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rwallace comments on Rationality Quotes: July 2010 - Less Wrong
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For an even somewhat rational person, pain is far stronger than necessary as a warning sign. As someone generally concerned with my own body's welfare, the mental equivalent of popping up a politely worded dialog box would be sufficient. I find that shame is likewise overkill for solving this problem.
Personally, I don't mind pain being a strong enough warning that it's hard to ignore. I can see the need for that.
I think the problem with pain is that it's like those stupid car alarms. You know the ones that should be programmed to turn off after five minutes because any good they might do will have been done by then if it's to be done at all, but they actually keep going all night?
That's what pain should have: a way of saying, after some appropriate enforced time delay, fine, I've got the message, I'm doing everything I can about the problem, you can stop now.
I can't. I've had problems with pains that are demonstrably unrelated to any threat to bodily integrity and for which there is no known technique that removes it. If pain were limited to real threats, I'd agree, but it's not.
So it's not even an issue of "yeah, I get the message, you can stop reminding me"; often times, there is no message to be given, just suffering.