Marvin Minsky "The Emotion Machine": Chapter 3 "Suffering, pain, grief"

The father of artificial intelligence is thinking about how to make a machine that would be proud of us . Marvin Minsky was a rather tough scientist and the fact that he explored the theme of feelings and emotions with his “scalpel of knowledge”, which makes us human, is quite interesting and useful. The book is an excellent example of how to use the “ITish approach” to try to comprehend the “human”: values, ideals, love, pain, common sense.

§3-3 Feelings, Pain and Suffering

“When he began to think about it, a sharp injection of pain pierced him like a knife, and made every fiber of his nature quiver. His eyes were as deep as amethyst, and through them came a slight haze of tears. It seemed to him that his heart was touched by an icy hand.
- Oscar Wilde in the book "Portrait of Dorian Gray."

We have many words that express types of pain — for example, burning, throbbing, shooting, gnawing, burning, annoying, and so on. But words never encompass all those sensations that give us a certain feeling, so we have to resort to analogies that try to describe what each particular feeling looks like; These words are, for example, "knife" or "ice hand", or the image of a suffering person. Dorian Gray did not feel physical pain, but he was horrified that he was getting old - scary, wrinkled, and worst of all, having lost the golden color of his hair.

What makes pain so difficult to describe? This is because feelings are too simple and basic, and because of this, nothing more can be said about them? No, everything is exactly the opposite; Chapter 9 will state that feelings are quite complex processes, but since we have so few ideas about how feelings work, we can describe their effects only using familiar analogies.

I am so something that I can't remember what it's called
- Myles Styles (5 years old)

For example, I heard that suffering was compared with a balloon that expands in your mind until there is no place for your ordinary thoughts in it. Then you can feel that you have lost your “freedom of choice” and that your mental state has become the same as that of the prisoner.
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In any case, this fact raises the question of what differences we make between such things as pain, discomfort, and suffering. Sometimes these terms seem interchangeable, sometimes they denote different degrees of pain, and sometimes we use them to designate completely different phenomena. The next few sections will try to use different words to determine the mental state of the victims, soon after receiving any injury. We will use the designation "pain" only for those sensations that come immediately when we get injured. We will also use the phrase “sensation of pain” to describe all the sensations that come after injury and will be used to describe the early effects of pain. Finally, we will use the term “suffering” to define states when we become involved in large cascades of pain.

Critic: Even if your theory is correct - that suffering is a big cascade of interruptions - why can't all the involved machinery work without making people feel extremely uncomfortable?

Our theory suggests that these two things cannot be separated, because when we talk about “discomfort” we largely refer to violations of the ordinary course of our thoughts! In fact, pain would not fulfill its functions, which it developed during evolution, if our thought processes continued to function in the face of painful stimuli, because if we continued to pursue our goals and did not try to avoid the sources of pain that appeared, we would continued to do their work, even if our body was torn to pieces. [Cm. §§Zombie Machines.]

Philosopher: Don't you think that something is missing in this explanation? You describe the mental states and some of the mechanisms that can trigger them. But you did not give the slightest hint at why these conditions should give rise to feelings - or some basic sense of being or experiencing the moment.

Terms such as “basic” or “experience” only hide our lack of understanding of the processes that underlie these terms. For example, when you "see" your own hand, you seem to know that it is your hand without making any intermediate steps to understand that it is really your hand - but this happens only because you have an extremely small idea of ​​the system that produces these intermediate steps.

So it should be with our understanding of the senses. When they seem to us "basic" or "direct", it simply reflects our lack of knowledge of how we recognize different types of mental events.

What do we mean when we talk about feelings? What do we mean by the words “I feel good”, “I am confused”, “I am excited”, or “Now I feel that I am making progress”. You feel satisfied when you reach your goal - but this feeling can also be mixed with a feeling of regret, because you need to find something else to do. And sometimes success makes you feel surprised - which could lead to the question of what led to success, or why you did not expect this development of events. It is clear that such a feeling should be the result of reflexive attempts to describe your state.

For when you ask yourself “How I feel (or What I feel)”, it prompts you to describe your present state - and, of course, it’s quite difficult to answer such questions, because each such attempt will affect the entire system, which will try to make a detailed description of the processes that occur with you. Then, it may force you (unconsciously) to switch to another view of yourself - and this action will make it difficult for you to track changes in your mind “in real time”.

