= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Nornagest comments on How is your mind different from everyone else's? - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (266)
In one psychology experiment run by an acquaintance of mine, I was asked to dip a hand into ice water for an extended period and rate my discomfort level (the experiment also included groups which were lied to as to when they'd be told to remove their hand). I rated it as 2; days after the experiment, my acquaintance said that was abnormally low discomfort.
Similarly, in the hospital as I was recovering from peritonitis, the nurse was skeptical of my 1-10 pain rating of pi.
I guess it's just that I can remember how much things really hurt when they really hurt so my 10s are much closer to the real maximum pain than most peoples'. In that case it's not really my brain, but my mind?
I'm a little surprised that those uncalibrated pain scales enjoy such wide use; with no obvious anchors, I'd expect people's subjective responses to them to vary quite a bit. Since this doesn't seem to be the case, I suppose most people are anchoring on something I'm not.
The last time I was asked for a pain rating (doctor's visit following trauma to an eardrum), I hemmed and hawed over it for a while and finally interpreted it as a quasi-logarithmic scale with 1 being the least perceptible discomfort definable as such. This seemed to confuse the nurse.
A friend of mine in college had a story about a dislocated elbow. The conversation was early in the diagnostic process, possibly over the phone:
Friend: "I have a dislocated elbow."
Nurse: "On a scale of one to ten what's your pain?"
Friend: "Seven."
Nurse: "Then you don't have a dislocated elbow. Those are very painful and people say ten when it happens."
Friend: "Kidney stones are a nine. I'm saving ten for something worse than that."
Nurse: "Oh... [stops to think] Then I guess you probably do have a dislocated elbow."
My answer at one point (when I was in a rehab center recovering from a stroke) was something like "if 10 is, say, having a burning building collapse around me, this is a 3. Maybe a 2. I'm not sure... I've never had a burning building collapse around me, but I'd expect it sucks."
Eventually I calibrated my answers against the pain meds they were giving me and just started giving them numbers.
Based on this, I assumed the pain scale was something like
0 = I was unaware that receiving oral sex is part of the evaluation process, but thank you, nurse.
2 = The mild irritation of needing but being unable to sneeze.
4 = This is actually just ennui.
6 = The stupidity of your diagnosis would cause me to facepalm if my hands were not so badly burned at the moment.
8 = I've recently been smashed in the face with a cast-iron frying pan. How do you think I feel?...
10 = ...and now my eyes are leaking pimples on to my face as well. Dammit!
I was talking to a paramedic, who uses a 1-10 pain scale as part of his patient assessment. He said that it's common to have a patient reply "ten" and then the paramedic would say something like "When your wife gave birth to your child, that was a ten. Are you sure this is a ten?" after which the patient decides that the pain is actually more like a five.