As you wrote, there’s no view on this I’m confident in. But speaking from having had certain enduring experiences of suffering, like being very sick for weeks on end, or being bullied at school for years, at times life can just be enduringly awful. Yes, one can develop certain coping mechanisms to make the bad times easier to bear, but if the bad times are bad enough, I think they do just make life consistently far worse. Evidence from an earlier post of mine:
Extreme pain or discomfort reduces health-related quality of life by 41%.
Nerve damage results in a loss of health-related quality of life between 39% for diabetes-caused nerve damage and 85% for failed back surgery syndrome.
Suffering from cluster headaches is associated with greatly increased suicidality.
Patients suffering from chronic musculoskeletal pain would rather take a gamble with a ⅕ chance of dying and a ⅘ chance of being cured than continue living with their condition.
I also think that many coping mechanisms (e.g. “I’m suffering for a cause! Or for my children!” etc) are mostly possible because the suffering being has higher order brain function which allows those complex ideas to have similar mental sway to the feeling of suffering. So it feels plausible to me that a chicken would have a harder time “coping” with suffering than a human in an equivalent situation.
To quantify my subjective and very uncertain feelings on the matter, I’d put a 40-80% probability that coping mechanisms don’t reduce chickens’ suffering by more than 50% relative to the undiluted experience. But I think reasonable people can have all sorts of views on this, and would love to see further research.
“Extreme pain or discomfort reduces health-related quality of life by 41%.
“Nerve damage results in a loss of health-related quality of life between 39% for diabetes-caused nerve damage and 85% for failed back surgery syndrome.”
This makes sense—one interesting point here is that failed back surgery syndrome and severe nerve damage are some of the more severe and chronic pains humans suffer (makes me shudder thinking about it TBH, have a couple of friends who have suffered from that) yet people still lead “net positive” lives with the pain and usually want to keep living.
“I also think that many coping mechanisms (e.g. “I’m suffering for a cause! Or for my children!” etc) are mostly possible because the suffering being has higher order brain function which allows those complex ideas to have similar mental sway to the feeling of suffering. So it feels plausible to me that a chicken would have a harder time “coping” with suffering than a human in an equivalent situation.” That’s true—its also true that human’s complex ideas lead us vulnerable to complex mental health issues which can modulate pain to make it worse. I’d be so uncertain as to be 50⁄50 on whether modulation effects would be worse for humans.
”To quantify my subjective and very uncertain feelings on the matter, I’d put a 40-80% probability that coping mechanisms don’t reduce chickens’ suffering by more than 50%” - This sounds fair enough
As you wrote, there’s no view on this I’m confident in. But speaking from having had certain enduring experiences of suffering, like being very sick for weeks on end, or being bullied at school for years, at times life can just be enduringly awful. Yes, one can develop certain coping mechanisms to make the bad times easier to bear, but if the bad times are bad enough, I think they do just make life consistently far worse. Evidence from an earlier post of mine:
Extreme pain or discomfort reduces health-related quality of life by 41%.
Nerve damage results in a loss of health-related quality of life between 39% for diabetes-caused nerve damage and 85% for failed back surgery syndrome.
Suffering from cluster headaches is associated with greatly increased suicidality.
Patients suffering from chronic musculoskeletal pain would rather take a gamble with a ⅕ chance of dying and a ⅘ chance of being cured than continue living with their condition.
I also think that many coping mechanisms (e.g. “I’m suffering for a cause! Or for my children!” etc) are mostly possible because the suffering being has higher order brain function which allows those complex ideas to have similar mental sway to the feeling of suffering. So it feels plausible to me that a chicken would have a harder time “coping” with suffering than a human in an equivalent situation.
To quantify my subjective and very uncertain feelings on the matter, I’d put a 40-80% probability that coping mechanisms don’t reduce chickens’ suffering by more than 50% relative to the undiluted experience. But I think reasonable people can have all sorts of views on this, and would love to see further research.
“Extreme pain or discomfort reduces health-related quality of life by 41%.
“Nerve damage results in a loss of health-related quality of life between 39% for diabetes-caused nerve damage and 85% for failed back surgery syndrome.”
This makes sense—one interesting point here is that failed back surgery syndrome and severe nerve damage are some of the more severe and chronic pains humans suffer (makes me shudder thinking about it TBH, have a couple of friends who have suffered from that) yet people still lead “net positive” lives with the pain and usually want to keep living.
“I also think that many coping mechanisms (e.g. “I’m suffering for a cause! Or for my children!” etc) are mostly possible because the suffering being has higher order brain function which allows those complex ideas to have similar mental sway to the feeling of suffering. So it feels plausible to me that a chicken would have a harder time “coping” with suffering than a human in an equivalent situation.” That’s true—its also true that human’s complex ideas lead us vulnerable to complex mental health issues which can modulate pain to make it worse. I’d be so uncertain as to be 50⁄50 on whether modulation effects would be worse for humans.
”To quantify my subjective and very uncertain feelings on the matter, I’d put a 40-80% probability that coping mechanisms don’t reduce chickens’ suffering by more than 50%”
- This sounds fair enough