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Comment by leroy-is-here | Hacker News Reader

There’s no single experience of thinking yet I can say everyone has thoughts. Thoughts about what? _That_ is what varies. The body is similar, it speaks through signals to the brain. The only way to know your body’s voice is by doing. Dismiss your notion that individual experience has no value.

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Bodies are quite different, different metabolic rate, different fitness, different in many ways.

I can go an entire day without eating to little ill effect. I knows people who must eat three times a day and if they miss one meal get super cranky.

It’s not dismissing it to point out data vs datum or that people’s bodies vary wildly.

What I’m saying is that perhaps the “cranky” eater doesn’t even know their body’s voice. Or is angry by simply hearing it.

Another way of putting it: you say you have tried but are you even sure that others have tried? People will say they have experienced but in reality have not.

Or perhaps they have a much faster metabolism and are hypo-glycemic?

I accidentally go all day without food. They must carry snacks.

Or perhaps you’re just a better listener. Do you _know_ they _must_ carry snacks or are you imagining that’s how they must be?

The real trick of this is realizing people do the same “imagining” with their own body and their own selves. They do not know.

They have been diagnosed with hypoglycaemia so yes I’m pretty sure they are listening to their own body.

Tbh it’s me who’s ignoring mine by not eating

Yes, it took me a long time to realize that pain, and pangs, and feelings aren't minor inconveniences that I must live with, but my body telling me something was wrong or needed adjustment. I've found that fasting helps us stop ignoring what the body is telling us.

Exactly right. I can go 24 hours without eating with no ill effects, and while I am hungry, I'm not ravenous, and I can certainly keep going just fine. I have a neighbor and friend who can't get through a morning of moderate labor without a snack - not because he can't stand the hunger, but because he simply runs out of energy. He is genuinely ravenous after a 12 hour fast.

I’m here before he responds with “what about people in a coma? Therefore we don’t know!”

We do know, and individual experience is underrated. If it weren’t for individual experiences we would have no science.

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