Suffering. What a terrible thing. Pain, grief, heartbreak, humiliation—they’re the worst. If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that suffering is bad, and we don’t want it. Right?
Because of this fundamental base reality, gnostic Christians concluded that material reality is in some core sense flawed and that it is controlled by a malevolent Demiurge, who seeks to torture and destroy the souls it has trapped within this reality. Under this perspective, suffering is ultimately about letting go of attachments (much like the Buddhists believe) in order to achieve spiritual communion with God.
Are you familiar with the theory of constructed emotion? This description of suffering seems to parallel a description of one end of one axis on the interoceptive "plane" pleasant-unpleasant. So, of course, the question of removing suffering, or what could possibly be described as interoceptive "unpleasant", would effectively reduce our emotional processing. This seems likely to reduce our ability to do well in the world, as the interoceptive system is considered to be tightly tied to our survival. Of course the contention that we are now over-selected for the world we inhabit - I could be persuaded, but that's difficult to answer, posed as a question.
Yea I'm familiar with the constructed theory of emotion, but I'm largely unsympathetic to it because I think it is too unfairly dismissive of evolutionary psychology theories of emotion. Here's some academic reading on the topic (where my views come from) if you're interested. The first two papers lay out the evolutionary psychology approach to emotions, and the last one defends the evolutionary approach against the constructed theory of emotion.
Thanks for the links, interesting. I've needed to do a bit of research to sort things out a bit more for myself. I'm left with a couple questions, and a comment. What is the role of interception in human awareness and behavior? Is it reasonable to note that organisms have evolved the gross architecture of a separate central nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system and consider that an adaptive/conserved trait, especially because it may have evolved more than once? In this case in marine worms, which may or may not be our ancestor and in vertebrates https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6939724/
This neurological structure is conserved over a wide range of species.
Then, between the camps of universal emotion, evolutionary psychology and constructed emotion, it seems even the terms of the debate are up for debate, which makes it difficult to compare the data, mostly because there is little agreement on what the question is.
I'm wondering if the problem of understanding emotion is more like the hard problem of consciousness, where consciousness can be flippantly considered an emergent property of a feedback loop. In this case, one flippantly puts the parasympathetic neural system in that overall self recognition loop, or in a side loop, but still "touching" in the feedback system vernacular, and the awareness of the parasympathetic variables is what we note as emotion, a second emergent property.
I think interoception plays an important role in how we recognize and categorize our own emotions--ie how they make us feel in our bodies, what facial expressions they compel us to make. But it is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what emotions ultimately are. Emotions are way more than just how they manifest on our faces or in our bodies. They are highly complex computational systems that orchestrate attention, memory, reasoning, valuation, etc. to solve a specific, evolutionarily recurrent adaptive problem. It is the deep, computational structure of the emotion that is culturally universal, not the outward manifestation of it. Or at least, that’s the evolutionary psychology take. It seems to me be the most promising explanation of what emotions are and what their function is.
Thanks for the clarification. Though when you say computational structure, from what I understand, it's one thing to have a neural structure in place and fully another to train it up. Mostly, it's not like we can point to a single cluster of neurons and say, this is the exact set of neurons that makes it possible for us to recognize faces. I thought it was more like, yeah we have a correlation to facial recognition in this general area.
I suppose it's time to let this rest, but I do want to bring up a language case that is intriguing/analogous. Khoisan is filled with clicks, many different kinds. Linguists wanted to know where they came from. It was a mystery, because very few populations use clicks in their language, and they thought, they had to come from somewhere. Eventually, researchers studying Khoisan language development in their infants discovered that after getting little or no reinforcement for making vowel sounds, after a latent period, Khoisan infants start to make clicking sounds. This is pretty late in infancy, if I recall. Despite being immersed in clicking sounds Khoisan infants still start out making vowel sounds.
It could be argued that human language develops from our instinct to "call", something traceable/conserved back a long long way. We could further argue that we have at least three different calling systems. The starting points are tonal and click. Whistling in some dialects comes even later and more deliberately. I think there's a pretty good case to be made that the rest of our language skills are learned. Sure we've been selected to produce a wide range of sounds through our motor cortex, via trachea, vocal folds, formant (mouth and tongue position) shapes and diaphragm control. And, we have a decently sensitive, pretty wide range auditory receiving system. But the language we speak is totally learned. And, none of those system parts make a call by themselves.
