It short-circuits rationality. If you are in enough pain, it no longer matters what is the rational thing to do, only what will stop the pain.
It carries immediacy that forces action before proper consideration. Future be damned, you WILL do whatever needs to be done to end the pain NOW.
In its less excruciating forms, it is a drain on mental and physical energy. No matter what you can do with pain (and some people do truly amazing things), you would be able to do more without.
Finally, it is often unproductive. You have a headache, for example. Does the pain tell you why you have a headache? No. It could be tiredness, allergies, sinus infection, deadly brain tumor, or a million other things. In cases of chronic pain, it is even worse: the pain “migrates to the cortex.” In other words, the injury can heal completely, but the brain “learns to feel the pain” and continues feeling it for years to come (often for the rest of person’s life).
I would say that is plenty of bad about pain.
A more controllable damage signaling system would be great. People are working on it.
A lot of people talk about their experiences of pleasure in ways that suggest the same properties to me: it causes them to forego rational behavior and the consideration of long-term consequences in favor of seeking out/continuing pleasure, it distracts them from doing things they could otherwise do, it doesn’t come with clear referents and indeed can sometimes lead to generalized happiness not connected to any particular event.
If I’m understanding them right, does it follow that for them pleasure is just as bad as pain?
Yes, it does, at least in my opinion. The extreme example of this would be a heroin addict; a less extreme example would be an overweight person unable to resist a bag of potato chips. Doing what is ultimately contrary to one’s long-term goals is destructive and irrational, regardless of the cause for such behavior.
Everyone who’s ever tried to make a pleasurable drug for 1-damage.
Everything that’s not damage, if signaled as a reward stimuli like pleasure, would work!
As a policy (Updateless decision theory), only respond to positive reinforcement and disassociate from pain. I hypothesize that pain asymbolia is trainable. Then you wield a vorpal blade.
Kalla724, if I was the boss at Oxford, you would get the Old Souls Prize from me!
What is bad about pain?
It short-circuits rationality. If you are in enough pain, it no longer matters what is the rational thing to do, only what will stop the pain.
It carries immediacy that forces action before proper consideration. Future be damned, you WILL do whatever needs to be done to end the pain NOW.
In its less excruciating forms, it is a drain on mental and physical energy. No matter what you can do with pain (and some people do truly amazing things), you would be able to do more without.
Finally, it is often unproductive. You have a headache, for example. Does the pain tell you why you have a headache? No. It could be tiredness, allergies, sinus infection, deadly brain tumor, or a million other things. In cases of chronic pain, it is even worse: the pain “migrates to the cortex.” In other words, the injury can heal completely, but the brain “learns to feel the pain” and continues feeling it for years to come (often for the rest of person’s life).
I would say that is plenty of bad about pain.
A more controllable damage signaling system would be great. People are working on it.
A lot of people talk about their experiences of pleasure in ways that suggest the same properties to me: it causes them to forego rational behavior and the consideration of long-term consequences in favor of seeking out/continuing pleasure, it distracts them from doing things they could otherwise do, it doesn’t come with clear referents and indeed can sometimes lead to generalized happiness not connected to any particular event.
If I’m understanding them right, does it follow that for them pleasure is just as bad as pain?
Yes, it does, at least in my opinion. The extreme example of this would be a heroin addict; a less extreme example would be an overweight person unable to resist a bag of potato chips. Doing what is ultimately contrary to one’s long-term goals is destructive and irrational, regardless of the cause for such behavior.
(nods) OK, cool. That seemed to follow from what you were saying, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t putting words in your mouth.
Sounds interesting, who?
Everyone who’s ever tried to make a pleasurable drug for 1-damage.
Everything that’s not damage, if signaled as a reward stimuli like pleasure, would work!
As a policy (Updateless decision theory), only respond to positive reinforcement and disassociate from pain. I hypothesize that pain asymbolia is trainable. Then you wield a vorpal blade.
Kalla724, if I was the boss at Oxford, you would get the Old Souls Prize from me!