# Will people ever not Suffer? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 8, 2005, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937 "2005-02-08T03:23:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ninetypercent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9de0a6/32.png) [@ninetypercent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ninetypercent)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/21 "2005-02-08T17:22:15Z")
> [@II Gyan II](#): > > To the OP, there’s a guy who’s believes the answer to your question can be Yes. And since 1995, has maintained a huge [network](http://www.bltc.com/bltc-research.html) of sites. I present you [Paradise Engineering: The Hedonistic Imperative](http://www.hedweb.com/). He’s technically adept even if his broad beliefs are a bit …loony (to me), including the fundamental premise that Suffering can be eradicated. That’s an interesting site. A bit vague, but that’s because(as he says), we can’t imagine how REALLY GOOD we could feel. Drugs could be devised to continuously produce Ecstasy and the “loss of magic” that is common with such drugs can be engineered away. The pleasure-inducing aspect can be continuously re-fined. There may still be a mid-point, but at that mid-point you’ll still feel real fucking good. The reason to feel better would not be because of _need_, but because the possibility exists. I’m still reading the site; it agrees with my thinking. IMO, thus far, his views are not so much loony as they are difficult to reconcile with the axiom “suffering is necessary for joy”. ---
**Author:** ![ninetypercent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9de0a6/32.png) [@ninetypercent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ninetypercent)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/22 "2005-02-08T17:38:25Z")
> [@Qadgop the Mercotan](#): > > But, as any good Pain Clinic physician will tell you, the quantification scale is very subjective. One person who says he is experiencing 10 out of 10 on a pain scale (worst imaginable) right this very second will be sitting and smiling while telling this. Another claiming the same degree of pain will be curled up in a ball and tearing the skin from his arms with his own teeth to distract him from the pain. > > Do they both have the same degree of pain? They both report their pain as “the worst imaginable”. This is one of the reasons anti-depressants have such low efficacy. What I meant though is that there is a chemical reason that people respond to pain in different ways. Science does not _yet_ know what that is, but it seems clear to me that we will one day not need a questionnaire to gauge levels of pain. Right now I have to go to work. I hate work. Why should that be? The menial labor I am forced to perform in order to survive should be joy itself. It would never be boring if every task was 1000x more pleasurable than it is now. ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/23 "2005-02-08T18:30:58Z")
My G\*d, what are we talking about here? Seems to me that everyone on the side of doing away with pain and suffering is talking about drugs. What is new about trying to feel better through the use of drugs? Isn’t that the idea behind **Dr. Feelgood**? Don’t we already have a drug called **Esctasy**? How happy would **ninetypercent** ’s boss be if **ninetypercent** said he was 1000% happier with his job after taking drugs. Of course, the boss could solve that problem by taking some himself, then both their brains would resemble fried eggs. To me this idea of doing away with suffering falls under the category of: **Be careful of what you wish for, because it might come true.** ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/24 "2005-02-08T18:32:21Z")
> [@ninetypercent](#): > > This is one of the reasons anti-depressants have such low efficacy. Compared to what? > [@](#): > > What I meant though is that there is a chemical reason that people respond to pain in different ways. Science does not _yet_ know what that is, but it seems clear to me that we will one day not need a questionnaire to gauge levels of pain A chemical reason? You sure? I’d disagree, unless you reduce all behavior to neurotransmitter release. And having diagnosed chronic pain and treated it for 2 decades, I’d disagree that we won’t need a questionnaire to gauge pain. > [@](#): > > Right now I have to go to work. I hate work. Why should that be? The menial labor I am forced to perform in order to survive should be joy itself. It would never be boring if every task was 1000x more pleasurable than it is now. Ah, sweet Blisstopia! Trouble is, the more euphoria, the less productive work people do. Be ecstatic every time you staple together a document, and I guarantee your production goes down, not up! Since stapling 10 documents in a minute won’t give 10 times the ecstacy of stapling one in a minute, you won’t be stapling at peak efficiency! That’s why chronic Bliss addicts (the opiate people) who are on methadone perform better than those on heroin. Methadone keeps the despair away, but you lose the high too. QtM, MD ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/25 "2005-02-08T18:40:36Z")
Great minds think alike, **kniz**! Anyway, despite my initial post in this thread, I have to say that it’s really pain that’s inevitable. Suffering is optional. I’ve suffered many horrible fates in my life; most of which never actually happened. And I’ve dealt with some horrendously painful, grief-filled issues, and opted to feel the horribly bad feelings but not wallow in them to my own and other’s detriment. Thus my suffering was reduced greatly. YMMV ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/26 "2005-02-08T19:04:42Z")