If I could take the pill you suggested, I would. Interestingly, there's someone who essentially "took the pill" due to a rare genetic mutation. Her name is Joe Cameron. At a glance, it doesn't appear that this condition has stripped away her humanity or deprived her of anything she holds dear. You can view this short segment on her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0y78VLwcQ&ab_channel=CBSMornings
I don't argue that all suffering is pointless; indeed, much of it has value. However, much of the suffering we endure is needless, stemming from our evolution in a far more dangerous environment. Our brains often present us with redundant suffering, such as the fight or flight response during an exam or anxiety when speaking in front of an audience. Many instances of pain and suffering are truly unnecessary. It's reminiscent of the arguments you highlighted that were used to oppose anesthesia in the mid-19th century, with some even asserting that pain was a crucial part of the healing process.
Another issue with this topic is that many of the examples of self-inflicted suffering you provided aren't conscious decisions. For instance, experiencing nightmares, regret, or grief isn't something people choose, any more than one chooses to feel hunger when not fed or pain when injured.
Some other examples you mentioned are also problematic. In the case of infidelity, one might endure greater anguish from doubting the paternity of their child. With the electric shocks, some individuals might find the company of their own thoughts and the grip of boredom more tormenting. It's not about willingly choosing suffering, but rather opting for the lesser of two pains in a situation where both options involve discomfort.
Thanks, Alex. These are good counterarguments, and I appreciate the friendly pushback. I'm honestly surprised you'd take the pill. You wouldn't be afraid of it crippling your ability to achieve any of your goals, or it making you a sociopath, or it alienating you from everyone you care about--not to mention dying very quickly from the injuries you'd rack up from feeling no pain or fear?
I agree with you that some suffering is dysfunctional, and we'd like to avoid that kind of suffering (see the first footnote). You also might be right that the prevalence of dysfunctional suffering has increased in the modern world. I agree that, for example, our social anxiety is probably too extreme. The costs of social ostracism were probably greater in the ancestral past than they are now, so it would be nice if we could tone down our social anxiety a bit. I'm all for therapy, meditation, and antidepressants to do that kind of thing. Your other points are good. Nobody needs to be awake during surgery. I believe anesthesia during labor increases the risk of injury to the mother, but maybe that's a trade-off worth making (people should know about it in any case). I would accept the badness/dysfunctionality of suffering on a case-by-case basis. Still, I'd bet that once we go through all the cases, we'd find that the majority of our suffering is actually quite useful and serves an important function. And we too often fail to recognize that. Which is why I wrote the post.
The thing about conscious decisions: yes, we don't choose to have nightmares. But it still speaks against the idea that suffering is an intrinsically bad thing that our brains are wired to avoid. It's not. Our brains are wired to occasionally seek it out in controlled, mild, and optimally helpful ways. They are also wired to prolong it and feed it once it starts. The point is that we ought to abandon the idea that we are wired to avoid suffering--that it's an intrinsically feel-bad mental substance whose function is to make us feel bad. That is a circular, simplistic, implausible, and quasi-dualistic theory of suffering we need to abandon immediately. Even if my theory is wrong, it is way better than the alternative, which really really needs to go.
As for the anguish of doubting the paternity of one's child, the anguish goes away if your spouse does a really great job of lying to you about their fidelity, or does a really a great job of convincing you of all the ways your illegitimate child resembles you. So that means you'd want your spouse to be an especially skilled liar, right? Or let's assume that you're done having kids. Would you still want your spouse to lie to you if they had an affair?
With the electric shocks, yes, one explanation is that people prefer shocks over boredom. But another explanation is curiosity, and that is what the second study I linked to examined. People are overwhelmingly willing to risk shocking themselves instead of waiting, because finding out whether there was a shock satisfies their curiosity. That ties in very nicely with my theory that suffering functions as a learning opportunity. So does Coltan Scrivener's work on morbid curiosity and our fascination with horror. We want to suffer because "getting colder" is useful information.
Thanks for reading and thanks again for disagreeing in a friendly and polite way. Hopefully I've nudged you back a bit in my direction.
I appreciate the friendly and detailed reply. It's a complex topic, but I believe the essence of our discussion can be distilled to this question: what percentage of pain and suffering is genuinely beneficial for an individual? You seem to advocate that a significant portion is valuable, whereas I view most of it as unnecessary. Neither of us posits that it's wholly useful or completely redundant; our disagreement lies mainly in the proportion. Another point of contention, which honestly deserves a whole post, revolves around whether humans optimize for end results (such as increasing reproductive fitness) or if they prioritize feeling good/not suffering, even at the cost of diminished reproductive fitness. Both subjects intertwine significantly.
