Comment by zzbzq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zzbzq | Hacker News Reader

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Perhaps your friend was signaling a taste you couldn't perceive. For example, I generally look down upon scallion pancakes as a category.

Consider an American food analogue. Do I distinguish good and bad grilled cheese? How can I when its identity is that of a basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class food? If you add more exotic ingredients, it becomes distant from its quintessential identity, so it becomes "good" grilled cheese in inverse proportion to it being, actually, grilled cheese. Contrariwise, if you enhance it by further indulging in the fats, oils, salts, etc., can we say this is "better" when it has also become even more base, even more low class? It becomes better as it becomes worse.

I find myself wanting to say something similar to your friend. All the grilled cheese are the same to me. I can plainly see one is different than another, but they are all objects of derision, and they only rise above that derision insofar as they stop being grilled cheese.

> How can I when its identity is that of a basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class food

That's an assertion, not a self-evident fact. And one that I (and I am certain, many other people) would dispute.

Skimming through some recipes I searched, it seems it is mostly all purpose flour and a ton of oil to make it flaky. It seems to be in the "unhealthy" camp assuming carbs and sat fats are unhealthy.

Also in the cheap camp considering the ingredients are cheap and making it does not seem too time or equipment intensive.

I find working with dough to always be complicated, but the recipe itself seems simple enough, so it might qualify as basic too, relative to other recipes.

Low class is ill defined, but assuming it means it is popular with poorer people due to the lower cost of its ingredients and preparation, then it might also be true.

> basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class

"Basic" is clearly not a useful adjective, when a grilled cheese sandwich can be made with a variety of different ingredients some of which are easily available in most parts of the world, and some are not. Certainly you can make a basic grilled cheese sandwich, but it's a logical fallacy to leap from there to "all grilled cheese sandwiches are basic".

"Low class" is again highly ingredient dependent. A grilled cheese sandwich made with some "rare" sourdough bread, irish grass fed butter and 3 kinds of artisanal cheese from different parts of the world is just as much as grilled cheese sandwich as one made with wonderbread and slices of american "cheese product". It's a similar logical fallacy: just because you can make a "low class grilled cheese" doesn't imply that "all grilled cheese sandwiches are low class".

"Cheap" is also covered in a similar way.

Unhealthy I will generally concede, other than to note that our ideas about what is and is not healthy or unhealthy food shift a lot over time (and often loop back on themselves).

So, then: which one of you has good taste?

Uhh I can't really understand this argument frankly. You're making a value judgement of grilled cheese as a commodity food but still, if someone put a grilled cheese in front of you that used plain white bread and one that used sourdough, you'd notice the difference, right? Sure you could argue that the sourdough grilled cheese is not a real grilled cheese but in doing so, you are inherently distinguishing the two items, therefore demonstrating taste to a degree.

They would see a difference, but wouldn't find one better than other: they're still grilled cheese, and thus worthless in their value system.

The argument is that I can distinguish them, but not rank them, because I distinguish them with respect to their essential character. Grilled cheese's essential character is something I view with derision, and its rank increases only by shedding that essential character. Grilled cheese with sourdough bread, or with veggies and barbecued meat, would rank as "better food" precisely because they rank as "worse grilled cheese."

So, you've embraced the 'no true scottsman' fallacy as the primary arbiter of your taste.

But in "no true Scotsman" there's an assumption that there's an external definition of the Scotsman category that is invariant from the fallacious clause, whereas here the definition of the grilled cheese category is the system under question. Otherwise, I could say "yes, I like grilled cheese, especially when it isn't grilled and contains neither cheese nor bread."

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