knb comments on Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Vaniver 01 July 2013 05:10PM

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Comment author: knb 03 July 2013 01:57:17PM 1 point [-]

Is there any practical use for having magnets in your fingers? It seems like a bizarrely bad idea to me.

Comment author: Username 03 July 2013 04:39:09PM 4 points [-]

Besides telling if a device is live or not, not that I know of. The one major issue is that you can't have an MRI, although if I'm in a situation where I can't tell a doctor that I have them, magnets being ripped out of my fingers is the least of my worries. If need be, I could have a doctor make a small incision and take them out. And I do have to be careful not to hold on to powerful magnets for too long, or it will crush the skin in between the two magnets. Other than that though, there's no real downside. They're off to the side so it doesn't affect my grip, and once my skin finishes healing they'll be unnoticeable.

The upside for me is the qualia of sensing emfs and having them as toys to play with. I treated the decision like getting a tattoo, where my personal rule is I have to love a design for a continuous year before getting it. I haven't settled on a design long enough to get a tattoo, but I had planned on getting magnets for about a year and a half so I went ahead and did it.

Comment author: drethelin 03 July 2013 07:46:01PM 0 points [-]

Having extra senses is pretty cool.

Comment author: bbleeker 05 July 2013 06:33:34PM 2 points [-]

I'm wearing a magnetic ring (a post on LW gave me the idea). It's fun, and I can take it off whenever I want to. Occasionally it comes in useful too; when I need to open up my computer I can put the little screws on my ring, and I can tell whether a pot will work on my induction hot plate.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 12 July 2013 06:01:37PM 0 points [-]

This sounds like a much lower-commitment variant, but it doesn't seem like it would have close to the same sensitivity.

Comment author: bbleeker 13 July 2013 08:28:05AM -1 points [-]

Yes, it's not really like having an extra sense.