Do some people here agree with the 'prime directive' approach in general? I think its not very good myself, for the same reasons one might contact and exchange ideas with tribes that have no knowledge about the rest of the world.

There are herbs that can encourage lucid dreaming. I've experimented a bit with hyssop flower, also known as ezov, but it didn't change my experience of dreaming much, except I woke up feeling like I had been sorting things through and having insights in my sleep. I didn't recall what I had figured out, but I had the feeling of figuring things out. But I could lucid dream before I started taking it, though I don't do it often, and I remember my dreams often and write them down. Keeping pen and paper by the bed and writing down dreams can be a way to start if you want to work up to lucid dreaming.

I don't usually feel pain while dreaming, but I sometimes wake up from too much pain, so that is not always the case.

Many years ago, I did some meditation techniques to shut off pain when I was severely ill, and it worked for a little while, the technique was successful and I didn't feel pain. But then I moved around and lived my life as if the pain weren't there and I ended up hurting myself, and being in a worse condition than before. The pain had been stopping me from doing things that my body couldn't handle. So, I've been reluctant to mess with the pain signalling system since then.

I guess I'm telling you these stories because neither lucid dreaming, nor shutting off feeling the pain were answers for me. But that's me. Different people have different experiences and different bodies, which makes exploring these options not something that one can outsource, and anecdotes and stories are not reliable guides.

Did you look at https://www.painscience.com/? That site had info that cured nasty chronic pain of mine that lasted >1 year. This tutorial in particular was extremely helpful: https://www.painscience.com/tutorials/trigger-points.php

To answer your original question: when I was dealing with chronic pain, I had issues with deep despair similar to what you describe. My chronic pain left me unemployed, and I was constantly in fear of doing things that would aggravate my condition and set back the (very slow and variable) progress it was making in resolving itself. Definitely an extremely miserable period.

Thoughts I had that I found helpful and I'll pass on to you: I decided there were basically 2 strategies for dealing with the pain I had: cure and mitigation. Cure refers to finding a way to roll back the root cause of the problem and return to being my pain-free self. Mitigation refers to accepting the pain and finding ways to work around it (for me--finding a job that doesn't require me to make use of my hands at all, and probably doing a lot more meditation). I decided that it was best to focus on 1 strategy at a time, and that I should focus on the "cure" strategy for at least several years before switching to "mitigation". (What's a few years when I had decades left to live?) I realized that any given "cure" had a pretty low probability of working out, and being in a state of deep despair was extremely non-conducive to trying things that individually had a small probability of working out. This observation was helpful for recalibrating my intuition, and I resolved to make the "list of things I had tried" as long as I could possibly make it. I also resolved to do more of a breadth-first search than a depth-first search, at least at first--I didn't want something that would gradually fix my pain over the course of many months in a way that I would need careful journaling to observe--I wanted a technique that would help things noticeably, that I could use at any time, if the issues came up in the future. Luckily I did manage to find such a technique, which was trigger point therapy (see above links). I've since helped a few others make progress on their pain using trigger point therapy, and I think it's potentially useful for many, perhaps almost all, people who suffer chronic pain.

Some more specific recommendations:

• If you're not already taking something, start taking SAMe. It's a supplement that you can buy over the counter that's anti-depressant and has been shown to be quite useful for arthritis (so who knows, maybe it will end up helping your condition somehow--it probably hasn't been studied for your condition and you may as well do an n=1 trial). Ideally it will improve your mood, which will give you the motivation to try low-probability treatments, and it might fix your issue on its own. Here's more info: http://www.lifeextension.com/Magazine/2007/4/report_same/Page-01

• Read this book: http://smile.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1591847745/ Not only is it an great book in and of itself, the author covers mental strategies that are ideal for chronic medical condition sufferers. And he uses the story of his chronic medical condition as a motivating example through the book, so it gives you something to relate to.

Yes, decastrophising pain is a good thing based on empirical evidence and my personal experience.

Yes, cognitive behavioural therapy is a type of cognitive therapy. When administered correctly it will help. There are also useful resources on the web. I recommend this strategy. I can provide other strategies depending specifically on your etiology.

