Why I hate the index finger (1980)
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
That preference might be explained here, by the precision/strength combination. I tried holding a hammer as described in the author’s hammer exercise, and there’s similarity, though it requires much more weight-holding. The left hand doesn’t hold the weight of the violin (consider a cello or a guitar with shoulder strap), but a little grip strength is required to securely hold down the string, especially with vibrato.
Overall, fascinating article. I feel quite motivated to read more on hand anatomy and biomechanics.
Sent it to some doctor friends and they are floored by the writing style as well.
It tingles all the time. There's a ton of "referred pain". It frequently feels like there is a dental drill going of in my face, when it's not painful, it's a a persistent nagging tickle, on my cheek/temple/around my eye.
It gets reynauds phenomena, my house is 68F 20C right now, but my finger is freezing/painful because of how cold it is, this happens pretty much any time I wash my hand, so even in the summer when there's a slight breeze I'm hiding my hand in my pocket for warmth.
When I bang it on things it really hurts, and like this paper says it's extended basically all the time when I'm trying to use my hand for other things.
When I use it to grab things, it feels really weird, so I've kind of trained myself to keep it out of the way. This paper says cut it off, which the few other orthopedists I've talked to have not advised, but at this point, it's been a decade, and seeing a doctor be like "dude, the thing that's only there to make your hand more precise, is actually making your hand way less precise and detracting from your quality of life, cut it off", is a perspective I'm happy to hear. I manage mostly alright, but it's been a decade of major annoyance at best.
I have a friend who crushed the tip of one of her fingers, but it wasn't amputated. She's described sensations very similar to yours, presumably from nerve damage. I never asked a bunch of questions about it, and now I wish I had after reading this post.
If it ever comes up in conversation again, may I share a link to your comment with her?
That's funny. I think I can reproduce that.
Do you often use those knuckles to touch that area of your face? Might be that those nerves fire together so often, your brain strongly associates them. I have a habit of massaging that area of my face while thinking and slouching on my chair.
I experience referred pain. I'm told my brain's intepretation is out of sync with the stimulation. Phantom limb syndrome is an example.
Swedish Hospital (Seattle WA) Pain Services clinic got me on the right path. https://www.swedish.org/services/pain-services For me, it was a 4 week course, 3 days/week. Learn (or relearn) meditation, breathing, the current best available science about pain, life skills, etc.
Maybe call them up to help find a clinic near you.
The curriculum seems like total bullshit. But it somehow worked, despite me thinking it wouldn't. I now do a daily regiment that's supposed to reprogram my brain. Including tai chi and HIIT. Seems to be working. A lot of initial progress (like clearing a plugged drain) and now slow and steady improvement. YMMV.
I'm sorry about your pain. Of all my chronic pains, the nerve stuff is by far the worst. So I can sympathize a bit. I hope you find some relief.
Always chalked it up to not enough practice. After reading this paper, I feel somewhat vindicated. It's not my fault, it's the finger's.
https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/how-to-hold-a-knife...
Typical civilian relies too heavily on the index finger when grabbing for instance your arm, and that makes it easier to twist out of the grapple, by using the shoulder and the bicep to lever out along the line halfway between the thumb and the index finger. Usually these are stronger muscles than the forearm, possible exception of rock climbers.
It’s really important, ok?
And then, why have we evolved with 5 of 4 is enough? Is it for redundancy, in case one fails? If yes, why is there no second thumb?
https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/z7700105/800wm/Z7700105...
When typing I feel pain initially at the fingertip where nail meets skin, which worsens and radiates around to the middle finger side of the fingernail after more use. Even when typing without using the index finger, stretching the finger to keep it away from the keyboard induces some pain after a while. If I cut the nail very short, I think I notice some tenderness and loss of sensation in a spot near the middle of the skin just under the nail edge.
I think the pain developed over time while heavily using a split mechanical keyboard (kinesis freestyle edge) with poor typing technique and putting repeated pressure on the tip and side of the finger, but it has not gone away after switching to something more comfortable (kinesis 360). I don't remember any significant injury happening.
The only visual sign is that the skin seems strongly attached to the nail near its edge, there is minimal free edge compared to what my other fingernails (which are all short) have. Actually that is somewhat true of the other index finger, but to a much lesser extent. There is nothing apparently abnormal about the skin under the nail but perhaps any issue isn't visible.
Interestingly, the pain seems worse when my hands are warmer.
X-rays/MRI/ultrasound scans showed nothing abnormal apparently. All my internet searching for an explanation has yielded nothing, hence writing this comment to see if anyone can help.
That is just brilliant. The article was an object lesson in clarity and humanity.
Not a source I had previously associated with top-tier humor.
I particularly enjoy this one (PDF):
http://cda.psych.uiuc.edu/multivariate_fall_2013/salmon_fmri...
> The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute
> What we can conclude is that random noise in the EPI timeseries may yield spurious results if multiple testing is not controlled for. In a functional image volume of 60,000-130,000 voxels the probability of a false discovery is almost certain.
[0] silly as in "there's no way this fMRI will show the frozen salmon as alive, right?"
