A couple interesting notes about your cite, now that I’ve dug it up for you:
Nowhere does it mention “chopsticks.”
Nowhere does it mention buffets.
Nowhere does it support your inane claim that “Chinese places that only have chopsticks do so only because they want you to eat less, nothing more.”
Now that I’ve shown you how badly your cite sucks and supporting anything you claimed, I have a better idea why you offered your cite in such an inept fashion: if you’d given a direct link to it, it’d be a lot easier for folks to see that you’re talking out your ass.
That said, I was familiar with Wansink’s work before reading this cite (I just didn’t recognize his name); his experiments are ingenious and invaluable. The fact that he doesn’t support you in no way diminishes the coolness of what he’s working on.
And… FTR… I am not necessarily a lousy tipper, I often go above and beyond for service that was above and beyond but still take good care of those who take good care of me in an average setting.
But bad service (on the part of the wait staff, not the establishment or the kitchen staff i.e. bad food) will get you bupkiss.
And rude service will get you worse, I have no problem leaving my 2 cents to show you what I really think.
And… If I were to request additional utensils, unless they were totally unreasonable I would expect them to be provided. Western style utensils are not unreasonable in Manchester. I’ve even heard rumors that some people there use napkins so providing these would not be too far beyond reason.
If upon the second request for additional utensils, said utensils were not provided I would then request someone else to assist me. Either that or leave.
Okay, my apologies for misinterpreting you on this, thinking you meant that you were calling for tipping only for above-average service.
I agree. If my waiter is not a native English speaker, after the second refusal, I’d suspect a language problem and would ask for someone else. If it turned out that they really didn’t want to (or weren’t able to) provide me with what I felt I needed to enjoy the dinner, I’d make polite excuses and leave. No harm, no foul: it’s their business to run as they see fit, and my choice is whether to give them my money or not.
Silly tradition or not, the fact is that our waitstaff don’t get paid living wages, and anyone who doesn’t tip a waiter who gave acceptable service in America is an asshole, especially if they attempt to justify it with philosophy. I would love to live in a country where tipping was not necessary, but in the country I live in, it is, and that’s just a fact you can’t get around. We can both gnash our teeth and bang our fists on the table screaming that it’s the employer’s responsibility to pay the waitstaff a respectable wage, but the waiter is just going to go hungry or get evicted. It’s this kind of crap:
that sent me headlong into malnutrition and debt.
So, in other words, you acknowledge that your argument has no basis in reality, that you know nothing about the American customs you’re arguing about, and that you have no cogent argument to return with? Apology accepted, sir. Thanks for playing.
Why in the hell do you think anyone has argued that you should tip at a Chinese buffet? Why do you think that is relevant to this thread in even the slightest way?
Well, I don’t have a bone in this particular dog fight, but there’s no “proper” format for citing here on the Dope. If you want a handy little tool, I recommend Son of Citation Machine (Warlick, 2000).
The whole “do they want you to eat less” thing is interesting to me. Is it different in the UK? Because here, every single Chinese place I’ve ever eaten at brings you enough food in one entree to split with another adult and still have some to take home… so I don’t see how they’re adjusting the amount of food you eat at all, since they always bring you way more than you can eat regardless. (Unless you weigh 400lbs and can manage to shovel a half-gallon of food into your neck in one sitting, but I don’t think that is the case with most people.) (I see a couple of other people have touched on this as well.)
As for the studies cited (and I agree with Left Hand of Dorkness on the presentation of those–it seems to me to be the very height of arrogance to expect people to go to the library and check out and read a book just to see if your point on some message board thread is valid) It seems just as likely that the results could show what they show because Asian people tend to eat less than Western people. (I don’t know if they do or don’t–just saying that looking at the data that’s been posted, I could see that as an explanation.)
(I had a reply written to Capt. Ridley’s… but on reading more of the thread I realize that this person is pointless to respond to.)
You’re right, of course, that there’s no required format for a cite. I contend that a cite containing a direct link to the source material and accompanied by the relevant quote from the link is the kind of cite that will be most persuasive. A direct link without a quote is next. This is followed by a specific, albeit unlinked, cite that is accompanied by the relevant quote (note some folks will reverse the order of 2 and 3; it’s all good). A mention of a particular work that supposedly buttresses the poster’s claim is a very distant third, and is scarcely any better than “my post is my cite.”
