What's the worst sense to lose?

[Jason Tandro]

Sight and sound are the two biggies, but taste and smell are pretty bad too. But I think the worst is losing the sense of feeling. People with CIPA (for instance) have all sorts of problems because they are numb from head to toe.

Plus sex would be a lot less enjoyable...

[EverPhoenix]

sound isnt a sense

for me its a tie between hearing and sight.

[Freedan]

I'd say sight. Living without hearing would suck, but it seems to me that it would be significantly easier than not seeing.

Living without a sense of touch could be dangerous. There's a medical condition out there (which Jason mentioned) where someone literally can't feel pain. On paper, that sounds all right.... you could fall down the stairs, get right up and dust yourself off... but your body is still being damaged. If you put your hand on a hot stove, you snap your hand away instantly (before you realize it's hot); it's a defensive mechanism to limit the damage your body takes. But if you don't realize that it's hot, you might keep your hand there, and burn it to the point where you can't use it any more.

[Jason Tandro]

That's exactly why I chose touch. I mean sure, if you're being tortured, CIPA is a great thing to have, but otherwise it'd suck.

Imagine freaking the crap out of some serial killer.

"Oh come on, you call that terror? Give me that knife you asshole. You gotta cut here, see? It draws more blood freaks them out more. Oh, bamboo shoots up the fingers eh? Real original. God you suck at this."

[Yet One More Idiot]

I read somewhere long ago that 80% of all of our sensory input is visual.

However, I definitely have to agree with Freedan here - lacking a sense of touch seems to me that it would have the most detrimental effect to quality of life, as you could easily injure yourself without even realising.

Plus I read an article once about a man who suffered from a lack of sense of touch, it indicated that the condition also affects other aspects of daily life, such as affecting sense of balance and ability to walk normally (apparently, we subconsciously take pressure cues from the soles of our feet when we walk, without which we would have a much more difficult time remaining balanced) for one.

So yeah, my vote was for touch.