I have chronic pain, and I could tell you what’s bad about that, which I think might be applicable to pain more broadly.
Pain doesn’t always serve its purpose of keeping one out of trouble, and when it doesn’t, it’s distracting. It sometimes makes it difficult to get up and go, much less do anything great. It can be a spirit breaker when it goes on too long, affecting mental stamina and usefulness as well as physical.
Depending on where the pain is, it can make it difficult to complete tasks in a much more specific way too, by making it difficult to walk or use ones hands. I don’t have kids but I imagine it would put a big ole damper on raising them.
I have chronic pain as well, and it often interferes with my daily life and puts certain goals and ambitions out of easy reach, because I have to factor in what it will cost me, in terms of pain-coping resources, to try and do the activity anyway. I’m lucky in that my condition is not regularly so severe as to prevent me from doing certain things, but that can have its own downside—I may overestimate the length of time before my next serious episode, and get myself into a situation that’s much harder to handle once the pain kicks up.
On the other hand, I’m a masochist, and find certain kinds of pain very rewarding—it’s not just the endorphins, but the sensation itself. Those don’t tend to be the kinds of pain my body supplies during an episode, though, so it’s a different thing.
In such cases, the evolutionary purpose of pain is to cause despair in order to encourage suicide or euthanasia so that resources are no longer wasted on an unfit member of society. It would be an obsolete function were hospital bills not so expensive in the United States.
Unless there is some clever kin selection pathway, there is no way for evolution to know of this benefit, as the genes that implement the suicide die with the host and can’t be selected for. If there is such a pressure to get rid of inefficient members to make room for the others, it’s easier to suppose that other members will get rid of the inefficient ones (or simply the ones unable to defend themselves).
Evolution is a hack, and pointless pain is there because it comes in a bundle with useful pain. That being said, if it were actually worth spending resources to keep an unfit individual functioning, such a change might eventually come about. And so evolution indirectly causes pointless paint to unfit individuals, because it allows it to continue happening.
I have chronic pain, and I could tell you what’s bad about that, which I think might be applicable to pain more broadly.
Pain doesn’t always serve its purpose of keeping one out of trouble, and when it doesn’t, it’s distracting. It sometimes makes it difficult to get up and go, much less do anything great. It can be a spirit breaker when it goes on too long, affecting mental stamina and usefulness as well as physical.
Depending on where the pain is, it can make it difficult to complete tasks in a much more specific way too, by making it difficult to walk or use ones hands. I don’t have kids but I imagine it would put a big ole damper on raising them.
I have chronic pain as well, and it often interferes with my daily life and puts certain goals and ambitions out of easy reach, because I have to factor in what it will cost me, in terms of pain-coping resources, to try and do the activity anyway. I’m lucky in that my condition is not regularly so severe as to prevent me from doing certain things, but that can have its own downside—I may overestimate the length of time before my next serious episode, and get myself into a situation that’s much harder to handle once the pain kicks up.
On the other hand, I’m a masochist, and find certain kinds of pain very rewarding—it’s not just the endorphins, but the sensation itself. Those don’t tend to be the kinds of pain my body supplies during an episode, though, so it’s a different thing.
In such cases, the evolutionary purpose of pain is to cause despair in order to encourage suicide or euthanasia so that resources are no longer wasted on an unfit member of society. It would be an obsolete function were hospital bills not so expensive in the United States.
Why would evolution react to the concerns of society? This line of argument seems like group selectionism to me.
Unless there is some clever kin selection pathway, there is no way for evolution to know of this benefit, as the genes that implement the suicide die with the host and can’t be selected for. If there is such a pressure to get rid of inefficient members to make room for the others, it’s easier to suppose that other members will get rid of the inefficient ones (or simply the ones unable to defend themselves).
Evolution is a hack, and pointless pain is there because it comes in a bundle with useful pain. That being said, if it were actually worth spending resources to keep an unfit individual functioning, such a change might eventually come about. And so evolution indirectly causes pointless paint to unfit individuals, because it allows it to continue happening.