Effective Altruism and the Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain
Channel: Andrés Gómez Emilsson
Date: 2020-06-18

This is my submission for the EAGxVirtual Unconference on Saturday, June 20th 2020.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wwW4u4sXbP8YbfBts/eagxvirtual-unconference-saturday-june-20th-2020

Abstract:

Based on: the characteristic distribution of neural activity, personal accounts of intense pleasure and pain, the way various pain scales have been described by their creators, and the results of a pilot study we conducted which ranks, rates, and compares the hedonic quality of extreme experiences, we suggest that the best way to interpret pleasure and pain scales is by thinking of them as logarithmic compressions of what is truly a long-tail. The most intense pains are orders of magnitude more awful than mild pains (and symmetrically for pleasure).

This should inform the way we prioritize altruistic interventions and plan for a better future. Since the bulk of suffering is concentrated in a small percentage of experiences, focusing our efforts on preventing cases of intense suffering likely dominates most utilitarian calculations.

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 quality adjusted life-years (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 conditions. Finding scalable treatments for migraines, kidney stones, childbirth, cluster headaches, CRPS, and fibromyalgia may be extremely high-impact (cf. Google: "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. 

Finally, if the positive valence scale also has a long-tail, focusing one’s career in developing bliss technologies may pay-off in surprisingly good ways (whereby you may stumble upon methods to generate high-valence healing experiences which are orders of magnitude better than you thought were possible).

*https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8Sed33q54kdhZ4M9m/get-out-of-hell-free-necklace

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Importantly, I recommend supporting the work of Jonathan Leighton on changing policy for cluster headache medicine: https://www.preventsuffering.org/cluster-headaches

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[Ps. sorry for the hot mic]