
“Pain Is the Only School-Teacher” - telotortium
https://www.gwern.net/Backstop#pain-is-the-only-school-teacher
======
Lucent
Few of the comments here seem to discuss his point. He asks if pleasure to
pain is a continuum, why have pain at all? Instead of -1 to 1, with negative
representing unpleasantness, human experience can instead span 0 to 2 and have
the same reinforcement value with no sensation of displeasure.

My understanding of his answer is if this were the case, we wouldn't always
avoid lesser pleasant sensations and may even seek them out to enjoy the
rebound to greater pleasure. If burning your skin knocks you from baseline (1
instead of 0 for this example) to 0 (instead of -1), and the relief of
stopping the burn kicked you up to 2 as a reward for escaping it, you'll just
repeatedly burn your arm. Only negative values ensure you'll never seek them
out for the purpose of rebounding to higher values.

~~~
emrehan
A good argument, but not applicable for people practicing self-harm.

A quotation from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
harm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-harm) below:

“Those who engage in self-harm face the contradictory reality of harming
themselves while at the same time obtaining relief from this act.

It may even be hard for some to actually initiate cutting, but they often do
because they know the relief that will follow. For some self-harmers this
relief is primarily psychological while for others this feeling of relief
comes from the beta endorphins released in the brain. Endorphins are
endogenous opioids that are released in response to physical injury, acting as
natural painkillers and inducing pleasant feelings, and in response to self-
harm would act to reduce tension and emotional distress. Many self-harmers
report feeling very little to no pain while self-harming and, for some,
deliberate self-harm may become a means of seeking pleasure.”

~~~
xenadu02
Pathologies are not, in the general case, a rebuttal to an argument about
behavior.

~~~
sukilot
Pathology is just personality when you use a -1 to 1 scale instead of a 0 to 1
scale.

------
ve55
This reminds me a lot of pain related to finance and gambling losses,
underwent by someone being much riskier than they should have been. You can
tell someone about the risks of gambling or very-high risk investing, but in
my experience the best teacher by far is for them to experience pain from
something gone wrong themselves, which is generally them losing a lot of their
hard-earned money, and feeling somewhere between 'terrible' and 'I want to
kill myself'.

It's the one type of reinforcement that hurts badly enough that it can correct
their future actions to be of more reasonable riskiness. A lot of people that
I watch go through the psychological cycle of gambling, whether via casinos,
cryptocurrencies, stock options, etc, will often not stop until they're forced
to by the pain of a terrible loss. It's unfortunate that this is the most
effective method for some things to be taught, but that is part of life.

~~~
ericmcer
I didn’t lose a lot but enough to feel it! Trading options can teach you a
lot, it is one of the few areas where you need to form an opinion, reinforce
it and then have it either affirmed or torn down (at great cost). Sometimes I
wish political, social and economic opinions had to withstand such an
immediate and potentially costly test, would certain teach some people some
things.

~~~
ve55
It definitely took me quite a few lessons to have a good idea what I was doing
there myself. Skin in the game is definitely important, and has become
increasingly less common in society, to the detriment of many systems.

~~~
WalterBright
A big reason free markets work so well is it is an inherently "skin in the
game" setup. This does a better job of weeding out irrational and unproductive
behavior than any other system.

~~~
mettamage
My teacher (organizational psychologist) was warning banks before the 2008
crisis about their bonus culture, precisely because they don’t have enough
skin in the game.

Also, as an employee, I don’t have enough skin either. I could get fired, I
might not be promoted. That’s a whole different level than that one could lose
everything immediately as some entrepreneurs.

------
Reelin
[c-f] nociception -> zero hits

This surprised me. Nociception is the term you will find in the biological
literature because we can't quantify how (for example) a mouse "feels" when
it's tail is dipped in hot water but we can quantify the behavioral response
and use it as a proxy for the underlying biological mechanism.

Once you separate the biological and psychological responses in this manner
the reasoning seems (to me) to become much cleaner.

Without higher level reasoning, nociception just needs to trigger _any_
learning response in order to achieve survival. That's an incredibly open
ended requirement.

In the presence of higher level reasoning then, pain could be viewed as a
secondary effect that in turn triggers some learning response. So if you have
higher level reasoning you don't necessarily need pain, but you probably do
need nociception _plus some other robust downstream response_ for a reliable
organism. (This seems to mostly match up with the observations about useful
nonpainful pain in the article.)

