Would the pleasure be worth this price?

nope

No thanks. I’ve hit a ten on the pain scale. Won’t be doing that again willingly.

I think I speak for those of us who have experienced great physical pain that its absence is great physical pleasure. I, who have experienced both greatly, am content with the middle ground.

Nope.

I would say no to the offer.

Extremes are forgotten quickly, whether bad or good. They are ephemeral by nature, or they would not be extremes.

A good even keel normal is what I want.

No thanks! Prolonged extremes dull the senses, and even one hour of intense pleasure sounds painful to me. I’m happy in the middle.

No, nein, non, nyet.

The responses so far are perfectly in line with psychological research that’s been done along these lines. Prospective pain counts for more than prospective pleasure in human decision making.

But when you take it out of the speculative realm and examine the actual experience, it’s the order of the experience that matters. The last experience is what really counts. Knowing this, I should say that yes, I’ll take the deal if I can choose the pleasurable experience last; but I couldn’t actually bring myself to make that decision, since my decision making process is strongly biased against pain.

@thorninmud No way, José.

I don’t care what order you do them in, pain lasts. Psychologically, pain lasts. Nightmares, fear of ever doing anything that could cause that pain again… that’s why a kid only has to touch a hot pan once, or stick a knife in an electrical socket once. Pleasure makes you seek out experiences again, and having received the penultimate pleasurable experience, you’d be left with a longing to experience it again which can not be achieved. That’s another level of pain, in a sense.

Would it be the average person’s concept of extreme pain or my concept of extreme pain? I have a really high pain threshold. And I love pleasure. I’d give it a shot.

I think I’m with @Adirondackwannabe, I’d probably give it a shot.

Notice the response to extreme pleasure and extreme pain are practically identical.

@KNOWITALL You realize they’re going to think we’re nuts?

I’ve experienced chronic pain that consumed my life 24 hours a day, and I’ve experienced acute pain that literally knocked me off my feet. Currently, I often reflect how wonderful it is to be pain free. So, no thanks.

I disagree with your hypothesis that these results show that prospective pain counts for more than pleasure. The duration of both is the same… so how can you come to that conclusion? It appears a wash for me (1 hour of each).

Perhaps a better question is “what duration of immense pain would be worth experiencing 1 hour of immense pleasure?”

@Adirondackwannabe They already think I’m a lunatic, I believe in God remember?! HA! The Pleasure Seekers!!

@Seek_Kolinahr and @Cupcake I’ll certainly admit that it’s counter-intuitive, which is why I couldn’t bring myself to base a decision on it. In psychology, it’s called the “peak-end rule”. It states that in retrospectively evaluating experience, what sticks with you are the peaks (i.e. maximum intensity trumps duration) and the end (the ending outweighs precedence). Since this question supposes that the peaks are equal, then order would be the determining factor.

The issue here is that in thinking about whether to take the deal the question offers, you have to look forward. The psychological mechanism for anticipation is different for that involved in retrospection. Here’s a paper on how dread looms larger than pleasurable anticipation.

Exactly. The lingering effects.

The experience that sticks with me was an extreme haemorrhage after I gave birth to my son.

In retrospect, I could have taken the doctor’s advice an had a C-section, and avoided the whole mess. But I was already anticipating lasting pain from the surgery, and convinced that my body would be able to handle an extended labor. It wasn’t, apparently. The pain I experienced is enough to let me know I will never plan to give birth to another child. I love my son and I love children, but I also love not being in pain. I do NOT love the recurring nightmares of bleeding half to death in a hospital when my husband is scared and my midwife was out of town and none of the nurses knew what to do and where was my baby anyway?

Seems like a complete non starter anyway, why get a rush of pleasure when a payback is part of the deal? Total waste of time & energy even contemplating it.

@ucme Always take the bad first, then you’re last thought is on the pleasure..lol, that’s my theory.

It sounds like giving birth to me… only the relentless pain lasts for hours and hours and the sheer bliss lasts for a couple of minutes.

I’ll do it again. hopefully in 9 months

@KNOWITALL Here’s my theory, take the bad out of the equation all together, gimme a double dose of pleasure please…err, that’s not a request by the way :)

“It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again…”
.

No. Anyone experiencing an hour of severe, scale-10 pain would gladly sacrifice all of life’s pleasures just to make the suffering end.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Fuck no. I read stuff about people who were severely tortured with the intent of death. Some of these people got lucky and, after all, didn’t get killed. Things were halted, they were rescued, whatever. But immense amounts of prolonged pain caused them severe depression and emotional trauma in the rest of their short lives, in which they eventually committed suicide. Fuck that.

I’ve got a very low pain threshold, so no, I’ll give it a miss.

I avoid pain as much as possible, so no thank you.

I don’t know, I hate and am terrified of pain. On the other hand, the worst part of pain for me is the paranoia that my body is being damaged by whatever is causing the pain. If I can know that that isn’t happening, I won’t be as afraid.

Both the pain and pleasure would be an interesting experience, so maybe. I have a very high pain threshold. I’ve passed kidney stones and didn’t find it traumatic. But I suspect pain has the potential to get much worse than that.

But consider this – what if regularly achievable pleasure never measured up again after the experience?

I find that all of the bad experiences I have had, while I hated having them at the time, I was usually glad in hindsight because of the emotional growth I experienced.

David Benatar, author of the book Better Never to Have Been, writes about what I’d asked here in making his case for antinatalism. One of the major tenets for the ideology behind his book is that humans’ dread of pain will always win out over the lust for pleasure. This logic is followed by the fact that for most humans, even among the most privileged and happiest, their lives will be filled with more pain than pleasure by default.

Personally I’m happy with a fine medium, so I’d answer no here to my own question. Extreme pain does cause long lasting psychological effects, and I would never want to be addicted to acquiring that level of pleasure anyways by whatever means.

@Paradox25 But the pleasures are what make life worth living!! Plus in the scenario you gave us, it’s only an hour’s worth of both. I’ve endured an hour’s worth of intense pain in real life, so it’s do-able.

@KNOWITALL It’s a very deep book, and he counters that notion with some powerful counterarguments, but I don’t want to get too far off track here. Personally for me I’m really not so sure that some of the most pleasant experiences in my life really were worth the pain I went through to experience brief ‘bliss’. I can respect your answer and see your point though, considering that it’s an hour of each sensation (kind of offsetting).

@Paradox25 I’m going to write that down and check it out, thanks!

I have memories of a few pleasurable hours that will get me through my old age smiling hopefully!

I’m not sure I’d recommend the book if you don’t want to be depressed, and I think that what qualifies as a positive or negative experience is very subjective. Also, many of these gloom and doom philosophers believe that this ‘life’ is the end and tend to have a reductionist view of the Universe. However I don’t, so that too changes my outlook of this topic when compared to Benatar. The book is a good mind#$!% and conversation piece though.

Eh, I don’t depress easily and heck, I’m on fluther, of course I love mind*&ks. :)