It’s completely possible to imagine a world where your baseline fear increases ever so slightly in a way that outweighs the fact of knowing what may be going on when it hits you.
To elaborate on this a bit more, it’s important to note that we humans only have a finite amount of attention—there are only so many things that we can consciously be afraid of at any one time. In my world model, people in extreme pain are much more afraid that the pain isn’t going to stop immediately than they are of the cause of the pain itself. The former fear basically renders the latter fear unnoticed. In this context, knowing the cause of the pain addresses very little fear and knowing how soon you’re going to get drugs addresses a lot.
But –though I concede your point– is your behavior someway modified, at any rate, given the fact that you may get hit by kidney stones?
In my case no. The main behavioral change I’m aware of for kidney stone prevention is eating less red meat. I was already vegetarian so this wasn’t useful for me (and it’s not useful for people who like meat enough that the minor kidney-stone-risk-reduction isn’t worth it). It has been useful for my mom.
To elaborate on this a bit more, it’s important to note that we humans only have a finite amount of attention—there are only so many things that we can consciously be afraid of at any one time. In my world model, people in extreme pain are much more afraid that the pain isn’t going to stop immediately than they are of the cause of the pain itself. The former fear basically renders the latter fear unnoticed. In this context, knowing the cause of the pain addresses very little fear and knowing how soon you’re going to get drugs addresses a lot.
In my case no. The main behavioral change I’m aware of for kidney stone prevention is eating less red meat. I was already vegetarian so this wasn’t useful for me (and it’s not useful for people who like meat enough that the minor kidney-stone-risk-reduction isn’t worth it). It has been useful for my mom.