~~~
gwern
"Nociception" is one of those words which assumes its conclusion, and is a
kind of dormitive fallacy. "What _is_ pain?" "Well, it is a behavioral
response to a nociceptive stimuli..."

Talking about nociception may be useful once you have already gone through all
of the anomalies about pain and made a good case for distinguishing between
the different parts and have an implicit taxonomy. But it's not useful for my
essay to just jump straight to a handwavy 'oh, you have "nociception"
(whatever that is) vs motivation as an example of bi-level optimization'. And
once it's all been covered, there's still no particular reason to bring in
that jargon unless I need a quote or something using it, which I haven't so
far.

~~~
Reelin
I'm having trouble seeing it as fallacious and what (I think?) you're
describing there doesn't seem to capture what I was taught nor the usage I'm
accustomed to encountering in the literature.

Rather I see it as splitting along an intuitive boundary - namely a whole host
of low level biological responses (seriously there's a lot) versus higher
level psychological (ie perceptive, conscious, whatever) phenomena. This seems
particularly meaningful to me in part because most low level multicellular
organisms that otherwise lack anything resembling emotion or psychology of any
sort still possess (often highly conserved) analogous pathways.

My understanding is of nociception being a biological phenomenon that can be
measured by proxy via behavior. It's important to note that the behavior
itself isn't the nociception but rather a downstream response to it. That
might sound like nitpicking but it's important because nociceptive responses
can and do occur (and are of clinical significance) in patients who have lost
consciousness. (At absolute minimum it seems weird to me to talk about an
unconscious patient experiencing pain. Surely we benefit from being able to
draw a distinction here?)

So (for example) the mouse tail flick test is a means of quantifying the
nociceptive response which presumably also causes the rodents some mild pain.
In fact it's (presumably) pain that actually results in the behavior that's
measured but we can't quantify it on account of (at minimum) being unable to
meaningfully communicate with them. Compare this to a physician collecting
periodic "pain level" survey responses from a postoperative patient.

Semi-related thought: The term nociception allows avoiding confusing turns of
phrase such as "painful pain" and "nonpainful pain". Surely the apparently
contradictory term "nonpainful pain" should alone be sufficient evidence that
there are important distinctions to be made here (and hence justify the
additional terminology)?

Another semi-related thought: I find things much easier to reason about once
they're "stacked" like this. Otherwise, trying to make sense of nonpainful
pain, or the C. elegans thermal response, or the physiological responses of
unconscious patients is downright confusing to me. Modeling it as "damage ->
nociception (ie sensing) -> pain (ie psychology) -> response (ie behavior)" is
much more intuitive to me. Importantly, it provides a framework for
differentiating between cases that have more or less of a psychological
response involved in mediating any behavioral ones, as well as allowing for
cases that exhibit only physiological responses (ie nothing psychological or
behavioral). (Or perhaps it just helps scientists sleep at night after they
throw a few hundred plates with thousands of C. elegans each into the
autoclave?)

~~~
gwern
> My understanding is of nociception being a biological phenomenon that can be
> measured by proxy via behavior...At absolute minimum it seems weird to me to
> talk about an unconscious patient experiencing pain. Surely we benefit from
> being able to draw a distinction here?

It may be weird, but I think it's very valuable to have a taxonomy which lets
you ask about kinds of pain which are not merely yoked to immediate
verbalizable things. As you say, it _is_ complex.

For example, if you thought 'unconscious pain' is a contradiction in terms,
then what do you make of things like anesthesia awareness or the troubling
long-term PTSD-like symptoms in some people who undergo anesthesia (
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wzj6WkudtrXQFqL8e/inverse-p-...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wzj6WkudtrXQFqL8e/inverse-
p-zombies-the-other-direction-in-the-hard-problem-of) )? That may be
'behavior' but they certainly are not classic indicators of pain. They are not
like dipping a mouse's tail in hot water and observing its movement. They do,
however, despite the lack of qualia, look like learning processes about
avoiding damage.

And why do we apparently have consciously-perceived damage signals which can
in fact motivate behavior (if the person chooses to) without the accompanying
painful qualia, if nociception is merely behavioral effects? When Tanya
decides to react to burning her hand on a stove by moving it away, is she
really experiencing the exact same kind of nociception that you or I
experience when we burn our hand on a stove and move it away? It's the same
behavior, after all.

