Board 8 > What's the stronger motivational force: pleasure or pain?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm not sure, so I figured board 8 would know.

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pain (or the absence thereof)

i will shoot you in the kneecaps if you don't go to the grocery store
i will give you the best sex i've ever had if you go to the grocery store

not getting shot > having sex

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There's a reason why torture has been such an effective method of interrogation throughout the ages.

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i don't know if you're looking for a definitive answer, but it would definitely be pain for me

i highly doubt the highest levels of pleasure come anywhere near the highest levels of pain

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From: Justin_Crossing | #002
pain (or the absence thereof)

i will shoot you in the kneecaps if you don't go to the grocery store
i will give you the best sex i've ever had if you go to the grocery store

not getting shot > having sex

well if the sex isnt even good for me, that's a no brainer =[

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Depends which one you think is kinkier

Ah, well I'll say in my life personally pleasure is a stronger motivational force.

But if pain is introduced I think that'll take precedence over anything, hah but I'm not sure if motivational is how I'd describe it. It'd motivate me to stop being hurt or go to a hospital I guess.

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LeonhartFour posted...
There's a reason why torture has been such an effective method of interrogation throughout the ages.

Uh most emphatically no. Torture is a good way of extracting information yes, but whether it's accurate information is very questionable. Might i point out that torture was used to convict defendants in the Salem witch trials?

From what I understand, at least as far back as World War II, the primary method of extracting information from prisoners by the Nazis was to... confront them with the lies they told until they decide to tell the truth IIRC.

I'm 95% confident that torture is not the most optimal method of generally extracting information from initially uncooperative parties, 30% confident that it's never the most optimal method for any situation that occurs more than ~1% of the time.

The threat of torture is an entirely different matter though.

Also uh, it depends. It's certainly true that unpleasant things are more likely to make humans do things they would like to do simply because we're risk and loss adverse as opposed to pleasure attracted. But pain also tends to impede productivity since the exact motivational forces which would force someone toward doing something they want would also apply if their goal is an unpleasant one. (For example, if starting your homework gives you an initial twinge of distaste, you're far more likely not to start). But eh, I'm not entirely sure what the literature says so...

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Pretty sure psychological tests done over the years say pleasure is the right answer here.

Though pain is usually the one that's cheaper and in higher supply so it's often the easier thing to do. Like JC said it's easy to shoot some dude in the knee caps but offering a pleasure equal to that isn't necessarily very easy-- "the best sex ever" probably isn't even gonna be equal there.

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Yes, but how are you to measure comparable levels of the two? It seems like when making a decision, realism should be a factor as well.

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_stingers_ posted...
Yes, but how are you to measure comparable levels of the two? It seems like when making a decision, realism should be a factor as well.

You can compare it against a gradient: Offer some amount of money and have someone choose between the prevention of some pain or some pleasure. Then start comparing some type of pleasure X1 plus some amount of money Y (where Y can be negative) against greater pleasure X2, the amount of money at which they start taking X1 and Y over X2 represents the difference between them.

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Gonna go with pleasure.

We didn't go to the moon because they were tortured to.

When you are suffering

truly suffering

the only thing you can wish is for the suffering to end.

So, pain is probably more effective in the short run.

I'd say neither of them are the greatest motivators for humans, though. Many people have forgone pleasure and endured pain in the pursuit of other goals.

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pjbasis posted...
Gonna go with pleasure.

We didn't go to the moon because they were tortured to.

indeed, we went to the moon because we were afraid the communists were going to bomb us from space if they got there first.

pain

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Fear of pain is stronger than desire for pleasure. Pain is going to put you at a worse state than you are at present. You're not really being affected negatively with pleasure. Just missing out.

Uh most emphatically no. Torture is a good way of extracting information yes, but whether it's accurate information is very questionable. Might i point out that torture was used to convict defendants in the Salem witch trials?

If you torture someone who simply was not speaking, they will say something. They may lie, but they'll talk.

If you promise them all the riches in the world, even if you could prove you meant it, I would wager they're still far less likely to even speak.

Torture is a far more effective method of interrogation. It's just not particularly useful, but that's not the question.

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blindhobo13 posted...
Fear of pain is stronger than desire for pleasure. Pain is going to put you at a worse state than you are at present. You're not really being affected negatively with pleasure. Just missing out.

This.

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If you could give them exactly what they wanted though, they'd probably crack anyways right?