The reasons for this Panda has made abundantly clear: it’s somewhat difficult to demonstrate that someone is full of hot air when their cite is difficult to obtain. I was only able to show how poor his interpretation of the cite was because it turned out that something fitting his cite is available through Google Scholar.
Perhaps that’s why I referred to the book rather than the powerpoint presentation.
If you can teach me how to hyperlink to a book on my bookshelf, I will sing your praises for all eternity. I’m good with computers, but I’m not that good.
Did you refer to the book using any means beyond psychic projection? Because I found the title and author in two different posts, but nothing more specific than that.
Well, your quote from the book is generally how it’s done; thanks for providing the quote that you claim supports your positions!
Let’s check out that quote from the book:
It’s unsupported by evidence. If the evidence appears elsewhere, that’s what you should be quoting. As I mentioned before, a neurological study suggests that how proficient someone is with chopsticks depends on whether it is “overlearned” as an activity; there are MRI scans to support this claim.
It does not mention buffets.
Most importantly, it has nothing whatsoever to do with your inane claim that “Chinese places that only have chopsticks do so only because they want you to eat less, nothing more.”
As I suggested before, we need something more than a vague reference to a work, so we can evaluate the evidence ourselves. When I evaluate that evidence, I find that it does extremely little to support your claim.
If you want to make a slightly different claim–Chinese buffets don’t regret the fact that people eat less food when they’re given chopsticks–that’s something that is probably true. But having been to Chinese buffets and having seen extremely few hurdles put in the way of massive overeating (plates are big, food is practically displayed in troughs, people receive infinite refills on huge glasses of sugary drinks, high-calorie and high-cost foods are prominently displayed), I not only find your specific claim to be absurd, but I find the underlying logic–that Chinese buffets put significant energy into lowering how much folks eat–highly dubious. Instead, it looks to me as though they put significant energy into high customer and food turnover, assuming that most customers will mindlessly eat, and figuring that into their costs and expected profits.
If anything at all in any of your books addresses the motives or workings of buffets, that is what would constitute a relevant cite. Otherwise, your best bet is to back sheepishly away from a silly and unsupported claim.
There are several proposed explanations for why chopstick eating leads to lower food intake. You have not addressed all of them.
Higher difficulty in use of chopsticks increases concentration on what you are eating, leading you to pay more attention to how much food is going into your body.
Higher difficulty in use of chopsticks slows down the rate at which we eat, giving our stomachs more time to adjust.
Chopsticks cannot deliver as much food per bite as a fork or spoon.
3a) This slowed time gives your body more time to report being full
3b) This decreased payload means that, for equal amounts of food, chopsticks will present a higher amount of effort expended. Higher effort = less food eaten.
You’ve not provided an iota of proof that any of your claims hold true. The closest you’ve come is an quote from a book that supports #2 without providing the author’s evidence to support the claim.
Even if I stipulate that claims 1-3 are accurate, it STILL does nothing to support your original inane claim that “Chinese places that only have chopsticks do so only because they want you to eat less, nothing more.” That claim is just dumb, even if we assume you are only talking about buffets.
Now, of course I’ll admit that for folks who are not proficient in using chopsticks and who are proficient in using forks and spoons, your claims 1-3 are accurate. I hope you’ll admit that the exact reverse is true for those who are proficient in using chopsticks and who are not proficient in using forks and spoons.
My apologies if it wasn’t clear I meant the book. I really didn’t expect anyone to think I was referring to the powerpoint presentation you found. That doesn’t seem particularly difficult to believe, as nine of the first ten results on google for “brian wansink mindless eating” either sell or directly mention the existence of the book, and none link to your powerpoint.
Oh, now you want the primary source, eh? The citation he provides? This should look familiar; I’ve already posted it, and gotten shit from you for it, too.
Let’s examine the evidence I have provided you:
A secondary source published by an expert in food psychology
A direct quotation from this secondary source
The primary sources he provides as evidence for his claim
Still disagree? Cool. But I’ve presented my argument, and provided citations for it, to boot. The best you’ve got is that I haven’t been perfectly persuasive, which is irrelevant to my being correct or incorrect.