In addition, mere insight in the psychological interactions with somatic symptoms like pain gives you an edge in recovery over many chronic pain sufferers. You are a smart man to have asked this question. I was not so smart, and suffered for a long time before having this ideas shoved in my face when attending a university lecture on the topic.

And yes, I used to feel suicidal constantly and made some attempts. Now I very rarely feel suicidal. Pain was a big contributor to my mental illness.

Can you describe what pharmacological therapiies you were prescribed and the nature of your pain, if you don't mind? If you are concerned about privacy I will respect that since it could be identifying information (feel free to pm me). If you have symptoms in areas I have either formal research expertise and/or personal experience (usually they're the same areas) then I would love to help. I am not a health care professional, do note, but a researcher. The reason I offer is that given what I can formulate about your case based on what you've said (chronic pain, pharmacotherapy treatment resistant, CBT offered afterwards rather than concurrently, and where are rehabilitation exercises?) your treatment team may not be operating in alignment with what I understand as best practice. Now, that may be inavavoidable since I don't read clinical guidelines, and it may simply be that researchers like me have to do more translational research, or it could be that you have a bad physio/gp/whoever and should get a second opinion so you don't suffer.

Also, I avoid going into too much depth about my specific research expertise here on LW because it becomes rather identifying information. For those who follow this account, this isn't Carlos (who's public about him identity) typing right now (this is a shared account, as you can probably tell from our very different writing styles). So, if I do not respond it just means I haven't had much time to visit lately or I'd be giving myself away. In such a case, I recommend just cnosulting a different health care provider for a second opinion.

I have chronic back pian.

Yes. This is a common problem: look up 'pain catastrophising'.

Then: Learn specific evidence-based strategies to deal with anxiety (relaxation techniques) and cognitive distortions like catastrophising (cognitive therapies).

I tend to read up on potential cures that may come in the future. Even ones that are far off or unlikely. Hope is a valuable coping mechanism.

I busy myself with tracking the parameters in my life that make me feel good or bad. I take care to track the things that make me feel good and I don't have a "Pain Journal" but rather a "Thriving Journal". The semantic distinction changes my attitude toward the process.

I consistently pursue every currently available medical treatment. This is part of keeping a positive mindset.

I try to fully and mindfully appreciate the good days. I hope you have good days, or at least better days, to focus on. On the worst days, I try to reflect on the fact that a better day will come around eventually. Maybe tomorrow, even!

I assiduously avoid letting myself dwell or ruminate on "how much my life sucks" in such terms. I focus more on how I'm doing pretty well, considering. I've learned that getting into a depression about it just makes everything a billion times worse. Call it stoicism or whatever, it's more like a mindset that depressive thinking is an addictive drug that I know I can't risk taking a single hit of or I'll be addicted.

Suicide is not really an option that bears much thought when you consider that literally tomorrow somebody could come out with the cure to whatever ails you. You never know. And once you're finally cured, physical pain that's in the past is not really real anymore.

To fellow victims of chronic pain: do you ever despair about the future, knowing your pain might never end? If so, how do you deal with it?

I've made it a schelling point to never end it all. To leave open the possibility of suicide seems too dangerous to me, too alluring. But I'm still afraid that one day I might try. Do any of you ever feel like this?

I would like to know how others deal with this, as I'm only doing so-so.

Misunderstandings and ignorance of GCTA seem to be quite pervasive, so I've tried to write a Wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCTA

I think that too much investment could result in more noise in the field. First of all because it will result in large number of published materials, which could exceed capacity of other researchers to read it. In result really interesting works will be not read. It will also attract in the field more people than actually clever and dedicated people exist. If we have 100 trained ai safety reserchers, which is overestimation , and we hire 1000 people, than real reasesrchers will be dissolved. In some fields like nanotech overinvestment result even in expel of original reaserchers because they prevent less educated ones to spent money as they want. But most dangerous thing is creating of many incomparable theories of friendliness, and even AIs based on them which would result in AI wars and extinction.

EY arguing that a UFAI threat is worth considering -- as a response to Bryan Caplan's scepticism about it. I think it's a repost from Facebook, though.

ETA: Caplan's response to EY's points. EY answers in the comments.