Juan Villoro
“None of our sufferings has been in vain,” says Carlos Pellicer to Frida Kahlo in a poem. The lessons of pain define human life.
The topic gained prominence with the news that Geoffrey Hinton resigned from further development of artificial intelligence, to which he devoted most of his life. According to Hinton, one of the dangers of robots is that they have no innate limits, such as pain, which prevents efforts that would lead to self-destruction. His perception coincides with that of Pierre Césaro, professor of neurology at the Henri-Mondor Hospital in Créteil (Paris), who stated in an interview with El País that pain is part of “the body’s set of functions that allow it to detect, perceive and react to potentially harmful stimuli”. We know, then, that a muscle twitch is a warning.
Nerve sensitivity serves to preserve the body but also represents a peculiar stimulus for life. I am not referring to the sophisticated tortures promoted by masochism but to the possibility of achieving something with a dose of discomfort: “No pain, no gain”. The eloquent gym slogan refers to muscles, but it can also be applied to various areas of behavior.
In his book Posmo, Cuban writer Iván de la Nuez draws a suggestive comparison between Mr. Smith, a character by science fiction author Stanislaw Lem, and Carles Puyol, Barcelona’s soccer central defender. In recounting Mr. Smith’s ordeal, Lem aims to decipher the moment when a body begins to become posthuman. The story’s protagonist is a motor racing champion who has suffered several accidents with severe consequences and lives in a future where prostheses replace damaged organs. His body has received numerous transplants on credit, and the time comes when he cannot pay his debt. The company sues him, leading to a trial where the verdict depends on establishing whether someone with so many artificial parts is still really human and deserves to be treated as such. It is no coincidence that the title of this text is “Does Mr. Smith really exist?
Iván de la Nuez compares this case with that of Puyol, who ended his days on the field playing with a mask on his face due to an injury. The Barça captain departed like a struggling Phantom of the Opera version. But that was not his only injury; he suffered from all sorts of soreness from his small-area fatigues. Puyol’s body was an encyclopedia of pain, and, despite everything, he continued to play.
The same can be said of Boris Becker, Rafael Nadal, and other martyrs capable of playing high-performance tennis matches for years accompanied by extreme physical pain.
What is significant is that, unlike Mr. Smith and intelligent machines, what characterizes these athletes is not only their ability to cope with suffering but to turn it into a spur to triumph.
The theme can be extended to emotional or psychological pain. At times, uneasiness paralyzes; at others, it becomes a stimulus to find a solution. When the physician Ruy Pérez Tamayo reflected on the origins of his vocation, which would lead him to become an eminent pathologist, he gave particular relevance to anguish to reach knowledge.
“The cornered man becomes eloquent”, wrote George Steiner. The best ideas come from the urgency to say them.
In his belated critique of the creatures he helped create, Hinton mentions the absence of pain in the machines’ circuits, which prevents their self-preservation. But there is more to say about pain. Cramps, spasms, and shivering do not only serve to prevent further injury. All it takes is one ingrown toenail for a human being to think differently. Some of the best witticisms are due to a timely discomfort.
The muses would waste their time handing out caresses; their stimulus is that of wounds that can be exploited. As Pellicer points out, art shows that one does not suffer in vain.
Beauty is the failure of pain.
At least for now, robots ignore that trick. The most significant limitation of their silicon mind is that they do not know how to suffer.
This was published in Spanish by Reforma on June 2, 2023
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