(My thoughts are still not sufficiently organized that I’m making a top level post about this, but I think it’s worth putting out for discussion.)

A couple of years ago, in a thread I can no longer find, someone argued that they valued the pleasure they got from defecation, and that they would not want to bioengineer away the need to do so. I thought this was ridiculous.

At the same time, I see many Lesswrongers view eating as a chore that they would like to do away with. And yet I also find this ridiculous.

So I was thinking about where there difference lay for me. My working hypothesis is that there are two elements of pleasure: relief and satisfaction. Defecation, or a drink of water when you’re very thirsty bring you relief, but not really satisfaction. Eating a gourmet meal, on the other hand, may or may not bring relief, depending on how hungry you are when you eat it, but it’s very satisfying. The ultimate pleasure is sex, which culminates in a very intense sense of both relief and satisfaction. (Masturbation, at least from a male perspective, can provide the relief but only a tiny fraction of the satisfaction – hence the difference in pleasure from sex.)

I can understand the desire to minimize or eliminate the need for functions that serve only to provide relief, but I think the “let’s subsist on Soylent” people are throwing the satisfaction baby out with the relief bathwater. I suspect lack of awareness of the possibility of satisfaction as well as relief may also explain the comments I’ve seen here from people who are asexual and happy about that (but I’m less confident in this case because the inferential distance is large.)