Motion: “Which sense would you choose to lose?”
Presented by Margarita Nogueiro
I found this video in youtube and I thought that it could be an original motion for our debates.
If you were to be deprived of one of your five senses, which one would you choose to lose? I know it is a difficult question!
Comments»
I wold choose smell, without any doubt. Sight and hearing are the most usefull, and your life would be pretty more hard if you lose one of them. In my opinion touch is also very important because of it you could feel pain, and that’s a warning which allows you to defend against the thing that had caused you the pain. Taste is also usefull for not eating something bad, and even smell is important to detect a gas leak or something like that I don’t feel it’s as important as the others four.
Although it is a very difficult decision, I would choose smell; for me it is the less important sense. It is nice to smell the aroma of flowers or perfumes but there are many unpleasant things that would be better not to smell !
If I think about the other senses, I could not imagime myself blind,life would be much more difficult,I think sight is the most important sense.
That is the most difficult question that I have answered today. Really I don’t know which sense I would chose to loose because all of them are very important for my daily life, but if I have to choose one maybe I would say the taste. The reason is because I think that his function is by far the less important for me. I know that I could not enjoy the food anymore but I prefer it than loose my sight or another sense.
Without any doubt if I had to lose one sense, I would choose smell. I think it’s difficult to live without one of the five senses but I can’t imagine life without sight for example. I don’t agree at all with Diana when she says that living without hearing would be so difficult. I think I would prefer to lose hearing than touch. Nowadays there are lots of improvements in case you can’t hear but if you can’t touch there isn’t anything you can do to find a solution, and in fact, it’s a way to feel lots of things. Despite of this, I would choose to lose smell surely; there are things much more important you can receive with the other four senses.
First of all, I wouldn’t like to lose any of my senses, I just adore all of them, and also the sixth one, which come to be one of the most important ones: Common sense!!!!,
If I really had to lose one, without no doubt I would choose taste. In fact when I do have a cold I don’t really taste the food, so it is as if I had already lose it, life without it is possible..I’m still alive.
Apart from that; I must admit that I don’t eat as many vegetables, as I should because I hate them. In fact, if I couldn’t taste them I’m sure I would eat in a healthier way. It seems to me that in the end it wouldn’t be so a disaster to lose one of my senses
This is the easiest question for me today! I would choose smell, why? because in fact, this is the sense that I have less developed! I know perfectly how to live without smelling…
Your five senses play in important role in your daily life. Every moment in your life, you use at least one of your five senses. You touch, hear, see, taste, and smell in order to adapt to a new environment. The five senses are important for everyone so it’s a difficult choice if I have to lose one. The five senses work together all the time in order to allow your body to function properly and lets your life be easier. I can’t imagine my life without any but smell will be my choice. Also I have to say that I never reject seeing or hearing.
It´s an interesting issue. For me, there´s no doubt: smell! I know that it´s really important, like the rest of the senses, but I find it less useful. I can´t imagine my life without sight sense (for me, this is the last sense that I could choose to lose). And the same for hearing (the reason is easy, I love music and I play the piano since I was a child).
In relation to what Chiquilla says, I agree that common sense is the sixth sense and it´s one of the most important senses.
This is a very complicated and interesting question too.I´m agree with abbey,I would choose smell, I think is the less important(although I know all the senses are important)Maybe you find this argument a bit stupid but, would you miss your smell when you are on a public transport or in a public bathroom?Think about it.
It´s an interesting question and I agree with us: I choose smell.
Sight is the most importan sense: I can´t imagine my life without seeing my family, my friends, a beautiful landscape, reading,..
And what about hearing? I like listening to music, the voice of the people I love,…
Touching is an important way to feel love, for example, a hug of your family and friends.
And taste? Well, I think eating is a pleasure.
Chiquilla, I can hardly believe that your first option was “taste”! Just imagine for a second a world in which you can’t enjoy food! Just remenber the taste of sweets, chocolat, strawberries, ice creams, apple cakes…
Don’t you like cooking? at least for me, it’s very nice doing your food in advance; you will enjoy eating more if there is anticipation. I’ll give you an advice: spend some time looking at the food and enjoying the colors and smells… Are you sure you don’t really need taste-sense?