How is it that I am the only person expected to provide citations here?
I’ve strayed away from posting this because it was nearly impossible to find (over an hour of scanning) and not referenced in the index. Turns out because the passage I read was in the appendix, and I was reading the main sections.
I don’t believe the effect would be quite as pronounced, because forks are capable of delivering more food per bite. But the difference would still be there, yes.
That’s because I went to Google Scholar. I didn’t know whether you were citing a book, a movie, a song, or a PowerPoint slideshow. Since you claimed it was all scientific and stuff, I went to the place where one finds scientific cites. Guess what the first one was when I googled his name?
Yes, because, again, a link without the relevant quote is useless. Am I right in thinking you’ve not looked at these things you’re citing as evidence for your claim?
I’d show them to you, except neither is showing up in Google Scholar (the first shows up as having been cited by someone else; the second does not show up at all)
Everything so far may as well have been quoted from The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle, E.), for all the relevance it has to your central claim. At the end of your post you appear to back away from claims 1 and 2 as apply to all humans (compared just to Westerners), and to suggest that claim 3 is the only one that still applies. You’ve offered no evidence to back up claim 3, and I wonder whether you’ve watched anyone shovel noodles into their mouths with chopsticks before. I can’t imagine eating noodle soup as quickly with a fork or spoon as with chopsticks.
You’re not. (My post is my cite–hee!)
If you go to that link, you’ll find that I already provided you with a citation for this claim, including a direct link and a quote to the relevant passage. You’re expected both to provide cites and to pay attention when they’re offered to you.
So you expected the reader to go down to the library and check this book out to see what you were saying, but you strayed away from answering it because you couldn’t be arsed to find it yourself? Hmm.
At any rate, thanks for finding it; now we have something to work with. Again, that’s how cites are properly offered.
Let’s look at the relevant portion of the passage:
Now let’s look at the claim you made: “Chinese places that only have chopsticks do so only because they want you to eat less, nothing more.”
Do you see how:
Your claim is not remotely supported by the passage from the book; and
Your claim is very stupid?
This passage backs up a different claim–surprisingly, the claim I suggested you make. If you back away from that inane claim about why Chinese places only have chopsticks, and instead say that “Chinese buffets don’t regret the fact that people eat less food when they’re given chopsticks,” you’ll be right on.
Given that quote, you could even make the claim that “some Chinese buffets make chopsticks the default in order to reduce the amount that people eat.” That would be an accurate claim. It wouldn’t claim that was the motivation for all Chinese places; it wouldn’t claim that it was the sole motivation; it wouldn’t claim that it applied to places that didn’t offer forks and spoons. It would have the advantage of being accurate.
I really don’t understand this. Seriously. You’re in the U.S., right? The land of plenty? The place where restaurants are fucking everywhere. So a lousy waiter won’t get the tip and the custumer will go next door.
You mentioned this in two posts so I’d really would like an explanation.
A couple of other things.
In countries where there’s a service fee, it’s not the actual tipping that’s included (and thus mandatory), as I’ve seen in some American guides (typically in flight mags), but the wages, i.e. they’re working on a low flat salary and a commision. If you want to compliment someone on the service, do tip.
Also, I’ve read a lot of posts here from Americans who not only think it’s mandatory to tip, but that it makes for a better system. I agree that the restaurant service, even in greasy spoons, is very good in the U.S. and that the tipping is likely a big incentive.
But then, should I really get lousy service, I think it defeats the purpose of the system to tip. The service drone will make the tip anyway and thus have no incentive to do a better job.
Another thing, there are a lot of people working minimum wage in the U.S. in service positions that aren’t tipped, so why people who carry food (and, I guess, drive cabs, clean hotel rooms, park your car and carry your bags)? What about the busboy, the dishwasher, the cook in the greasy spoon. The person at the reception desk might be much more important to how your overall experience with a hotell is, rather than the guy carrying a suitcase, but one is not supposed to tip the people behind the desk, right?
And if there’s no tipping of the service drone at the check in, why would I expect to get good service there?
If it were me in that situation, I would have asked the waiter, “I thought you didn’t have a knife and fork.” If he told me that he actually went to another restaurant and borrowed them, I’d give him a big tip.
