Iâm confused about what âsuperlinearityâ is even supposed to mean here.
In the intro you distinguish âunpleasantnessâ and âintensityâ, and say that one grows superlinearly with the other, but how are these two things even defined to begin with? And what is the difference between them? Defining one scale for measuring pain is hard enough, but before we can evaluate this âsuperlinearâ claim we first need to define two!
In the examples with humans, I can see what the claim is. There are at least two ways you could try to define a pain scale: (i) self-report on a scale of 1-10, and (ii) something that more consistently tracked actual preferences with respect to gambles or experiences of different duration, and in this example the claim is that (ii) grows super-linearly with (i).
But this just seems like a claim about the limitations of the self-report 1-10 scale, which is only relevant for humans (think Iâm probably agreeing with the summary of Bob Fischerâs take here).
In the case of non-humans, itâs not that I disagree, but I donât even understand what the claim is that is being made?
Thanks for your clear question! Youâre right, I should have been much clearer in what I meant.
Concretely, I was thinking about the cumulative pain framework, and how it has 4 different intensities of pain (Annoying, Hurtful, Disabling, and Excruciating), and what the relative unpleasantness of the levels might be.
And in this post I was trying to understand how the moral-weight numbers would interact with the pain-intensity-weightings (whether they should apply to the duration or the intensity dimension, as that makes a big difference).
Did this answer your question, or was there a more fundamental crux I missed?
Iâm open to the idea that Iâm barking up the wrong tree. Itâs been a few years since I really sat down to think all this through.
If the claim is that the gap between âDisablingâ and âExcruciatingâ should be larger than the gap between âAnnoyingâ and âHurtfulâ, then that makes sense to me, and seems interesting.
But it sounds like this wasnât a numerical scale to begin with? So this again just feels like a claim about how we should go about assigning numbers to those categories (if we need numbers), rather than a claim that pain unpleasantness is âsuperlinearâ in some objective sense?
Defining what a numerical score for pain means seems like a hard problem. From my perspective, it seems like it should be defined so that the being concerned would be indifferent between a day of 2*x and 2 days of x. I think this is the notion you are referring to as âunpleasantnessâ. The question then for any other pain metric is just: âhow well does it measure this?â. Iâm still not sure it makes sense to ask âHow does pain intensity scale with unpleasantness?â, since then we would first have to define a numerical scale for pain intensity in some different way, and Iâm still not sure how we begin to do that?
I suppose there is another ineresting complication here, which is that you could also try to define your pain scale in terms of preferences among gambles. For example, the pain scale should be defined so that a rational being is indifferent between 100% chance of x and a 50% chance of 2*x. And then youâre confronted with the question of whether this should give you the same answer as defining it in terms of preferences among durations. My feeling is that it should be the same (something about personal identity not being a âfurther factâ and applying standard utilitarian aggregation approach to person-moments rather than persons..?) but would be interesting to explore points of view where those two potential scale definitions are different. That doesnât feel quite the same as âintensityâ vs âunpleasantnessâ though. More like two different definitions of âunpleasantnessâ.
Ah, I see where youâre coming from. Youâre saying that the real problem is deciding where to place the intensity categories (Annoying, Hurtful, etc) on the number line of pain, instead of pretending those categories make their own dimension called intensity, and mapping them to another thing called unpleasentness.
The way I was thinking about it:
The way youâre thinking about it:
I think the reason I was drawn to the intensity perspective is because for humans it seems real, and thatâs where we have our best understanding (due to the advantages of self-report, more pyschophysics studies, introspecting on our own experiences), and so I was thinking about translating our (still very limited) understanding of that model to the non-human space. But maybe youâre right that it would be better to build a simpler model from scratch around the non-human limitations.
I like the property of the pain scale you mentioned where it scales linearly with time and duration. That would mean the whole ambiguity of the moral-weights/âlog-pain intersection that this post was about would disappear. And yes, I share your intuition that it would be the same as your gambling property (although would also be interested in any special cases where they come apart).
Thanks for pushing me on this, it helped clarify my own vague thoughts about it!
Iâm confused about what âsuperlinearityâ is even supposed to mean here.