> [@jeffh3000](#): > > The rats still experienced pain and suffering. Their addiction to the pleasure device simply over-rode it. This would be similar to a drug addict who is slowly killing themselves with heroin, but simply can’t stop. The suffering is still experienced Yikes…thanks for pointing that out, **jeffh3000**. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, and that certainly wasn’t the point I was trying to make. By citing the above research as being considered relevant to addiction research, I in no way intended to imply that victims of addiction are not suffering. I see now that my post could be interpreted that way, and I apologize. Athough research on people undergoing brain surgery had demonstrated that memory and perception could be directly manipulated through electrical stimulation, the Olds/Milner experiments proved that extremely specific behavior could be altered in the same way. Since the areas of the rat brain being stimulated were the same structures that induce feelings of intense well-being in humans, I think it’s likely that the rats were likely not experiencing any meaningful awareness of suffering so long as the stimulation persisted. Beforehand and afterward, of course, is another story. My point was that, insofar as the experience of suffering has a proximate biological origin, there seems to be no reason why this can’t be altered or eliminated by tweaking the relevant structures–with the implication that this isn’t an option that most human beings would consider to be appropriate. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/27 "2005-02-08T19:26:47Z")
> [@kniz](#): > > My G\*d, what are we talking about here? Seems to me that everyone on the side of doing away with pain and suffering is talking about drugs. What is new about trying to feel better through the use of drugs? Isn’t that the idea behind **Dr. Feelgood**? Don’t we already have a drug called **Esctasy**? How happy would **ninetypercent** ’s boss be if **ninetypercent** said he was 1000% happier with his job after taking drugs. Of course, the boss could solve that problem by taking some himself, then both their brains would resemble fried eggs. > > To me this idea of doing away with suffering falls under the category of: **Be careful of what you wish for, because it might come true.** Not just drugs, genetic engineering. Suffering from a philosophical point of view is usually quantified as some sort of ‘I am/I am not’ equation. You have an image of yourself and your world you want to maintain, anything driving you away from that image causes suffering. Anything driving you towards it causes the opposite of suffering. Its simplistic, but its more or less true. True, if suffering were truly eradicated then society would probably collapse. People high on hallucinagens, PCP or alcohol have been known to do very nutty things because the suffering caused by failing to live within societies laws do not apply anymore while you are high. People might quit their jobs alot more often w/o the fear of unemployment or homelessness. People may be more disruptive in general, instead of working or studying they’d be off doing what they wanted all day and not caring about the non-existant consequences. The structure of society could collapse. There have been reports on people born w/o physical pain and they usually die young from endless infections and injuries that normal people use suffering to guard themselves from, its probably safe to assume (to me at least) that those who are incapable of mental suffering would bring about the collapse of society since they have nothing to hold them into a set schedule of living. However replacing suffering with somehting more humane could be a good idea. Why should it be an almost unbearable feeling that gnaws at you that keeps society functioning? It could be something else, im sure. Not only that but physical suffering is fought with surgery and drugs too. You can overcome physical drugs (to an extent) by using mind tricks like hypnosis just as you can overcome mental suffering to an extent by using mind tricks like reframing or looking at the long term. However I doubt you’d find anyone who said ‘we dont need morphine we have hynosis to cure pain’ outside of a cult, but that attitude exists all the time with mental suffering. They are both forms of pain. Not only that but maybe controlling suffering could be good in a way. If we couldn’t control physical suffering surgery and modern medicine would be impossible. Controlling mental suffering could open up doorways to do things with life that we’d consider impossible or too risky right now. So its not, to me at least, the elimination of suffering totally that is the goal, it is mastering it the same way we try to master physical pain. If nobody felt physical pain, we’d probably all die. And I assume if nobody felt mental pain we’d probably revert to feral lives. However by mastering physical pain you can increase quality of life and do things you couldn’t do with physical pain (surgery for example). Controlling mental pain would probably have the same effects if we did it intelligently. ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/28 "2005-02-08T20:01:24Z")
> [@kniz](#): > > To me this idea of doing away with suffering falls under the category of:Be careful of what you wish for, because it might come true. Many, if not most, of the values that human societies hold dear, are the evolutionary response of the constraints that have bounded us. If suffering is eliminated, people won’t, indeed can’t, be distressed by the resulting side-effects that you regard as deleterious. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/29 "2005-02-08T20:21:35Z")
