If you had a rare illness...

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Atheus

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2005
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Originally posted by: Xyclone
Originally posted by: nkgreen
Pain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense#Pain

If we also count pain as a sense in this discussion, losing it would be a bad choice. Pain is your body's way of telling you something is wrong. This means exercising would be dangerous, you might not notice a cut on your leg and bleed to death, etc.

Apparently there are about twenty of them in reality - balace, the sense that tells you where your arm is when your eyes are closed, etc.
 

DrPizza

Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Mar 5, 2001
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By taste, I assume I'll no longer be able to taste saltiness, bitterness, and sourness. That's almost a decent trade-off for sweetness, and the rest of flavor, as mentioned numerous times in the thread, is due to our olfactory senses.

Thinking in evolutionary terms, it seems that those who couldn't detect saltiness died out, having had a few too many glasses of ocean.
There are a few foods that are sour/bitter that are enjoyable, but most of the time, you taste something "whoa, that's really bitter. I'm not eating any more of that."
And, sweetness. "MMmmmm, good. Let's eat more of these."


We've outgrown our "need" to be able to detect these. Sure, it's nice, but since we know what more of our food is, I think I could survive quite well without those.

 

xanis

Lifer
Sep 11, 2005
17,571
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Definitely smell. There's too much beauty, good things to feel, and food to eat in this world to make me want to keep my other senses.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
70,565
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I'd go with smell. While some smells/tastes are great, they are not really a big requirement in human life. Though in some cases it can be a life/death situation such as smelling a gas leak. (well gas actually has no smell but they add a chemical to make it smell)

Sight is the worse one to loose and hearing would be the 2nd imo.

At first I was thinking feel as at first it seems less important, but really it's a sense we take for granted. Not being able to feel would pretty much mean not being able to physically do much. Walking would probably be next to impossible, so would using a computer or any electronic device. If you can't feel which key your hitting how do you know which one it is, and if you're pressing hard enough? My dad has no feeling in one finger and he has the worse troubles using stuff like cell phones. Incredible how important it really is.