Dear Pollock:
As far as I know, it’s not with taste sense that you enjoy what you are eating, and in your case what you’ve cooked in advance. What I know from my lessons related to the senses is that taste sense allows us to discern among sweet, acid, bitter and salted. Anything about experiencing any kind of pleasure. That’s the main reason for me to have chosen that sense as first option, besides the one I’d written in my comment -eating healthier. It’s obvious that I love what I experience eating sweets, strawberries….
The thing that is raising my attention more is that lots of you are saying that you’ll prefer to lose your smelling ability. So as you asked me: is it that you don’t like remembering how your partner smells, the sea, the grass when it’s been already cut…and many other things???? (and please do not use as an argument that there’re lots of things that stink, because I could also say that there’re lots that are absolutely disgusting!!!!). bye
Upssss! I’ve been thinking about what I’ve just written and I’ve seen, that there’s an incongruence in my arguments ;(
It isn’t possible to say that it would be great to lose my taste in order to eat anything, but healthier…and then give a new argument saying that with that sense we only can difference among the four flavours….did you noticed it???
i’m terribly sorry, but I mantain this last argument, as the pleasure related with eating delicious meals involves more sensations than taste.
I’ve read almost all the comments and there’s something surprising. I can’t understand how there is someone who would lose taste. Nature provided us with lots of senses , not only five. What about internal senses?. If I had to lose one sense that would be a really tough question to answer because I’d have a wide range of senses to choose. But, watching the video, I work out that the question is related to the most popular five ones. I’d choose smell , as most of the people has said. Not because I don’t want to be controvert but because I guess I could live without it. If you live in a cold place ,probably, you‘ll suffer several coughs or flues during the year, so you wouldn’t smell almost anything. I wouldn’t de able to ‘taste’ an ‘eau de toilette’ if I didn’t smell , but also I wouldn’t have to cope with very unpleasant smells that everyone can realise everywhere. You know…
I have no doubt, I would choose smell! Even more, I would prefere to live without! I have to travel by bus all days and I suffer and get sick because of the people’s odours… it’s horrible. I see that all people have chosen it and it’s logical, the only good thing about this sense, could be smelling perfumes, but I usually get bored soon of all them so… I wouldn’t miss smell! However, I coudn’t live without the others…It has to be very hard, I can’t imagine my life being blind…. for me, see is the most important sense, because all things I like needs be able to see: watching films, travel, going for a walk, reading and watch photos, pictures,going shopping…
What a difficult question! If I choose smell I will never smell the dirtiness of rubbish dumps or industrial pollution anymore. However, if I choose taste that means I will never be delighted by the delicious McDonald’s specialities. Hearing? please, no, how I adore the “music” of cars in a traffic jam. Choosing sight means that I’m going to miss the “beautiful” skyline at the Spanish seaside…Well, what can I say…I quit.
Dear Chiquilla,
As you can guess by my comments, I’m not a doctor and, what is worse, I’ve completely forgot my EGB’s Science lessons!
I didn’t remember the relation between taste and sweet, acid, bitter and salted. For this reason, I spoke about enjoying the experience of cooking and eating… Thank you for your reminder!
So, as you have said, “the pleasure related with eating delicious meals involves more sensations than taste”… including smell, obviously. But I insist on choosing smell as the sense I wouldn’t mind to choose. A good argument? In fact I haven’t any, but the idea of surviving (more or less) perfectly without it.
I’d choose smell.I know people who can’t smell because of brain surgeries and so on.They can obviosly live without any problem and they can imagine smells by associating them with colours or emotions.
I’ve been reading all the comments, and a question comes to my mind: [b]what sense would yo be more afraid to loose??[/b]
I would say sight no doubt, I would go mad without my eyes…
But I agree with you, smell is the less important one, If we have to say one.
It’s been a while since the last time I enter the blog, so I’m ansewiring to dream’s comment, the forth one (yes, I know it’s a little late). It’s about hearing, which is in my opinion the second usefull sense. There isn’t any improvement if you can’t hear anything at all, just if you have a little problem, but you can hear. Don’t you thing that learning lip reading is quite hard? Comunication is very dificult for a deaf person, and without it you can be warned about a lot of dangerous situations.
