You left out washing your clothes in the river, carrying water from the well, butchering a chicken for dinner, walking ten miles uphill both ways and a whole lot of things that you seem to have automated away.

haha you're right! That is the entire nuance of the discussion. There's a line somewhere in there. And it's not as pedantic as it seems. I still do cook my own food. I don't grow it and butcher the meat. But thousands of years of cooking people still cook food. (and not me but people do still grow their own food).

Efficiency and automation isn't some objective linear path toward enlightenment, that's not unreasonable, is it?

And you might say "people cook because they want to". Not exactly given the whole socioeconomic realities. But also "want to" is nuanced. Cooking is a lot of work and there's many parts of it annoying. It's worth it. <insert philosophy on value and how to assess value and is hedonism 'value based' and how can we know>