Nothing in the link indicated that pain asymbolia (as opposed to other conditions like aboulia or not feeling pain at all) is ‘extraordinarily crippling’.
Why don’t we come with asymbolia by default? I don’t know. Possibly the same reason we feel pain even while dying, at which point there’s no productive purpose to feeling pain—because evolution is dumb and doesn’t care about us.
Yeah, that’s certainly a fair clarification. It’d probably take a lot more space to give a really robust definition of “suffering”, but that’s close enough for gummint work.
Gwern, why do you think we have those emotional responses to pain in the first place?
Yes, I’m aware of forms of brain damage that make people not care about negative stimuli. They’re extraordinarily crippling.
Nothing in the link indicated that pain asymbolia (as opposed to other conditions like aboulia or not feeling pain at all) is ‘extraordinarily crippling’.
Why don’t we come with asymbolia by default? I don’t know. Possibly the same reason we feel pain even while dying, at which point there’s no productive purpose to feeling pain—because evolution is dumb and doesn’t care about us.
What would be the point of signaling pain if the animal does not care about it?
‘Caring’, whatever that is, doesn’t have to involve ‘pain’. I care about many things that do not trigger pain neurons.
So pain asymbolia means something else than “being able to feel pain but not caring about it”?
“When pain does not hurt”
It means “being able to feel pain but not suffering from it.”
Where “pain” and “suffering” are defined, respectively, as… what?
Roughly, pain is a sensation typically associated with damage to the body, suffering is an experience of stimuli as intrinsically unpleasant.
I do not suffer if my room is painted a color I do not like, but I still may care about the color my room is painted.
Agree, with the assumption that “stimuli” as relevant to suffering includes internal stimuli generated from one’s own thoughts.
Yeah, that’s certainly a fair clarification. It’d probably take a lot more space to give a really robust definition of “suffering”, but that’s close enough for gummint work.
You are a much more powerful consequentialist than our evolutionary ancestors which first evolved pain. They probably couldn’t care about avoiding events which had not previously caused them pain.
I am also an animal.
You are an animal of the first species to invent computers. You have superpowers not posessed by other animals.
Now there’s one for “Shit Rationalists Say.”
Having reread your reply several times, I still have no idea how it is related to what I said.