This suggests that what we call “feelings” are attempts (undertaken by different parts of our mind) to describe the large-scale aspects of our mental state. However, these states are usually so difficult to interpret that the best thing we can do is recognize them, and then try to say what they are "similar." It is this process that makes feelings difficult to explain: feelings are difficult to describe, not because feelings are basic and impossible to describe, but because each of the feelings is so complex that any compact description of them can cover only a small part of the sensed feeling. This problem will often appear in this book, and chapter 9 will try to summarize it.

§3-4. Overriding pain

Sonya: “To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, you must stop loving. But then the man suffers from a lack of love. Thus, to love is to suffer, and to suffer is to suffer. To be happy you need to love. Thus, to be happy is to suffer, but suffering makes a person unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, you need to love, or you need to love to suffer, or you need to suffer from a lot of happiness. ”
- Woody Allen in Love and Death.

Some effects of pain are so transient that they end before you have “time to think about them.” If Joan had touched something hot, she might have pulled her hand back before she noticed. But when pain comes from Joan's knee, her reflexes cannot relieve her of this pain, and therefore she would follow Joan everywhere and would not let her think of anything other than pain. Persistent pain can distract us so much that it will interfere with any attempt to avoid this pain. In this case, we are prisoners in a vicious circle. When pain starts to work very well - namely, to focus on some kind of injury, you may need some way to eliminate the pain in order to regain control of the rest of your mind.

If Joan urgently wants to cross the room, she is more likely to be able to do this “despite the pain” - risking additional injury - how often does it happen with runners and wrestlers. Professional boxers and football players are trained to hold back punches that can damage their brains. In that case, how can they not notice the effects of pain?

“At about the same time, G. Gordon Liddy began to master new exercises in training willpower. He burned his left hand with cigarettes, then with matches and candles to overcome the pain. ... Years later, Liddy assured Sherry Stevens that he would never reveal all the secrets that were entrusted to him. He asked her to light a lighter. Liddy put his hand under fire and held it until it smelled like burnt flesh, which caused Stevens to put out the flames. ”
- Larry Taylor

Each of us knows the tricks to overcome the pain, and we evaluate some of them as praiseworthy, and others - as deserving disapproval. Evaluation of these methods depends, first of all, on the culture in which we were brought up.

Another way to cope with pain is to distract yourself: when a certain part of the body hurts, it sometimes helps to rub or pinch the place of pain, or bring even more pain elsewhere in your body. But why does the second annoyance replace the first, instead of making you feel even worse? And why do drugs like opiates have a specific effect on how we feel pain? Researchers have proposed various theories explaining these effects, but they are still incomplete. The simplest explanation is that when we experience numerous irritations, it becomes extremely difficult for the brain to choose which pain to focus on, and in some way this makes it difficult for a large cascade of pain to grow, instead of several.

Usually, when you start to focus on the pain itself - this makes it more intense, which, in turn, strengthens your goals to get rid of it.

If you engage your mind in another activity that annoys you, then the pain may seem less severe. We all heard jokes about wounded soldiers who continued to fight without even noticing the pain - and only after a defeated or lost battle did they begin to feel something. Thus, the goal to survive or save a comrade may be able to dominate all other sensations. At a smaller level, when you feel a little pain, you may be too busy to feel it at all. In this case, the pain can still “be in your body,” but it will not worry you much. In this way, you may not notice that you have begun to fall asleep until you feel that you have begun to yawn, and your friends may notice this much earlier than you. (In my own experience, the first awareness of fatigue usually occurs when you begin to notice certain types of grammatical errors)

Shakespeare reminds us (in “King Lear”) that suffering loves company: no matter how bad we feel, it becomes much more comfortable for us when we realize that the same things can happen to others.

Who sees how others are oppressed,
His misfortune will soon suffer.
One you suffer - it seems to you:
All died, fate with you in the fight,
But it is easier to endure the suffering
When trouble comes to friends.
Now neither shame nor pain is hard for me
When under the grief the king was exhausted.

Many other processes can also change how pain affects our behavior.

Aaron Sloman: “Some mental states include dispositions that manifest themselves in certain contexts in behavior, and if the corresponding reaction does not occur, then he needs to explain why he behaves this way (for example, a person suffering from pain does not swing his arms and does not show pain, or does not take any steps to reduce it). The explanation may be that he joined a religious cult that accepts the position of the Stoics, or he wants to impress a girl and the like. ”
- comp.ai.philosophy, 20/7/96.

