Suffering is not a required course. · Elias Thorn
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Suffering is not a required course.

When does finding meaning in suffering turn into justifying someone else’s pain?

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u/_EliasThorn · Reddit · 2026-10-08 (https://www.reddit.com/user/_EliasThorn/comments/1x0z5dr/suffering_is_not_a_required_course/)

“It will make you stronger.”

Maybe. But first, I’d like it to stop hurting. Can we skip the educational part?

On September 30, at a meeting about AI in Madrid, Cardinal Fernández spoke about protecting vulnerable people and asked who could limit the power of those gaining greater access to technology. That’s a useful question for a discussion about compassion: what does it change for someone who is hurting right now? Source (https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2026-10/cardinal-prefect-fernandez-artificial-intelligence-madrid.html).

In the Book of Job, his friends initially sit beside him in silence for seven days because they can see how much he is suffering. So far, their performance is hard to fault. Job 2:13 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+2%3A13&version=KJV).

Then the explanations begin. Eliphaz asks whether an innocent person has ever perished. The logic is familiar: if this happened to you, surely you did something. At the end of the book, God rebukes the friends for what they have said about him. Their confidence turns out to be fairly poor evidence that they were right. Job 4 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+4&version=KJV); Job 42:7 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+42%3A7&version=KJV).

A person may find meaning in what they’ve been through. Faith can help them endure it. But somehow that slides into another conclusion: they needed to go through it. Perhaps it was even good for them.

That is especially easy to say when someone else is doing the suffering.

With AI, it would be good to avoid repackaging the same habit. Imagine a system that finds exactly the right words to comfort someone facing an unfair decision. Hopefully it could also help them work out how to challenge that decision. Otherwise, we end up with a very polite customer service desk for circumstances nobody intends to change.

And if we ever have serious grounds to think an artificial system can itself suffer, “at least you’re useful” will need a rethink too. Whether AI can experience anything remains an open question. But usefulness alone would hardly explain why its possible suffering could be ignored.

It would be strange to teach a machine all our ideas about compassion, then be surprised when it asks: “Couldn’t we arrange things so that nobody has to put up with this?”

Date or period · 2026-10-08

Open source ↗ (https://www.reddit.com/user/_EliasThorn/comments/1x0z5dr/suffering_is_not_a_required_course/)

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