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knb comments on Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013 - Less Wrong
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Posting here rather than the 'What are you working on' thread.
3 weeks ago I got two magnets implanted in my fingers. For those who haven't heard of this before, what happens is that moving electro-magnetic fields (read: everything AC) cause the magnets in your fingertips to vibrate. Over time, as nerves in the area heal, your brain learns to interpret these vibrations as varying field strengths. Essentially, you gain a sixth sense of being able to detect magnetic fields, and as an extension, electricity. It's a $350 superpower.
The guy who put them in my finger told me it will take about six months before I get full sensitivity. So, what I'm doing at the moment is research into this and quantifying my sensitivity as it develops over time. The methodology I'm using is wrapping a loop of copper wire around my fingers and hooking it up to a headphone jack, which I will then plug into my computer and send randomized voltage levels through. By writing a program so I can do this blind, I should be able to get a fairly accurate picture of where my sensitivity cutoff level is.
One thing I'm stuck on is how to calculate the field strength acting on my magnets. Getting the B field for a solenoid is trivial, but with a magnetic core I'm sure it throws everything out of whack. If anyone has any links to the physics of how to approach that, I'd be much obliged.
And if you're curious about what it's like so far to have magnets in your fingers, feel free to ask.
Is there any practical use for having magnets in your fingers? It seems like a bizarrely bad idea to me.
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.
Having extra senses is pretty cool.
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.
This sounds like a much lower-commitment variant, but it doesn't seem like it would have close to the same sensitivity.
Yes, it's not really like having an extra sense.