> [@II Gyan II](#): > > Are you saying that there are mind events not caused by the brain? No, not at all (tempting as it is) - merely pointing out that our response to pain/pleasure is more malleable than that of a lizard, because of the complexities introduced by our conscious minds, our perceptual paraphenalia, our highger brain functions etc… > [@](#): > > If all mind is brain-based, then the act of finding something boring is physically-based. So theoretically, there could be a way to engineer brain such that it does not find ecstasy boring Sounds plausible, but I wonder if you could truly claim that it was having so rich an experience as ourselves; it’s only by means of light AND shade that we can see anything at all - how would this hypothetical creature _know_ it was expericening ecstasy, without any point of reference? ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/30 "2005-02-08T20:44:07Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > how would this hypothetical creature _know_ it was expericening ecstasy, without any point of reference? Because the activity of the brain that represents it “knowing” and “enjoying” the ecstasy would be perenially active. ---
**Author:** ![Dob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Dob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dob)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/31 "2005-02-08T21:01:42Z")
I hope suffering doesnt end. While suffering has caused pain for millions, it has also been an inspiration for millions. Think of Art, Music, Books, all have roots in suffering that lead to inspiration. Where will the desire and will to do better, strive, come from if we lose suffering? I think a world with no suffering, no pain, would be a very bland pale world. Which is kinda of a sad statement when you think about it. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/32 "2005-02-08T21:16:14Z")
> [@Dob](#): > > I hope suffering doesnt end. While suffering has caused pain for millions, it has also been an inspiration for millions. Think of Art, Music, Books, all have roots in suffering that lead to inspiration. Where will the desire and will to do better, strive, come from if we lose suffering? > > I think a world with no suffering, no pain, would be a very bland pale world. Which is kinda of a sad statement when you think about it. Would you be willing to watch your kids be violently raped for all eternity in exchange for poetry? ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/33 "2005-02-08T21:16:46Z")
> [@Dob](#): > > I think a world with no suffering, no pain, would be a very bland pale world. Once more, that wouldn’t be a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Dob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Dob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dob)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/34 "2005-02-08T21:22:54Z")
> [@](#): > > Would you be willing to watch your kids be violently raped for all eternity in exchange for poetry? Well thats a bit far fetched eh? I didnt know we were talking about eternal suffering, exaggerate much? Obviously I wouldnt want to see anyone raped for any length of time, but rape happens, and people suffer for it. What if one of those suffering comes up with a way to make sure it never happens again, to anyone, ever? Would they have done that without first suffering? Maybe. Who knows? Im not saying suffering is a great thing, I just have hard time thinking of what life would be without it. But its all circular…I mean if we dont have suffering, I guess I wouldnt be suffering from thinking about it! ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/35 "2005-02-08T21:41:22Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > Would you be willing to watch your kids be violently raped for all eternity in exchange for poetry? After I read your answer to my post on drugs, I was just reading to the bottom and planned to then congratulate you on an excellent post. Then I read this and wondered where it came from. It is almost like you have two personalities, As to my other post, I’m sure we don’t disagree on much. I am not against finding ways to reduce pain and suffering, I’m just against opining about what a wonderful world this would be if suffering was illiminated. You agreed (I believe) and after all that is the subject of the OP (not suffering). ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/36 "2005-02-08T22:19:37Z")
> [@kniz](#): > > After I read your answer to my post on drugs, I was just reading to the bottom and planned to then congratulate you on an excellent post. Then I read this and wondered where it came from. It is almost like you have two personalities, > > As to my other post, I’m sure we don’t disagree on much. I am not against finding ways to reduce pain and suffering, I’m just against opining about what a wonderful world this would be if suffering was illiminated. You agreed (I believe) and after all that is the subject of the OP (not suffering). Sorry, I realized I worded my statement wrong when I wrote it. My fault, I was trying to think of something that would cause intense suffering and that was the first thing that came to mind. Let me rephrase it. Would you be willing to have yourself, your kids, your parents and your spouse spend 10 years in a slave labor camp in north korea/Nazi Germany/the USSR/Japan, etc if it meant you would be a great poet when you got out? I don’t know many people who would make that kind of sacrafice. They may be willing to endure some suffering but the soul crushing kind of suffering that eats at people until they die is what alot of us are talking about when we refer to suffering. While I agree that suffering can create great things, I do not think those things are worth the more intense forms of suffering or that suffering is the only way to bring them about. People are motivated by awe and beauty just as much as pain. People write hit songs about losing their kids and the birth of their kids. They make good art about the destruction of cultures and the creation of culture. ---