After all, there is a "reason" they are withholding information.
If you could promise to give them that thing they wanted, they'd crack.

Of course, there's the nature of believing you and whatnot.

In the short term, yes, but longterm in your average person's life, pain is less of a motivator than pleasure I'd say.

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According to most child rearing studies, giving a child rewards encourages good behavior more than the threat of pain. This type of study seems to work every time it is presented, so I'm inclined to believe Pleasure > Pain.

CeraSeptem posted...
Uh most emphatically no. Torture is a good way of extracting information yes, but whether it's accurate information is very questionable. Might i point out that torture was used to convict defendants in the Salem witch trials?

If you torture someone who simply was not speaking, they will say something. They may lie, but they'll talk.

If you promise them all the riches in the world, even if you could prove you meant it, I would wager they're still far less likely to even speak.

Torture is a far more effective method of interrogation. It's just not particularly useful, but that's not the question.

Your criteria is nonsensical and not based in fact. Why should we care about whether someone speaks or not? I mean, if you get arbitrary enough, I'm pretty sure someone tortured via waterboarding would have a lot harder time speaking during torture than someone offered some amount of money to say a word, any word. Like, sure you're claiming that someone is far more likely to act based off of torture, most likely based off your internal model of how you would act, but such a model is by no means representative of how other people or even yourself would act.

This isn't even counting the fact that you don't make any justification for why you consider the incredibly vague term "torture" equivalent to "all the riches in the world" and while it may seem like only a semantics squabble, and that you actually just mean "any really pleasurable event" it really isn't. There's a big difference between, let's say "all the riches in the world" or "the ability to experience the maximal amount of pleasure possible for X amount of time" or "harem of 50 raven haired Brazilian belly dancers (if you were so inclined)" simply because it may be that torture simply cannot be negated by anything we can do now or that it's harder to think of what specific things you can do with X amount of money rather than picking for someone.

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I don't know if someone promised me the best stuff ever and I knew for a fact they had to keep their word (to put it on the same premise as pain) then I'd probably take it. I mean pain sucks and is terrible but stuff is stuff, and stuff is awesome.

I think they are probably pretty equal depending on context and the person. Stuff like this is so motivated by the person and context, no clear answer can be arrived at.

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Depends on how you look at it.

What might cause you to sell out your company's/country's secrets first?

100 Million Dollars or having your body parts removed one at a time starting with the fingers and toes?

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Honestly I would be more inclined to do/say whatever if someone told me they were going to cut my dick off rather than if they told me they would suck my dick until it fell off. The threat is just so scary and painful to think about.

PerfectChaosZ posted...
According to most child rearing studies, giving a child rewards encourages good behavior more than the threat of pain. This type of study seems to work every time it is presented, so I'm inclined to believe Pleasure > Pain.

Do they threaten to cut off limbs if the child doesn't behave? Of course positive reinforcement works with kids, because we aren't willing to go far enough. Getting a spank on the bottom is nothing. Imagine if you start cutting on them.

And no, I am not advocating we start cutting up kids to get them to behave. I'm just pointing out the fact that there's different levels of pain that can be induced on someone. If someone says they'll punch me in the arm if I eat a sandwich, I'll probably still eat it. If they threaten to cut off my balls if I eat said sandwich, probably not going to eat it.

The problem is that there's so many hideously gruesome ways to inflict pain on someone that it'll always be a stronger motivator than pleasure. And I think that's the key wording here: stronger.

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If "I've got a headache" is a valid excuse to not have sex, I'm going with pain.

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I think they are probably pretty equal depending on context and the person. Stuff like this is so motivated by the person and context, no clear answer can be arrived at.

Can't really argue with this. There are way too many factors to actually answer the question, but hey let's make a guess.

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Why should we care about whether someone speaks or not?

uh... because it's an action that was not previously being done that (hypothetically) is now being done.

Like, sure you're claiming that someone is far more likely to act based off of torture, most likely based off your internal model of how you would act, but such a model is by no means representative of how other people or even yourself would act.

People being tortured at all is fairly obvious evidence that people are more likely to act based on it, because if the interrogatee were already talking there would be no goddamn point in torturing them for something that's not even guaranteed to be the truth. And while the latter is certain to have happened at some point, it seems flatly stupid to think it's the standard.