In the intro you distinguish âunpleasantnessâ and âintensityâ, and say that one grows superlinearly with the other, but how are these two things even defined to begin with? And what is the difference between them? Defining one scale for measuring pain is hard enough, but before we can evaluate this âsuperlinearâ claim we first need to define two!
In the examples with humans, I can see what the claim is. There are at least two ways you could try to define a pain scale: (i) self-report on a scale of 1-10, and (ii) something that more consistently tracked actual preferences with respect to gambles or experiences of different duration, and in this example the claim is that (ii) grows super-linearly with (i).
But this just seems like a claim about the limitations of the self-report 1-10 scale, which is only relevant for humans (think Iâm probably agreeing with the summary of Bob Fischerâs take here).
In the case of non-humans, itâs not that I disagree, but I donât even understand what the claim is that is being made?
Thanks for your clear question! Youâre right, I should have been much clearer in what I meant.
Concretely, I was thinking about the cumulative pain framework, and how it has 4 different intensities of pain (Annoying, Hurtful, Disabling, and Excruciating), and what the relative unpleasantness of the levels might be.
Thereâs a longer report here about that question, and Iâm very sympathetic to the view that the 4 pain ratings should increase in a very superlinear way https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââC2qiY9hwH3Xuirce3/ââshort-agony-or-long-ache-comparing-sources-of-suffering-that
And in this post I was trying to understand how the moral-weight numbers would interact with the pain-intensity-weightings (whether they should apply to the duration or the intensity dimension, as that makes a big difference).
Did this answer your question, or was there a more fundamental crux I missed?
Iâm open to the idea that Iâm barking up the wrong tree. Itâs been a few years since I really sat down to think all this through.
Thank you for your reply and clarification!
If the claim is that the gap between âDisablingâ and âExcruciatingâ should be larger than the gap between âAnnoyingâ and âHurtfulâ, then that makes sense to me, and seems interesting.
But it sounds like this wasnât a numerical scale to begin with? So this again just feels like a claim about how we should go about assigning numbers to those categories (if we need numbers), rather than a claim that pain unpleasantness is âsuperlinearâ in some objective sense?
Defining what a numerical score for pain means seems like a hard problem. From my perspective, it seems like it should be defined so that the being concerned would be indifferent between a day of 2*x and 2 days of x. I think this is the notion you are referring to as âunpleasantnessâ. The question then for any other pain metric is just: âhow well does it measure this?â. Iâm still not sure it makes sense to ask âHow does pain intensity scale with unpleasantness?â, since then we would first have to define a numerical scale for pain intensity in some different way, and Iâm still not sure how we begin to do that?
I suppose there is another ineresting complication here, which is that you could also try to define your pain scale in terms of preferences among gambles. For example, the pain scale should be defined so that a rational being is indifferent between 100% chance of x and a 50% chance of 2*x. And then youâre confronted with the question of whether this should give you the same answer as defining it in terms of preferences among durations. My feeling is that it should be the same (something about personal identity not being a âfurther factâ and applying standard utilitarian aggregation approach to person-moments rather than persons..?) but would be interesting to explore points of view where those two potential scale definitions are different. That doesnât feel quite the same as âintensityâ vs âunpleasantnessâ though. More like two different definitions of âunpleasantnessâ.
Ah, I see where youâre coming from. Youâre saying that the real problem is deciding where to place the intensity categories (Annoying, Hurtful, etc) on the number line of pain, instead of pretending those categories make their own dimension called intensity, and mapping them to another thing called unpleasentness.
The way I was thinking about it:
The way youâre thinking about it:
I think the reason I was drawn to the intensity perspective is because for humans it seems real, and thatâs where we have our best understanding (due to the advantages of self-report, more pyschophysics studies, introspecting on our own experiences), and so I was thinking about translating our (still very limited) understanding of that model to the non-human space. But maybe youâre right that it would be better to build a simpler model from scratch around the non-human limitations.
I like the property of the pain scale you mentioned where it scales linearly with time and duration. That would mean the whole ambiguity of the moral-weights/âlog-pain intersection that this post was about would disappear. And yes, I share your intuition that it would be the same as your gambling property (although would also be interested in any special cases where they come apart).
Thanks for pushing me on this, it helped clarify my own vague thoughts about it!