**Author:** ![ninetypercent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9de0a6/32.png) [@ninetypercent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ninetypercent)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/37 "2005-02-08T22:24:34Z")
> [@Qadgop the Mercotan](#): > > Compared to what? > A chemical reason? You sure? I’d disagree, unless you reduce all behavior to neurotransmitter release. And having diagnosed chronic pain and treated it for 2 decades, I’d disagree that we won’t need a questionnaire to gauge pain. > Ah, sweet Blisstopia! Trouble is, the more euphoria, the less productive work people do. Be ecstatic every time you staple together a document, and I guarantee your production goes down, not up! Since stapling 10 documents in a minute won’t give 10 times the ecstacy of stapling one in a minute, you won’t be stapling at peak efficiency! > > That’s why chronic Bliss addicts (the opiate people) who are on methadone perform better than those on heroin. Methadone keeps the despair away, but you lose the high too. > > QtM, MD So… pain is not chemical? Response to pain, whatever variation, is not chemical? Is it God that sends us these feelings? Is it God that determines individual interpretation of pain? If you belief that, fine. I don’t. All things are chemical. Stapling efficiency could be increased significantly if each staple was followed by electrical stimulation of reward pathways. Stapling would be like smoking crack. Isn’t that something like the rat study? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/38 "2005-02-08T22:26:06Z")
> [@Dob](#): > > Well thats a bit far fetched eh? I didnt know we were talking about eternal suffering, exaggerate much? Obviously I wouldnt want to see anyone raped for any length of time, but rape happens, and people suffer for it. What if one of those suffering comes up with a way to make sure it never happens again, to anyone, ever? Would they have done that without first suffering? Maybe. Who knows? > > Im not saying suffering is a great thing, I just have hard time thinking of what life would be without it. But its all circular…I mean if we dont have suffering, I guess I wouldnt be suffering from thinking about it! Granted, no one suffers for eternity and people adjust to suffering. Bad wording on my part but that was the best example I could come up with at the time. My point was are those who thing the good of suffering outweigh the bad (which is the impression I get) willing to go through severe suffering themselves to obtain these good things? Probably not, just like i’m not willing to go to medical school but I still want to see a doctor. I couldn’t think of anything more severe than what I originally wrote at the time, but yeah it was an exaggeration. A short duration of time (5 years maybe) would be a better example. If we didn’t suffer in the first place we wouldn’t need solutions to these problems. ---
**Author:** ![Nunavut\_Boy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e95f7d/32.png) [@Nunavut\_Boy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nunavut_Boy)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/39 "2005-02-08T22:30:58Z")
> [@kniz](#): > > Very good **Nunavut Boy**. Have you ever read The Prophet by Kahlil Gabran? > > (chapter)[**On Joy and Sorrow**](http://www.columbia.edu/~gm84/gibran8.html) > \I went to the website for Iqaluit. Very impressive. I loved the maps.\ No, I’ve never read it. Sounds interesting, though. What if everyone walked around having an orgasm 24/7? I imagine that eventually everyone would get bored with it if that was our default state. You’d get used to it, like getting in a hottub. People would seek out new forms of pleasure. What I’m trying to say is that anything that you do or experience continually would eventually become boring. You need to experience things that suck occasionally in order to appreciate the times that don’t suck. \ I’ve got a website up with some pics of Iqaluit [here](http://www.chadron.kicks-ass.org) WARNING! Slow site \ ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937/40 "2005-02-08T22:32:10Z")
As to the OP, I don’t know if we understand mental suffering enough to solve it yet. Do we even know the neurochemicals involved in mental suffering the way we know the ones involved in physical suffering? And what is the goal, to genetically engineer people who do not suffer but have some more humane method of social/personal control in them or to distribute drugs that can overcome suffering in non-genetically engineered people? Hedweb is probably the only place i’ve seen that really addresses this issue. But if biotechnology info doubles every 4-5 years i’d give it 50 years before quality solutions to suffering start coming out. Not cure alls, but something akin to morphine that kills the pain enough to let people live more normal lives instead of being controlled by their pain. Who knows what the world will be like in 200 years though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-people-ever-not-suffer/288937.md?page=3)