As an individual doing research on suffering, I have long been nurturing the idea of a Center for the Study and Control of Suffering. Can it become a reality? I hope Effective Altruism can help answer this question.
You might ask: What exactly would do such a Center? What would be its benefits? My answer can be summed up in three points. In a fourth point, I'll say a few words in the context of the ITN framework.
1- Millions of dollars for a Theoretical and Practical Discipline
Shouldn't there be an academic discipline specifically dedicated to the phenomenon of suffering?
A discipline would provide a powerful body of theoretical and practical knowledge about suffering, its various kinds, its numerous causes, its different degrees of prevalence or urgency, the various ways to handle it, the people and organizations concerned with these matters, etc.
It would provide the terminology, classification, metrology (measurement, monitoring), methodology, bibliography (documentation, information, referral), and general synthesis that are to be used by people wanting to rationally address the problem of suffering.
It would enable organizations and individuals working on suffering across a wide variety of fields to collaborate much more effectively. Right now, our alleviation efforts are plateauing: we need to go much further to make progress on a global scale. In addition to philanthropic, ethical, political or ideological approaches, we need to adopt a new techno-scientific disciplinary approach that deals specifically and comprehensively with the phenomenon of suffering “as such”.
Benefits would be felt in all major spheres of human activity such as healthcare, social affairs, economy, politics, religion, law, art, literature, philosophy, ethics, news media, environmental studies, education, science, history, war, crime, work, sport, interpersonal relationships, personal life, etc.
Benefits would also be felt in more specialized fields such as medicine, social service, social security, insurance, economic development aid, human rights protection, animal welfare, judicial punishment, disaster relief, certain parts of the biological or psychological or social sciences, Buddhism, Effective Altruism, the United Nations system, etc.
2- Billions of dollars to Implement the Systematically Designed Set of Interventions Required
In practice, it's hard to say what the Center will do until we know exactly what results can reach its large teams of theorists and practitioners, with the help, presumably, of artificial intelligence.
Specific practical actions can only be imagined today, but they would certainly revolutionize the way we deal with suffering.
For example, as a result of a multi-million dollar research program on the social, political, and cultural determinants of suffering, the Center might suggest that governmental and intergovernmental organizations adopt a regulation that will produce various economic, health, environmental, and peace-making benefits thanks to the implementation of (such and such) measures that would prevent millions of occurrences of excessive suffering.
For another example, a research program on the psycho-neural nature of suffering and its technical control through sophisticated high-tech tools might allow the introduction of a gene modification that would cut down billions of occurrences of excessive suffering.
3- A Chance to Change the World
Like other natural phenomena, excessive suffering could be mastered to a large extent by a game-changing professional initiative specifically dedicated to dealing with it comprehensively and systematically.
Sentient life on our planet would move from a historically high level of excessive suffering to an incomparably more tolerable level.
The global alleviation of suffering is in itself an emergency, of course. In addition, because suffering begets suffering, global alleviation would also have the extremely important side benefit of fostering a future that would take us toward happiness and progress, rather than toward the negativity-fueled catastrophic global risks that threaten us.
Our extinction is not the least of these risks: it must be stressed that a foremost reason for preserving humanity’s future is that we are the only species we know that has the potential to control the excessive suffering that has been plaguing our world for millions of years.
4- Effectively tackling global suffering is for altruists a task that is, I might argue, important, tractable and neglected.
IMPORTANT: most Effective Altruists agree on this.
TRACTABLE: many say it's not, but wouldn't they reconsider their opinion if presented with a workable solution? A good enough solution might be, for instance,
- ...to provide a proposal about a World Center for the Study and Control of Suffering that is good enough…
- …to inspire the author(s) who can elaborate a first small version of the Center that is interesting enough…
- …to attract the high-level manager(s) or promoter(s) who can present a development project convincingly enough…
- …to involve the high-level funder(s) who can invest enough…
- …to pay for the workforce, facilities, and equipment sophisticated enough…
- …to operate departments for research and interventions powerful enough…
- …to realize the best possible control of excessive suffering in the world.
NEGLECTED: very few, if any, realize that this task is completely neglected. The fact is that no one, at present, is tackling suffering with a truly global, suffering-specific approach.
So, what do you think?
I wish you great success in the idea you are putting forward to create this center and commend the inspiring vision behind it. It is clear from your biography (which I just learned from the link to your bio) that you have dedicated your life to reducing suffering—something truly remarkable.
I would just like to highlight a key point regarding the assertion that there is a lack of “standardized metrics for measuring and comparing different types of suffering.” I believe you will be glad to know that the Welfare Footprint Framework provides a universal methodology for quantifying affective states, including both pain and pleasure, in a biologically meaningful way. Specifically for suffering, this framework incorporates the Cumulative Pain Metric, which is expressed in units of time spent in varying intensities of negative affective states. This metric allows for direct comparison of different sources of suffering across conditions and interventions.