This brings me to the topic of the pill. Although it possesses considerable downsides, the potential benefits might make it worth the risks. I don’t anticipate it turning me into a sociopath since it doesn't nullify love or positive emotions. The absence of such emotions can also send potent signals. For example, witnessing someone's distress might leave me indifferent, but observing their happiness would uplift me. This dynamic reinforces my preference for others' well-being. This sentiment is somewhat analogous to David Pierce's concept of "gradients of bliss." The absence of good, too, conveys valuable information. Also, even if I stop experiencing suffering, my memories of past pain will serve as a reference. Just as I no longer need physical pain to avoid touching a flame — previous experiences have ingrained the lesson — I believe many forms of suffering become less instructive as we age.
I believe the same considerations apply to the other downsides you've mentioned. I’m not suggesting that a complete eradication of suffering is optimal. I merely argue that it could be better than our current state, where suffering often seems pointless. My intuition diverges from yours when it comes to assessing the utility of pain and suffering in our environment on a case-by-case basis.
Concerning the distinction between chosen suffering and imposed suffering, it's pivotal to understand that all suffering originates internally. Our brain is the genesis of both joy and pain. However, just because our brain produces these feelings doesn't necessarily vouch for their utility. Some forms of suffering, like phantom limb pain, might merely be malfunctions. Others could be context-dependent — physical pain, for example, is educational in teaching us to avoid harm, but it's counterproductive when undergoing surgery. And then there's suffering that might have been adaptive in past environments but not in our present context, a point we've both touched upon in previous exchanges.
Your arguments seem to lean towards an economist-style revealed preference theory, suggesting that suffering is a conscious choice. But the reality isn't so straightforward. While certain instances highlight the brain's ability to induce suffering, that alone doesn't establish its usefulness, or suggest that the conscious mind genuinely desires such experiences.
It's noteworthy that there are ample instances where people consciously sidestep suffering, even at the cost of reproductive fitness. For example, some might turn to opioids to numb pain despite the associated risks, or evade medical tests to avoid the anguish of potential bad news. Others, tragically, may end their lives to escape unbearable pain. These are conscious decisions, not impositions by the brain.
Ultimately, I concur that humans do actively try to evade suffering. But, as you rightly pointed out, that's not the entire narrative. We often opt for suffering for various reasons. However, I'm inclined to believe that the assertion that humans primarily seek pleasure and avoid pain is truer than the proposition that our main objective is to uphold a hunter-gatherer-style reproductive fitness. That said, I also believe the reality blends elements of both views.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. It seems the disagreement boils down to some more fundamental beliefs about metaphysics and epistemology. It seems I tend to favor a more objective, revealed-preference-style way of inferring people’s desires, whereas you (in addition to that) favor a more introspective measure—what it seems like we want from the inside. You seem to be more skeptical of the power of natural selection to produce well-designed systems. I am more skeptical of the possibility that natural selection could possibly result in such a huge and complex portion of our mental life being utterly useless. That strikes me as almost a nonstarter. It would be like saying most of our digestive system is useless. And I’m afraid we have different approaches to psychology. I take a harshly mechanistic/computational approach; you seem to focus more on subjective feels and introspection. One of the dangers of your approach, I think, is creeping dualism. I noted one point where you contrasted our “conscious decisions” and the “impositions of our brain”, as if our conscious decisions were something distinct from the operations of our brain. Maybe that’s not a problem for you—maybe you are a dualist or lean that way—I don’t know. But in any case, it’s very different from my theoretical starting point, which treats dualism, quasi-dualism, the Cartesian theatre (Dennett’s phrase), the idea of a “self” that can be “deceived” “controlled” or “esteemed” (by itself), the ghost in the machine, etc. as conceptual black holes from which no insight can escape—as bullshit. I doubt you share that starting point. Probably I’ve mischaracterized you in some ways. If so, apologies. But it seems, at the very least, that this disagreement is a very large one that would require many such exchanges to resolve, if a resolution were possible. But that’s okay. That’s what makes the internet fun. Thanks again for the good faith discussion. Hopefully our minds will converge at some point in the future. Cheers.
Sep 19, 2023·edited Sep 19, 2023Liked by David Pinsof
The fact that you simultaneously maintain that
a) we want to suffer, and
b) we don't want to be happy
says to me that you're equivocating on what you mean by 'want'. If you treat happiness and suffering as two sides of the same prediction-error coin (which I'm pretty okay with, for the record), it seems that, holding what we mean by 'want' fixed, either we don't want either (because they're *only* prediction-error cues vis-à-vis things that matter to us) or we want both (*because* they're very useful prediction-error cues).
