I think that olive oil seeming flavorless to anyone would be an exception rather than the rule, if there's anyone at all with a sense of taste of whom it's true.
To me, olive oil of any sort has practically no taste or smell. Olives have a strong taste, but olive oil is not even slightly reminiscent of olives. If they were not called by the same name, it would not occur to me that they had anything to do with each other. Other vegetable oils also taste of nothing. And yet, my sense of taste is not generally insensitive: the very first time I encountered chopped coriander leaf (in a salad, not in a labelled jar), I guessed at once that it was the same plant that coriander seed comes from.
So, there is indeed someone with a sense of taste of whom it's true.
I suspect there is a large variation in senses of taste that largely goes unnoticed. Alcohol also has no taste to me, yet some people specifically don't like the taste of alcohol.
Today's post, The Unfinished Mystery of the Shangri-La Diet was originally published on 10 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Beware of Other-Optimizing, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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