@h4890 @korsier @Cosmic @cjd @FourOh-LLC @verita84 @toiletpaper

People need survival first of all. Once that is stable, they can worry about their pleasure-pain ratio, but generally speaking, most people endure a fair amount of pain and suffering in life anyway so it is less relevant.

Then there is the old human favorite, "is pleasure merely the absence of pain or something else," which seems silly to me as well. Without something to reach out for, an affirmative good that one enjoys, pleasure is misunderstood as complacency.