Why should I include any non-sentient systems in my moral circle? I haven’t seen a case for that before.
jbkjr
Karma: 336
To me, “indecision results from sub-agential disagreement” seems almost tautological, at least within the context of multi-agent models of mind, since if all the sub-agents were in agreement, there wouldn’t be any indecision. So, the question I have is: how often are disagreeing sub-agents “internalized authority figures”? I think I agree with you in that the general answer is “relatively often,” although I expect a fair amount of variance between individuals.
I’d guess it’s a problem of translation; I’m pretty confident the original text in Pali would just say “dukkha” there.
The Wikipedia entry for dukkha says it’s commonly translated as “pain,” but I’m very sure the referent of dukkha in experience is not pain, even if it’s mistranslated as such, however commonly.
Say I have a strong desire to eat pizza, but only a weak craving. I have a hard time imagining what that would be like.
I think this is likely in part due to “desire” connoting both craving and preferring. In the Buddhist context, “desire” is often used more like “craving,” but on the other hand, if I have a pizza for dinner, it seems reasonable to say it was because I desired so (in the sense of having a preference for it), even if there was not any craving for it.
I think people tend to crave what they prefer until they’ve made progress on undoing the habit of craving/aversion, so it’s understandable that it can be hard for such a person to imagine having a strong preference without an associated craving. However, the difference becomes clearer if/when one experiences intentions and preferences in the absence of craving/aversion.
Perhaps it would be informative to examine your experience of preferring in instances other than e.g. eating, where I think there is more of a tendency to crave because “you need food to survive.” For example, if you’re writing and considering two ways of articulating something, you might find you have a strong preference for one way over another, but I imagine there might be less craving in the sense of “I must have it this way, not another.” Perhaps this isn’t the best example possible, but I think careful consideration will reveal the difference in experience between “desire” in the craving sense and “desire” in the preferring sense.
ETA: Another example I thought of is selecting a song to listen to if you’re listening to music—you might want to listen to one song vs. others, but not necessarily have a strong craving for it.
Does then craving (rather than desire) frustration, or aversion realization, constitute suffering?
No, because craving something results in suffering, even if you get that which you crave, and being averse to something results in suffering, even if you avoid that to which you’re averse.
But still, it seems to make sense to say I have an aversion to pain because I suffer from it
I think it makes more sense to say there’s an aversion to pain because pain feels bad; since suffering is not a necessary consequence of pain, it doesn’t make sense to say that you’re averse to pain because it results in suffering. The causal chain is aversion->suffering, not the other way around.
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.
Then the question is whether the idiosyncratic words are only ever explained using other idiosyncratic words, or whether at some point it actually connects with the shared reality.
The point is that the words ground out in actual sensations and experiences, not just other words and concepts. What I’m arguing is that it’s not useful to use the English word “suffering” to refer to ordinary pain or displeasure, because there is a distinction in experience between what we refer to as “pain” or “displeasure” and what is referred to by the term “dukkha,” and that “suffering” is best understood as this dukkha. That we commonly say things like “he suffered the pain” is an indication of this distinction already existing in English, even if there is a tendency to messily equivocate between the two.
My point is that in English “experience such severe pain that one might prefer non-existence to continuing to endure that pain” would be considered an uncontroversial example of “suffering”, not as something suffering-neutral to which suffering might or might not be added.
Sure, but I think that’s just because of the usual conflation between pain and suffering which I’m trying to address with this post. If you ask anyone with the relevant experience “does Buddhism teaching me to never suffer again mean that I’ll never experience (severe) pain again?”, they’ll just answer no. I don’t think it’s reasonable to think of this as a “bait-and-switch” because the dhamma never taught the end of pain, only the end of suffering; it’s not the dhamma’s fault if novices think the end of suffering means an end to pain.
The assumption that these can be completely dropping the habit is entirely theoretical. The historical Buddha’s abilities are lost to history. Modern meditators can perform immense feats of pain tolerance, but I personally haven’t heard one claim to have completely eradicated the habit of suffering.
