Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

sydney.edu.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 236 posts

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#121

Post by hackinthebochs »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #116
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I think the support for insects feeling pain probably extends to saying cars with accident avoidance feel pain. That is to say, I'm not convinced: pain is a perceptual result.

I don't understand what you mean by "perceptual result". Animals avoid dangerous behaviours because they cause them pain. Robots, including self-driving cars avoid dangerous behaviours, because they are programmed to do so. Why is the existence of robots programmed to avoid dangerous behaviour indicative of whether animals feel pain?

>Animals avoid dangerous behaviours because they cause them pain. Robots, including self-driving cars avoid dangerous behaviours, because they are programmed to do so.

We don't know a priori whether these are in fact two distinct sets or just two descriptions of the same set. That is, nature may have "programmed" the insect to avoid dangerous stimuli without any conscious awareness of it, similar to how my hand starts to move from a hot stove before I consciously feel the pain. Or, our programming of accident avoidance might in fact endow a conscious experience of pain for all we know.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#122

Post by bsanr2 »

stkdump wrote: post #107
bsanr2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I understand that this procedure will remove healthy and functioning tissue from my son's penis, and involves similar risk as other prophylactic or cosmetic surgeries, including infection, disfigurement, and death. I understand that the procedure may be performed without anaesthesia at the doctor's discretion. I understand that the doctor has recommended my son undergo circumcision because studies have shown a reduc…

> the doctor has recommended my son undergo circumcision because studies have shown a reduction in the risk for serious diseases in circumcised men Source? Especially that this risk reduction outweighs the risks of the procedure is not proven as far as I know.

The studies (showing risks in reduction of HIV and other STIs) are cited frequently by doctors and are controversial with people who take issue with circumcision. I personally find the conclusions of those studies suspect, but I'm not a doctor nor an expert, and this is the stance that many of them hold.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#123

Post by deogeo »

toasterlovin wrote: post #114
rv-de wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is reasonable to entertain the hypothesis. It is unreasonable to assume that it is true.

I (and Occam's razor) would say the exact opposite - one should assume the effect will be the similar as for an older human, unless proven otherwise.

Otherwise you're making the unproven assumption that an infant's mind responds to pain differently - why would you think that? And which other subgroups of humans could you make evidence-free assumptions that they are different from the default (however chosen) human?

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#124

Post by Waterluvian »

bsanr2 wrote: post #98
xvector wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s ridiculous. This sort of mutilation should be flat out illegal. It’s physical child abuse, plain and simple.

"I understand that this procedure will remove healthy and functioning tissue from my son's penis, and involves similar risk as other prophylactic or cosmetic surgeries, including infection, disfigurement, and death. I understand that the procedure may be performed without anaesthesia at the doctor's discretion. I understand that the doctor has recommended my son undergo circumcision because studies have shown a reduc…

I dunno what's up elsewhere but my doctor said that there is no longer any medical reason to do it and to avoid it if possible.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#125

Post by cdolan »

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…

I’m surprised abortion has not been mentioned yet.

Regardless of your stance on the topic, I wonder if this type of information (insects feel pain) could mean a developing child can also feel pain when it is aborted?

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#126

Post by hackinthebochs »

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.

>Why wouldn't they feel pain?

If they don't require a conscious experience of pain to thrive in their environmental niche, then we can reasonably assume they wouldn't have it. It's a good reason why we don't expect plants to experience pain.

>Anything that didn't feel pain would soon be evolved out.

You have to distinguish between nociception and a conscious experience of pain. Nociception is required for just about any multicellular organism. But the experience of suffering due to noxious stimuli only serves a purpose in the context of conscious planning of behavior.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#127

Post by merpnderp »

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…

Because pain implies suffering. If an insect can suffer as mammals can, that would have huge ethical implications.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#128

Post by nkrisc »

xvector wrote: post #95
jacobush wrote: post #90

I didn't realise the impact until I remembered how common circumcision is in the US.

It’s ridiculous. This sort of mutilation should be flat out illegal. It’s physical child abuse, plain and simple.

It's not as horrible as you make it out to be. I was circumcised. In fact, I didn't even realize I was until I was much older, I just thought that's the way things were down there. Once I learned, I didn't care. Everything's fine. Everyone makes it out like it's torture; it's not. You can't even remember it.

I have no deep trauma, no lingering issues. I'm just a normal boring guy, kind of like most guys who are circumcised too.

Personally I've only known women and uncircumcised men to have a problem with. I've never met a circumcised man who cared.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#129

Post by wazoox »

ohlookabird wrote: post #115
bsanr2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I understand that this procedure will remove healthy and functioning tissue from my son's penis, and involves similar risk as other prophylactic or cosmetic surgeries, including infection, disfigurement, and death. I understand that the procedure may be performed without anaesthesia at the doctor's discretion. I understand that the doctor has recommended my son undergo circumcision because studies have shown a reduc…

> studies have shown a reduction in the risk for serious diseases in circumcised men What are those studies? It is very uncommon to cut off parts of children in Europe, Russia, South America and China ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision ) and such serious deseases should be much more common there. So what are they? On this scale we should see a pattern.

Circumcision reduces susceptibility to AIDS by quite a large margin (60% in heterosexual relationships). I'm not sure about other diseases but there's probably an impact.

https://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#130

Post by toasterlovin »

deogeo wrote: post #123
toasterlovin wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is reasonable to entertain the hypothesis. It is unreasonable to assume that it is true.

I (and Occam's razor) would say the exact opposite - one should assume the effect will be the similar as for an older human, unless proven otherwise. Otherwise you're making the unproven assumption that an infant's mind responds to pain differently - why would you think that? And which other subgroups of humans could you make evidence-free assumptions that they are different from the default (however chosen) human?

> 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.

That’s what OP said, emphasis mine. I agree with you: that infants experience pain in the same way as adults should be the default hypothesis. That they remain psychologically scarred by it for decades, however, should not be.

Post reply on HN