Thanks for the write-up—I hadn’t looked into neuroplastic pain before, but it rang a bell.

A year ago, I messed up my leg (probably sciatic nerve, not diagnosed), and the pain stuck around way longer than it should have. I couldn’t walk for more than five minutes without it flaring up, even weeks after the initial strain. It clearly should’ve healed by then—nothing was torn, broken, or visibly inflamed—but the pain stayed.

What finally worked wasn’t rest, it was more walking. Slow, deliberate, painful-but-not-too-painful walking, plus stretching. It hurt, but it got better. And once I saw that, something flipped—now whenever that sensation comes back, I’m not worried. I just think, “yeah, I know this one,” and it fades. That sounds a lot like the “engage with the pain while reframing it as safe” strategy you described, and it tracks well with my experience.

I’ll be experimenting to see if the same approach works on other kinds of pain, too.

It's hard to describe, but I'll try to list a few details and hopefully that narrows things down:

• I can only do it eyes closed.
• It's wordless.
• It feels like an inward, mental smile.
• I let go of tensions in parts of my body.
• The feeling itself still has some kind of tension, concentrated around the eyes and forehead.

These are just some characteristics, not what I've optimized for. My intent is just "manufacture some pleasure" and that's what my brain comes up with.

Hope that helps. If you have more specific questions I can try to answer those!

I edited the intro to make this clearer, thanks. 

That’s indeed a limitation. I guess there was still a small pleasure associated with it for me, but low enough to not be the main driver. The gratification I get when noticing and deciding not to indulge in it is greater.

Yeah I thought about that, but (I didn't expand on that) the habit also included picking skin around my cuticles with my fingers, so that would've only half worked at best.

That’s why I waited six months before publishing the post :)

I really enjoyed how you connected all these ideas.

I also feel like there’s a parallel to be made between:

1. Learning to navigate in an irregular environment vs. using a GPS
2. Learning critical thinking through exposition to lots of different ideas vs. being recommended content through ML algorithms

In that analogy, the street orientation diagrams from old cities would be like nuanced thought, while those from grid-like cities would be more polarized.

I don’t know if that makes sense…

Some Black Mirror vibe in there, glad I read it. Not directly connected to LW, but doesn't feel out-of-place to me either.

Typo: I think a "be" is missing, as in "be swallowed".

I see the entire corpus of mankind’s creative output as a tiny ship, a gnat really, about to swallowed by a towering ocean wave.

Anyway, thanks for the nicely written post! I think I've had a similar feeling lately. If we're getting surpassed by machines in every intellectual task, maybe the only thing left to do is... just enjoy life for its own sake?

Actually, AI dominates chess, yet humans still enjoy playing it. I'd say that's because the fun is in interacting with other people, rather than in beating the game. Could it be the same for writing?