I'm sure you can extend 'nociception' as a word to cover some but not all of
these cases, but by that point, nociception needs the entire essay as a
preface just to explain what one means by that, which is why I don't use it.
It is a pointer to an entire theoretical & empirical apparatus the reader does
not have. Anyone who already knows all that doesn't need to read the pain
section at all as it's obvious why pain in humans is an example of bi-level
losses.

> Or perhaps it just helps scientists sleep at night after they throw a few
> hundred plates with thousands of C. elegans each into the autoclave?

I think it was Steven Pinker who said he stopped doing animal experiments when
he could no longer convince himself that hitting mice on the head with tiny
hammers to give them brain damage was not the most evil thing he did...

~~~
Reelin
I can't escape the impression that you aren't using the same definition I am
for nociception. I otherwise agree with everything you've said as far as I can
tell.

> And why ... if nociception is merely behavioral effects? ...

This is definitely not consistent with the definition I'm using. Rather, I'm
using nociception to refer to the low level _physiological_ responses to
damage (specifically the set of molecular pathways that are in some way
organized as part of a larger systemic response to said damage).

The term pain can then be assigned to a particular qualia, leaving a few other
phenomena on the levels in between the two. This makes nociception easy to
speak and reason about and helps avoid some of the most confusing or
apparently contradictory situations but otherwise leaves the higher level
stuff (pain, motivation, various other qualia) as difficult to figure out as
before.

In the case of complications related to anesthesia I'd say it's squarely in a
grey area that the classification scheme I'm applying here doesn't handle as
well. That's due partly to the line between physiology and psychology blurring
at times, and partly to the (related) fuzziness of the term unconscious as it
applies to an organism's biology.

Even when you're unconscious, a great deal of your nervous system still has to
be functioning on some level in order to keep you alive. Since psychology
arises from your nervous system, which is in turn made up of innumerable
physiological effects, then it's not inconsistent with the definitions I'm
using that we can observe nociceptive pathways resulting in changes to some of
the higher level systems even if someone was unconscious while they were
active.

> When Tanya decides to react to burning her hand on a stove by moving it
> away, is she really experiencing the exact same kind of nociception that you
> or I experience when we burn our hand on a stove and move it away?

I'd point out that (given the definition I've been using) we don't experience
nociception but rather some higher level qualia that's downstream of it. Not
knowing all that much about her case other than what appears in your article
(ie pain insensitivity) I honestly have no idea. She obviously doesn't
experience what any of us would describe as pain. Beyond that, how can we know
what qualia someone else experiences? If we assume her to be otherwise
identical to us then I suppose it would depend on exactly where in the pathway
that runs from nociception to pain response her genetic abnormality
manifested.

> ... despite the lack of qualia, look like learning processes about avoiding
> damage.

Precisely! As I'm modeling it, useful (evolutionarily) nociceptive pathways
can give rise to avoidance or learning processes _in any way whatsoever_. All
that's required is that their presence increase organism fitness!

In the case of many simpler organisms I suspect there might not be any qualia
or learning whatsoever (and thus no loss function, bi-level or otherwise, on
the level of an individual organism). Rather, nociceptive pathways might
simply trigger some set of immediate, hard coded, higher level responses.
(Consider C. elegans in particular and I think this will make a lot of sense.)

Up organism complexity a bit and you might encounter learning in the form of
something resembling a simple state machine. In other words, employing
nociceptive pathways to form a very basic set of associations between specific
environmental conditions and some sort of danger or avoidance response. This
could allow preemptively avoiding something that caused damage (and thus
lowered fitness) in the past. (This might or might not be bi-level depending
on what other learning pathways, if any, it interacted with.)

Under such a model, it's only when you make it up to incredibly complex
organisms whose behavior is governed (to at least some extent) by higher level
reasoning that you might encounter things we could identify as psychology,
qualia, or pain. This is where bi-level losses seem to become particularly
important and also where things rapidly become incredibly complicated to
model.

That being said, it seems to me that a hardwired avoidance response (ie an
outer loss) is likely only necessary for initial bootstrapping (in the case of
sufficiently well educated humans) or in an organism where higher level
reasoning is present (and thus driving behavior) but not sufficiently
advanced. For example, it seems at least plausible that Tanya might have been
fine if only there were some way to imbue her with a well developed
understanding of the world. Then again, maybe not - it's quite possible that
other internal processes have developed a dependence on the pain response
being present, and so ripping it out without doing any other remodeling might
well result in a "pain sized hole" and a nonviable organism.

------
remote_phone
My cousin feels pain or discomfort but only a little. This almost affected her
when she gave birth because her water had broken but she didn’t feel any
contractions at all until it was almost too late. Luckily she got to the
hospital in time and her son was born perfectly normal but it was a bit
harrowing.

More interestingly, her son inherited this. He doesn’t feel pain the same way
normal people do. Once her son broke his wrist and had to go to the hospital.
He wasn’t in pain, but I think they had to pull on the arm to put it back in
place properly (is this called traction?). The doctor was putting in all his
effort to separate the wrist from the arm, and the dad almost fainted because
it looked so gruesome but all the son looked like was mildly discomforted from
the tension. The doctor was apparently shocked at how little pain he felt.

The son also pulled out all his teeth on his own, as they got loose. He said
it bothered him to have loose teeth, but the act of pulling them out didn’t
bother him at all.

------
DrLindemann
I don't get his point. After all there is no need for a conscious
introspection from evolutionary perspective - not even for pain. There is
observable behaviour driven by events from the "outside" world. That all could
easily be represented by a function of some input. No qualia needed. The truth
behind this is that science has no grip on certain things. And these things
are the central aspects of human experience. So all science can do is
explaining consciousness "away". Like Dennet (among others) does. Magicans
that distract and redirect the focus away from the matter. It could be just an
epiphenomenon.

