The motivation of this post is to address the persistent conflation between suffering and pain I have observed from members of the EA community, even amongst those who purport to be “suffering-focused” in their ethical motivations.
I’m pretty suffering-focused in practice for EA-related actions (mostly donations), so I was hoping you’d say more. So:
Having this distinction in mind is critical in order to develop ethical policies and effective interventions. For instance, as previously mentioned, CBT and mindfulness practices have been shown to reduce suffering by altering the mental response to pain rather than addressing the pain itself. If (the alleviation of) suffering is what we care about, this distinction guides us to focus on the root causes of suffering in our ethical considerations, rather than merely alleviating pain. Recognizing that suffering often lies in an aversive mental reaction to pain rather than the pain itself enables more precise scientific research and more effective strategies for reducing overall suffering.
This was probably the first intervention that came to mind for me as well when seeing your claim that distinguishing pain and suffering matters in the EA-action-guiding sense; unfortunately it’s already a thing, e.g. HLI recommending StrongMinds. I’d be interested if you have any other ideas for underexplored / underappreciated cause areas / intervention groups that might be worth further investigation when reevaluated via this pain vs suffering distinction? (This is my attempt to make this distinction pay rent, albeit in actions instead of anticipated experiences.)
I’d be interested if you have any other ideas for underexplored / underappreciated cause areas / intervention groups that might be worth further investigation when reevaluated via this pain vs suffering distinction?
Unfortunately, I don’t have much to point you toward supporting that I’m aware of already existing in the space. I’d generally be quite interested in studies which better evaluate meditation’s effects on directly reducing suffering in terms of e.g. how difficult it is for how many people to reduce their suffering by how much, but the EA community doesn’t seem to currently be focused on this very much. I am still supportive of existing organizations with a direct focus on reducing suffering; I just wanted to make the point that such organizations would do well to recognize the distinction between suffering and pain in order to ensure their efforts are actually aimed at suffering and not merely pain on the margin.
I see. You may be interested in a contrary(?) take from the Welfare Footprint Project’s researchers; in their FAQ they write
4. Why don’t you use the term ‘suffering’, instead of ‘pain’?
We prefer not to use the term suffering for various reasons. First, our analyses are concerned with “any” negative affective state (including mild ones), whereas the term suffering is often used to denote more severe states that are accompanied by concurrent negative feelings such as the perception of lack of control, fear, anxiety, the impossibility to enjoy pleasant activities or even a threat to one’s sense of self. Additionally, it is not yet possible to determine objectively when an unpleasant state becomes suffering. This is so far a value judgement, which we leave open to users of our estimates. The term ‘pain’ (both physical and psychological), in turn, is associated with negative affective experiences of a wide range of intensities.
They define their terms further here. To be fair, they focus on non-human animal welfare; I suppose your suffering vs joy distinction is more currently actionable in human-focused contexts e.g. CBT interventions.
I’m pretty suffering-focused in practice for EA-related actions (mostly donations), so I was hoping you’d say more. So:
This was probably the first intervention that came to mind for me as well when seeing your claim that distinguishing pain and suffering matters in the EA-action-guiding sense; unfortunately it’s already a thing, e.g. HLI recommending StrongMinds. I’d be interested if you have any other ideas for underexplored / underappreciated cause areas / intervention groups that might be worth further investigation when reevaluated via this pain vs suffering distinction? (This is my attempt to make this distinction pay rent, albeit in actions instead of anticipated experiences.)
Unfortunately, I don’t have much to point you toward supporting that I’m aware of already existing in the space. I’d generally be quite interested in studies which better evaluate meditation’s effects on directly reducing suffering in terms of e.g. how difficult it is for how many people to reduce their suffering by how much, but the EA community doesn’t seem to currently be focused on this very much. I am still supportive of existing organizations with a direct focus on reducing suffering; I just wanted to make the point that such organizations would do well to recognize the distinction between suffering and pain in order to ensure their efforts are actually aimed at suffering and not merely pain on the margin.
I see. You may be interested in a contrary(?) take from the Welfare Footprint Project’s researchers; in their FAQ they write
They define their terms further here. To be fair, they focus on non-human animal welfare; I suppose your suffering vs joy distinction is more currently actionable in human-focused contexts e.g. CBT interventions.