(1) We are trying to arrive at a metric like you describe at QRI. See: Quantifying bliss and a future for neuroscience for the big-picture idea. I think the suffering you describe is very relevant for instrumental reasons, but perhaps not very large in terms of absolute values (still sucks, obviously!).
(2) I think that another important update that people should make in EA is that hell-seconds are not only much, much, much worse than garden-variety pain and suffering. But also that they are *far more prevalent* than we realize. About 20% of people in the US live with chronic pain, of which 8% is “high-impact” (i.e. severe enough to interfere with life on many fronts). Kidney stones happen to 10% of people, migraines are equally as common, and about 2-3% of people who get fractures develop complex regional pain syndrome, which tops the scale (and worse of all, it is chronic and persistent pain rather than episodic like cluster headaches).
I suspect most people will be horrified when we get an accurate estimate of a country’s Hell-Index. Perhaps you don’t dip your toes into those realms often, but chances are that your neighbor or two houses down the line someone very close to you does.
I looked up CRPS and kidney stones, and it looks like both of them have relatively mild symptoms in most cases. Are you sure that this isn’t a case of conflating the pain of the most extreme cases and the prevalence of all cases?
You’re right about the 8% figure for chronic severe pain, though.
CRPS sufferer here. There are cases that are mild or that resolve quickly. But when it becomes chronic by some metrics it is the most painful condition in existence, with a persistent pain worse than having a finger cut off without anesthetic or childbirth without anesthetic.
Let’s say “the typical pain of the top 5% most painful of the cases of a given condition”.
My sense is that the pain scale is exponential. Let’s say that kidney stones rank on average at a 7⁄10 level with a standard deviation of 1. In that case, about 2% of the kidney stone cases are a 9⁄10, which might be hundreds of times more painful than the 7⁄10 typical case. In other words, you can’t really judge how many hell-seconds a given condition contributes by observing a *median* case… you need either the average or to look at the more painful side of it.
It’s just that your first comment sounded a bit like you’re implying that 10% of the population suffers from excruciating kidney stones. With your estimated numbers (10% of population affected at some point in their lives, 2% of cases at 9⁄10 on the pain scale), it would be more like 0.2%.
That’s probably still a lot if you multiply by the world population and total pain episode lengths. I don’t know how long such a case typically lasts with modern medical care, but plenty of people don’t have access to it.
Of course, this all depends on whether the 2% number is a reasonable estimate, and whether the pain scale is exponential.
But my guess is that a better strategy will probe better medical prevention and treatment of underlying causes in most cases. After all, flooding the USA with powerful painkillers hasn’t exactly been a boon to the nation (see opioids).
Thank you.
Two things:
(1) We are trying to arrive at a metric like you describe at QRI. See: Quantifying bliss and a future for neuroscience for the big-picture idea. I think the suffering you describe is very relevant for instrumental reasons, but perhaps not very large in terms of absolute values (still sucks, obviously!).
(2) I think that another important update that people should make in EA is that hell-seconds are not only much, much, much worse than garden-variety pain and suffering. But also that they are *far more prevalent* than we realize. About 20% of people in the US live with chronic pain, of which 8% is “high-impact” (i.e. severe enough to interfere with life on many fronts). Kidney stones happen to 10% of people, migraines are equally as common, and about 2-3% of people who get fractures develop complex regional pain syndrome, which tops the scale (and worse of all, it is chronic and persistent pain rather than episodic like cluster headaches).
I suspect most people will be horrified when we get an accurate estimate of a country’s Hell-Index. Perhaps you don’t dip your toes into those realms often, but chances are that your neighbor or two houses down the line someone very close to you does.
I looked up CRPS and kidney stones, and it looks like both of them have relatively mild symptoms in most cases. Are you sure that this isn’t a case of conflating the pain of the most extreme cases and the prevalence of all cases?
You’re right about the 8% figure for chronic severe pain, though.
https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/09/14/who-hurting-prevalence-chronic-pain-america-13407
CRPS sufferer here. There are cases that are mild or that resolve quickly. But when it becomes chronic by some metrics it is the most painful condition in existence, with a persistent pain worse than having a finger cut off without anesthetic or childbirth without anesthetic.
https://www.burningnightscrps.org/sufferers/pain-scale/
Let’s say “the typical pain of the top 5% most painful of the cases of a given condition”.
My sense is that the pain scale is exponential. Let’s say that kidney stones rank on average at a 7⁄10 level with a standard deviation of 1. In that case, about 2% of the kidney stone cases are a 9⁄10, which might be hundreds of times more painful than the 7⁄10 typical case. In other words, you can’t really judge how many hell-seconds a given condition contributes by observing a *median* case… you need either the average or to look at the more painful side of it.
It’s just that your first comment sounded a bit like you’re implying that 10% of the population suffers from excruciating kidney stones. With your estimated numbers (10% of population affected at some point in their lives, 2% of cases at 9⁄10 on the pain scale), it would be more like 0.2%.
That’s probably still a lot if you multiply by the world population and total pain episode lengths. I don’t know how long such a case typically lasts with modern medical care, but plenty of people don’t have access to it.
Of course, this all depends on whether the 2% number is a reasonable estimate, and whether the pain scale is exponential.
But my guess is that a better strategy will probe better medical prevention and treatment of underlying causes in most cases. After all, flooding the USA with powerful painkillers hasn’t exactly been a boon to the nation (see opioids).