Luddites Not Named Morgan Or Chass

and it’s beautiful.

that intelligence is unfair.

Good god, how awful.

I also put more stock in advanced statistical baseball analysis than Murray Chass or Joe Morgan.

I’M AN ENIGMA!

4) The books focus too much on the sous vide technique.
5) It is too esoteric for home use. Honest, I am not going to buy ethylene gas to ripen my fruit!
6) I cannot quite figure out who the target audience is for these books.

Relative to baseball, this is more like comparing SIERRA to xFIP, rather than comparing Morgan to anything not dumb. When they released SIERRA, we spent quite some time trying to figure out what it brought to the table that the current metrics overlooked. After some articles, people just said “F*ck it, it doesn’t bring any quality improvement over what we have (xFIP)”.

Maybe, it’ll get to a point where it has gone over the top or people will use the technique without regarding the limitations of the method. Like correctly interpreting UZR and not using SSS. Or when you’re just making mac and cheese and you put 5g of salt instead of 3.75g (PANIC PANIC, throw the food away!!11one). You didn’t use ethylene gas in your mac and cheese!

I get the comparisons over process: many “traditionalists” or whatever don’t like the new techniques being used by “modern” cooks, who often boil (ha) everything down to a science, whereas before everyone just threw flour and spices in a bowl and food came out of the fire. Fair enough.

If the analogy ends there, I’m with you. Thing is, food as an end product is so subject to the whims of taste that it may not matter how you got there so long as what is produced tastes awesome. I may love the David Wright pizza made from old, “outdated” techniques, and find that the Ryan Zimmerman pizza, which is also really good but made from the new techniques, is missing something. Maybe not enough garlic, I dunno. You may prefer the latter pizza. Point is, both processes are perfectly cromulent and well-tested with a good end product, I just happen to find one tastes better than the other, irrespective of the fact that Ryan Zimmerman pizza is measured in micrograms.

Not trying to bag on this post too much because I agree with some of your analogy I just think maybe it needs some tweaking. Or not. It’s entirely up to you.

The main difference I see between molecular gastronomy and sabermetrics is that it seems like its not something most chefs would be able to jump right into. (just my sense, I had never heard of it before this post) I think that it is kind of myth that sabermetrics are this complex, abstract set of statistics and principles that are above the common fan and that you need an advanced degree in mathmatics to even begin to understand them. I think it perpetuated both by fans who are too lazy to familiarize themselves with sabermetrics and also by fans of sabermetrics themselves who want to maintain an sense of superiority over those who don’t embrace SABR. To me sabermetrics are mostly commonsense. A lot of what I learned through sabermetrics were things that I already knew or at least suspected. And I hate when I read comments from opponents of sabermetrics who say things like "I don’t want to break out an abacus while enjoying a ball-game. Maybe people don’t realize that you can look up any SABR stat as easy as ERA or RBIz.

almost everything we eat is already a product of quantitative experimentation. Unless you’re cooking entirely from scratch you’re using a Ragu sauce that has its formulas, additives, and what nots down to the milligram. And even if it is from scratch scientists have their hands all over the raising, feeding, and breeding of animals and crops. Just an observation, but it cautions against putting an “old-time” label on everything grandma whips up in the kitchen.

As philosophy major/enthusiast, the battle between determinism and contingency (free will) reminds me very much of the battle between the traditional understanding of baseball and sabermetric’s. Determinism is the advanced stats of metaphysics (things are the way they are because of the laws of physics and whatnot that govern the universe make them that way) and contingency is the traditionalism (I feel like I’m free and determinism feels uncomfortable).

For starters, since it was mentioned in the comments earlier, yes, it isn’t for home cooking. It states as such. Same with many of the fancy cookbooks. Thomas Keller’s French Laundry cookbook is goddamn awesome, but he isn’t a buffoon and separates “this is what we make in the restaurant” from “this is the aspect and fundamental that you can use for yourself and family at home”. I’ve definitely had discussions with people who are much more into the statistical numbers side of things and would basically ignore or dismiss any point that wasn’t quantifiable by stats. It’s a silly stance, imo, because it leads to a lot of missing the forest for the trees situations.

Stats are good. They are, in fact, a great way to measure pretty much anything. If you follow molecular gastronomy instructions to the milligram, you will almost certainly get a good meal. However you can also get a good meal from watching your parents cook and learning “the old fashioned” way.

The baseball analogy is good to a point, but like pretty much everything in life, it isn’t a clear cut black and white, but rather a shade of grey.