Now, I suppose you might charge the common platitude – that what we really want is to be happy, and to avoid suffering – with the same equivocation. And that would be fair enough, except that this platitude doesn't come packaged with your particular prediction-error theory of motivation, emotions, happiness, etc., and so you don't get the equivocation, and least not immediately.
Also: I would resist your 'teachable moment'. You have a very nice discussion about the functionality of bullshitting about suffering. But if that's right, then all this bullshit around suffering *serves a purpose* – especially a variety of social ones. You wouldn't get a teachable moment until you have an argument that these purposes are somehow bad, or better served by something else, say, more stoic ideals.
Thank you. Very good points, Jared. You’re right that technically we “want” happiness in the sense that we want it to exist because it helps us get what we want (in the same way suffering helps us get what we want). But that is different from the sense that most people mean when they say they want to be happy. They’re not saying they’re glad they have an emotion called happiness that activates when they have a positive prediction error; they’re saying they are *pursuing* happiness, that it is the object of their desire, that they want as much of it as possible. That sense of “wanting” is bullshit. But the other sense (that nobody uses) is sensible.
But then wouldn’t it this also apply to suffering? No, because people deny that they “want” suffering, even in the sense of it being a useful emotion to have. Also, sometimes we actually *do* pursue suffering (in a controlled and mild way), as a quasi-object of our desire, in order to learn things. This would apply to horror movies, electrocuting ourselves out of curiosity, kids getting boo-boos, and teenagers getting crushes on people out of their league. It may be that we are actually seeking some amount of suffering in these cases. Regardless, you’re right that there are lots of interesting subtleties in the semantics I don’t explore. I’m not a philosopher. But I think the semantics I use are familiar enough that the claims are interesting and defensible.
It’s also a great a point that I don’t really justify why stoicism is good, especially given the social benefits of bullshitting about suffering. You’re right that abstaining from this bullshit might cause you to lose out in certain ways. I think what I was getting at was more of an argument for change at the cultural level. Yes, if you stop bullshitting and no one else does, you’re going to lose out. But if everyone stops bullshitting, then we might all win together. Our beliefs will be more accurate, and we’ll spend less time and energy competing for pity points. Our suffering will start to seem less bad, and life might start to seem more good. Maybe I’ll edit this at some point to clarify.
There’s also a personal part of the argument. If you personally recognize that suffering isn’t bad, it might help you cope with your suffering. Maybe. That’s more speculative, but in any case, I’m going to try it next time I suffer and see if it helps.
Thanks again for reading and thanks for your thoughtful comment.
Really interesting. This piece seems like a good argument for not trying to make your Substack more optimistic, as perhaps people aren't really looking for jolly ideas anyway - quite the reverse.
Wow, you may have nailed human nature (especially the art of BS, humble-bragging, and virtue-signaling) better than anyone. Especially in the workplace, this is spot on.
“There might be cases where you want to avoid chronic pain when there’s nothing’s wrong with you, or chronic anxiety when everything’s fine. But these dysfunctional cases are pretty rare.”
These are rare? Pretty sure chronic pain is all too common and chronic anxiety and worry ubiquitous. Maybe it’s just me.
Rare in the sense that these people are in the minority, and/or the percentage of their lives with such conditions is a minority of their lives. But open to evidence suggesting otherwise.
Thanks, Raymond. It’s a great question. I note in the first footnote how the argument doesn’t apply to dysfunctional forms of suffering, which we do have good reason to avoid (e.g., chronic pain when there’s nothing wrong with us). Whether the modern epidemic of depression counts as dysfunctional suffering, thereby justifying the use of antidepressants, is a complicated and hard question to answer. Ed Hagen and colleagues have argued that most depression is indeed functional: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/85221.pdf
I find Hagen’s work really interesting and plausible. But at the same time, I also find it plausible that some portion of depression is genuinely dysfunctional. (For instance, Hagen doesn’t consider the possibility that the “bargaining” tactics he posits could themselves be dysfunctional--ie one could dysfunctionally “bargain” for good treatment when good treatment is already being provided). What the balance is between functional and dysfunctional I have no idea. I feel like I would have to study this question for ten years to have a confident answer. Anyways, that’s the best I got. But read Ed Hagen. He’s awesome.
I enjoyed this post, thanks for writing it. Sure, suffering can be and is used as a tool of learning, but I share Schopenhauer's philosophical pessimism on a more fundamental level: everything in this universe is predation, i.e. anything living must consume other living creatures in order to survive. Even a plant is sentient and seeks to fulfill its will to power: https://munewsarchives.missouri.edu/news-releases/2014/0701-plants-respond-to-leaf-vibrations-caused-by-insects%E2%80%99-chewing-mu-study-finds/
Because of this fundamental base reality, gnostic Christians concluded that material reality is in some core sense flawed and that it is controlled by a malevolent Demiurge, who seeks to torture and destroy the souls it has trapped within this reality. Under this perspective, suffering is ultimately about letting go of attachments (much like the Buddhists believe) in order to achieve spiritual communion with God.