About what Blue apple said, I totally agree. Sight is (with hear ;)) a sense we are using all the time, and the most important, also in my opinon
I’ve notice that most of you have chosen smell. I have to say that never before did I try to think about living without this sense. Yes, sometimes I’ve imagined how difficult it would be to live without the sight, the heard, the tact… and unfortunately I’d been without taste sometimes (I love eating and it’s horrible to eat when you have a cold and you can’t even notice what you are eating).
But bearing on mind how important smell to me… it’s hard to say that I would choose smell. It’s so close to regards… I don’t know if everybody feels the same but in my case smells remind me people, carry me to familiar places or to make me think about the past.
By other hand things like coffee in the mornings, meals when you are hungry….and, most of all, the particular smell of people you love…. I couldn’t abandon all those smells.
This topic has made me think a lot because the question is quite difficult to answer, I am not sure but I would choose the sense of smell. I am going to explain my reasons.
Smell: I know a person who isn’t able to enjoy the pleasure of smelling a fragrance or the smell of a desirable meal. He lives quite well and the only thing he has to do is to ask other people for buying a perfume, he needs advice.
Hearing: it would be difficult to live without it because you couldn’t appreciate all the sounds that the nature have and you couldn’t enjoy with the voices of you relatives.
Taste: it would be difficult to enjoy with the pleasure of eating, if you don’t have it you can eat any kind of food without differentiating if it is in good or bad conditions.
Touch: without it you couldn’t know if you are burning your skin and you couldn’t feel when someone is touching you with love or to injure you.
Vision: although it has been demonstrated that blind people are able to live without it because they have developed the others senses, it is difficult to get used to be blind, you couldn’t admire the beautiful views that the earth offers us.
Most of you have chosen smell. It attracts my attention, because for me , smell and taste are linked, so you are willing to lose two senses instead of one!
I know it could be very hard, lose one of your senses, all of them are essential; but it is known that lose the sight don´t cause as many difficults as lose other one.
Despite the fact that eyes are very important for us, we can use the hearing , or the sens of touch, or the smell to see the world.
After reading all your comments, I have come to a “great conclusion”, most of you live in a world that’s nasty, … at least that’s what you let me know: it must stink!!! Only that way can I understand your lack of love for smell sense.
Anyway, I’ll try to give you a new argument in favor of loosing taste sense (I’m sorry, I know I’m quite stubborn) Our senses, all of them but one (you know which one I mean), provide us some kind of defense: we can SEE what happens around us, and we can also HEAR it. We can feel if something is hot, or if it hurts when we touch it….and when there’s gas, or if there’s a meal that is run out apart from see it you SMELL it and take some cautions, but what does taste do for you? No defense provided, I’m sorry!
About what lollipop has written I’m not going to say anything more than if you want to make controversy, and to create a good debate, it’s great…but be aware about the things you say, and before writing a silly thing , please think!
Dear chiquilla:
I see, for you the taste doesn´t matter but if you choose to lose your taste, maybe you will lose your smell, if you don´t believe me, ask someone who doesn ´t have one of them, about this topic.
Fortunately, I have all my senses in perfect conditions, and I don´t know the feeling of have lost one, but why do you judge my post without knowledge??
Many blind people, have a normal life .They don´t have problems to have relationships with other people, can we say the same about the deaf people? do you imagine being in a conversation without understand anything? or eating without taste while other people enjoy the food? For me is unthinkable to be isolated.
Each one have his choice, and the mine is that one, not worse than the yours.
Hi, I think it’s a funny question, in fact I had already thought about it, and I have a clear decision I think I would lose the smell, because in my opinion is the most useless. Well, what I want to tell is that in comparison is the sense that we use few times, also if you can’t smell you can avoid living embarrassing situations like being next to a person that smells horrible, because if you don’t smell you won’t notice anything.
