Would you rather:Pain in doses,or all at once?

[Pappy13]

^^ your logic makes no sense to me but I don't want to argue about it.  Its a scientific fact that larger surface area = faster conductive heat transfer.  But you can believe whatever you want that's OK too.

I agree that there's more heat transferred because of the larger surface area, but each individual receptor doesn't transfer any more heat from the pin than from the screwdriver, they transfer the same amount of heat because the pain receptor size isn't changing, what's changing is how many of them are in contact with the heat source.

Now what makes you think that 12 needles wouldn't be more painful than one since they too would be over a larger surface area. That's really the point I was making. The larger the surface area, the more pain you feel. 12 shots would be more painful than 1. Roughly 12 times as painful, because 12 times the number of pain receptors would receive pain and your brain adds them all up to determine how much pain your body is receiving.

Another way to think of it is that pain receptors are digital. They are either on or off, there's no inbetween. So for instance it wouldn't matter if you heated the pin to a higher temperature, you wouldn't feel more pain, you would feel the same amount of pain. The only way you feel more pain is if more pain receptors are on. That's why I said pain is multiplicative. Your brain multiplies the amount of pain from 1 receptor by the number of receptors that are on to determine the overall pain you feel.

[Dave Gray]

It's not 12 times as painful.  It just doesn't work that way.

When you get a TB stick, it's 4 needles, but it feels like 1.  It's not 4 times as painful as 1 shot.

[Phishfan]

I think we need more information in order to tell if the pain is more with the 12 shots. I assumed you would receive 12 individual shots consecutively rather than a large 12 shot needle aT once as Dave suggests.

[Pappy13]

It's not 12 times as painful.  It just doesn't work that way.

When you get a TB stick, it's 4 needles, but it feels like 1.  It's not 4 times as painful as 1 shot.

I'm talking theoretically. In practice there are a lot of variables to take into consideration. What's the actual difference in surface area of 1 needle compared to 4? Not that great. So would you even be able to perceive the difference in pain? That's a good question. Also it has a lot to do with where you stick those needles. There are more pain receptors in certain places in the body than others and there are also different types of pain receptors. Getting a shot in the shoulder for example is not very painful because there aren't a lot of pain receptors there and they are mostly at the surface, once you get past the skin surface, it's not really that painful until you start hitting the muscles for example and I don't think a TB shot goes all the way to the muscle. Getting a shot into your spine on the other hand is completely different. Different set of pain receptors. Could you tell the difference between 4 needles in your spine as opposed to 1? Maybe. My guess would be yes.

Generally speaking I think it's pretty safe to say more shots would equal more pain if they were of the same variety. Can you tell the difference? Maybe or maybe not.