SilasBarta comments on Pain - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Alicorn 02 August 2009 07:12PM

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Comment author: Emily 02 August 2009 08:39:49PM 6 points [-]

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.

Comment author: SilasBarta 02 August 2009 09:13:47PM 0 points [-]

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.