mgorny-nyan (he) :autism:🙀🚂🐧 on Nostr: """ But now consider another accident. A report in the British Medical Journal ...
"""
But now consider another accident. A report in the British Medical Journal describes the case of a construction worker who had jumped off some scaffolding. Beneath him, to his horror, was a 15 cm nail that pierced clean through his boot when he landed. The man […] was in agony, tortured by every small movement of his foot. He was given some even more powerful sedatives, fentanyl and midazolam. But when doctors removed the boot they discovered that the nail had not penetrated his foot at all. In fact, it had passed safely between his toes. There was no bodily injury causing the excruciating pain he felt, though it was completely genuine. In his case, however, the experience was produced entirely by his own powerful prediction machinery. Those searing pains were false perceptions created by his brain's predictions (based on the visual evidence) of serious injury and the kinds of feelings that might result.
"""
(Andy Clark, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality)
Honestly, I think the biggest conceptual leap here is realizing that pain that is neither caused by an injury, nor neuropathic in nature, can be very real and people aren't just "making up" or "imagining" things. The wiring of their brain fires up as in any other instance of pain.
But now consider another accident. A report in the British Medical Journal describes the case of a construction worker who had jumped off some scaffolding. Beneath him, to his horror, was a 15 cm nail that pierced clean through his boot when he landed. The man […] was in agony, tortured by every small movement of his foot. He was given some even more powerful sedatives, fentanyl and midazolam. But when doctors removed the boot they discovered that the nail had not penetrated his foot at all. In fact, it had passed safely between his toes. There was no bodily injury causing the excruciating pain he felt, though it was completely genuine. In his case, however, the experience was produced entirely by his own powerful prediction machinery. Those searing pains were false perceptions created by his brain's predictions (based on the visual evidence) of serious injury and the kinds of feelings that might result.
"""
(Andy Clark, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality)
Honestly, I think the biggest conceptual leap here is realizing that pain that is neither caused by an injury, nor neuropathic in nature, can be very real and people aren't just "making up" or "imagining" things. The wiring of their brain fires up as in any other instance of pain.