I’ve read the human beings in the future will be completely different, talking about senses, our eyes will improve so we’ll see better, on the other hand our nose will be smaller because we will stop using the sense of smell, because the other ones will be better and we won’t need to smell.
Chiquilla, it’s true that sometimes smell helps but, what would you think about smell if you were in a lift with a man that came from the gym and is sweaty? In that case smell isn’t a lovely sense. XD
I’m sorry Chiquilla but I’m afraid I agree with the others. Problems related with blindness or losing hearing are very clear and don’t need to be mentioned. Moreover as already Teddy Bear told you, if you become anaesthesic (without the sense of touch) you will be easily burned or injured and even and in most severe cases you completely destroys your joints or bones without being aware of it. So the only choice is smell or taste and in human beings taste is far more important, in fact there are lots of people suffering chronic rhinitis whose sense of smell is severely impaired and they can run an absolutely normal life although, it’s true, losing some pleasures of life.
Lollipop, do you really believe I’m trying to convince you? Make your head clear: I don’t really mind if you understand or support my opinion. And as you said mine isn’t worse than yours. If you think that losing your sight isn’t a great disadvantage, that’s your opinion…God thanks, it wasn’t me who said that!!!!
By the way, I would like you to explain me how on earth would I lose my smell if I lose taste sense? I’m sorry, I’m not a doctor, and I don’t know how that could be possible.
Just to finish, Koby: I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I said that it seems to me that you all live in a world that stinks. Fortunately, where I live, there’re more fragrances than stinky things!!
I wouldn’t choosen. All of them are important. I can’t imagine a world in which people wouldn’t have one of they senses!
Smell is good: could you feel a forest, a flower without it? Even your parents or the places you love have a special smell and, in my case, I would be so unfourtunate…
Vision: it hepls you to appreciate the world’s beauty and lets you to see, to know the unjust things that sourround you so you could fight against them or know the danger.
Could you live without touch? Could you live without having any sensation when you caress you son/daughter or anyone you loves deeply? I believe it’s a nonsense.
Hearing: the birds, trees’ branches glancing a cause of the wind, hearing words of love…It is life possible if we forgot this? Maybe we can hear horriblke words but we can, one more time fight against them.
And finally taste. Yes, sometimes it would be better don’t have it but…in my opinion is better to know than be blind (i’m refeering to taste, i think you would understand what I’m traying to say).
Now, to sum up all I’ve said: the world gives us information. If we prefer to loose what the Nature has given to us, that mean we don’t respect her, our world and, what’s more, ourselves. In some way, it is a way of being sel-dead
As many of you have said, I´d choose smell, without doubt. Although I think all of them are very important, I can imagine my life without smell (above all in public transport as EstefaniaAF said).
And answering the question that Blue Apple has made, the sense I would be more afraid to loose is sight. For me it is the most important one.
Hello Diana,
You are ok; I hadn’t thought about the case in what you can’t hear anything. But after all, I still believe that there could be lots of problems if you can’t hear anything but there are more if you can’t see, aren’t they? Of course than learning lip reading could be very difficult, but you can do it. There is nothing you can do to feel something or someone if you don’t have touch for example.
Thinking about it carefully I’ve reached to a conclusion. This is a kind of stupid question. What sense would you choose to lose? None of them, obviously! Who would want to lose one sense? .If you have to suffer the dramatic situation of having to live without one sense…I mean it’s not something you can decide, and I can’t imagine a situation in which this question could make sense. If we were gifted the senses that we have, is , of course, because we need them all!
As Pineapple has wrote, the worse sense to loose is, without doubts, sight. Loosing my eyes will be a nightmare for me! Just think for a moment that I wouldn’t see my family again, that I couldn’t read anymore…
Maybe I need to wear glasses and contact lessens but my eyes are still working (almost) perfectly… and for many years, I hope!
Thank you MNT009!!! I know that it’s really difficult to think about the possibility of losing one sense, but try to make an effort and think about it. Don’t be lazy. Come on!
Thinking about the question will make you be grateful.
I’ll wait for your reply.
First at all, I want to congratulate to my classmate Marga for her motion, in my opinion this is the most original motion in the blog.
