I wish you great success in the idea you are putting forward to create this center and commend the inspiring vision behind it. It is clear from your biography (which I just learned from the link to your bio) that you have dedicated your life to reducing suffering—something truly remarkable.
I would just like to highlight a key point regarding the assertion that there is a lack of “standardized metrics for measuring and comparing different types of suffering.” I believe you will be glad to know that the Welfare Footprint Framework provides a universal methodology for quantifying affective states, including both pain and pleasure, in a biologically meaningful way. Specifically for suffering, this framework incorporates the Cumulative Pain Metric, which is expressed in units of time spent in varying intensities of negative affective states. This metric allows for direct comparison of different sources of suffering across conditions and interventions.
The notation tool of the Pain-Track enables detailed analysis of the temporal dynamics of suffering, grounded in evidence from diverse fields such as physiology, neurology, pharmacology, behavioral science, and evolutionary biology.
These standardized tools and metrics not only make suffering more measurable but also facilitate informed decision-making and comparisons across a wide range of contexts. For example, the Welfare Footprint Framework has been applied to quantify welfare impacts in animal production systems, guiding policy decisions and reforms. For more details, please visit www.welfarefootprint.org.
Your work is amazing! I hope our efforts meet someday. Beyond the WF Framework, I am especially interested in the Pain Atlas Project and the Neurophilosopher GPT Tool. I would like also to discuss your definitions concerning pain and suffering. And, of course, I wholeheartedly share your vision, when you say: “Ultimately, we would like to help transform the understanding of animal and human suffering, shifting it from an abstract concept to a scientifically measurable and extensively mapped phenomenon across all sentient beings.”
I really appreciate your kind words. I’d be happy to discuss the topics you’re interested in—whether in a web meeting or through ongoing message exchanges here, whichever you prefer.
Your idea of an app addressing all suffering-related questions is excellent. We hope that the results from the Pain Atlas Project can serve as a valuable source of information for such an initiative. We continue working on this project—let’s see where it leads us.
I wish I had time to discuss definitions of pain and suffering, but it seems that all I can say for now is that all those who want to study pain or suffering scientifically should collectively adopt a new technical term for referring to all unpleasant feelings.
Thank you very much Robert for all the links and sources—I really appreciate it. It’s great to hear that our work on animal suffering is being considered within your quantification efforts at the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering and the World Center for the Control of Excessive Suffering.
Regarding the definition of pain, we have actually proposed one, and it has been operationally useful. We designed it to be as universal as possible while explicitly addressing the need for special attention to higher manifestations of pain:
”Pain is a conscious experience, evolved to elicit corrective behavior in response to actual or imminent damage to an organism’s survival and/or reproduction. Still, some manifestations, such as neuropathic pain, can be maladaptive. It is affectively and cognitively processed as an adverse and dynamic sensation that can vary in intensity, duration, texture, spatial specificity, and anatomical location. Pain is characterized as ‘physical’ when primarily triggered by pain receptors and as ‘psychological’ when triggered by memory and primary emotional systems. Depending on its intensity and duration, pain can override other adaptive instincts and motivational drives and lead to severe suffering”
I wish you great success in the idea you are putting forward to create this center and commend the inspiring vision behind it. It is clear from your biography (which I just learned from the link to your bio) that you have dedicated your life to reducing suffering—something truly remarkable.
I would just like to highlight a key point regarding the assertion that there is a lack of “standardized metrics for measuring and comparing different types of suffering.” I believe you will be glad to know that the Welfare Footprint Framework provides a universal methodology for quantifying affective states, including both pain and pleasure, in a biologically meaningful way. Specifically for suffering, this framework incorporates the Cumulative Pain Metric, which is expressed in units of time spent in varying intensities of negative affective states. This metric allows for direct comparison of different sources of suffering across conditions and interventions.
The notation tool of the Pain-Track enables detailed analysis of the temporal dynamics of suffering, grounded in evidence from diverse fields such as physiology, neurology, pharmacology, behavioral science, and evolutionary biology.
These standardized tools and metrics not only make suffering more measurable but also facilitate informed decision-making and comparisons across a wide range of contexts. For example, the Welfare Footprint Framework has been applied to quantify welfare impacts in animal production systems, guiding policy decisions and reforms. For more details, please visit www.welfarefootprint.org.
Thank you Wladimir, I just saw your comment—for some reason, I don’t get notification from EAF.
I listed the Welfare Footprint Project some time ago in https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OTCQlWE-GkY_V4V-OfJAr7Q-vJyIR8ZATpeMrLkmlAo/edit?usp=sharing
Your work is amazing! I hope our efforts meet someday. Beyond the WF Framework, I am especially interested in the Pain Atlas Project and the Neurophilosopher GPT Tool. I would like also to discuss your definitions concerning pain and suffering. And, of course, I wholeheartedly share your vision, when you say: “Ultimately, we would like to help transform the understanding of animal and human suffering, shifting it from an abstract concept to a scientifically measurable and extensively mapped phenomenon across all sentient beings.”
My current work is to develop a means of establishing more fruitful relationships between all our various specialties that deal with suffering. My latest idea is expressed in a question I posted two days ago on the Forum: “What About Creating an App That Would Answer Any Question Related to Suffering?” https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z5KgLod4hin9TDtWQ/what-about-creating-an-app-that-would-answer-any-question
Let’s keep up the good work!
Hi Robert,
I really appreciate your kind words. I’d be happy to discuss the topics you’re interested in—whether in a web meeting or through ongoing message exchanges here, whichever you prefer.
Your idea of an app addressing all suffering-related questions is excellent. We hope that the results from the Pain Atlas Project can serve as a valuable source of information for such an initiative. We continue working on this project—let’s see where it leads us.
Thanks again, Wladimir.
What you do about animal suffering is already taken into account in our efforts concerning quantification at the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering, and I hope that more of it will soon figure in the chapter Suffering-Focused Animal-Centered Initiatives within the World Center for the Control of Excessive Suffering. Incidentally, I recently came across https://www.ixo.world/ and I wonder if this impact-focused organization could be relevant when you say “the Welfare Footprint Framework has been applied to quantify welfare impacts in animal production systems, guiding policy decisions and reforms.”
As to Creating an AI App to Answer Questions About Suffering, I ask everyone to let me know if, by chance, anyone around them might be interested in contributing to the very early stages of this project.
I wish I had time to discuss definitions of pain and suffering, but it seems that all I can say for now is that all those who want to study pain or suffering scientifically should collectively adopt a new technical term for referring to all unpleasant feelings.
Best regards.
Thank you very much Robert for all the links and sources—I really appreciate it. It’s great to hear that our work on animal suffering is being considered within your quantification efforts at the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering and the World Center for the Control of Excessive Suffering.
Regarding the definition of pain, we have actually proposed one, and it has been operationally useful. We designed it to be as universal as possible while explicitly addressing the need for special attention to higher manifestations of pain:
”Pain is a conscious experience, evolved to elicit corrective behavior in response to actual or imminent damage to an organism’s survival and/or reproduction. Still, some manifestations, such as neuropathic pain, can be maladaptive. It is affectively and cognitively processed as an adverse and dynamic sensation that can vary in intensity, duration, texture, spatial specificity, and anatomical location. Pain is characterized as ‘physical’ when primarily triggered by pain receptors and as ‘psychological’ when triggered by memory and primary emotional systems. Depending on its intensity and duration, pain can override other adaptive instincts and motivational drives and lead to severe suffering”