Check out this blog post and some of the links therein … The Logic of Pain and the Poverty of Punishment
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“I’m aware there are folks who argue that pain, like death, is a critical aspect of what makes life meaningful and what makes us human.”
As you’ve mentioned elsewhere, if mankind would discover a drug that reliably prevents aging, people currently romanticizing death would probably be happy to take it. I assume pretty much the same goes for side-effect free pain medication, when otherwise suffering from a painful condition. After experiencing a herniated disc, I certainly would like to have a simple switch to tune down that cognitive circle. Meditation, even if non-sophisticated, can temporarily help a bit in such situations and it feels reassuring to have something like that to hold on to.
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I read the first half. It seems you are missing the tip toe totalitarian effect. Though I do like your break down of what you wrote and are good at breaking it down in segments and compartmentalize each core item. But it really comes down that humans don’t logically dissect this in each and every action they do.
Also I think your post lacks even to touch on what trauma occurred or if it’s even part of the equation.
What about the frequencies we deal with daily to numb said pain you speak of?
It seems this is a good premise but needs a bit work to touch on these sort of things I’ve brought up.
I would like to see if that’s possible for you to write about. We can’t discard this as if it’s non existent.
Interesting! I read the short story too ;D
I think the key is in “choice”, even if all pain were able to be eliminated, there should still be a choice to continue to feel it, like the dial in the story, allowing anyone with the curiosity or desire to experience pain in contrast with this new normal (slight cringe at the covid catchphrase use lol) to do so.
On if pain has any value/its absence limits something for us, I do observe that those who experience less pain seem to have a higher level of general ignorance compared to those who have experienced more pain. We can say higher intelligence can solve this, infusing minds with understanding of things even in absence of having gone through them, but that is yet to be tested if it plays out the same in comparison to someone who has. As for evolutionary purpose of pain to warn of physical damage, if it were indeed like in the story where it seemed they were just gently nudged or alerted to damage, would anyone really obey it? (likely not in a lot of instances, even now we continue to drink and smoke and eat junk food knowing it is causing damage) So they would need to rely on something to be continuously repairing their bodies. If going beyond bodies, sure (this being “trancesion” in the story, or upload, etc.).
Do you consider unpleasant feelings like sadness, fear, embarrassment, rejection, shame, guilt, dissatisfaction, etc. pain? In the story it seems to suggest that at least sadness/emptiness is considered differently than “pain”, I personally would consider all those as forms of pain. Eliminating those sounds pretty awesome, but to make the case that its always good to remove those, we would have to essentially eliminate “evil”/ill intent as well.