I believe Daniel Ingram makes such a claim by virtue of his claim of arhatship; if he still suffers then he cannot reasonably claim to be an arhat. He also has an anecdote of someone else he considers to be an arhat saying “This one is not suffering!” in response to a question at a retreat. I think it’s often the case that someone who has found the end of suffering doesn’t go around proclaiming it widely for various reasons.
More directly, I know a complete cessation of craving/aversion and therefore suffering is possible because I have experienced it; I do not suffer. I hesitate to make this claim publicly because I’m not interested in getting into debates about whether or not I actually do not suffer—I know so, and that’s enough for me. However, if it’s helpful to know that the complete cessation of suffering is actually attainable by a kind of existence proof, I do not mind speaking simply about what I know in my own experience(s).
I think you’re right about all the claims of fact. The Buddha won’t suffer when he feels pain. But unenlightened beings, which is all the rest of us, particularly animals, will.
But the example of the Buddha goes to show that humans have the capacity to not suffer even in painful circumstances, even if right now they do. It’s not like “unenlightenment” is something you’re forever resigned to.
So taking pain as a proxy for suffering is pretty reasonable for thinking about how to reduce suffering
I agree that in most cases where someone suffers in the presence of extreme pain, they’re likely to suffer noticeably less if that pain is alleviated, but I don’t think this means “the best way to alleviate suffering is to reduce pain as a proxy for it,” since what’s actually causing the suffering is not the pain but the aversion to it.
The message of Buddhism isn’t “in order to not suffer, don’t want anything”; not craving/being averse doesn’t mean not having any intentions or preferences. Sure, if you crave the satisfaction of your preferences, or if you’re averse to their frustration, you will suffer, but intentions and preferences remain when craving/aversion/clinging is gone. It’s like a difference between “I’m not ok unless this preference is satisfied” and “I’d still like this preference to be satisfied, but I’ll ultimately be ok either way.”
I wouldn’t say suffering is merely preference frustration—if you’re not attached to your preferences and their satisfaction, then you won’t suffer if they’re frustrated. Not craving/being averse doesn’t mean you don’t have preferences, though—see this reply I made to another comment on this post for more discussion of this.
I don’t know if I would say depression isn’t painful, at least in the emotional sense of pain. In either case, it’s certainly unpleasant, and if you want to use “pain” to refer to unpleasantness associated with tissue damage and “displeasure” to refer to a larger category of sensations which includes both pain and other “unpleasant-but-not-‘painful’” experiences such as depression, I don’t really have an objection—my point is still that suffering is distinct from ordinary displeasure.
My sense is that existing mindfulness studies don’t show the sort of impressive results that we’d expect if this were a great solution.
If you have any specific studies in mind which show this, I would be interested to see! I have a sense that mindfulness tends to be studied in the context of “increasing well-being” in a general sense and not specifically to “decrease or eliminate suffering.” I would be quite interested in a study which studies meditation’s effects when directly targeting suffering.
Also, I think people who would benefit most from having less day-to-day suffering often struggle with having no “free room” available for meditation practice, and that seems like an issue that’s hard to overcome even if meditation practice would indeed help them a lot.
I really appreciate you raising this point in detail; I think it’s something I haven’t included enough in my own considerations. Having enough free time and energy for meditation practice is indeed a kind of privilege.
I’m going to chew on this some more, but one initial thought I’ve had is that the general quality of life needed as a prerequisite to devoting enough time and energy to meditation practice may be lower than one may expect, at least by Western standards. For example, in a place like India, there seems to be a good amount of people in difficult circumstances that nonetheless make time for meditation and spiritual pursuits. However, I agree that in the limit, if all of your waking moments are focused on simply acquiring enough food today, it seems much less reasonable to prescribe meditation as the solution for their suffering.
