I think there is something to the low IQ thing!
I am in a location that gets infrequent snow, and we happened to get a good bit over the weekend. County offices closed, businesses closed, and schools are now going to be closed for the third day in a row.
Local Facebook and NextDoor groups are blowing up with people outraged at the decision to close schools tomorrow, even though most roads are perfectly fine. I've been driving around since Monday (I do have 4x4).
The outrage goes something like this:
"I can't believe they're closing schools again, the road in front of my house is totally clear! It's ridiculous! This is an outrage!"
Well ok, the roads in front of YOUR house may be clear, but when you get to the hilly and more rural areas of the county--where school buses still have to drive--those roads are very treacherous right now. A school bus drove off a hill and flip just a few years ago when it it hit a large patch of black ice going around a curve. This is not a theoretical issue.
There is just a really large contingent of people who just cannot think in "what ifs" or beyond their immediate "right now" situation. (And to be clear, if they were saying "the schools should have had alternative plans for dangerous school bus routes" I would agree! It's just the idiocy of "me me me, now now now" that is striking.)
I still don't understand why the answer to that question isn't always just: "Hungry".
But to the rest of your point, we intentionally do not educate people in public school with the concepts of introspection, long-term-time-preference, stoicism, and multi-perspective analysis.
That's the midwit answer at best. Not being able to comprehend a hypothetical is the worst, but giving a "magic spell" answer isn't much higher up.
Actual consideration yields different answers. If you ask after lunch how I would feel if I didn't eat breakfast, the answer is "the same."
I don't' see how missing a meal and being hungry because you missed the meal is a "magic spell" answer.
If you are asked how you would feel if you hadn't eaten breakfast, after you had eaten lunch, I don't think you can assume it would be the same. If you ate the same size lunch, you would probably still be a little hungry, as opposed to "full".
Because I know the size of the lunch I ate earlier would have be determined by if I had previously eaten breakfast or not. I'd answer after thinking through the hypothetical. The problem I have with "hungry" as a default answer and default answers in general are that they don't demonstrate thought.
"How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast?" "Hungry."
"How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast yesterday?" "Hungry."
"How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast a week ago?" "Hungry."
It's the "always" part of your suggestion that I don't like. "But I did eat breakfast" shows a lack of comprehension. Giving a rote answer masks a possible lack of comprehension. I'm not sure which is worse.
It's not a rote answer when you change the question. The question was "How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast?" Which implies "... breakfast today."
If you change the question, the answer, by definition is likely to change.