~~~
Reelin
You seem to be describing p-zombies which (IMO) don't have much overlap with
present day science. Higher level reasoning would appear to increase fitness
in many cases. For whatever reason, our version of it appears to involve
conscious introspection.

As to the point of the article - it's about modeling human learning as a
reinforcement learning problem and thus pain as one of many interacting loss
functions. In particular it's about modeling how these different loss
functions interact with one another to achieve a desirable outcome.

~~~
DrLindemann
I just cannot see why the introspection is needed and to what regard it
extends the functional paradigma.

For the outcome of reaction - there is no introspection needed. The difference
between a pain value and qualia of pain is not clear with regard to the
function of behaviour and evolution.

Qualia is not simply a state. a state can also be modelled with a function.
The examples with people deactivating the "warning prothetics" are no real
explanation. I think a (non conscious but complex)function or set of functions
could simulate human behaviour without introspection or conscious sense.

There is, from evolutionary perspective, no necessity for it. Don't get me
wrong, I appreciate the authors work. I maybe just missed where the magic
begins.

~~~
Reelin
Certainly we lack (to the best of my knowledge) a rigorous model or definition
for terms such as "conscious" and "qualia". That doesn't tell us anything
about whether introspection or consciousness is necessary or not, just that
our understanding is lacking.

The fact that humans seem to have it doesn't say anything about it's necessity
(or lack thereof). It only speaks to it's presence in our particular case.

I would challenge your assertion that "qualia is not simply a state". In the
absence of a rigorous model how are you backing such a claim? Similarly, how
are you justifying your assertion that human behavior could be simulated
without introspection or consciousness? For that matter, how could anyone
justify a claim to the contrary?

It seems to me that (at present) we simply lack the knowledge to meaningfully
reason about generalizations such as introspection or consciousness being
necessary or not.

As to why the author brings qualia in to it - my guess would simply be
"because humans seem to have it". Sure, you could write about bi-level loss
functions from a purely mathematical standpoint. The point (IMO) is to tie
that mathematical model back to a concrete example in the real world in order
to draw inspiration for the design of more capable RL algorithms.

