There's research that suggests that physical pain is closely related to (if not identical to) emotional pain.
If such implants will be able to eradicate physical pain in humans (so far it's only been tested on rats), will it also eradicate emotional pain?
Ethical questions immediately crop up, since it's possible that experience of pain in oneself is necessary to develop empathy for others, and without empathy you could get sociopathy or at least less compunction against hurting or killing others. The military would probably love this.
The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of…
This reminds me of an episode of Black Mirror. The teenager has an implant that causes stressors to be blurred out, preventing anxiety. During a fight, she starts hitting her mom and, because of the involved stress, she's unable to see the physical damage she's causing, ultimately murdering her. If this was implemented broadly, it'd very quickly lead to reckless/dangerous behavior.
Please don't conflate pain relief with impossible-to-avoid-murdering-your-mother-when-you-feel-better syndrome. /s
Seriously, if I wasn't in as much pain as I am in then I would be out hugging people. Not hiding in my house, sitting on my hands to numb them and so I avoid touching a mouse for fear of searing pain for several days.
I promise I won't lead a (further) reckless life just because my idiopathic pain of 20 years is gone.
The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of…
My dad cannot feel pain in his feet- it is terrible, as he often doesn't know they are even injured until he leaves bloody footprints around the house, or infection sets in deeply.
"Abolition" of all physical pain is an asinine desire that will only lead to our detriment.
The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of…
My dad cannot feel pain in his feet- it is terrible, as he often doesn't know they are even injured until he leaves bloody footprints around the house, or infection sets in deeply. "Abolition" of all physical pain is an asinine desire that will only lead to our detriment.
OK, but suppose your brain could be notified that something is wrong with your foot, without it hurting?
The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of…
> Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take [the] routine absence [of physical pain] for granted.
My dad cannot feel pain in his feet- it is terrible, as he often doesn't know they are even injured until he leaves bloody footprints around the house, or infection sets in deeply. "Abolition" of all physical pain is an asinine desire that will only lead to our detriment.
OK, but suppose your brain could be notified that something is wrong with your foot, without it hurting?
The article speaks about using this as a way to escape addiction to painkillers. Not so fast. Addiction is a phenomenon that predominantly happens in the brain, due to it constantly adapting to find homeostasis. And being unable to perceive pain when you should be is not homeostasis.
Opioid addiction is not like other addiction mechanisms. After prolonged use the gastrointestinal system is ravaged and when people want to stop they find themselves plagued not only with withdrawals symptoms but also by incredible abdominal pain, so they take more opioids, which worsens the pain, which requires more opioids to alleviate , which worsens the gastrointestinal damage and subsequent pain, and so on... It…
But before enough prolonged use to cause that, aren't you already addicted, for practical purposes?
The article speaks about using this as a way to escape addiction to painkillers. Not so fast. Addiction is a phenomenon that predominantly happens in the brain, due to it constantly adapting to find homeostasis. And being unable to perceive pain when you should be is not homeostasis.
I'm with you, and we don't have to look very far to find other cases where the "not addictive" promise turned out to be a false one.
I am so glad they are actively working on alleviating pain. I know a guy who had horrid back pain. He was ok with opoids. He even admitted they reduced his pain, but he just felt better about life being on them. His doctor just decided to not prescribe opoids for any reason. My friend is miserable now, and takes too much Ibuprofen.
> His doctor just decided to not prescribe opoids for any reason. From my unerstanding, you can only take them for about a week before they become addictive, and that in itself is fine, but they become less and less effective as time goes on as well. You've got to take more and more to get the same effect. Opioids are really only good for short-term pain. Also, doctors are really under the gun right now because they…
This is absolutely not true for everyone. I took oxycodone for three years without ever getting addicted, and it never stopped working. Thankfully, eventually enough surgeries and physical therapy finally worked to where I don't really need pharmaceutical pain management beyond normal OTC stuff, but for a while, there was no way I could have handled life without a whole lot of schedule II help, and I'm glad as hell this was before the addiction problem really took off in these economically depressed places among people who are jobless with terrible lives and no prospects and everyone blaming the drugs, so my doctors were never pressured into not prescribing them for people they clearly worked for.