Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests • Hacker News Board

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#71

Post by kranner » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #61

kranner wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the similarities between us and other animals, it should make more sense to have to disprove that they don't feel pain, rather than having to prove that they do, i.e., that they must feel pain should be the default assumption in the absence of data.

Which similarities? Insects have a much, much simpler nervous system. They don't even have a spinal chord, and they have an exoskeleton. I think maybe only cnidarians have a simpler (or similarly complex) nervous system. Pain on a chordate might be comparable to pain in humans, with some exceptions like the Octopus (maybe) but that's about it.

But we don't know that insects absolutely couldn't experience pain, in the same way that we're certain a brick couldn't (unless one is a panpsychist). At least they have a nervous system.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#72

Post by rl3 » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:23 AM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #68

Infant surgery without anesthesia was common still in the mid 80's https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surg... > surveys of medical professionals indicate that as recently as 1986 infants as old as 15 months were receiving no anesthesia during surgery at most American hospitals. It's unknown where the consciousness starts (the hard problem sense) is but it's not unreasonable to assume that sentien…

Well, that's terrifying. Here's a 2017 article on the history of it:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/07/28/when-babies-fel...

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#73

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:30 AM UTC

blodovnik wrote: post #20

Why wouldn't they feel pain? It's such a superior attitude to even consider that only humans could feel pain. It's also obvious that any complex organism feels pain... It the most basic evolutionary protection mechanism. Anything that didn't feel pain would soon be evolved out.

I think there's confusion of terms. It's obvious that a lot of living things can feel "pain", as in stimuli and response; it's less obvious which living things are capable of experiencing suffering, and it's even less obvious to which point we can (or should) reasonably care - e.g. it's ridiculously hard (bordering on impossible) to live a life in which you don't hurt insects.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#74

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:30 AM UTC

Hendrikto wrote: post #70

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #67

>> “People don’t really think of insects as feeling any kind of pain,” said Associate Professor Neely. “But it’s already been shown in lots of different invertebrate animals that they can sense and avoid dangerous stimuli that we perceive as painful. In non-humans, we call this sense ‘nociception’, the sense that detects potentially harmful stimuli like heat, cold, or physical injury, but for simplicity we can refer…

> I don't understand the insistence of the article to place quotes around the word pain when referring to what insects feel. These are animals that can sense their surroundings and react to stimuli. How else would they be convinced to avoid dangerous situations, than by an unpleasant sensation? If you build a robot which senses dangerous stimuli and avoids them, does it feel pain? Equating reaction to stimuli with pa…

[deleted]

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#75

Post by simcop2387 » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:33 AM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #68

Infant surgery without anesthesia was common still in the mid 80's https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surg... > surveys of medical professionals indicate that as recently as 1986 infants as old as 15 months were receiving no anesthesia during surgery at most American hospitals. It's unknown where the consciousness starts (the hard problem sense) is but it's not unreasonable to assume that sentien…

As terrifying as it is, I wonder if a large part of it was because anesthesia on infants is a lot more dangerous because of the low body weight and unknown metabolism. That could lead to a lot of complications, so if there was reason to believe that it wouldn't otherwise impact the infant (no long term memory) it could be more ethical and safer to not do so. That said I'd assume they've solved those problems now if they're using it.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#76

Post by raverbashing » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:34 AM UTC

kranner wrote: post #71

raverbashing wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which similarities? Insects have a much, much simpler nervous system. They don't even have a spinal chord, and they have an exoskeleton. I think maybe only cnidarians have a simpler (or similarly complex) nervous system. Pain on a chordate might be comparable to pain in humans, with some exceptions like the Octopus (maybe) but that's about it.

But we don't know that insects absolutely couldn't experience pain, in the same way that we're certain a brick couldn't (unless one is a panpsychist). At least they have a nervous system.

Pain as in stimulus to nerve endings given damage to a limb yes

But pain in humans (or other more complex animals) is more complicated than that

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#77

Post by zimpenfish » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:39 AM UTC

brighter2morrow wrote: post #54

org3432 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to think black people don't feel pain too, it would be good to do a long term study to determine if they feel pain since they clearly can't determine if others do.

>They used to think black people don't feel pain too, Who thought this? White people?

https://www.history.com/news/the-father-of-modern-gynecology...

> While some doctors didn’t trust anesthesia, Sims’s decision to not use it—or any other numbing technique—was based on his misguided belief that black people didn’t experience pain like white people did.

> These findings suggest that individuals with at least some medical training hold and may use false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites to inform medical judgments

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#78

Post by kranner » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:40 AM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #76

kranner wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we don't know that insects absolutely couldn't experience pain, in the same way that we're certain a brick couldn't (unless one is a panpsychist). At least they have a nervous system.

Pain as in stimulus to nerve endings given damage to a limb yes But pain in humans (or other more complex animals) is more complicated than that

It may be more complicated, but do we know the minimum complexity required of a nervous system to support 'suffering'? If not, surely we are obligated to give even the simplest nervous systems the benefit of the doubt.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#79

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:43 AM UTC

Hendrikto wrote: post #70

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #67

>> “People don’t really think of insects as feeling any kind of pain,” said Associate Professor Neely. “But it’s already been shown in lots of different invertebrate animals that they can sense and avoid dangerous stimuli that we perceive as painful. In non-humans, we call this sense ‘nociception’, the sense that detects potentially harmful stimuli like heat, cold, or physical injury, but for simplicity we can refer…

> I don't understand the insistence of the article to place quotes around the word pain when referring to what insects feel. These are animals that can sense their surroundings and react to stimuli. How else would they be convinced to avoid dangerous situations, than by an unpleasant sensation? If you build a robot which senses dangerous stimuli and avoids them, does it feel pain? Equating reaction to stimuli with pa…

I don't see why we have to assume that a robot would feel pain. We can explain its behaviour easily without recourse to pain: we 've programmed it to avoid certain situations that we deem dangerous.

On the other hand, I don't see why we have to assume that an animal does not feel pain. Have we designed them? No. Don't we, who are also animals, feel pain? And isn't it reasonable to assume that pain is one mechanism by which we learn to avoid dangerous situations? Yes.

So, no good reasons to assume animals don't feel pain. Animals don't need to not feel pain just because robots don't need to feel pain.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#80

Post by rv-de » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:57 AM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #68

Infant surgery without anesthesia was common still in the mid 80's https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surg... > surveys of medical professionals indicate that as recently as 1986 infants as old as 15 months were receiving no anesthesia during surgery at most American hospitals. It's unknown where the consciousness starts (the hard problem sense) is but it's not unreasonable to assume that sentien…

Experiences of stress will even impact the neurological development of an embryo or a fetus. It's totally realistic to assume that a human will have to suffer psychologically even decades later from a psychological scarring caused by such surgery without anesthesia.