22Jun/1117
Connoisseur
by Jeff
Image text: Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.
This comic is a very funny one and needs very little explanation. Joe Biden is the current Vice President of the USA. The comic is saying that experiencing anything for a long period of time would make anyone a snobby connoisseur, even pictures of the Vice President eating a sandwich.
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June 22nd, 2011
I love how the discussion of the sandwich pictures is really well written, as if the two really did put a lot of thought into it.
“Even if he had no mayo on his hand at all.”
June 22nd, 2011
Can someone explain the alt text a little bit?
I’m guessing that he’s saying that the more time we spend with something, the more prominent it is in our brains, so the more dramatic minor differences seem. But I could be missing the point.
June 26th, 2011
Nope. You’re dead-on.
June 22nd, 2011
Suppose your personal scale is one to ten. And suppose you apply it to, say, sandwiches. And you definitely know what a “1″ is, and what a “10″ is, when it comes to sandwiches, because you have made a careful study, and kep records. Then, suppose, one day, you find a sandwich that is better than a “10.” The premise of the alt-text is that you will not rate it an “11,” but rather, you will adjust your scale so that it is the new “10,” and the old 10 is now . . . less than 10.
Or, at least, that’s how I took it. I could be full of crap. It wouldn’t be the first time.
June 22nd, 2011
In any case Canadian surrealist porn is a case of Rule 34 (http://xkcd.com/305/)
June 22nd, 2011
“Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.”
This means that however wide or narrow the field that we put our attention on, the range of differences in that field will seem just as important to us.
Whatever we focus our attention on becomes our whole reality.
If someone has a particular hobby or interest – say model trains, or 19th century French literature, or encryption algorithms, or wine, or whatever – his whole world can start to revolve around that, and the more he gets into it, the more that one narrow field seems to expand and encompass his whole reality and the more refined the differences he will see.
Someone who has a very smooth, uneventful life will be just as upset or happy as other people, but over small things.
If we focus on a small area, we see tiny differences. If we focus on a large area of experience or knowledge, only major differences seem important.
The more you focus down, the more the area you are focusing on expands.
It’s very true.
June 22nd, 2011
I agree; we RESIZE OUR EXPERIENCES – we don’t resize the scale. As MarkS noted, I believe it’s saying that even if you focus on something with only minute and irrelevant differences, your brain will “overlay” that experience on the fixed scale to the point that your brain will identify differences and thereby rate the [whatever].
EG: A real-world experience; I know so many people who say “a live performance is a live performance” – but I have certain songs from certain artists where I have a large number of live performances, some of which are ‘better’ than others in my mind to the point where I have favourites.
Others clearly don’t care to consider the differences; same as the wine example in the comic.
The Author is suggesting that having experiences that do not greatly differ or with no real consequential differences, the brain will still assign them to a scale. I’m sure most have had the experience while shopping where there are a few of one item, and you suddenly decide you have the analyse which is the “best” one to take – assessing flaws or quality of the item, when really they are all effectively the same. It’s all the same concept.
June 22nd, 2011
you know what cheap wine i hear is rather good, Two Buck Chuck from trader joes’
June 22nd, 2011
Are there any good pictures of Joe Biden eating a sandwich?
June 22nd, 2011
Only the ones with no mayo. Mayo pictures are disgusting and anyone who thinks otherwise is an untrained Visigoth!
June 22nd, 2011
Actually, already there’s a tumblr account with that very idea in mind. It’s http://joebideneatingasandwich.tumblr.com/
And no, I’m not making this up. That really is a Tumblr account dedicated to having 500 pictures of Joe Biden eating a sandwich.
June 22nd, 2011
I have to say, I really like the one with chocolate-vanilla ice cream, or is it pistachio, I can’t quite tell. While its not Joe eating a sandwich in a classical sense, it captures quite accurately his jaw’s capacity and the bite structure in general. The wrinkles of the cheek that are so rarely depicted, are shown here in gorgeous detail.
June 22nd, 2011
And what about how he handled that menu in “Yankee Kitchen Diner in August, 2008.”? It’s just superb how he shows his decisiveness in his selection…
October 24th, 2011
500 pictures? I was thinking the “500 still frames” would have been taken from ONE video of J.B. eating ONE sandwich… therefore even more similar to each other!
June 23rd, 2011
Is that the same two guys that locked themselves in the box?
June 26th, 2011
I don’t know. I don’t think it matters, though — if it were two volunteers they arranged, the point would be the same.
June 23rd, 2011
I kind of disagree with above comments about the scale–I think what the comic is trying to express is that we all know what a ten is in one particular experience, and we can equate that to something else. So if we love cheeseburgers and think that Miller’s Big Stanky Whopper is the best, and if we listen to a really great song, we might think, ‘Oh, that’s a 10, just like MBSW,’ or vice-versa.