That stinks.
Sometimes when I quit reading things, I have little pithy snarky posts about it. This time I wanted to highlight a factual error so that none of you will repeat it, because I've read this wrong, wrong thing more than one place:
It is, in fact, possible to remember and/or imagine a smell.
No, really. It is. I checked with timprov, who doesn't have nearly the nose I do, and it is not just me being a mutant superhuman. You may not be able to imagine or remember a smell, and that's fine. Some people can't process faces. Some people can't tell red from green. Some people apparently can't have smells in their brain without external scent stimulus. People vary, and that's cool.
But starting with the (supposedly nonfiction!) premise that humans cannot remember/imagine a smell and basing large swaths of social theory on it is just not on. I will be done at that point. I don't go around telling you that you can't possibly make up recipes without imagining smells if you don't go around telling me I can't do it my way. Among other things, it looked like a clear sign that this person had not so much researched his book as assumed his own universality. Not a win.
It is, in fact, possible to remember and/or imagine a smell.
No, really. It is. I checked with timprov, who doesn't have nearly the nose I do, and it is not just me being a mutant superhuman. You may not be able to imagine or remember a smell, and that's fine. Some people can't process faces. Some people can't tell red from green. Some people apparently can't have smells in their brain without external scent stimulus. People vary, and that's cool.
But starting with the (supposedly nonfiction!) premise that humans cannot remember/imagine a smell and basing large swaths of social theory on it is just not on. I will be done at that point. I don't go around telling you that you can't possibly make up recipes without imagining smells if you don't go around telling me I can't do it my way. Among other things, it looked like a clear sign that this person had not so much researched his book as assumed his own universality. Not a win.