Are you familiar with the theory of constructed emotion? This description of suffering seems to parallel a description of one end of one axis on the interoceptive "plane" pleasant-unpleasant. So, of course, the question of removing suffering, or what could possibly be described as interoceptive "unpleasant", would effectively reduce our emotional processing. This seems likely to reduce our ability to do well in the world, as the interoceptive system is considered to be tightly tied to our survival. Of course the contention that we are now over-selected for the world we inhabit - I could be persuaded, but that's difficult to answer, posed as a question.
Yea I'm familiar with the constructed theory of emotion, but I'm largely unsympathetic to it because I think it is too unfairly dismissive of evolutionary psychology theories of emotion. Here's some academic reading on the topic (where my views come from) if you're interested. The first two papers lay out the evolutionary psychology approach to emotions, and the last one defends the evolutionary approach against the constructed theory of emotion.
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?doi=85c3205786c34fd9013f3c6f87dca09ac1440524&repid=rep1&type=pdf
https://www.psy.miami.edu/_assets/pdf/rpo-articles/sznycer-2019.pdf
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14747049211016009
Thanks for the links, interesting. I've needed to do a bit of research to sort things out a bit more for myself. I'm left with a couple questions, and a comment. What is the role of interception in human awareness and behavior? Is it reasonable to note that organisms have evolved the gross architecture of a separate central nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system and consider that an adaptive/conserved trait, especially because it may have evolved more than once? In this case in marine worms, which may or may not be our ancestor and in vertebrates https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6939724/
This neurological structure is conserved over a wide range of species.
Then, between the camps of universal emotion, evolutionary psychology and constructed emotion, it seems even the terms of the debate are up for debate, which makes it difficult to compare the data, mostly because there is little agreement on what the question is.
I'm wondering if the problem of understanding emotion is more like the hard problem of consciousness, where consciousness can be flippantly considered an emergent property of a feedback loop. In this case, one flippantly puts the parasympathetic neural system in that overall self recognition loop, or in a side loop, but still "touching" in the feedback system vernacular, and the awareness of the parasympathetic variables is what we note as emotion, a second emergent property.
I think interoception plays an important role in how we recognize and categorize our own emotions--ie how they make us feel in our bodies, what facial expressions they compel us to make. But it is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what emotions ultimately are. Emotions are way more than just how they manifest on our faces or in our bodies. They are highly complex computational systems that orchestrate attention, memory, reasoning, valuation, etc. to solve a specific, evolutionarily recurrent adaptive problem. It is the deep, computational structure of the emotion that is culturally universal, not the outward manifestation of it. Or at least, that’s the evolutionary psychology take. It seems to me be the most promising explanation of what emotions are and what their function is.
Thanks for the clarification. Though when you say computational structure, from what I understand, it's one thing to have a neural structure in place and fully another to train it up. Mostly, it's not like we can point to a single cluster of neurons and say, this is the exact set of neurons that makes it possible for us to recognize faces. I thought it was more like, yeah we have a correlation to facial recognition in this general area.
I suppose it's time to let this rest, but I do want to bring up a language case that is intriguing/analogous. Khoisan is filled with clicks, many different kinds. Linguists wanted to know where they came from. It was a mystery, because very few populations use clicks in their language, and they thought, they had to come from somewhere. Eventually, researchers studying Khoisan language development in their infants discovered that after getting little or no reinforcement for making vowel sounds, after a latent period, Khoisan infants start to make clicking sounds. This is pretty late in infancy, if I recall. Despite being immersed in clicking sounds Khoisan infants still start out making vowel sounds.
It could be argued that human language develops from our instinct to "call", something traceable/conserved back a long long way. We could further argue that we have at least three different calling systems. The starting points are tonal and click. Whistling in some dialects comes even later and more deliberately. I think there's a pretty good case to be made that the rest of our language skills are learned. Sure we've been selected to produce a wide range of sounds through our motor cortex, via trachea, vocal folds, formant (mouth and tongue position) shapes and diaphragm control. And, we have a decently sensitive, pretty wide range auditory receiving system. But the language we speak is totally learned. And, none of those system parts make a call by themselves.
