Pessimistic errors are no big deal. The agent will randomly avoid behaviors that get penalized, but as long as those behaviors are reasonably rare (and aren’t the only way to get a good outcome) then that’s not too costly.
Also, if an outcome really is very bad, evolution has no reason to limit the amount of suffering experienced.
Getting burned is bad for you. Evolution makes it painful so you know to avoid it. But if strong and extreme pain result in the same amount of avoidance, evolution has no reason to choose “strong” over “extreme”. In fact, it might prefer “extreme” to get a more robust outcome.
And that’s how we get the ability to inflict the kind of torture which is ‘worse than death’, and to imagine a Hell (and simulations thereof) with infinite negative utility, even though evolution doesn’t have a concept of a fate being “worse than death”—certainly not worse than the death of your extended family.
I’m unsure that “extreme” would necessarily get a more robust response, considering that there comes a point where the pain becomes disabling.
It seems as though there might be some sort of biological “limit” insofar as there are limited peripheral nerves, the grey matter can only process so much information, etc., and there’d be a point where the brain is 100% focused on avoiding the pain (meaning there’d be no evolutionary advantage to having the capacity to process additional pain). I’m not really sure where this limit would be, though. And I don’t really know any biology so I’m plausibly completely wrong.
I’m unsure that “extreme” would necessarily get a more robust response
I meant robust in the sense of decreasing the number of edge cases where the pain is insufficiently strong to motivate the particular individual as strongly as possible. (Since pain tolerance is variable, etc.) Evolution “wants” pain to be a robust feedback/control mechanism that reliably causes the desired amount of avoidance—in this case, the greatest possible amount.
there comes a point where the pain becomes disabling.
That’s an excellent point. Why would evolution allow (i.e. not select against) the existence of disabling pain (and fear, etc)?
Presumably, in the space of genotypes available for selection—in the long term view, and for animals besides humans—there are no cheap solutions that would have an upper cut-off to pain stimuli (below the point of causing unresponsiveness) without degrading the avoidance response to lower levels of pain.
There is also the cutoff argument: a (non-human) animal can’t normally survive e.g. the loss of a limb, so it doesn’t matter how much pain exactly it feels in that scenario. Some cases of disabling pain fall in this category.
Finally, evolution can’t counteract human ingenuity in torture, because humans act on much smaller timescales. It is to be expected that humans who are actively trying to cause pain (or to imagine how to do so) will succeed in causing amounts of pain beyond most anything found in nature.
Evolution “wants” pain to be a robust feedback/control mechanism that reliably causes the desired amount of avoidance—in this case, the greatest possible amount.
I feel that there’s going to be a level of pain for which a mind of nearly any level of pain tolerance would exert 100% of its energy to avoid. I don’t think I know enough to comment on how much further than this level the brain can go, but it’s unclear why the brain would develop the capacity to process pain drastically more intense than this; pain is just a tool to avoid certain things, and it ceases to become useful past a certain point.
There are no cheap solutions that would have an upper cut-off to pain stimuli (below the point of causing unresponsiveness) without degrading the avoidance response to lower levels of pain.
I’m imagining a level of pain above that which causes unresponsiveness, I think. Perhaps I’m imagining something more extreme than your “extreme”?
It is to be expected that humans who are actively trying to cause pain (or to imagine how to do so) will succeed in causing amounts of pain beyond most anything found in nature.
it’s unclear why the brain would develop the capacity to process pain drastically more intense than this
The brain doesn’t have the capacity to correctly process extreme pain. That’s why it becomes unresponsive or acts counterproductively.
The brain has the capacity to perceive extreme pain. This might be because:
The brain has many interacting subsystems; the one(s) that react to pain stop working before the ones that perceive it
The range of perceivable pain (that is, the range in which we can distinguish stronger from weaker pain) is determined by implementation details of the neural system. If there was an evolutionary benefit to increasing the range, we would expect that to happen. But if the range is greater than necessary, that doesn’t mean there’s an evolutionary benefit to decreasing it; the simplest/most stable solution stays in place.
even though evolution doesn’t have a concept of a fate being “worse than death”—certainly not worse than the death of your extended family.
But as long as you’re alive, evolution can penalize you for losses of ‘utility’ (reproductive ability). For example:
Loss of a limb:
is excruciating
seems likely to decrease ability to reproduce and take care of offspring and relatives—especially in “the evolutionary environment”.
The only weird part of this story is the existence of suicide.*
*From a basic evolutionary perspective, it makes more sense in the piece History is Written by the Losers where it is revealed that the man who ‘invented history**’ in China chose to live rather than commit suicide after being sentenced to castration—an act which was inconceivable at the time. The context in which people would rather commit suicide than avoid other circumstances however, paints a picture of suicide as a social phenomenon. Arguably this might makes sense evolutionarily, but it’s a more complicated picture.
“because he was principled enough to contradict the emperor in the presence of his court, Sima Qian was sentenced to castration. This was a death sentence—any self-respecting man of his day would commit suicide before submitting to the procedure. Everyone expected Sima Qian to do so. But in the end Sima Qian decided to accept the punishment and live the rest of his life in shame, because if he did not he would never finish the history he had started.”
