And yet I've never once cut myself with legal near-scalpels in my kitchen, the serrated knives that "mangle" my food cut food perfectly fine, and my plates last as long as plates do.

Unless you literally never cook any food, it just isn’t possible to prepare all types of food using purely serrated knives. Cutting up many vegetables or herbs just is not possible with a serrated knife.

What is your aversion if you’ve never cut yourself?

For one, I have children in the house and scalpel-like sharp knives make me uneasy. Doubly-so as they are usually pointy and can stab too.

Besides that, serrated knifes make it practically impossible to cut yourself. You'll feel the cut way before you've sliced through any of your own meat, and that's precisely because you're "sawing" the food, or your flesh in that case.

I honestly can not think of anything (other than sticky cheese) that would be impossible to cut with the serrated knives I use. I cut up herbs, vegetables, meats, fruits everything. Come to think of it, they even cut crunchy bread with ease too, which usually requires a "bread" knife in a usual kitchen.

Not sure why you think that knife (that you posted in the other comment) is substantially safer than a regular knife. It’s similar to wavy-style bread knives, but smaller. The edge of the blade is still extremely sharp and reviewers have even noted they’ve cut themselves with it. The bread knife I own can easily cut me and it basically is just a larger version of what you linked with larger “waves”.

I don’t know how you could possibly mince herbs or dice vegetables into small cubes with something like that knife though. You need the flat slicing motion. Interrupted cutting like a bread knife does will lead to very messy cuts.

What are you making in the kitchen? Like, what's the "75%-effort" dish/meal look like for you?

I cut up all sorts of stuff. Fruits, vegetables, cheeses, meats. Seeing as other poster asked about mincing, I guess I also finely dice various herbs and garlic. Sure if I have to smash (mincing?) it I'll find something that can do that with ease, but I won't need a large heavy knife to double-up as a hammer to do so.

An easy go-to meal I guess is like stir-fry with a diced-onion base, which includes a lot of cutting of the above. I've never struggled as long as the serrated knife itself is not super old. They do eventually get dull and the bumps aren't enough for comfortable cutting.

My go-to knife that's really good quality and cuts everything with ease is this one: https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Classic-Serrated-Utility-H...