If I could take the pill you suggested, I would. Interestingly, there's someone who essentially "took the pill" due to a rare genetic mutation. Her name is Joe Cameron. At a glance, it doesn't appear that this condition has stripped away her humanity or deprived her of anything she holds dear. You can view this short segment on her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0y78VLwcQ&ab_channel=CBSMornings
I don't argue that all suffering is pointless; indeed, much of it has value. However, much of the suffering we endure is needless, stemming from our evolution in a far more dangerous environment. Our brains often present us with redundant suffering, such as the fight or flight response during an exam or anxiety when speaking in front of an audience. Many instances of pain and suffering are truly unnecessary. It's reminiscent of the arguments you highlighted that were used to oppose anesthesia in the mid-19th century, with some even asserting that pain was a crucial part of the healing process.
Another issue with this topic is that many of the examples of self-inflicted suffering you provided aren't conscious decisions. For instance, experiencing nightmares, regret, or grief isn't something people choose, any more than one chooses to feel hunger when not fed or pain when injured.
Some other examples you mentioned are also problematic. In the case of infidelity, one might endure greater anguish from doubting the paternity of their child. With the electric shocks, some individuals might find the company of their own thoughts and the grip of boredom more tormenting. It's not about willingly choosing suffering, but rather opting for the lesser of two pains in a situation where both options involve discomfort.
Thanks, Alex. These are good counterarguments, and I appreciate the friendly pushback. I'm honestly surprised you'd take the pill. You wouldn't be afraid of it crippling your ability to achieve any of your goals, or it making you a sociopath, or it alienating you from everyone you care about--not to mention dying very quickly from the injuries you'd rack up from feeling no pain or fear?
I agree with you that some suffering is dysfunctional, and we'd like to avoid that kind of suffering (see the first footnote). You also might be right that the prevalence of dysfunctional suffering has increased in the modern world. I agree that, for example, our social anxiety is probably too extreme. The costs of social ostracism were probably greater in the ancestral past than they are now, so it would be nice if we could tone down our social anxiety a bit. I'm all for therapy, meditation, and antidepressants to do that kind of thing. Your other points are good. Nobody needs to be awake during surgery. I believe anesthesia during labor increases the risk of injury to the mother, but maybe that's a trade-off worth making (people should know about it in any case). I would accept the badness/dysfunctionality of suffering on a case-by-case basis. Still, I'd bet that once we go through all the cases, we'd find that the majority of our suffering is actually quite useful and serves an important function. And we too often fail to recognize that. Which is why I wrote the post.
The thing about conscious decisions: yes, we don't choose to have nightmares. But it still speaks against the idea that suffering is an intrinsically bad thing that our brains are wired to avoid. It's not. Our brains are wired to occasionally seek it out in controlled, mild, and optimally helpful ways. They are also wired to prolong it and feed it once it starts. The point is that we ought to abandon the idea that we are wired to avoid suffering--that it's an intrinsically feel-bad mental substance whose function is to make us feel bad. That is a circular, simplistic, implausible, and quasi-dualistic theory of suffering we need to abandon immediately. Even if my theory is wrong, it is way better than the alternative, which really really needs to go.
As for the anguish of doubting the paternity of one's child, the anguish goes away if your spouse does a really great job of lying to you about their fidelity, or does a really a great job of convincing you of all the ways your illegitimate child resembles you. So that means you'd want your spouse to be an especially skilled liar, right? Or let's assume that you're done having kids. Would you still want your spouse to lie to you if they had an affair?
With the electric shocks, yes, one explanation is that people prefer shocks over boredom. But another explanation is curiosity, and that is what the second study I linked to examined. People are overwhelmingly willing to risk shocking themselves instead of waiting, because finding out whether there was a shock satisfies their curiosity. That ties in very nicely with my theory that suffering functions as a learning opportunity. So does Coltan Scrivener's work on morbid curiosity and our fascination with horror. We want to suffer because "getting colder" is useful information.
Thanks for reading and thanks again for disagreeing in a friendly and polite way. Hopefully I've nudged you back a bit in my direction.
David,
I appreciate the friendly and detailed reply. It's a complex topic, but I believe the essence of our discussion can be distilled to this question: what percentage of pain and suffering is genuinely beneficial for an individual? You seem to advocate that a significant portion is valuable, whereas I view most of it as unnecessary. Neither of us posits that it's wholly useful or completely redundant; our disagreement lies mainly in the proportion. Another point of contention, which honestly deserves a whole post, revolves around whether humans optimize for end results (such as increasing reproductive fitness) or if they prioritize feeling good/not suffering, even at the cost of diminished reproductive fitness. Both subjects intertwine significantly.
