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timtyler comments on Overcoming Suffering & Buddhism - Less Wrong
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Take care with psychological techniques oriented towards reducing self-suffering. Suffering is an important signal that something is wrong. Pain is similar. If you ignore or damp down the signal, that is a kind of self-sabotage. Sometimes the paradoxical effect is to increase the number of your long term problems. Instead, it is often best to respect and heed the signal - and track down the causes of the problem it is indicating.
Depends on the cause of the suffering. If I feel bad because, for example, I hate my job, that's something I can do something about - I can find another job. If I feel bad because my dog died, there is very little I can do about that, and continuing to feel bad would be counterproductive. If I feel bad because I suffer from depression, and that depression is resistant to current medications, then continuing to feel bad would be worse than useless.
In all those cases I imagine something like the techniques discussed in the original post might have some effect.
Shut up and do the impossible. People are accepting things they can't change all the freaking time, and then they can change them but they don't because they've accepted them. Accept death and oppose cryonics, accept pain and oppose anesthesia. Even if it were reversible it'd be dangerous because it prevents you from trying harder, but historically it's been worse than that.
Depression is an exception, because it's detached unhappiness.
I'm talking about accepting things that have already happened. Wanting to prevent any future deaths is a good thing. Continuing to feel bad about deaths that have already happened is, past a certain point, counterproductive.
So, extreme sunk cost indifference? Might work. Doesn't it make negative reinforcement too small?
And, from an abstract behavioural perspective, can sometimes be considered to be accepting negative circumstances and not trying to change them.
Tracking down and fixing the problems is another way to reduce suffering. I understand and agree with what you say, but just want to point out "alleviating suffering" doesn't necessarily mean only "ignoring suffering".