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Theist comments on Rationality Quotes: July 2010 - Less Wrong
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It seems pretty clear to me that this was not true in our ancestral environment. It may be the case in our present artificially benign environment however.
That is precisely what I mean; but also note that there are circumstances in the ancestral environment in which pain is entirely useless, such as when one has been mortally wounded. So even in the worst case we can do better than pain, and in the current case I suspect we can do much, much better.
Evolution has the problem of path-dependence, though. Once the "don't do that" / "pay attention to that" mechanism builds up slowly over many generations, it cannot refactor in such a way that it surgically cuts out the internal feeling of pain in precisely those circumstances where, "hey, might as well give up".
It's hard to see what reproductive benefit there would be to reduced suffering when dying either so there is unlikely to be any evolutionary pressure in that direction.