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Lumifer comments on Open thread for December 17-23, 2013 - Less Wrong
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Perhaps eating isn't a major pleasure of life for everyone.
I'm imagining an analogous argument about exercise. Someone formulates (or claims to, anyway) a technique combining drugs and yoga that provides, in a sweatless ten minutes per week, equivalent health benefits to an hour of normal exercise per day. Some folks are horrified by the idea — they enjoy their workout, or their bicycle commute, or swimming laps; and they can't imagine that anyone would want to give up the euphoria of extended physical exertion in exchange for a bland ten-minute session.
To me, that seems like a failure of imagination. People don't all enjoy the same "pleasures of life". Some people like physical exercise; others hate it. Some people like tasty food; others don't care about it. Some people like sex; others simply lack any desire for it; still others experience the urge but find it annoying. And so on.
It's a weak analogy as humans are biologically hardwired to eat but are not hardwired to exercise.
True, but two comments. First, let's also look at the prevalence. I'm willing to make a wild approximation that the number of people who truly don't care (and never will care) about food is about the same as the number of true asexuals and that's what, 1-2%?
Second, I suspect that many people don't care about food because of a variety of childhood conditioning and other psychological issues. In such cases you can treat it as a fixable pathology. And, of course, one's attitude towards food changes throughout life (teenagers are notoriously either picky or indifferent, adults tend to develop more discriminating tastes).