the idea, the carrot and the brain

We have one life and one life only. It ends together with your chance to experience anything more than what you already have. When that darkness hits you, no sunshine, no rain nor touch or smell will reach you ever again. I aim to be happy with my resume of experiences when I reach this point. The question becomes which of the infinitely possible experiences do I want to add and which ones would I rather leave out. It seems like a list that you should go through as you take your walk through life, instead of compiling and completing it beforehand. But there is one item in this list that has been with me from the start:

Why shouldn't I bite my pinky off at some point in my life?

Is it even possible? The carrot myth

The myth that you could bite off your pinky with the force it would take to bite through a carrot has been tackled before. Science was done under the context of car window safety, where they crushed cadaver fingers in a hydraulic press. Apparently it takes a lot more force than that produced when biting through a carrot (another one of my childhood conceptions is a lie). According to their results, it would take more force than a human jaw can generate. But the study was limited: it used a hydraulic press which can produce only a crushing force, and you can grind your teeth.

Given enough time and willpower teeth should be able to get through anything that is softer than tooth (and fingers have joints!). Empirical evidence for successful dental-assisted dinger amputation exists on reddit. The linked story is pretty tame compared to other stuff on that subreddit: I am willing to believe it.

The question of willpower: "Your brain would stop you from doing it"

There were (maybe are) Buddhist sects of monks that would endure months of starvation, prepare themselves to be locked into a tomb (while alive) mummify (with, by the way, a limited success rate). The other monks would open the hole you sat in after a few months. If you had successfully mummified you'd reached some sort of enlightenment and your body would be displayed somewhere. I think the brain-will-stop-it argument is dumb: clearly with enough fervour and/or motivation we can put ourselves through BYPO.