To zoom in on the “logarithmic scales of pleasure and pain” angle (I’m the author), I would say that this way of seeing the world suggests that the bulk of suffering is concentrated on a small percentage of experiences. Thus, finding scaleable treatments specially for ultra-painful conditions could take care of a much larger percent of the world burden of suffering than most people would intuitively realize. I really think this should be up in the list of considerations for Cause X. Specifically:
An important pragmatic takeaway from this article is that if one is trying to select an effective career path, as a heuristic it would be good to take into account how one’s efforts would cash out in the prevention of extreme suffering (see: Hell-Index), rather than just QALYs and wellness indices that ignore the long-tail. Of particular note as promising Effective Altruist careers, we would highlight working directly to develop remedies for specific, extremely painful experiences. Finding scalable treatments for migraines, kidney stones, childbirth, cluster headaches, CRPS, and fibromyalgia may be extremely high-impact (cf. Treating Cluster Headaches and Migraines Using N,N-DMT and Other Tryptamines, Using Ibogaine to Create Friendlier Opioids, and Frequency Specific Microcurrent for Kidney-Stone Pain). More research efforts into identifying and quantifying intense suffering currently unaddressed would also be extremely helpful.
To zoom in on the “logarithmic scales of pleasure and pain” angle (I’m the author), I would say that this way of seeing the world suggests that the bulk of suffering is concentrated on a small percentage of experiences. Thus, finding scaleable treatments specially for ultra-painful conditions could take care of a much larger percent of the world burden of suffering than most people would intuitively realize. I really think this should be up in the list of considerations for Cause X. Specifically:
(see also the writeup of an event we hosted about possible new EA Cause Xs)