This knowledge can be used to relieve pain in people.

“The degree of awareness of one's own pain can vary from denying its presence to full concern for it, and the reasons for fixing on pain can also vary. The pain itself can become the center of sensation and identification of oneself, or, perhaps, can be considered only as an addition to the personality. Some of the most influential characteristics that affect the perception of pain symptoms and the degree of attention to pain are the values ​​that attribute personality to disease symptoms. ”

Finally, in chapter 9 we discuss the apparent paradox that applies to the ordinary expression: “There is no victory without pain” (This is the closest expression to the meaning, in the context of the chapter in the original: “No pain, no gain”). There are many ordinary activities, for example, in sports, or strength training, in which a person tries to do something beyond their capabilities - and where, when experiencing greater pain, you get greater results.

Long and Chronic Pain

When the damaged joint swells up and starts to hurt, and the slightest touch causes fiery pain, we do not accidentally say that the damaged area is “burning”. What could be the use of this information when the damage has already happened? First, it can lead to the protection of the affected area; thus helping the wound recover; then this wound can make you feel sick and weak, which helps you to stop and get distracted by the source of the pain. Thus, pain can promote healing.

But it is quite difficult to justify the terrible consequences of pain that is chronic and never stops. Because of this, we begin to wonder: “What did I do to deserve this?”. Then, if we can find a way to justify punishment, it can alleviate our suffering and learn from this a lesson: “Now I understand what I'm suffering for!”.

Most victims of chronic pain do not see any way out of the situation, and find that they have lost a lot in their lives - but some others find that suffering is an incentive or an opportunity to show what people are capable of, or even begin to help in updating or “cleaning "Your identity.

FM Lewis: “Becoming an invalid can be a blow to a person’s self-esteem. However, some patients view this pain as an elevation in status that involves taking care and guardianship from other people. It was found that the ability to betray the meaning of the disease or symptoms increases the ability of some patients to control themselves and solve the problem or crisis facing them. ”

Thus, some victims find ways to adapt to chronic intractable pain. They develop new ways of thinking that allow them to think and build their lives around these methods. Let's read how Oscar Wilde describes how he dealt with the inevitable misfortune:

“Morality doesn't help me. I am one of those who are oriented towards exceptions, not laws. Religion doesn't help me. The faith that others bestow on something invisible I give to that which can be touched and seen. The reasons do not help me. They tell me that the laws I follow and the system I operate on are incorrect and incomplete. But, somehow, I have to make all these things fair and true specifically for me. I have to use everything that happens to me for the good of me. Hard and flat bed, disgusting food, hard ropes, harsh orders, terrible clothes that make you look grotesque, silence, loneliness, shame - I have to turn this thing into my spiritual experience. There is not a single action that would not damage my body, and could not be used as an experience for the soul spiritualization "

Recent pain relief studies have shown new techniques that have been used to evaluate different levels of pain, and then techniques for successful pain treatment. We now have drugs that can suppress even the most powerful effects of pain, but many people still cannot find relief from their pain, no matter what mental methods or medications they use. It seems fair to complain that evolution has not succeeded in alleviating such pain — and this upsets the theologians: how to justify a world in which people have to suffer so much? What functions should perform this kind of suffering? How could evolution have come to perfectly protect our bodies, but to make the mind suffer?

One of the answers is that the bad consequences of chronic pain were never washed away by evolution and the so-called “program error” was committed. Perhaps our ancient ways of reacting to pain are simply not compatible with reflexive thoughts and far-sighted plans, the evaluation and calculation of which have developed in our brain only recently.

The cascades that we call “suffering” should have evolved from earlier reactions that helped us reduce the harm from injuries, creating our priority goal of getting rid of pain, pushing everything else to the background. The resulting pain interrupted all our thoughts, which played a small role in our life, of course, before we developed modern intelligence. Evolution can never assume what will develop in the future, so they never prepared for the development of our intellect.