It occurs to me that you might be interested in this recent essay on the
topic. ([https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/01/book-review-origin-
of-...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/01/book-review-origin-of-
consciousness-in-the-breakdown-of-the-bicameral-mind/))

~~~
DrLindemann
> Certainly we lack (to the best of my knowledge) a rigorous model or
> definition for terms such as "conscious" and "qualia". That doesn't tell us
> anything about whether introspection or consciousness is necessary or not,
> just that our understanding is lacking.

Yes. In (theoretical) Computer Science, one of the first things students learn
are the limits of their domain and the limits of mathematics and models in
general. Keywords: Halting problem

In other domains (e.g. biology, psychology etc.) they don't bother with such
meta physics :) They use very primitive models (e.g. game theory) to map very
complex processes. They forget the proverb that all models are wrong, but some
are useful. And if that complexity gap is to big, the models just model
randomness.

Long story short: I doubt it is possible to build a formal model to describe
qualia or introspection.

> The fact that humans seem to have it doesn't say anything > about it's
> necessity (or lack thereof). > It only speaks to it's presence in our
> particular case. > I would challenge your assertion that "qualia is not
> simply a state". > In the absence of a rigorous model how are you backing
> such a claim?

As I said, there is no "connection", no "dependency" to evolutionary
processes. It is decoupled of what we call evolution. I would rather think it
is a property of matter or physics, than one of biology or even cognition.

On the other hand, take the usual examples. A color can be described as a
certain wavelength. You can model that. You can build a machine, that detects
/ "percepts" colors and have an inner state of that "color". What is needed in
addidition, to create, what we (as humans) perveive as colors? Is it a matter
of complexity? Like, if a lot of processes interact and supervise each other,
then there are 3rd level effects, like with magnetism and electricity. And one
of this is a new emerging "force": consciousness.

> Similarly, how are you justifying your assertion that > human behavior could
> be simulated without introspection > or consciousness?

Maybe not in that complexity, but it's possible to simulate agents
artificially in an artificial world. To simulate reality, you need a "super"
reality and more energy than is existing. Modelling is costly. You have to
sacrify through "abstraction". Maybe consciousness is just possible at this
level of immediacy when everything interacts with everything in real time.

> For that matter, how could anyone justify a claim > to the contrary?

If it could model or emulate a certain mental state at any time of a given
person and communicate that state. So that the person could verify it. Like a
weather forecast. It would be a sign in the direction. But of cause a real
"proof" is not possible.

------
owenversteeg
This is great, thank you gwern!

In particular, [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/a-world-
withou...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/a-world-without-pain)
\- this is a fantastic article. I really want to know my own levels of
anandamide now, I wonder how possible it would be to test that as a layman.

------
mwexler
For another POV on pain perception and it’s role in driving decisions and
behavior, Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational book talks about his early
experiences with immense physical pain and his research into the impact of
pain perception. A great book in many ways, this part comes early and is a
small part of the book, but puts a new perspective on some of our cognitive
biases. If you haven’t read it yet, worth the time.

------
donquichotte
Quite interesting article. After graduating from a control-theory-heavy
program, I have started thinking about animal movement as an optimization
problem. A manipulator is moved into a desired position while minimizing the
cost function of pain, in order to avoid damage to the body.

That would fall in the "useful painful pain" category, I guess.

~~~
WalterBright
A lot of animal movement is about minimizing energy usage, not optimizing for
minimal pain.

~~~
donquichotte
Sure, the cost-function can certainly be multi-dimensional.

Energy, pain, maybe even expected value of death (e.g., take energy-intensive
and possibly painful evasive action from a predator) might be dimensions to
take into consideration.

------
downerending
> Lobotomized subjects similarly report feeling intense pain but not minding
> it

I'd sign up for that, actually.

~~~
jacobush
Afterwards you’ll regret it, but you won’t mind it.

~~~
oblongx
This made me laugh out loud, what monster can downvote this?

~~~
downerending
This made me smile. What grumpy Gus can downvote it?

------
forgotmyp77
i think one evolutionary purpose of chronic pain is to remind about the event
which caused it.

for example, every time it rains i'm reminded of all the events which caused
fractures. hopefully that helps with not repeating them.

~~~
qppo
Its intellectually hazardous to anthropomorphize chaos, like ascribing a
purpose to evolution.

~~~
refurb
Yup. It always rubs me wrong when some says "Oh, the organism evolved to
overcome that environmental factor".

It's more accurate to say "The environmental factor selected for a genetic
variation that improved fitness."

~~~
kbenson
I understand that's common nomenclature, but to me "selected" always feel like
it implies intelligence in some manner. I've always preferred saying "the
environmental factor caused evolution" in some manner or something similar.

For example, if feels more natural to me to say "an obstacle in my path may
cause me to go around it", compared to "an obstacle in my path selected for me
to go around it".

I think of evolution as a system than reacts to conditions, similar to a state
machine. It's hard for me to think of those conditions as acting in some way
on a system, but perhaps that's just a failure in my own thinking.