I have to confess that I have never thought it. At first glance, it´s perfectly understable that I wouldn´t like to lose any of my senses, but if I had to choose one I would choose the taste.
The explanation is simple; the most important thing in my life is can relate with people around me. I need see, hear, touch, even smell, to feel what other person want to transmit me. However, I don´t believe that taste can be necessary in this concern.
For me taste is the only sense which isn´t use by people to relate or communicate each other. Consequently, taste is the less important sense in my life.
MNT009 you are completely right. You have said the most intelligent answer. The others have spent their time arguing about silly things. I’m sorry but Chiquilla and lollipop have strange opinions. I don’t know how you can say that blind people don’t have problems to have relationships with other people, it is crazy!!!! They have lots of problems: they suffer discrimination, have you got a blind people in your class???? I don’t think so, if not you don’t say that strange thing. Another thing that I am not able to understand is why if you lose the smell, you lose the taste at the same time. They don’t have any connection.
Sorry, but I can’t think about losing any of my senses. I prefer to think about how to improve them. Well, the only thing I will consider is losing taste or smell, but I would want to have special X-ray vision like Superman or be able to hear far away conversations.
Could any of you give me some ideas about improving particular senses?
I think that this is a personal question and what we have to do is not try to convince others that our point the view is the best or the most correct because it isn´t. This is a personal question. I would choose lose smell because I love eating and I prefer taste the food than smell it, but, I´m sure that Carlos, a very close friend of mine, would choose the taste because he hates eating!!!He does´t find eating a pleasure so in his case, the taste is the most useless sense!!
We have to think about what happened if we had never experienced having one sense?or more?What i want to say is that if you never touch, or smell, or see or taste you don´t know what you would feel, so “it doesn´t matter if you don´t have one” because you don´t know what you can´t feel.
I’m terribly sorry Cosual. I would have liked you to inform yourself about human physiology before affirming that there’s no connection between smell and taste. As I don’t have time and space enough to explain it here to you I’m going to recommend you some books where you’ll find that my strange opinion, is not strange but scientific evidence. Examples of good books are both Ganong and Guyton: Textbooks of Medical Physiology. Have a look at them. I’ve already study them, that’s why I know what I’m talking about.
Nevertheless, it’s not necessary to know about physiology to see such connection. Just think about those days in which you have a cold… why on earth don’t we taste the food? Doesn’t it suggest you there might be some kind of connection there??!!!!
If I were asked about the sense I’d be determined to lose, my answer would be … the sense of smell.
Living would be difficult without tools like sight or hearing and loosing the sense of touch would suppose an important health problem.
So, I only have two options, the senses of smell and taste and… I enjoy a lot eating.
This is a tough question as we can see in the debate. Losing your sense of touch is extremely bad. But I have think out of all the ones and between hearing, sight, smell and even taste I think that is the best sense to lose. The other senses seem to be risky. Anyway, I’d prefer not to lose any sense if it’s possible.
I think this is the most popular question, because lot of people have answered it. Most of them agree with my opinion: if I had to lose a sense, I´d choose smell.
Some of them think that it´s better to lose the sense of taste. I don´t think so. I like eating and I want to distinguish between sweet and salty, for instance.
And I agree with Sugar: I´d prefer not to lose any sense.
If I had to take this decision I would choose without any doubt the smell.
This is an important sense but not as important as the other ones. For me the most important of the five senses is the sight, because I couldn’t imagine the world without seeing what’s happening around me, for me loosing my sight would be a real nightmare.
However, without the smell you can have a quite normal life because when you have a cold sometines you temporary lose your smell and it’s not a big drama.
Although most of us, including me, have considered the sense of smell as the less important of human senses. I’ve recently read an interesting article about a company which produces aromas and yesterday I decided to summarize it to include it in the debate. In the text it’s said the sense of smell is the most important in evoking memories but nowadays sterile packaging and plastic wrapping prevent new generations from contacting with traditional smells. However a lot of organizations use fake smells in order to attract customers. Of course food stores are the main clients of this company but furniture shops use the fragance of coffee to create a homely ambience, several travel agencies the coconut aroma to transport people to tropical islands or car sellers the smell of leather in their luxury cars. What is mores museums, galleries or theme parks add smells to visual and sound effects to increase the realism of their displays.