Satire is "the truth, in the most extreme way", so I think it definitely qualifies to very, very seriously examine a dead salmon with an fMRI to see if it has brain activity.
It's not a parody - they actually did the study, and the results were as described, not an imitation journal article ala The Onion.
I think you're coining a definition to fit your purpose. If you want to argue that the article fits some definition of satire you need to actually provide a reference to a definition that is accepted by more people than just you. You can't just put quotation marks around your personal definition; that's not how it works.
I find your definition of satire to be unsatisfactory and reject it, pending further documentation.
> the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
In this case, they're using an analysis which is commonly used to "show activity" in various psychological and psychiatric contexts to "show activity" in a dead salmon. This directly exaggerates ("truth, but in the most extreme way" is about exaggeration, in my definition) and shows the futility of trying to draw significant results without screening for random chance among thousands of comparisons.
A comparison I'd make is to arch-satirist Jonathan Swift's "modest proposal" - it described a real problem (i.e. famine in Ireland) and skewered by exaggeration the English tendency to prescribe solutions that affected none of the core issues as though they knew best and could overcome English exploitation, greed, and callous disregard by the right public policy.
So for your example, what is the dead salmon study satirizing? Is there some other study that did something similar that they're making fun of? Is there a broader scientific movement that they're criticizing?
I concede that there may be a target that I'm not aware of. But I find it more likely that someone just said "what if we put a dead fish in an fMRI", and their colleagues found it funny enough to actually do. Many scientists have a sense of humor, and will absolutely do something just because they think it would be funny.
Yes. fMRI studies are used to "prove" this and that about cortex activation under certain kinds of tasks, and they're demonstrating that even a dead salmon shows significant activity under fMRI if you analyze it "in the standard way". Thus, it's absurd to draw conclusions in a psychological or psychiatric context without screening for false positives.
The arch-satirist Jonathan Swift is always my archetype. A modest proposal was about the famine in Ireland, but more than that, it was about a certain kind of English attitude that external technocracy could solve problems in the face of exploitation and callous disregard.
Also https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltext/S1535-6108%2802%29...
I will indeed remember that.
Ablative fingering, what an innovation.
I am so worried that we as a society have lost the ability to write well, and risk losing the ability to recognize and appreciate good writing. Rote professional written communication skills are changing and diminishing. The written word is generally seen to be a burden. Anyways, bittersweet thoughts from a really funny article.
But yeah, the decline is real, my friend. I declined to use IRC for all these years, and I'm afraid its descendant, texting, has not improved our society's level of anything beyond the most mundane trivial pursuits.
I have only met a handful of people that can lay out a complex argument from scratch in speech alone. For most of us, writing is thinking. If you avoid writing, your ideas will remain murky forever.
It always makes me curious how we generally view the people of antiquity as speaking very eloquently and properly, but that's probably because we only have writings from their time, not recordings of how they actually spoke.
Also, apparently TR used the manuscript much less than most speakers, delivering much of the actual wording impromptu and the general structure from the script, so he was actually pretty fluent off the cuff.
But when you find someone else who really knows their topic, inside and out -- they will probably write about it a lot like this.
I noticed that the WASD placement excluded the middle finger. Once you lift it up and keep it hovering, the pinky hitting A, the ring hitting W and S and the index hitting D, it's very easy to dance them.
I find the middle finger much less responsive than other fingers due to tendon connections (it is much stronger though as another user noted for bowling)
I am left handed but I do use the PC like a "normal" person. She is right handed and she played noticeably better once doing this.
The other major thing was to avoid cross talk between hands. Full aiming related things on the right, full movement related things on the left. (grenades, aimed abilities, etc. on mouse keys)
Related note: in paintball, you feather the trigger with the index and middle finger as they are the fastest. The pinky is also fast but the ring is so slow that doesn't work. Middle and ring is slow for the same reason.
TLDR: ring is your muscle finger, other fingers are more agile.
> Obviously, I do not like arrogant disabled index digits and believe they should be removed if they cannot be restored to a functional status. There is no in-between with index fingers.
> To me, index fingers portray a hideous personality reflecting conceit and pantywaist attitudes. In essence, they are smart-ass digits we can often do without. If I had to lose a finger and had my choice, I would choose first my nondominant hand index ray and next the other index. I find index digits easy to hate and sometimes hard to love.
Although, maybe the author's point was serious?
I'm no fingerologist but I do appreciate anyone who can make serious points in such a funny way.
That's the confusion I was trying to express by saying: "Although, maybe the author's point was serious?"
The author is basically (and provocatively) saying "Are you kidding me? You really think it's useful for people to continue to be burdened with non-functional appendages?" to his colleagues, and I think the humor is likely to get them to engage with his thesis rather than dismiss it off hand.
I have sent this to several doctor friends, and the writing style prompted them to send it to several more, so, I think it's quite likely that tone served the author's point.
"To me, index fingers portray a hideous personality reflecting conceit and pantywaist attitudes. In essence, they are smart-ass digits we can often do without. If I had to lose a finger and had my choice, I would choose first my nondominant hand index ray and next the other index. I find index digits easy to hate and sometimes hard to love."
LOL
You would have two :-)