People with pain asymbolia still get the signal of pain, so they know about damage and can mediate it, but it doesn’t feel bad.
One problem I can see with this: imagine that someone is in the middle of an activity that isn’t life-or-death, but that they care about, i.e. running in a race that they really want to win. They step on something uneven and twist their knee or whatever. They get the signal of pain in their knee, but because it doesn’t feel bad, they might just ignore it and try to win the race anyway, possibly causing a lot more damage in the process. The problem is that their temporary goal (i.e. increased social status after winning or whatever) conflicts with the long-term goal of having a functional body. Presumably humans or animals who were able to ignore pain in this way would have been more likely than average to injure themselves and exacerbate those injuries, and might not have survived to have as many children.
This is plausible. As someone who experiences pain as suffering, I need to cultivate the skill of doing painful things when I consciously decide that they should be done. If I had pain asymbolia, I imagine I’d need to instead cultivate the habit of making conservative decisions about my long-term health.
Is it obvious that the second attitude would be terribly much harder to achieve? By which I mean is it clear that the cost of becoming sufficiently conservative is higher than the cost of the pain?
Certainly not. On the contrary, successfully cultivating that sense of personal responsibility seems like a rewarding activity on its own. In fact, the only way of acquiring pain asymbolia that I’ve heard of involves treating pain as a warning signal and taking it seriously. So it seems like there are only benefits and no downsides to acquiring pain asymbolia, as long as you aren’t cruel to yourself.
One problem I can see with this: imagine that someone is in the middle of an activity that isn’t life-or-death, but that they care about, i.e. running in a race that they really want to win. They step on something uneven and twist their knee or whatever. They get the signal of pain in their knee, but because it doesn’t feel bad, they might just ignore it and try to win the race anyway, possibly causing a lot more damage in the process. The problem is that their temporary goal (i.e. increased social status after winning or whatever) conflicts with the long-term goal of having a functional body. Presumably humans or animals who were able to ignore pain in this way would have been more likely than average to injure themselves and exacerbate those injuries, and might not have survived to have as many children.
This is plausible. As someone who experiences pain as suffering, I need to cultivate the skill of doing painful things when I consciously decide that they should be done. If I had pain asymbolia, I imagine I’d need to instead cultivate the habit of making conservative decisions about my long-term health.
Is it obvious that the second attitude would be terribly much harder to achieve? By which I mean is it clear that the cost of becoming sufficiently conservative is higher than the cost of the pain?
Certainly not. On the contrary, successfully cultivating that sense of personal responsibility seems like a rewarding activity on its own. In fact, the only way of acquiring pain asymbolia that I’ve heard of involves treating pain as a warning signal and taking it seriously. So it seems like there are only benefits and no downsides to acquiring pain asymbolia, as long as you aren’t cruel to yourself.