Grief

I can not cry: all the moisture of the body
The fire in the hearth will not flood;
Do not relieve the burden of the heart with speeches.
After all, the very breath of my words
In the chest will inflate the coals and burn
I was the fire that filled the tears.
Weeping weakens the bitterness of torment ...
No, tears to children; Well I inherit - revenge!
Oh Richard! I wear your name.
I will avenge your death or die,
Himself glorifying bold attempt.
- Henry 6, part three

When you suffer from the loss of an old friend, it seems to you that you have lost part of yourself, because grief is our reaction to the loss of certain mental resources. This can be explained by the fact that some parts of our brain begin to specialize in the exchange of ideas with the person with whom you love; but after the loss, the signals transmitted by this part of the brain no longer find a response - just as in the case of a lost limb. This fact may be the reason why it takes so much time to cope with the loss of a friend.

Gloucester: Be patient, dear Nell; forget this grief.
Duchess: Ah, Gloucester, better teach me to forget yourself!
- Henry 6, part 2

Nell cannot follow Gloucester's advice, because the attachment ties have grown too wide and have covered all possible resources, and she cannot remove all of these connections overnight — they are not in any one place. In addition, we may not want to forget all these connections, as Aristotle considered in rhetoric:

“Indeed, the very first sign of love, besides getting pleasure from finding this object nearby, is having memories of when this object left, and we feel this pain as much as pleasure, because this object is no longer there. Because of this, there is some element of pleasure even during the mourning and mourning of the deceased. We really feel pain because of the loss of a person close to us, but we also get pleasure when we remember him, his business and his life. ”

So, Constance said, in the play The Life and Death of King John, that feelings of grief mingle with pleasant memories:

It has now replaced my son,
Lying in his bed and with me
He goes everywhere, he says,
And, having taken the gentle features,
His clothes are filling the void,
Reminds cute heart shape.
I fell in love with grief - and right.
Goodbye, I would have comforted you better
When would you know the same share.
I will not begin to remove my hair - In my heart and thoughts there is one confusion.
Oh my God! My Arthur, my son, my boy!
You are life and joy, you are everything to me!
You are the consolation of a sorrowful widow!

Thus, Shakespeare shows how people reduce pile sadness, and squeeze them until it changes and can be viewed from a happy side.

Today there is a widespread theory that, as a rule, recovery from heavy loss occurs through the passage of 5 successive stages, which are called:

• denials
• anger
• bargain
• depression
• Adoption

I like the following skeptical analogy associated with this process:

As an example, apply these 5 steps to the traumatic event that we all have ever experienced: a dead battery! You are late for work, rush headlong to the car, insert the ignition key and turn it. You do not hear anything except tarahtenya - your battery is dead.

Denial : What are you doing right after this? You try to start the engine again! And again. You can check that neither the radio, the heater, the lighting or the like work, and then ... you are trying to start the engine again.

Anger : "I should have thrown this damn car out a long time ago"

Bargaining : (realizing that you will still be late for work) ... "Well, please, car, if you start now at least once, I promise you I will buy you a new battery, make tuning, buy new tires, belts and hoses, and I will to keep you in perfect working condition .. ”

Depression : “Oh Gods, what will I do. I'll be late for work. I give up. All my work is flying into the pipe, and I can do nothing about it. What should I do?"

Adoption : “Okay, the battery is low. I think it's better to call the car club, or find some other option to get to work. The time is running out and I have to do things, and I will deal with the car later. ”

This example also applies to the general opinion about this book: of course, it is widely believed that “emotional” thinking is fundamentally different from ordinary thinking (and I do not insist that they are the same). However, many of these imaginary differences may disappear, after we consider this point of view from the standpoint of common sense - which we will do in Chapter 6.

For the translation, thanks to Stanislav Sukhanitsky

about the author

Marvin Lee Minsky (Eng. Marvin Lee Minsky; August 9, 1927 - January 24, 2016) - American scientist in the field of artificial intelligence, co-founder of the Laboratory of artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [ Wikipedia ]

Interesting Facts:

• Minsky was a friend of critic Harold Bloom from Yale University (Yale University), who spoke of him as “sinister Marvin Minsky”.
• Isaac Asimov described Minsky as one of two people who are smarter than himself; the second, in his opinion, was Karl Sagan.
• Marvin is a robot with artificial intelligence from the cycle of Douglas Adams novels Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film).
• Minsky has a contract to freeze his brain after death in order to be “resurrected” in the future.
• In honor of Minsk named the dog of the protagonist in the movie Tron: Legacy. [ Wikipedia ]

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