In my opinion people who prefer losing the sense of smell, don’t think it is less important than the others. We only prefer losing smell than view or taste for example. I found your comment really interesting Sebastian Coe, I haven’t thought about smell and memories, but know that I think about it, it’s true you remember loads of things for their smells.
First of all, I must say that is not necessary that you, Chiquilla, are angry with me. When I wrote my comment, it wasn’t my intention to offend you.
If in the future I have time, I will try to read the books that you have suggested me.
Apart from that, I totally agree with the Sebastian Coe’s opinion. It is true that aromas are used to attract people to buy, to eat, to use cars, to visit museums…. When you enter in a shop and it smells badly, you automatically go out but if it smells sweet, you can buy more and you feel happy.
If I had to choose a sense to lose I´d choose the sense of direction. Well, it´d be a bit difficult to loose something that I´ve never had but, anyway, this is my first choice.
The second sense that I´d choose it´d be the intuition, sixth sense (if in the end this sense is only useful to see dead people I don´t want it ).
And finally, although Chiquilla and abbey think that this is one of the most important senses, I´d choose the common sense (which is not the same that the sixth sense as abbey says) because I prefer to keep those which link me at this world physically.
I hadn’t thought about these other senses, and of course I think the common sense is among the most important senses. But if I had to choose I would prefer to loose my “sixth sense” rather than one of the basic senses. In addition, having talked about it in class, I was told that you can’t taste your food without smelling it, so I have to consider my opinion because I couldn’t live without chocolate!
I don’t have any doubt about the senses I can’t live without; these are: sight, touch and hearing, in this order of importance. But about the last two ones, smell and taste, it is hard to decide which one is more important to me.
After reading the comments that my classmates have done (particularly the comment of Sebastian Coe about smell and memories), I have to say that I don’t have my decision as clear as I though at the beginning. I’ve realized how important smell is to remember places and people. It is really necessary to interact with your environment, to feel it.
On the other hand, taste is quite egoist, I mean, if you enjoy eating chocolate, it is something very personal, it doesn’t involve your interaction with the world around you.
To sum up, my final answer is taste.
I believe the question the nerd have raised is very interesting too. Which sense would you choose to acquire? Of course “Superheroes” have amazing senses but some animals have incredible senses as well. For instance, snakes have heat receptors to locate the mammals they prey on. Ultrasounds are frequently used by dolphins or bats while they are hunting. I’ve seen in a documentary a bat which was able to notice one spider in the centre of its cobweb and even to know on which side of the web the spider was. It is thought that salmons, eels and migratory birds are able to feel the Earth’s magnetic field. Sharks have an organ in their skin, called the lateral line, aimed to detect movement and vibrations in the surrounding water. However, in my opinion the most astonishing sense is the ability of sharks and other marine animals to feel tiny electric fields generated by cellular activity even when the prey is buried in the sand of the ocean floor.
After my first contribution, in which I tried to minimize the importance of such a thorny issue, I´d like to tell that, apparently, almost we all agree with losing smell or taste. I am also one of these persons who think like that. I don´t want to imagine my life neither without sight nor without hearing (I´m sure that I´d die of sorrow if I couldn´t listen to music or the voice of my mother nevermore). As regards to sense of touch, I agree with Diana Fernandez: I couldn´t survive for a long time without this sense, it´s essential to keep myself out of danger. So, in the end, if I have to discard sight, hearing and touch I don´t have more alternative but to choose smell. The worst thing of this choice is that both smell and taste are closely related (as Chiquilla tells). So, if you lose one of them surely the other one will be affected.
This motion seems to be having done for me to participate in, don’t you think?
I just wanted to make something clear, and this is the fact that if you lose smell, without any kind of doubts, you’ll lose what you all are considering taste. However, if it is taste what you lose, you’ll be able to smell, don’t worry about that.
All the debate, at least from my point of view, has appeared because there’s a misinterpretation about what taste sense is used for, anything else!!!