**The idea of writing things down as they happened so future generations would know.
“That a great thinker could profitably spend his time sorting through evidence, trying to tie together cause and effect, distinguishing truth from legend, then present what is found in a written historical narrative—it is an idea that seems to have never occurred to anyone on the entire subcontinent. Only in Greece and in China did this notion catch hold.”
Also, if an outcome really is very bad, evolution has no reason to limit the amount of suffering experienced.
Getting burned is bad for you. Evolution makes it painful so you know to avoid it. But if strong and extreme pain result in the same amount of avoidance, evolution has no reason to choose “strong” over “extreme”. In fact, it might prefer “extreme” to get a more robust outcome.
And that’s how we get the ability to inflict the kind of torture which is ‘worse than death’, and to imagine a Hell (and simulations thereof) with infinite negative utility, even though evolution doesn’t have a concept of a fate being “worse than death”—certainly not worse than the death of your extended family.
I’m unsure that “extreme” would necessarily get a more robust response, considering that there comes a point where the pain becomes disabling.
It seems as though there might be some sort of biological “limit” insofar as there are limited peripheral nerves, the grey matter can only process so much information, etc., and there’d be a point where the brain is 100% focused on avoiding the pain (meaning there’d be no evolutionary advantage to having the capacity to process additional pain). I’m not really sure where this limit would be, though. And I don’t really know any biology so I’m plausibly completely wrong.
I meant robust in the sense of decreasing the number of edge cases where the pain is insufficiently strong to motivate the particular individual as strongly as possible. (Since pain tolerance is variable, etc.) Evolution “wants” pain to be a robust feedback/control mechanism that reliably causes the desired amount of avoidance—in this case, the greatest possible amount.
That’s an excellent point. Why would evolution allow (i.e. not select against) the existence of disabling pain (and fear, etc)?
Presumably, in the space of genotypes available for selection—in the long term view, and for animals besides humans—there are no cheap solutions that would have an upper cut-off to pain stimuli (below the point of causing unresponsiveness) without degrading the avoidance response to lower levels of pain.
There is also the cutoff argument: a (non-human) animal can’t normally survive e.g. the loss of a limb, so it doesn’t matter how much pain exactly it feels in that scenario. Some cases of disabling pain fall in this category.
Finally, evolution can’t counteract human ingenuity in torture, because humans act on much smaller timescales. It is to be expected that humans who are actively trying to cause pain (or to imagine how to do so) will succeed in causing amounts of pain beyond most anything found in nature.
I feel that there’s going to be a level of pain for which a mind of nearly any level of pain tolerance would exert 100% of its energy to avoid. I don’t think I know enough to comment on how much further than this level the brain can go, but it’s unclear why the brain would develop the capacity to process pain drastically more intense than this; pain is just a tool to avoid certain things, and it ceases to become useful past a certain point.
I’m imagining a level of pain above that which causes unresponsiveness, I think. Perhaps I’m imagining something more extreme than your “extreme”?
Yeah, agreed.
The brain doesn’t have the capacity to correctly process extreme pain. That’s why it becomes unresponsive or acts counterproductively.
The brain has the capacity to perceive extreme pain. This might be because:
The brain has many interacting subsystems; the one(s) that react to pain stop working before the ones that perceive it
The range of perceivable pain (that is, the range in which we can distinguish stronger from weaker pain) is determined by implementation details of the neural system. If there was an evolutionary benefit to increasing the range, we would expect that to happen. But if the range is greater than necessary, that doesn’t mean there’s an evolutionary benefit to decreasing it; the simplest/most stable solution stays in place.
But as long as you’re alive, evolution can penalize you for losses of ‘utility’ (reproductive ability). For example:
Loss of a limb:
is excruciating
seems likely to decrease ability to reproduce and take care of offspring and relatives—especially in “the evolutionary environment”.
The only weird part of this story is the existence of suicide.*
*From a basic evolutionary perspective, it makes more sense in the piece History is Written by the Losers where it is revealed that the man who ‘invented history**’ in China chose to live rather than commit suicide after being sentenced to castration—an act which was inconceivable at the time. The context in which people would rather commit suicide than avoid other circumstances however, paints a picture of suicide as a social phenomenon. Arguably this might makes sense evolutionarily, but it’s a more complicated picture.
“because he was principled enough to contradict the emperor in the presence of his court, Sima Qian was sentenced to castration. This was a death sentence—any self-respecting man of his day would commit suicide before submitting to the procedure. Everyone expected Sima Qian to do so. But in the end Sima Qian decided to accept the punishment and live the rest of his life in shame, because if he did not he would never finish the history he had started.”
**The idea of writing things down as they happened so future generations would know.
“That a great thinker could profitably spend his time sorting through evidence, trying to tie together cause and effect, distinguishing truth from legend, then present what is found in a written historical narrative—it is an idea that seems to have never occurred to anyone on the entire subcontinent. Only in Greece and in China did this notion catch hold.”