This isn't even counting the fact that you don't make any justification for why you consider the incredibly vague term "torture" equivalent to "all the riches in the world" and while it may seem like only a semantics squabble, and that you actually just mean "any really pleasurable event" it really isn't. There's a big difference between, let's say "all the riches in the world" or "the ability to experience the maximal amount of pleasure possible for X amount of time" or "harem of 50 raven haired Brazilian belly dancers (if you were so inclined)" simply because it may be that torture simply cannot be negated by anything we can do now or that it's harder to think of what specific things you can do with X amount of money rather than picking for someone.

The hypothetical wasn't "we will STOP torturing you and give you this really cool thing." It was simply a choice before either begins. And yes, "all the riches in the world" is very directly a substitute phrase for "super great thing you want" because I was being lazy. You could let our hypothetical prisoner ****ing pick whatever they'd want and it wouldn't change my point that pain seems a more motivating method to convince someone to play ball. Of course my hypothetical prisoner is a man of conviction rather than a common criminal, who probably wouldn't need much pain or pleasure to fess up, but the stronger motivational force would be proven in the extremes anyway wouldn't it.

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From: Phase | #028
If "I've got a headache" is a valid excuse to not have sex, I'm going with pain.

http://www.everydayhealth.com/pain-management/headache/sex-cure-or-trigger-for-migraine.aspx

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Yes, but how are you to measure comparable levels of the two?

The American way, with money. How much would you pay for the best sex of your life vs. how much would you pay to not get shot

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Even if the sex was life defining, I'm not sure I want to have another life defining moment by being shot to get to it.

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I'd say pain, if only because pain can be doled out in much higher quantities relatively easily.

If you could introduce me to a pleasure equivalent in intensity to the pain of being shot in the kneecap, that would definitely be a bigger motivator to me than anything else on this planet.

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uh... because it's an action that was not previously being done that (hypothetically) is now being done.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/13/AR2007121301303.html

Any evidence to the contrary?

And while the latter is certain to have happened at some point, it seems flatly stupid to think it's the standard.

Really? So how much money would you bet that

1) The verbal portion of the brain consistently comes up with justifications independently of the actual mechanisms which motivate a person.
2) That people predictably are wrong about how they would act in general, even if they are rewarded or threatened with pain?

And unrelated to the two above

3) That people can be manipulated by entirely random and arbitrary factors such as What was the last number they heard/saw?

After all, you must be fairly confident that what you're saying is true, and not, in fact, a guess made without even trying to look at the literature involved, hm?

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I would think pain is the answer. At least for me it is.

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Justin_Crossing posted...
pain (or the absence thereof)

i will shoot you in the kneecaps if you don't go to the grocery store
i will give you the best sex i've ever had if you go to the grocery store

not getting shot > having sex

Bad example.

Going to the grocery store is so easy.

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Pain easy. Unless you're a huge masochist I can't imagine it being the opposite.

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Pretty much all of psychology says that positive reinforcement beats negative every time

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foolm0ron posted...
Pretty much all of psychology says that positive reinforcement beats negative every time

I'm probably remember wrong, but negative reinforcement is better used to discourage behaviors, not promote them.

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psychology is a massive load of broscience on this(and many other things...), negative reinforcement has consistently shown to be more effective in the real world for thousands of years. yes you may get false confessions out of people that are desperate to make it stop who actually have no information, but people can lie for a promised reward as well, it goes both ways.

I'd say neither are the best motivators, but it really depends on the person. In general, I would say that pain is more effective.

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Liquid Wind posted...
psychology is a massive load of broscience on this(and many other things...), negative reinforcement has consistently shown to be more effective in the real world for thousands of years. yes you may get false confessions out of people that are desperate to make it stop who actually have no information, but people can lie for a promised reward as well, it goes both ways.

I don't even know what you mean by "consistently shown in the real world", like are you saying a lot of negative reinforcement has been consistently practiced throughout the world? Or that negative reinforcement has driven people to perform some set of actions that they wouldn't have done otherwise? If so, what actions have they actually performed specifically because of negative reinforcement?

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eti is just going off broscience as well

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Pain, easily.

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foolm0ron posted...
Pretty much all of psychology says that positive reinforcement beats negative every time

How negative are we talking? Are we talking "Do this or I'll scold you" or "Do this or I'll cut off a limb of my choice?"

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And how does "Negative reinforcement" automatically equal pain, and the same with "positive reinforcement" equal pleasure? If someone does something right, and I say "Good job" does that really equal pleasure? Are you deriving pleasure from someone saying "good job?"

It's all about scale, really.

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