I want to address a common misconception that I see you having here when you write phrases like:
not many people… are going to remain indifferent about it
“… I can choose to react on them or to ignore them, and I am choosing to ignore this one”
when people feel pain, and a desire to avoid that pain arises…
a person who really has no preference whatsoever
to the level that they actually become indifferent to pain
Importantly, “not being averse to pain,” in the intended sense of the word aversion, does not mean that one is “indifferent to pain,” in the sense of (not) having intentions and preferences. When I speak of “craving” or “aversion,” I am referring to a very specific kind of mental action and experience which results in suffering, not to intentions and preferences. Craving/aversion is the kind of desire which finds the way things presently are fundamentally unacceptable. Craving is like an attempt to grab at sensations and experiences, and aversion is like an attempt to hold them at arm’s length.
So, it isn’t the case that someone who has let go of craving/aversion and therefore suffering is completely indifferent to pain or that they won’t take action to alleviate the pain. If you stab a non-sufferer, they’ll still e.g. go to a hospital and have the wound treated. They’ll still have a general preference for pleasure over pain and take actions in accordance with those preferences; they just won’t seek pleasure or avoid pain in the sense of “I am not ok without this pleasure, or with this pain”—that’s craving and aversion. Pain still serves its important functional role, without the extra mental (re)actions of aversion and suffering.
This is also why I prefer to use terms like craving, aversion, and clinging to terms like “desire.” Sometimes you hear the Buddhist teaching formulated as “the cause of suffering is desire” and “stop desiring in order to stop suffering,” but I think the layperson is likely to misinterpret this as “so I can’t have any intentions or preferences,” due to the common usage of the word “desire” as “intending” or “preferring.” For example, see this LW comment thread which discusses the use of the word “desire” in this context, or Daniel Ingram’s discussion (and eschewal) of “no-preference models” of awakening.
Similarly, one could mean by “aversion” something like “dispreference” and describe someone who simply intends to alleviate pain as being averse to that pain, but this is not “aversion” as used in the Buddhist context to refer to the cause of suffering, tanha. While “aversion” may still be misinterpreted in such a manner, I think it’s less likely to be misunderstood than terms like “desire.” Same for “craving”—I think people are generally already familiar with “craving” in experience in the sense of “I must have that which I crave, I am not ok without having that which I crave.”
It seems a bit misguided to me to argue “well, even in the absence of suffering, one might experience such severe pain that one might prefer non-existence to continuing to endure that pain, so this ‘not suffering’ can’t be all it’s cracked up to be”—would you rather experience suffering on top of that pain? With or without pain, not suffering is preferable to suffering.
For example, with end-of-life patients, circumstances being so unpleasant doesn’t mean that they may as well suffer, too; nor does “being an end-of-life patient” being a possible experience among the space of all possible non-suffering experiences make not suffering any less valuable.
Acknowledging that not suffering is preferable to suffering, even in the presence of pain, doesn’t trivialize the reality of pain, which still feels bad!
Which of the following claims would you disagree with?
Craving/aversion causes suffering; there is suffering if and only if there is craving/aversion.
There are practices by which one can untrain the habit of craving/aversion with careful attention and intention.
In the limit, these practices can result in totally dropping the habit of craving/aversion, regardless of circumstance.
The Buddha practiced in such a manner as to totally stop craving/aversion, regardless of circumstance.
Therefore, the Buddha would not be averse to even the most extreme pain and therefore not suffer even in the most painful circumstances possible.
Interestingly, I had a debate with someone on an earlier draft of this post about whether or not pain could be considered a cause of suffering, which led to me brushing up on some of literature on causation.
What seems clear to me is that suffering causally depends on craving/aversion, but not on pain—there is suffering if and only if there is craving/aversion, but there can be suffering without pain, and there can be pain without suffering.
On Lewis’ account, causal dependence implies causation but not vice versa, so this does not itself mean that pain cannot be considered a cause of suffering. However, given that suffering occurs if and only if craving/aversion occurs, I’m pretty comfortable pointing to craving/aversion as “the” cause of suffering.
I’m actually fairly sympathetic to a view which holds pain as an indirect cause of suffering in that it seems pretty natural to say that e.g. aversion arose in response to pain, at least in specific instances where there is pain, aversion (to the pain), and then suffering. However, I’m not sure I would make the claim that “pain causes aversion” in general, as it is quite possible for pain to occur without aversion then occurring.
