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Emily comments on Pain - Less Wrong
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Comments (195)
I think (though I haven't thought about it very much yet) that maybe the most coherent line of argument is that pain per se is not a bad thing, but it is an indication that a bad thing is occurring, e.g., burning oneself, tearing a muscle, walking on a joint that is damaged and therefore damaging it further. All these are easily argued to be bad things because they get in the way of the goals of the pain-experiencer. So when we say "pain is bad, we should minimise it", that's really just shorthand for "things that cause pain are bad, we should minimise them". It strikes me as similar to the way genes, in shaping the behaviour of their bodies, might use "have sex as often as possible" as shorthand for what they really want: "produce as many surviving offspring as possible".
And counterargument: I've read about back pain patients who are in pain for no other reason than that some nerves are messed up and won't stop mistakenly sending pain signals. The "bad thing" behind this particular pain is the messed-up nerves. But why are the messed-up nerves bad? Because they're causing pain. There's simply no other reason.
In such cases, the pain can have quite serious consequences. (Warning: Nightmare Fuel.)
Thanks to that article, I've spent the past 15 minutes scratching miniscule itches all over my body.
That sounds like me, minus the successful troubleshooting.
Pain is the root-level sensation of "this is bad, make it stop", which doesn't involve conscious reasoning of why it is bad. It's necessarily going to interfere with your other goals, because it will insert itself (and assert itself) in your goal ranking. If that goal is something you want, great. If not, it's bad.