I see a lot of people in the comments to this post talking about divorcing the “damage report” aspect of pain from the “unpleasant experience” aspect. This won’t work—at least, not in naive form. Emotions are what motivate people to do things. If you take away the negative emotional impact of pain without some kind of situational fine-tuning, you might as well remove pain entirely. Those people with pain asymbolia that I mentioned previously are indifferent to the threat of harm.
I see a lot of people in the comments to this post talking about divorcing the “damage report” aspect of pain from the “unpleasant experience” aspect. This won’t work—at least, not in naive form. Emotions are what motivate people to do things. If you take away the negative emotional impact of pain without some kind of situational fine-tuning, you might as well remove pain entirely. Those people with pain asymbolia that I mentioned previously are indifferent to the threat of harm.