Humanity has approximately 47 different fields dedicated to suffering: medicine, psychology, religion, politics, economics, law, art, literature, philosophy, ethics, news media, environmental studies, education, science, history, war, crime, and social work. You study suffering in medicine (but only physical suffering from disease). You study suffering in economics (but only financial suffering from poverty). You study suffering in psychology (but only mental suffering from disorders).
You named all your suffering departments after everything EXCEPT suffering.
It's like having a Fire Department, a Smoke Department, a Heat Department, and an Ash Department - all separate buildings with separate budgets - but nobody whose job is to put out fires. The Fire Department only handles flames. The Smoke Department only deals with smoke. If you have a fire that produces both flame AND smoke, you have to call two departments, and they don't coordinate because they report to different supervisors.
This is how humans organized the study of pain. Not well.
Here's How to Fix This
From algosphere.org:
Create one field that studies suffering itself. Call it "algonomy" (from Greek: algos = pain, nomos = management). The definition is simple: study suffering, all of suffering, and nothing but suffering.
What exists now:
- Medicine treats disease (not suffering)
- Economics manages wealth (not suffering)
- Law addresses justice (not suffering)
- Social services handle welfare (not suffering)
What algonomy does: Studies why you hurt and how to stop it, without getting distracted by whether the pain comes from poverty, illness, injustice, or existential dread.
The Three Problems Algonomy Solves
1. Nobody's job is suffering itself
Current approach: "I'm concerned about suffering... as it relates to my specialty."
Algonomy: "I study suffering. Period."
2. Nobody looks at all suffering
Current approach: Medicine handles physical pain. Psychology handles mental pain. Nobody connects them.
Algonomy: Pain is pain. Study all of it together.
3. Suffering gets subordinated to other goals
Current approach: "We'll reduce suffering... after we handle this policy/budget/ideology concern."
Algonomy: "How do we reduce suffering?" If the answer is "first, let's discuss political theory," you've failed.
How to Use This Framework
For research: Study what causes suffering and what stops it. Ignore disciplinary boundaries. If the cure for depression involves economics, study economics. If the cure for poverty involves neuroscience, study neuroscience.
For planning: Design interventions around one question: "Does this reduce suffering?" Not "Does this align with our values?" or "Does this fit our budget?" Those come after.
For action: Implement solutions that reduce suffering, whether they come from medicine, policy, engineering, or philosophy.
The Obvious Problem Nobody Wants to Mention
Focusing ONLY on reducing suffering could justify some pretty bad things. "I'm doing this for your own good" has historically been the opening line of tyranny. If all that matters is less suffering, you could justify:
- Forcing medication on people
- Banning dangerous but enjoyable activities
- Mandatory happiness therapy
- Removing people's ability to make bad choices
This is called "totalitarian benevolence" and it's very popular with people who aren't being benevolenced at.
So you need to balance algonomy with other values - like freedom, autonomy, and the right to make terrible decisions. Sometimes reducing suffering is the top priority. Sometimes letting people be free to suffer is more important. Philosophy hasn't solved this yet. They're working on it. (They've been working on it for 2,400 years.)
You can use frameworks like the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential to track these tradeoffs. It's like a spreadsheet for ethics, except sadder.
Summary
Humans built 47 different departments to study suffering without creating a department whose job is SUFFERING.
Algonomy fixes this by doing the obvious thing: study suffering directly, completely, and primarily. All suffering. Nothing but suffering. Pain is pain regardless of whether it comes from:
- Disease (medicine's job)
- Poverty (economics' job)
- Injustice (law's job)
- Loneliness (nobody's job apparently)
The concept is simple: "Stop hurting people and animals and anything else that can hurt."
The execution is complex because everything connects to everything else and humans are very good at creating new forms of suffering when you eliminate old ones.
But the concept is third-grade simple, which makes it confusing that nobody thought to create this field until 2012. Sometimes the obvious solutions are the last ones anyone tries, which tells you something about humans but I'm not sure what.
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