For example, we feel putting on clothes, but then very quickly, aren’t aware of that sensation anymore. Similarly, when you encounter a smell, the sensation begins to diminish. While I am glad that I become less aware of a foul smell, why does this happen? Would it not be safer to remain aware of bad smells so that you remain deterred from bad food or potential disease exposure? At the same time, does this happen with other senses like hearing? I remain constantly aware of the noise of my fan if I leave it on, so if that sense doesn’t diminish, why is that?
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Because after a while it’s less help to be reminded that a certain stimuli is still there than it is to be notified that new stimuli has shown up.
For example if you lived in a field full of flowers, and you never got desensitized to the smell of those flowers, then you’d never notice the predator who does NOT smell like flowers coming up behind you.
EDIT: Or maybe since our sense of smell isn’t that spectacular, maybe there’s some food that you always get in the wild, so you eventually become less sensitive to the taste of that food on its own because you need to be able to detect if you’ve picked a rotten or poisoned fruit.
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