I read it as a different question: what is bad about pain vs. what is the nature of pain’s badness. The first question is about describing the ways in which pain isn’t optimal, how its properties could be changed to improve the result (like a naive suggestion to completely eliminate it, which turns out to be a worse option). The second question is about what features in particular make people characterize pain on the bad side of things. It’s a less constructive question, it considers specifically the current implementation rather than how its role could be better played by something else.
The second question is about what features in particular make people characterize pain on the bad side of things.
This question seems just as constructive to me, but for a different purpose.
Suppose we want to outlaw people building brains (or running brain simulations or AIs) in their basements and forcing them to have bad experiences. We’ll probably have to do this sooner or later, so it would be nice to understand what makes a bad experience bad. Since it’s commonly agreed that pain is bad, it seems like a good starting point to study the nature of its badness.
And this is a third question, about the nature of badness, for which pain is but a special case, not necessarily anywhere near the most salient one. I suspect pain only registers as an important example of badness because of availability bias, it’s a particular incarnation of badness which people actually experience, as opposed to a concept of pure badness derived from an accurate theory of badness. You’d want to study the nature of badness, not the nature of pain.
I read it as a different question: what is bad about pain vs. what is the nature of pain’s badness. The first question is about describing the ways in which pain isn’t optimal, how its properties could be changed to improve the result (like a naive suggestion to completely eliminate it, which turns out to be a worse option). The second question is about what features in particular make people characterize pain on the bad side of things. It’s a less constructive question, it considers specifically the current implementation rather than how its role could be better played by something else.
This question seems just as constructive to me, but for a different purpose.
Suppose we want to outlaw people building brains (or running brain simulations or AIs) in their basements and forcing them to have bad experiences. We’ll probably have to do this sooner or later, so it would be nice to understand what makes a bad experience bad. Since it’s commonly agreed that pain is bad, it seems like a good starting point to study the nature of its badness.
And this is a third question, about the nature of badness, for which pain is but a special case, not necessarily anywhere near the most salient one. I suspect pain only registers as an important example of badness because of availability bias, it’s a particular incarnation of badness which people actually experience, as opposed to a concept of pure badness derived from an accurate theory of badness. You’d want to study the nature of badness, not the nature of pain.