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SilasBarta comments on Pain - Less Wrong
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Let me try to explain this better, then. Imagine we take a person who needs surgery but was never told by their doctor what part of their body the surgery will be on. We perform the surgery without any anaesthetic and with the patient blindfolded. In this case, the pain is giving new information ("AAAIE! MY RIGHT LEG!") but we still don't approve.
kpreid could clarify that this information is useless (in that the patient doesn't gain anything from knowing) and that (s)he meant useful information. But this isn't true either. I could state before the surgery that I will give the patient ten cents if they can tell me which of their limbs I operated on, but this still wouldn't make it okay to perform surgery without anaesthetic.
The way I would have put kpreid's point is that the pain must provide sufficiently useful information to offset its painfulness. If putting someone under surgery without anaesthetic earned someone ten cents, I would consider it an atrocity, but if it was necessary so that the patient could help guide the surgeon by telling them what they feel, saving the patient's life, then it might be a necessary measure.
However, this seems like straightforward utilitarianism, in which the benefit of getting information must outweigh the cost of having such terrible pain. This means it can't be used as a definition of why pain is a cost.
I would say that pain is a cost for other reasons, but that when pain conveys information, the information can be a counterbalancing factor. This makes it a mistake to say that the reason pain is a cost is that it doesn't convey information, equivalent to saying that the reason bombing civilians in Afghanistan is bad is that it doesn't kill Osama bin Laden. The reason bombing civilians is bad is because murder is wrong. Killing Osama bin Laden would be a potential counterbalancing factor that might justify bombing the civilians, but lack of Osama-killing is not the definition of the evil of murder.
Consider someone whose only ambition is to collect every Pokemon in the world. Kpreid's scenario suggests a dichotomy: either it is okay to cause this person pain, or the only reason not to cause this person pain is because it might prevent Pokemons from being collected. I don't think this captures the reason we don't break the bones of Pokemon collectors (even though we all feel sorely tempted sometimes.)
Good point; I wasn't careful to distinguish between a "benefit" and an "outweighed cost". However, as I mentioned in another comment, akrasia can blur the distinction. For example, what if pain causes me to take the necessary action against a minor health problem before it becomes a major problem, when otherwise I'd procrastinate? My future self would be very thankful.
Yet you cannot view the pain as some add-on attribute here. The displeasure is part of its usefulness. Simply informing me that "hey, you gotta have this looked at soon" isn't enough; what I need is for my short-term goal ranking to agree with my long-term goal ranking.
A contrived scenario. There is no such person, nor will there likely ever be. There might be someone whose only stated, conscious goal is to collect every Pokemon, but their biology prevents them from making that their only actual goal.
So you're right that we don't break the bones of Pokemon collectors, but their friends do try make the collector's long-term goals match up with their short-term goals, and exert social pressure to tame the obsession. As in the above example, pain can be good here.