~~~
refurb
I probably didn't do a good job explaining it, but using your obstacle
analogy...

When you say "an object in my path caused me to go around it", you're
switching the cause and effect.

A more accurate way to say it would be "an obstacle on the path meant that
only a handful of the population can go around it".

The change that allows you to go around the obstacle was not caused by the
obstacle, it would have happened regardless. However, the change is only
important if the obstacle is there - that's what drives evolution (selection).

~~~
kbenson
> However, the change is only important if the obstacle is there - that's what
> drives evolution (selection).

I understand what's being said, it's the "selects" that triggers the problem
for me.

I think of evolution as a system. Inputs cause the system to act in a certain
way, but it's the system responding to the inputs, not the inputs choosing to
get a specific output (which is what it sounds like to me to say A selects for
B).

In the same way with orbital mechanics I wouldn't say a one object selected
for a change in trajectory in the other. I would say one caused the change in
the other, or more specifically, due to the how orbital mechanics work (the
"system", the law of gravity), one object caused a change in the trajectory of
the other.

So I guess my question is, why does evolution prefer the "selects"
terminology? Is that common in any other sciences?

~~~
Reelin
> why does evolution prefer the "selects" terminology? Is that common in any
> other sciences?

I think this is due to set theory and statistics. Terminology such as "select
x such that" is standard. In fact a choice function is commonly referred to as
a selector. Since evolution is essentially a biased random walk, you can
describe it as a stochastic choice function (plus some other stuff) applied to
the set of entities that makes up a population.

(If "selects" bothers you, what do you make of quantum mechanical "observers"?
I witnessed that one cause lots of misconceptions among university and even a
few graduate students.)

------
082349872349872
Fools learn from experience. The wise learn from _others '_ experience.

(even knowing this, I am usually a fool. Also, could someone please tl;dr
"inner vs outer losses" for me? advthanksance)

Edit: am I properly interpreting "pain as grounding" to be somewhat parallel
to the I term of a PID controller?

~~~
gwern
The problem with learning from others' experience is... where does this
learning process come from?

Learning from watching others is actually quite difficult. As Terence said,
"when two do the same, it's not the same." No set of pixel observations will
be identical. How do you map a third-person view to your own first-person
view? You need sophisticated algorithms before 'learning from others'
experience' is even an option. We struggle to get robots to learn from
imitation. Human children routinely 'over-imitate' because they can't
distinguish what part of a sequence of actions is necessary and what parts are
optional or can be sloppier and still achieve the goal. Indeed, how do you
even know what the 'goal' was? People differ greatly in abilities,
preferences, and knowledge, so you would seem to require theory of mind just
to begin. (I'm reminded of a point about kittens I saw argued: cats can't
learn from observations, and instead, when a kitten 'imitates' their mother,
they are actually simply becoming interested in the same object or place, and
then independently inventing, by the usual cat trial and error, whatever
useful behavior it was.)

~~~
082349872349872
I currently believe the third-person view comes before the first-person view.
There's a substantial evolutionary pressure to be able to predict one's
predator or prey; even quite limited theories of mind come in handy there.
Consciousness, however, isn't required — I'll argue that the first-person view
is an accident: once we have a system that is suitable for modelling others,
it makes sense that the creature we have the most substantial data stream on
is ourselves, so we model that as well.

This way around might explain why our self-awareness sometimes fails to be
optimal.

For how little theory of mind it takes to play antagonistic games, see
Shannon's 1953 mind reading machine:
[https://this1that1whatever.com/miscellany/mind-
reader/Shanno...](https://this1that1whatever.com/miscellany/mind-
reader/Shannon-Mind-Reading.pdf)

(or try to play fetch with a dog, mixing two types of throws, and see how
quickly it learns your tells)

------
dntbnmpls
> and in other ways the manifestations of lobotomy and morphine are similar
> enough to lead some researchers to describe the action of morphine (and some
> barbiturates) as ‘reversible pharmacological leucotomy [lobotomy]’.

Interesting. Wonder if they did brain scans on people taking morphine to see
if the same areas were affected. If so, couldn't we narrow "mindfulness of
pain" to that section of the brain?

