The chocolates of Poco Dolce (which means “not too sweet”) have been named “top ten” in America by Saveur. One of Poco Dolce’s products is a bittersweet chocolate square with double-roasted almonds.

“Why double-roasted?” I asked Kathy Wiley, who makes the chocolates, at the San Francisco Chocolate Salon. Double roasting — roast, cool, roast again — produces a better flavor, she said. “Why not just roast them longer?” I asked. Because you are more likely to over-cook them. There are special ovens for roasting nuts but she doesn’t have one.

This is basic material science. Wiley wants to maximize the concentration of certain molecules (that produce a roasted almond flavor) while minimizing the concentration of other molecules (that produce a burnt flavor). By trial and error she has figured out how. She was able to do the trial and error — i.e., research — because her business is successful. Her business is successful in large part because of connoisseurship and gift rituals. People give her products as gifts.

I believe we have genetic tendencies toward connoisseurship and gift-giving holidays and rituals because, long ago, these tendencies supported research in material science. Pleasure from finely-made things and desire for gifts supported artists and artisans, who by trial and error learned better control of their materials. Poco Dolce is a latter-day example.

As regular readers of this blog know, I propose that art exists because in our evolutionary past payment to artists promoted material science — learning how to create new materials with useful properties. For example, red stained glass.

Medieval artisans unknowingly became nanotechnologists when they made red stained glass by mixing gold chloride into molten glass. That created tiny gold spheres, which absorbed and reflected sunlight in a way that produces a rich ruby color.

The gold spheres have to be about 25 nanometers in diameter to get this effect.

Thanks to Joshua Schrier.

The Japanese have a tradition of omiyage, little gifts that you bring back from vacation and give to your friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers. A large number of people. According to Wikipedia, “Japanese are often very close-lipped about their travel plans, hoping to minimize their omiyage responsibilities.” That is one solution, here is another:

Choosing omiyage is so difficult and takes time out of sightseeing! It makes the luggage so heavy, when it was already heavy to begin with! You are so tired and beaten down when you return home! Just leisurely choose omiyage from this catalog, go on your trip, and we’ll deliver it to your door when you return home to Japan!

And wrapping matters:

When presenting omiyage remember that the wrapping is VERY IMPORTANT. Put your omiyage in the suitcase or bag that will be sent directly to Morioka from Narita Airport and you can wrap your gifts here to avoid the “well traveled” look.

Like Christmas presents, omiyage (especially the wrapping) is something neither the giver nor the recipient would otherwise buy. Gift traditions increase the market for high-end finely-made things. The genes that pushed us toward these traditions evolved because they helped artists and artisans — the first material scientists — make a living.

I have been drinking diet cherry sodas for many years. Last week, for the first time, I decided to compare two different brands. I bought a four-pack of Jones sugar-free Black Cherry Soda and a six-pack of Hansen’s sugar-free Black Cherry Soda.

I’m never so thirsty that I want to drink two cans of soda at one time so I resisted making a direct comparison (opening both brands at once). I happily drank three bottles of the Jones soda and four bottles of the Hansen’s soda at widely-spaced intervals (several hours at least). Both brands tasted fine.

When I had only three bottles left (one Jones, two Hansen’s) I finally drank a Jones and a Hansen’s side by side: sip of one, sip of the other. It was immediately clear that the Jones was much better. It had a strong clear flavor while the Hansen’s had something fuzzy and metallic about it. A difference I hadn’t noticed. I will never buy another Hansen’s — it was that bad.

The Jones soda cost more. I had never bought it because I saw nothing wrong with the cheap stuff. Now I do. The changes were not just negative: After I noticed the difference, I got more pleasure from the Jones. Now that I am aware of this difference it will be fun to buy other cherry sodas to see how they stack up. The side-by-side comparison greatly increased my hedonic reaction to cherry sodas. Not only will I get more pleasure from the better-made, I’ll get less pleasure from the worse-made.

Thus side-by-side comparisons (which we enjoy) make connoisseurs of us. Connoisseurs, of course, pay more for and create a market for finely-made things, helping artists and artisans make a living. In human prehistory, artists and artisans were material scientists. Their trial-and-error research about how to control materials eventually led to better tools.

More about side-by-side comparisons. The evolutionary function of art.

This clever and attractive music video creates images out of repetition of dice numbers — pictures of dice showing 1, 2, etc. It illustrates the general point that we like to see identical or nearly-identical things side by side. A vast amount of decoration (wallpaper, rugs, packages, posters, architectural details) takes advantage of this.

It’s a curious propensity because we don’t see this pattern in nature: we don’t see identical things side by side, neatly lined up. So the propensity did not evolve so that people will prefer Place X to Place Y. It’s a propensity that causes us to place similar things side by side — if we have a doll collection, for example, to put our dolls side by side rather than far apart.