This brings me to the topic of the pill. Although it possesses considerable downsides, the potential benefits might make it worth the risks. I don’t anticipate it turning me into a sociopath since it doesn't nullify love or positive emotions. The absence of such emotions can also send potent signals. For example, witnessing someone's distress might leave me indifferent, but observing their happiness would uplift me. This dynamic reinforces my preference for others' well-being. This sentiment is somewhat analogous to David Pierce's concept of "gradients of bliss." The absence of good, too, conveys valuable information. Also, even if I stop experiencing suffering, my memories of past pain will serve as a reference. Just as I no longer need physical pain to avoid touching a flame — previous experiences have ingrained the lesson — I believe many forms of suffering become less instructive as we age.
I believe the same considerations apply to the other downsides you've mentioned. I’m not suggesting that a complete eradication of suffering is optimal. I merely argue that it could be better than our current state, where suffering often seems pointless. My intuition diverges from yours when it comes to assessing the utility of pain and suffering in our environment on a case-by-case basis.
Concerning the distinction between chosen suffering and imposed suffering, it's pivotal to understand that all suffering originates internally. Our brain is the genesis of both joy and pain. However, just because our brain produces these feelings doesn't necessarily vouch for their utility. Some forms of suffering, like phantom limb pain, might merely be malfunctions. Others could be context-dependent — physical pain, for example, is educational in teaching us to avoid harm, but it's counterproductive when undergoing surgery. And then there's suffering that might have been adaptive in past environments but not in our present context, a point we've both touched upon in previous exchanges.
Your arguments seem to lean towards an economist-style revealed preference theory, suggesting that suffering is a conscious choice. But the reality isn't so straightforward. While certain instances highlight the brain's ability to induce suffering, that alone doesn't establish its usefulness, or suggest that the conscious mind genuinely desires such experiences.
It's noteworthy that there are ample instances where people consciously sidestep suffering, even at the cost of reproductive fitness. For example, some might turn to opioids to numb pain despite the associated risks, or evade medical tests to avoid the anguish of potential bad news. Others, tragically, may end their lives to escape unbearable pain. These are conscious decisions, not impositions by the brain.
Ultimately, I concur that humans do actively try to evade suffering. But, as you rightly pointed out, that's not the entire narrative. We often opt for suffering for various reasons. However, I'm inclined to believe that the assertion that humans primarily seek pleasure and avoid pain is truer than the proposition that our main objective is to uphold a hunter-gatherer-style reproductive fitness. That said, I also believe the reality blends elements of both views.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. It seems the disagreement boils down to some more fundamental beliefs about metaphysics and epistemology. It seems I tend to favor a more objective, revealed-preference-style way of inferring people’s desires, whereas you (in addition to that) favor a more introspective measure—what it seems like we want from the inside. You seem to be more skeptical of the power of natural selection to produce well-designed systems. I am more skeptical of the possibility that natural selection could possibly result in such a huge and complex portion of our mental life being utterly useless. That strikes me as almost a nonstarter. It would be like saying most of our digestive system is useless. And I’m afraid we have different approaches to psychology. I take a harshly mechanistic/computational approach; you seem to focus more on subjective feels and introspection. One of the dangers of your approach, I think, is creeping dualism. I noted one point where you contrasted our “conscious decisions” and the “impositions of our brain”, as if our conscious decisions were something distinct from the operations of our brain. Maybe that’s not a problem for you—maybe you are a dualist or lean that way—I don’t know. But in any case, it’s very different from my theoretical starting point, which treats dualism, quasi-dualism, the Cartesian theatre (Dennett’s phrase), the idea of a “self” that can be “deceived” “controlled” or “esteemed” (by itself), the ghost in the machine, etc. as conceptual black holes from which no insight can escape—as bullshit. I doubt you share that starting point. Probably I’ve mischaracterized you in some ways. If so, apologies. But it seems, at the very least, that this disagreement is a very large one that would require many such exchanges to resolve, if a resolution were possible. But that’s okay. That’s what makes the internet fun. Thanks again for the good faith discussion. Hopefully our minds will converge at some point in the future. Cheers.
The fact that you simultaneously maintain that
a) we want to suffer, and
b) we don't want to be happy
says to me that you're equivocating on what you mean by 'want'. If you treat happiness and suffering as two sides of the same prediction-error coin (which I'm pretty okay with, for the record), it seems that, holding what we mean by 'want' fixed, either we don't want either (because they're *only* prediction-error cues vis-à-vis things that matter to us) or we want both (*because* they're very useful prediction-error cues).
