307. A.I. Can't Bake

<p>You’ve probably heard that, in a blind taste test, even experts can’t tell between white and red wine. Even if this were true – and it’s not – it wouldn’t matter.</p> <p>I was in Rome last month, visiting some <a href= "https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/leonard-mind-raphael-world/">Raphael</a> paintings to research my next book, and stopped by the Sistine Chapel.</p> <p>I’ve spent a good amount of time studying what Michelangelo painted on that ceiling. There are lots of high-resolution images on Wikipedia.</p> <p>But seeing a picture is nothing like the experience of seeing the Sistine Chapel. You’ve invested thousands of dollars and spent fifteen hours on planes. You’re jet-lagged and your feet ache from walking 20,000 steps. You’re hot.</p> <p>When you enter, guards order you to keep moving, so you won’t block the door. They corral you to the center, and you can finally look up.</p> <hr /> <p>When you hear wine experts can’t tell between white and red wine, you imagine the following: Professional sommeliers are blindfolded, and directed to taste two wines. They then make an informed guess which is white, and which is red. In this imaginary scenario, they get it right half the time – as well as if they had flipped a coin.</p> <p>If it were true wine experts couldn’t tell between white and red wine, the implication would be that the experience of tasting wine is separate from other aspects of the wine. That the color, the shape of the glass, the bottle, the label, and even the price of the wine are all insignificant. That they all distract from the only thing that matters: the taste of the wine.</p> <hr /> <p>There’s some psychophysiological trigger that gets pulled when you tilt your head back. Maybe it stimulates your pituitary gland. When you have your head back and are taking in the images on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, you feel vulnerable. (You literally <em>are</em> <a href= "https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/beyond-vulnerability/">vulnerable</a>. You can’t see what’s going on around you. You’d be easy to physi