Autumn: You know what I hate, is when people know they're not going to get random diseases, they brag about it, but they don't act like they understand what that means.
Autumn: Oh, yes, I'm engineered to never get sick, I'm so great!
Autumn: What's that? I dropped a roll on the floor?
Autumn: It must be covered in plagues now!
Autumn: I'd better throw it away instantly, lest its dangerous germs enter my fancy germ-proof intestines and have no effect whatsoever!
Lois: "Autumn: You know what I hate"
Lois: Everything?
Autumn: Only the horrible things that everyone should hate!
Autumn: So, yes.
Mary: People don't avoid eating off the floor just for health reasons. Like most behaviors that "just seem gross," it has the downside of making you look bad, regardless of how much physical risk is involved. Part of living in a society is managing your social risks as well.
Autumn: Well, that's stupid!
Mary: You see this behavior as self-contradictory. But it should be expected that someone who boasts about their genes will also be aware of that social risk. The root cause is caring how others think of them.
Mary: Obnoxious boastfulness is a flaw that arises when you care about that, while being bad at modeling how people will react to your boasts.
Dan: I agree with Mary that the boasting is the bigger flaw here, but I think pointlessly refusing to eat food that's touched the floor is a flaw as well.
Dan: It's one that I have myself, for essentially the reason she's identified.
Dan: We can understand why someone thinks that way, and still recognize that it's stupid.
Mary: It's stupid if you look at it solely in health terms, ignoring the social context. For people who care about how they relate to society, which is to say, nearly all people, it's sensible.
Mary: You're in the position of sensibly caring about that, but you hate yourself for it because you think it would be better if you only cared about things like objective germ risks.
Dan: I agree with you as far as the self-hatred part.
Autumn: Self-hatred is also something I hate!
Autumn: That sounds like a joke.
Autumn: But I mean it seriously.
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