Human senses, and what's nonsensical.

I was wondering the other day if everyone has a particular dislike for a sound, sight, feeling, taste or smell. Do they know what their dislike is and is it ingrained in their genetics or part of their history? Do all humans have an aversion to certain experiences?

Everyone dislikes certain foods, so it’s easy to assume that taste is the sense that is easily defined under the qualifications of “good” and “bad”. Smell is related to taste. You can assume that if something smells rancid, it is going to taste rancid. Logically we can assume that all humans have a dislike for smells or tastes of things that are not good for us to eat. Evolutionarily this would be a very good idea! Of course, there are certain things I loathe to smell or taste that other people seem more than willing to. Cigar or joint smoke, for one, makes me want to hurl. And yet I like the smell of turpentine. This interest me because it begs the question—do I not like smokers or smoking because the smell disgusts me? Or do I have an aversion to the smell because I dislike smoking? Perhaps I even enjoy the smell of turpentine because I associate it with painting.

And what about sounds? Is there a sound that has a universal reaction of dislike or fear from humans? For me it’s babies. I can’t stand the sounds they make—and this includes their bubbling and their laughter, not just their screaming. When a baby cries I expect they are being so irritating because they want someone to soothe them right away, and mothers that soothed their children instead of killing them (like I probably would) would be more likely to pass on their genes. I doubt I could conclude that a baby screaming is found as universally disgusting because of this.

Evolutionarily you might expect ancestral humans to find the sound of a predator snarling frightening. To me the snarling would be frightening only if I thought it was going to lead to pain—it’s only a method of communication to me and I’m not afraid of it at all. The counterargument of that is that babies are also communicating when they “talk” (how could their noises ever be considered “talking”?); to me a snarl is much more effective than blowing spit bubbles.

It also makes my skin crawl to see a baby’s pink wet mouth and sausage-limbs waving, so there is a clear overlap in my sense-dislike there. Thankfully I’ve only had the bad luck to hold a baby once, but my impression was the same: disgust.

Again, there is a discord between what I find disgusting and what the majority of humanity find disgusting. I enjoy looking at spiders and have no problem with snakes (in fact I love both groups!), but human children make me want to run away and hide.

In conclusion? Babies are gross. Oh, and I don’t think sense-dislike is universal, though I could see such things being a bell curve. Unless we are talking about claustrophobia I’d probably be on the extreme ends of that bell curve.