
Researchers Teaching Robots to Feel and React to Pain - kiyanwang
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/researchers-teaching-robots-to-feel-and-react-to-pain
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ThrustVectoring
Do note that while feeling pain is generally a bad thing, being able to feel
pain is an amazingly useful ability for people to have. The entire point of
pain is to provide rapid feedback when things happen that harm the body, so
that the decision-making algorithm can do things to prevent further and/or
future damage. Without being able to feel pain, people can do things like
forget to use a utensil to retrieve eggs from boiling water.

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partycoder
Technically it is just another sensor/actuator loop. While the high level
concept is the same, it's not that they "feel" pain just the way we do.

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TeMPOraL
If you want a robot to "feel" the pain like we do, you'll have to code things
like:

\- low-level reactions that get triggered by pain and override high-level
directions

\- the pain cannot be filtered out and constantly consumes computational
resources

\- enough of pain overwhelms the high-level processing completely

And now, if the "high-level" processing gets advanced enough (i.e. AI-like),
you could say that the robots do feel pain.

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hosh
No, that's not accurate. There are ways for humans to still maintain high-
level directions with pain. There are ways to mentally block it out -- though
that is not very effective. The "constantly consuming computational resources"
has more to do with _suffering_ than with pain.

For a practical application, see: [https://www.quora.com/What-psychological-
tricks-and-hacks-ar...](https://www.quora.com/What-psychological-tricks-and-
hacks-are-useful-to-know/answer/Barnard-Law-Collier)

Although humans tend to conflate pain with suffering, they are not the same
thing.

~~~
LionessLover
> There are ways for humans to still maintain high-level directions with pain.

You have not experienced severe pain yet. I want to see you with acute severe
kidney pain from stones.

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hosh
@LionessLover, to your point, it is true that without training, this will
suck. I'm not one of those Sufi sages who can stay centered while being
tortured by Islamic fundamentalists, or one of those Buddhist monks that set
themselves on fire, meditating while they die, as a form of political protest.

Your response, "I want to see you with X pain" is a very common response I
have gotten over the years talking and working with people through their
suffering. When I have brought up what I have, I tend to get this response.
Embedded is the story, "there is no possible way you can understand my pain or
suffering."

Pain can be localized, and it is relative, but dukkha is non-local. For any
given person, dukkha (suffering) is going to be the most intense form of
dukkha. People can compare pain, but people cannot really compare suffering.
What is the suffering of acute, severe kidney pain compared to say,
childbirth? Dying of cancer? Seeing your family mutaliated and dead from war?
Being raped? Being tortured? The conclusion I came to is that dukkha --
suffering, existential anguish -- is non-local, and _cannot_ be trivialized
(someone who stubs a toe might be in less pain than someone who has acute
kidney pain from passing stones, but suffering is suffering), yet at the same
time, the relief from suffering also comes from seeing suffering for what it
is, clearly. This "clear seeing" is called vipassana. It is this clear seeing
that is the real gem of being precisely aware of your pain.

And just as importantly: relief of pain is not the same as relief of
suffering.

Lastly, this just past by my way. It is about the link between interoception
(the perception and sensitivity to minute changes of state within the body)
and resilience: [http://www.bodyinmind.org/interoception-
resilience/](http://www.bodyinmind.org/interoception-resilience/)

Whatever suffering you have, or are going through, I hope you find what you
are looking for.

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hosh
There is a difference between pain and suffering, and as humans, we tend to
conflate the two. Usually, when we see someone in pain, we tend to
automatically think that person is suffering, and we ourselves suffer in a
kind of emotional contagion effect. (Sociopaths notwithstanding).

This is going to open up some interesting things, and I think really help our
human civilization to understand more about ourselves: what it means to be
empathic; what really is pain and suffering. For creationists, it brings up a
very interesting (as in, uncomfortable) question: why was pain created in the
first place?

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andrewclunn
Will autonomous robots than can "feel pain" (even merely emulated) be easier
or harder to control? I could see arguments either way.

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AnimalMuppet
> "Pain will help with our maintenance costs", you said. You said. You didn't
> mention how much it would HURT.

From the wonderful web comic "Schlock Mercenary",
[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-11-14](http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-11-14)

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bobisme
This is the moment that our robot overlords will point back to in order to
justify their cruel reign.

