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ignoranceprior comments on Rationality Quotes July 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: bbleeker 01 July 2016 09:02AM

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Comment author: Clarity 01 July 2016 05:40:41PM 1 point [-]

A guy named Harold Schraeder studied prevelance of chronic whiplash in Lithuania, of all things. He found the prevalence was zero. In most Western nations, a certain subset of people who get in car accidents suffer chronic disabling neck pain, presumably related to having their neck get suddenly jerked by the force of the impact. But Schrader found that this never happened in Lithuania, even though they had a lot of accidents and their cars were no safer than ours. Simotas and Shen found that there was zero whiplash in demolition derby drivers, even though they got into crashes all the time and it was basically their job description. Further studies found that accident victims with more neck injury were no more likely to develop whiplash than victims with less neck injury. Perhaps, they argue, chronic whiplash isn’t a bodily injury at all, but a culture-bound syndrome in which people who expect whiplash to exist use its symptom profile as a way of expressing their psychological tension.

Comment author: ignoranceprior 01 July 2016 08:42:22PM 6 points [-]

Source, since you didn't link it.