If it were possible, you accept a new sense?

[Peremensoe]

@SunSandSuffering

I’ve got at least eight senses, I’m sure you all do too:
Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, ability to sense temperature, ability to sense changes in air pressure, ability to detect changes in pitch (balance).

Eh. If you break out something like thermoception based on the receptors involved (rather than just counting it as a component of touch), you might as well we have five different senses of taste, and so on. We all have dozens and dozens of senses! Except that’s not how it feels (heh), and not how people think of it.

[Peter_Morris]

@Weedy

Ha!

What was that story called again, I’ve forgotten.

The Secret Sense, by Isaac Asimov.

[Peter_Morris]

Hesitently yes, depends on the new sense.

Imagine a world almost identical to our own, except that the people there see in black and white. One day, one of the people suddenly gains the ability to see colours. Useful? Maybe so, but he’s going to have to learn what the colours mean.

I, for example, can tell at sight a ripe banana from an unripe one. Will our hero have that ability? As a young child I had parents to explain to me that this colour is called green, green bananas are unripe, that colour is called yellow, yellow bananas are ripe. Our hero will have to work it out all by himself. It could take years, if ever, and in the meantime the world will look very weird to him.

[KneadToKnow]

Hesitantly yes, depending.

Because I wouldn’t if it meant being able to see, every waking second, what is, what was, what could be, and what must not. Because that’s the curse of being a Time Lord, Donna.

[Wheelz]

I picked “Hesitently yes, depends on the new sense.”

My first impulse was of the “Hells yeah!” variety, then I thought about it some more. We can’t turn off our senses. Essentially, every waking second of every day we are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching something. We can learn to prioritize sensory inputs, but not to block them out completely (even with your eyes closed, you’re still seeing something).

So, if all day, every day, for the rest of my life, I’m sensing electrical fields or feeling magnetism or what have you, and can’t ever turn that off, I’m not entirely convinced I would consider that a cool new ability and not a constant irritating distraction. I’d have to weigh that against what I’m getting in return.

[Imago]

@Der_Trihs

I’d take a grab bag of new and enhanced senses if they were offered. The ability to sense electrical and magnetic fields, wider spectrum vision, the ability to see light polarization, better sense of smell, built in radar & sonar, the ability to sense radiation, extra internal senses so to better know what parts of me are damaged, ill or stressed, built in micro and telescopic vision, etc.

This.

And even if it were something completely useless or caused some level of distraction, just having the broadened experience would appeal to me.