= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
gwern comments on Rationality Quotes: October 2009 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (276)
Pain is just pain; it's neither good nor bad. Good and bad are only judgments, which are thoughts, and as such are determined by one's mind & beliefs. I think this is a profound truth unappreciated by many, and by no means trivial.
Over my dry dessicated remains!
Pain is the raw "quale" of badness. You can deem some future goal to be good, and worth the pain, but you can't judge pain good, except in an abstract, meaningless sense, disconnected from any implications for your actions.
I think the quote originator, and Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics, might say that you can instead think pain neither good nor bad, but simply there. Certainly, it is hard to act as if pain is good, but the idea is that the rational person can subordinate that reflexive reaction, after a moment's thought (perhaps less with training) and move beyond it.