The claim here is even stronger, and somewhat different: that suffering and reward are fundamentally different kind of things, and cannot simply undo each other, not at any exchange rate. The difference is qualitative, not quantitative. For example, if you lose your eyesight, it's such a big loss, that most likely nothing can balance it out ever. It has no "five times as good" equivalent.
You can 'program' humans that way too. Doesn't mean they aren't slaves and it doesn't mean it isn't bad.
And anyway I suspect that your use of the word suffering implies a rather narrow definition of suffering that counts only material suffering as important.
Suffering is not the same as having a reward function. If the outcome is a reward, people would opt in for suffering to get rewards. Some even cheat their ways to rewards. People do hustle porn, virtue signaling, other fake sufferings. Some push to the extremes like running triathlons. But at some point, reality will wake us up. Our personal struggle is always there. It never ends. We'd be forced to make intelligent choices. Or we'd die wasting our time on useless endeavors.
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