I believe it’s impossible in the real universe.

Sure there are solutions of general relativity that contain time loops, but they require stuff like an infinitely long cylinder, or escaping a spinning black hole, or negative energy. I just don’t believe beings made of finite matter and with finite energy will ever be able to time travel (except into the future at various rates) and that’s the only kind of beings I think exist.

I think from a physics standpoint, strict free will is already an illusion and the only useful definitions of free will basically boil down to “choices can be made”, perhaps as far as “Slight differences in initial conditions can lead to different choices” (but somehow excluding random processes). That kind of definition doesn’t even require consciousness, and is compatible with a deterministic universe like ours seems mostly to be. Would also be compatible with the time traveler unwittingly doing everything as must happen, but still via individual choices.

Statements like that make me feel like an alien who just landed here: I believe you, but it’s so totally outside my experience that I genuinely can’t make sense of it.

That part doesn’t make sense to me either - people don’t generally intentionally stub a toe or bite their tongue or whatever, but those activities would release endorphins also.

Exercising is about as close as I can think of that people regularly do and releases endorphins, but it of course has direct benefits and not doing it has drawbacks, and it should not really hurt that much to begin with.

Getting a tattoo would also, but I assume most people do that for the result and not the experience.

I fully agree, to me it doesn’t add any flavor at all and even overwhelms other flavors the food would have.

But it’s kinda funny that the comment my client currently shows directly below yours says “The pain itself is a flavour!”

Sounds like you have built up a decent tolerance already.

It’s the same word in a different grammatical situation.

That almost makes sense to me, the same way something like slapping one’s own face might.

Huh. Yeah, still can’t imagine a flavor that good.

And even very mild spicy food strikes me as less flavorful than without the capsaicin, mostly because of the (even slight) pain taking my attention from the food itself.

Singular ‘they’ is centuries old. Apparently even older than singular ‘you’. It’s only recently that people tried to make it a rule that it should only be used as a plural, but really it’s used in natural language as a singular all the time like I did. (Did you notice it in the middle of my previous comment, not just the end?)

The obvious issue with ‘it’ as a pronoun for people (or in my opinion mammals or other sentient animals) is that it’s literally objectifying them: The main use of ‘it’ is for inanimate objects. Sometimes that’s used for effect, for example calling a pedophile an it. But unless you really dislike a person of nonspecific gender, just call them a them.

I’m going to be the ‘tenth dentist’ here and say eating spicy food.

I understand that eventually people build a tolerance so it hurts less but I can’t comprehend being willing to even reach that point, especially since it’s still not completely pain free I have been told.

Those I’ve asked say it’s a really good flavor, but to me that sounds like being willing to eat a handful of broken glass (assuming no long term damage) as long as it tastes good. There are other foods that taste good and don’t hurt, not even slightly.

I like that the wiki article just includes the full cartoon. I didn’t check when that was added, but I like to imagine exactly midnight wherever Wikipedia’s US legal headquarters are.