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> > I searched as well, with no luck. The more I think about it, though, the more I'm sure that if I were to compose such a list, all of the top 10 would be some sort of unrelenting physical agony. That is, if the amount of pain is measured in per unit of time.
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> I didn't take it to mean exclusively literal pain. I have seen lists of "most stressful events" that a person can go through (actually used to predict your vulnerability to illness), so that's how I figured "most painful thing list" was meant--emotional pain as well as literal pain.
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> That list was topped by either death of a spouse or death of a child, can't remember which, and was followed by (in no particular order) death of a parent, death of a sibling, divorce, losing a job, major illness, bankruptcy, incarceration, auto accident, etc.
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> Also included were ostensibly "good" things like getting married, or birth of a child, or "neutral" things like moving house, since they can also induce stress.

Yes, I was implicitly including all forms of pain as well. I guess if one were to make the definition as formal as possible, it'd be based on some sort of utility theory (A is more painful than B to me if, given the choice between the two, and all else being equal, I'd choose to experience B -- this would flip the preliminary outcomes based on simple physical pain considerations, for masochists).

Even so, I thought it important to factor consideration of the duration of the event to make fair comparisons. Someone might say he'd rather have one of his arms cut off than go through the emotional pain equivalent to, say, losing a loved one. However I think a lot of that would have to do with the duration of the pain. The loss of the loved one would be permanent (we haven't drawn near the Singularity yet) and presumably you'd be affected for your whole life. Having your arm cut off would hurt, sure, but you'd largely get over it soon enough with proper treatment. Equating the durations, though, I'd rather feel the emotional pain equivalent to that from losing a loved one [note: not the same as saying I'd rather lose the loved one -- just whether I'd want to feel the equivalent pain] than feel the physical pain of having my arm severed for *every remaining second of my life* -- and never "getting used to it".

Anyway, I anticipate that the lists which have been made in these areas don't reflect the pain per unit time (equivalently, they don't mandate common durations of the experiences), but some generalized "total sum" of pain from the whole experience. From that sort of definition, yeah, I can see how a lot of life-changing tragedies could be considered to be at the very top. I just thought it was equally interesting to imagine a ranking of instantaneous pain levels among possible experiences.