The notation tool of the Pain-Track enables detailed analysis of the temporal dynamics of suffering, grounded in evidence from diverse fields such as physiology, neurology, pharmacology, behavioral science, and evolutionary biology.
These standardized tools and metrics not only make suffering more measurable but also facilitate informed decision-making and comparisons across a wide range of contexts. For example, the Welfare Footprint Framework has been applied to quantify welfare impacts in animal production systems, guiding policy decisions and reforms. For more details, please visit www.welfarefootprint.org.
Thank you Wladimir, I just saw your comment -- for some reason, I don't get notification from EAF.
I listed the Welfare Footprint Project some time ago in https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OTCQlWE-GkY_V4V-OfJAr7Q-vJyIR8ZATpeMrLkmlAo/edit?usp=sharing
Your work is amazing! I hope our efforts meet someday. Beyond the WF Framework, I am especially interested in the Pain Atlas Project and the Neurophilosopher GPT Tool. I would like also to discuss your definitions concerning pain and suffering. And, of course, I wholeheartedly share your vision, when you say: "Ultimately, we would like to help transform the understanding of animal and human suffering, shifting it from an abstract concept to a scientifically measurable and extensively mapped phenomenon across all sentient beings."
My current work is to develop a means of establishing more fruitful relationships between all our various specialties that deal with suffering. My latest idea is expressed in a question I posted two days ago on the Forum: "What About Creating an App That Would Answer Any Question Related to Suffering?" https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z5KgLod4hin9TDtWQ/what-about-creating-an-app-that-would-answer-any-question
Let's keep up the good work!
Hi Robert,
I really appreciate your kind words. I’d be happy to discuss the topics you’re interested in—whether in a web meeting or through ongoing message exchanges here, whichever you prefer.
Your idea of an app addressing all suffering-related questions is excellent. We hope that the results from the Pain Atlas Project can serve as a valuable source of information for such an initiative. We continue working on this project—let’s see where it leads us.
Thanks again, Wladimir.
What you do about animal suffering is already taken into account in our efforts concerning quantification at the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering, and I hope that more of it will soon figure in the chapter Suffering-Focused Animal-Centered Initiatives within the World Center for the Control of Excessive Suffering. Incidentally, I recently came across https://www.ixo.world/ and I wonder if this impact-focused organization could be relevant when you say "the Welfare Footprint Framework has been applied to quantify welfare impacts in animal production systems, guiding policy decisions and reforms."
As to Creating an AI App to Answer Questions About Suffering, I ask everyone to let me know if, by chance, anyone around them might be interested in contributing to the very early stages of this project.
I wish I had time to discuss definitions of pain and suffering, but it seems that all I can say for now is that all those who want to study pain or suffering scientifically should collectively adopt a new technical term for referring to all unpleasant feelings.
Best regards.
Thank you very much Robert for all the links and sources—I really appreciate it. It’s great to hear that our work on animal suffering is being considered within your quantification efforts at the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering and the World Center for the Control of Excessive Suffering.
Regarding the definition of pain, we have actually proposed one, and it has been operationally useful. We designed it to be as universal as possible while explicitly addressing the need for special attention to higher manifestations of pain:
”Pain is a conscious experience, evolved to elicit corrective behavior in response to actual or imminent damage to an organism’s survival and/or reproduction. Still, some manifestations, such as neuropathic pain, can be maladaptive. It is affectively and cognitively processed as an adverse and dynamic sensation that can vary in intensity, duration, texture, spatial specificity, and anatomical location. Pain is characterized as ‘physical’ when primarily triggered by pain receptors and as ‘psychological’ when triggered by memory and primary emotional systems. Depending on its intensity and duration, pain can override other adaptive instincts and motivational drives and lead to severe suffering”
Agree/support with the idea/a lot of these points, and also 4 particularly; for "1. Shouldn't there be an academic discipline specifically dedicated to the phenomenon of suffering?" I have been thinking how exactly economic disparity contribute to suffering risks, and if this is one reliable causal reason for systematic crime
Thanks for your comment.
The economy is certainly one of the key areas of our societies where much of the risk of suffering and crime is played out. Disparity might not be a problem in itself, but when people are denied the essentials to survive decently, it is clear that the resulting suffering may be a cause of systematic crime. How exactly? I suppose economists have looked at this question over the last two or three centuries, but... while many professionals in various fields (healthcare, economics, ethics, law, etc. ) are motivated by the alleviation of suffering at the start of their career, none so far have been able to keep the phenomenon of suffering at the forefront of their concerns, because their profession necessarily deals first and foremost with its own specific object (health/illness, wealth/poverty, the good/the bad, the right/crime, etc. ) rather than with suffering as such: a specifically dedicated discipline would be a game-changer.
Young Effective Altruists would do well to consider a career in this new discipline, which awaits its illustrious pioneers.