HaydnB comments on Open Thread, April 15-30, 2013 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: diegocaleiro 15 April 2013 07:57PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 16 April 2013 10:08:01PM 4 points [-]

Is tickling a type of pain?

Comment author: [deleted] 17 April 2013 07:12:15PM 4 points [-]

In case the answer to Qiaochu_Yuan's question is something like “I'm trying to establish the moral status of tickling in my provisional moral system”, note that IIUC the sensation felt when eating spicy foods is also pain according to most definitions, but a moral system according to which eating spicy foods is bad can go #$%& itself for all that I'm concerned.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 April 2013 11:42:35PM 4 points [-]

Is tickling a type of pain?

The simplest way of categorizing this would be based on the biology of which nerves nerves are involved. It appears that the tickle sensation involves signals from nerve fibres associated with both pain and touch. So... "Kind of".

Comment author: MileyCyrus 16 April 2013 10:23:57PM 8 points [-]

Dissolve the question.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 17 April 2013 07:00:44AM 11 points [-]

One question I like to ask in response to questions like this is "what do you plan on doing with this information?" I've generally found that thinking consequentially is a good way to focus questions.