Now, I suppose you might charge the common platitude – that what we really want is to be happy, and to avoid suffering – with the same equivocation. And that would be fair enough, except that this platitude doesn't come packaged with your particular prediction-error theory of motivation, emotions, happiness, etc., and so you don't get the equivocation, and least not immediately.
Also: I would resist your 'teachable moment'. You have a very nice discussion about the functionality of bullshitting about suffering. But if that's right, then all this bullshit around suffering *serves a purpose* – especially a variety of social ones. You wouldn't get a teachable moment until you have an argument that these purposes are somehow bad, or better served by something else, say, more stoic ideals.
Thank you. Very good points, Jared. You’re right that technically we “want” happiness in the sense that we want it to exist because it helps us get what we want (in the same way suffering helps us get what we want). But that is different from the sense that most people mean when they say they want to be happy. They’re not saying they’re glad they have an emotion called happiness that activates when they have a positive prediction error; they’re saying they are *pursuing* happiness, that it is the object of their desire, that they want as much of it as possible. That sense of “wanting” is bullshit. But the other sense (that nobody uses) is sensible.
But then wouldn’t it this also apply to suffering? No, because people deny that they “want” suffering, even in the sense of it being a useful emotion to have. Also, sometimes we actually *do* pursue suffering (in a controlled and mild way), as a quasi-object of our desire, in order to learn things. This would apply to horror movies, electrocuting ourselves out of curiosity, kids getting boo-boos, and teenagers getting crushes on people out of their league. It may be that we are actually seeking some amount of suffering in these cases. Regardless, you’re right that there are lots of interesting subtleties in the semantics I don’t explore. I’m not a philosopher. But I think the semantics I use are familiar enough that the claims are interesting and defensible.
It’s also a great a point that I don’t really justify why stoicism is good, especially given the social benefits of bullshitting about suffering. You’re right that abstaining from this bullshit might cause you to lose out in certain ways. I think what I was getting at was more of an argument for change at the cultural level. Yes, if you stop bullshitting and no one else does, you’re going to lose out. But if everyone stops bullshitting, then we might all win together. Our beliefs will be more accurate, and we’ll spend less time and energy competing for pity points. Our suffering will start to seem less bad, and life might start to seem more good. Maybe I’ll edit this at some point to clarify.
There’s also a personal part of the argument. If you personally recognize that suffering isn’t bad, it might help you cope with your suffering. Maybe. That’s more speculative, but in any case, I’m going to try it next time I suffer and see if it helps.
Thanks again for reading and thanks for your thoughtful comment.
Really interesting. This piece seems like a good argument for not trying to make your Substack more optimistic, as perhaps people aren't really looking for jolly ideas anyway - quite the reverse.
Yea, that's a good point. Hadn't thought of that. People grow more from downer ideas. I will redouble my efforts to bum people out! :)
Great! - I look forward to it!
Wow, you may have nailed human nature (especially the art of BS, humble-bragging, and virtue-signaling) better than anyone. Especially in the workplace, this is spot on.
“There might be cases where you want to avoid chronic pain when there’s nothing’s wrong with you, or chronic anxiety when everything’s fine. But these dysfunctional cases are pretty rare.”
These are rare? Pretty sure chronic pain is all too common and chronic anxiety and worry ubiquitous. Maybe it’s just me.
Rare in the sense that these people are in the minority, and/or the percentage of their lives with such conditions is a minority of their lives. But open to evidence suggesting otherwise.
Makes sense. Funny, I’m always a bit surprised when I see how happy/well most people are.
“But it’s also good to avoid being a burden on others—itself a form of compassion. “ 🎯
There is a proverb that says "if there is pleasure there is pain".
Thanks, Raymond. It’s a great question. I note in the first footnote how the argument doesn’t apply to dysfunctional forms of suffering, which we do have good reason to avoid (e.g., chronic pain when there’s nothing wrong with us). Whether the modern epidemic of depression counts as dysfunctional suffering, thereby justifying the use of antidepressants, is a complicated and hard question to answer. Ed Hagen and colleagues have argued that most depression is indeed functional: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/85221.pdf
I find Hagen’s work really interesting and plausible. But at the same time, I also find it plausible that some portion of depression is genuinely dysfunctional. (For instance, Hagen doesn’t consider the possibility that the “bargaining” tactics he posits could themselves be dysfunctional--ie one could dysfunctionally “bargain” for good treatment when good treatment is already being provided). What the balance is between functional and dysfunctional I have no idea. I feel like I would have to study this question for ten years to have a confident answer. Anyways, that’s the best I got. But read Ed Hagen. He’s awesome.