[kalid]

Here’s the best analogy I’ve heard.

Imagine you wake up and your back is sore. Getting out of bed is a struggle, everything aches and you must move slowly.

Without other knowledge, you may get worried, anxious, feel distressed.

If you remember you had a workout yesterday, you may actually enjoy the feeling. It reminds you of the effort you put in, the future progress you’ll make as muscles are repaired.

The physical sensation is exactly the same.

[mcculley]

I like that example, but it breaks down. I have experienced plenty of pain in the muscles of my back in the form of both delayed onset muscle soreness that follows a good workout and the spasms of pain associated with a torn muscle. The former is pleasant. The latter is not.

[kalid]

Is it necessary for the realization you've torn a muscle to be unpleasant? (It's that realization you're reacting to, not the pain.)

Ultimately, we're making a prediction: my life is guaranteed to be worse off because my muscle was recently torn. Is this true?

https://sivers.org/horses

[mcculley]

I’m saying they are distinctly different kinds of pain.

[erikpukinskis]

You’re saying it’s a different set of pain receptors firing, which are more uncomfortable?

The fact that it feels different to you could just be that it’s a different context. Different “metadata” so to speak, with the same pain.

Seems like GP thinks the metadata is making it worse, and you think the data is different. How would you tell the sifference?

[mcculley]

I have no idea how pain receptors actually work or if there were different pain receptors firing. All I know is that I have experienced muscle soreness after workouts and I know I can ignore it. The first time I tore a muscle in my back and was carried to the hospital for a diagnosis, I experienced a new level of pain. (That was before my first kidney stone, which set the bar for me.)