I don't think the fact that you lie to yourself through difficult times means the truth is no longer needed. I don't think truth necessitates any utility either. For the former I'd say that, in a dispassionate sense, you lack the fortitude required to move forward in light of the meager offerings of truth - though only meager to your perspective. With respects to the former, I think that truth has great utility although commonly not in relation to personal desires or motives save for rare circumstances.

I find this particularly buoyant, incorporating it into one's comportment or ethos can help buffer you against the woes of the day or your life if sought consistently enough. Put another way, develop relations with those that create this dynamic and one can find purpose in routine interactions or even existence. It does invite a certain degree of suffering but then again, what doesn't.

Well said, I like the connection you made with food and sexual porn. It’s this bite sized notion of something that used to be a much more quintessential part of our lives. Something that used to be sustenance and maintenance became merely performative. Without being too cynical, how many relationships these days are based on genuine and or authentic connections. Hopefully it’s merely our position in the cycle of human existence and the notion of silk slippers and wooden shoes (thank you Carlin) but it would seem like even the necessity of this discussion spells the truth of a somewhat miserable situation.

I haven’t had time to read all the responses so excuse me if I’m repeating a previous comment.

If we consider the all too human component of this thought experiment, us, we must not fail to consider the fact that our brains are pattern detectors. This somewhat negates the classical notion of randomness in my mind. Ultimately it is nothing more than a lack of information on our part, what we consider randomness essentially is somewhat synonymous with inexplicable. Even when considering this through the lens of probabilistic outcomes, that something with a vanishingly small likelihood of occurring happens, seems more aptly attributed to desirability bias - this shouldn’t have happened! It had a one in all but infinite probability of being the case! - which I think also treats the issue of the original post and addresses what responses I did get through.

That said, another plausible interpretation of randomness (though only subtly different, it is philosophically distinct) is unpredictability. In this sense, the case of 10 5’s appearing and being an unsatisfactory result from the randomness machine would entail you A) had an expectation of what the randomness should look like or B) any result with too much of a “common” pattern would be unsatisfactory and make the machine seem faulty.