When we put things side by side it is far easier to notice small differences. Noticing small differences is the first step toward caring about small differences, deriving pleasure and displeasure from them — becoming a connoisseur, in other words. Connoisseurs pay more for “fine” stuff than the rest of us — wine connoisseurs pay more for wine, for example. In human prehistory, I theorize, connoisseurs supported artists and artisans, who were the first material scientists.

The pleasure we take from identical things side by side evolved because it increased connoisseurship. Supermarkets should do more side-by-side sampling of different products in the same category — different balsamic vinegars, for example.

Directory for this series.

At the scrapbook store the clerk smiled as I paid. (I have a Shangri-La Diet scrapbook.)

“You’re amused because I’m a professor?” I asked.

“Because you’re a man. Never see men in here,” she said. “My husband hasn’t been here.”

“I think scrapbooking is very important,” I said. “Everyone’s an artist.”

“There’s no right or wrong,” she said.

Exactly. There’s no right or wrong in art but there is better and worse. Unlike technology where there is “right and wrong”: the tool works or it doesn’t work.

Suppose you are trying to guess a number between 1 and 10000. Contrast two kinds of feedback:

yes/no

and

too low/correct/too high

The first is discouraging, the second encouraging. With the second you can find the number; with the first you will give up.

Suppose you are trying to learn how to make steel. To make useful steel requires doing several things almost exactly right. There really is right or wrong. Trying to guess what to do is hopeless because the feedback is of the yes/no variety. And, in the beginning, all of it is no.

In contrast, suppose you are using steel-like materials in art. There is better and worse in art; as a result, you will slowly learn better control of your materials. You will be slowly guided toward the knowledge you need to make steel. The evolutionary reason for art, I believe, is that paying artists paid for research in material science, which eventually led to better tools. Just as ramps and curb cuts help people on wheels, art helped ancient man. It replaced step functions of utility vs. knowledge with ramp functions.

For fascinating recent comments on sex differences see Rebecca A. and Tyler Cowen. Just as scrapbooking releases the inner artist, blogging releases the inner story-teller.

Previous posts in this series: Christmas; American Idol; business book.

My theory of human evolution says there are mechanisms that produce diversity of skills and knowledge. These mechanisms evolved because diversity of goods and services is crucial to a healthy economy. Human diversity generates economic diversity — the person who likes to paint becomes an artist, the person who likes to make things becomes an engineer. These differences are crucial because they allow trade. If everyone made the same things, there could be no trade and no gains from specialization. The more diversity, the better. This is the opposite of the way variation is viewed in statistics. A statistician thinks of variation in measurement as “error” — something to be reduced, perhaps by averaging. Variation is everywhere, of course; you can think of it as something to be encouraged or discouraged.

Human nature encourages diversity. You can build (a) institutions that encourage, benefit from, or at least accept human diversity or (b) institutions that discourage it. The former will work vastly better than the latter because the latter are always fighting human nature. It is the difference between swimming with the current and swimming against it. This is the heart of my criticism of higher education: It is anti-human-nature. It is anti-human-nature because every student in a class is treated the same. Every student is expected to learn the same things and is measured using the same yardstick. Such classes ignore diversity and try to reduce diversity (every student is supposed to learn the same stuff, thus making their brains more similar). They are ignoring and fighting human nature.

When I told Sarah Kapoor this critique, she recommended First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently (1999) by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. “You’ll like it,” she said. She was right. At the heart of what distinguishes better managers from worse managers, say the authors, is that the better managers have this “revolutionary insight”:

People don’t change that much. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. [In other words, don’t try to make your employees identical.] Try to draw out what was left in.

In other words: 1. Start by accepting diversity. 2. Try to use it to advantage.

Better managers achieve better results, defined all sorts of ways, than worse managers. The author’s conclusions are based on a vast amount of research done by the Gallup Organization.

Christmas edition. American Idol edition.

My theory of human evolution (paper, talk) is that our brains changed in several ways to build healthy economies — in particular, to increase specialization, trade, and technical know-how. For example, collectors and connoisseurs pay more for finely-made things than the rest of us; the extra payment helps skilled craftsmen advance their art. Collectors and connoisseurs come to value small improvements, I believe, through side-by-side comparisons. Obviously side-by-side comparisons help us notice small improvements; it’s the predicted hedonic change that’s interesting.

After listening to Jordin Sparks sing “Woman in Love” on American Idol last night, I wondered what other singers had done with it. YouTube was happy to help.

Jordin Sparks

Barbra Streisand

Liz McClarnon

Lili Ivanova

Young Divas

Leticia

Shiela Rodriguez

Regine Velasquez

After you listen to several of these performances, I predict you will respond more strongly — more fully? — to future performances. The better ones will bring you more pleasure, the worse ones more pain. You will be willing to pay more for the better ones. Saul Sternberg has also been interested in the effect of side-by-side musical comparisons.

Christmas edition of my theory.