I’m curious as to what part of my argument you perceived as invalidly inferring from extreme to average situations?
Re: 2, I disagree—there will be suffering if there is craving/aversion, even in the absence of pain. Craving pleasure results in suffering just as much as aversion to pain does.
Re: 4, While I agree that animals likely “live more in the moment” and have less capacity to make up stories about themselves, I do not think that this precludes them from having the basic mental reaction of craving/aversion and therefore suffering. I think the “stories” you’re talking about have much more to do with ego/psyche than the “self” targeted in Buddhism—I think of ego/psyche as “the story/stories a mind tells itself about itself,” whereas “self” is more about modeling some sensations as “me or mine” and other sensations as “not me or mine.” I think non-human animals do not tell themselves stories about themselves to the same extent humans do, but do think they’re quite capable of making the self/other distinction in the relevant sense. I think it’s quite possible for craving/aversion to occur without having concocted such a story.
You’re welcome, and thanks for the support! :)
Re: MAPLE, I might have in interest in visiting—I became acquainted with MAPLE because I think Alex Flint spent some time there? Does one need to be actively working on an AI safety project to visit? I am not currently doing so, having stepped away from AI safety work to focus on directly addressing suffering.
Lukas, thanks for taking the time to read and reply! I appreciate you reminding me of your article on Tranquilism—it’s been a couple of years since I read it (during my fellowship with CLR), and I hadn’t made a mental note of it making such a distinction when I did, so thanks for the reminder.
While I agree that it’s an open question as to how effective meditation is for alleviating suffering at scale (e.g. how easy it is for how many humans to reduce their suffering by how much with how much time/effort), I don’t think it would require as much of a commitment as you seem to expect in the median case. Personally, I think it’s likely that the median person would be able to make substantial progress in reducing suffering as a layperson, i.e. without becoming a monastic. Even if attaining a total and forevermore cessation of suffering is substantially more difficult/attainable by substantially fewer people in one lifetime, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that most people could suffer at least 50 percent less with dedicated mindfulness practice. I’m curious as to what might feed an opposing intuition for you! I’d be quite excited about empirical research that investigates the tractability and scalability of meditation for reducing suffering, in either case.
(By the way, would it be alright if I ping you privately to set up a meeting? I’ve been a fan of your writing since becoming familiar with you during my time at CLR and would love a chance to pick your brain about SFE stuff and hear about what you’ve been up to lately!)
It sounds to me like a problem of not reasoning according to Occam’s razor and “overfitting” a model to the available data.
Ceteris paribus, H’ isn’t more “fishy” than any other hypothesis, but H’ is a significantly more complex hypothesis than H or ¬H: instead of asserting H or ¬H, it asserts (A=>H) & (B=>¬H), so it should have been commensurately de-weighted in the prior distribution according to its complexity. The fact that Alice’s study supports H and Bob’s contradicts it does, in fact, increase the weight given to H’ in the posterior relative to its weight in the prior; it’s just that H’ is prima facie less likely, according to Occam.
Given all the evidence, the ratio of likelihoods P(H’|E)/P(H|E)=P(E|H’)P(H’)/(P(E|H)P(H)). We know P(E|H’) > P(E|H) (and P(E|H’) > P(E|¬H)), since the results of Alice’s and Bob’s studies together are more likely given H’, but P(H’) < P(H) (and P(H’) < P(¬H)) according to the complexity prior. Whether H’ is more likely than H (or ¬H, respectively) is ultimately up to whether P(E|H’)/P(E|H) (or P(E|H’)/P(E|¬H)) is larger or smaller than P(H’)/P(H) (or P(H’)/P(¬H)).
I think it ends up feeling fishy because the people formulating H’ just used more features (the circumstances of the experiments) in a more complex model to account for the as-of-yet observed data after having observed said data, so it ends up seeming like in selecting H’ as a hypothesis, they’re according it more weight than it deserves according to the complexity prior.