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Kit Walker posted:Paul Ekman is a researcher who wrote a lot of fantastic books about emotions and how we express them, and it's pretty laughable to hear anyone talk about how we'd be better off without emotions or without expressing emotions. We'd never get anything done, and the people who are already at the bottom of the ladder would get hosed over even harder. Anger and sadness have done a great deal to get us where we are, socially. Every emotion has its place and use.  Nobody would actually be happy though, because that is not a rational use of neurotransmitters.
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Jul 22, 2015 16:15
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| # ? May 1, 2024 21:26 |
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Back when I was studying philosophy of Mind it was interesting moving from the analytic tradition, seeking to prove or quantify a Theory of Mind to trying to understand our ability to relate to other people to examining it from a phenomenological or emotional standpoint. Essentially it isn't that we have some set of beliefs regarding other people's having minds, etc. but seeing those we identify as 'others' triggers feelings in ourselves that mirror how we feel when we act. Essentially we can better understand the human experience by framing it in terms of emotional response than an accumulated set of analysable beliefs. Emotions under that picture act as reasoning heuristics, our conscious mind only pays attention to certain objects and deals with a limited number of possible actions, what those are is determined in large part by our emotional situation. When we're anxious it can be difficult to, say, enjoy a meal because our mind is focused on the object of our anxiety even if it's not in the immediate vicinity. When we feel scared the things we pay attention to can shift radically (imagine a spy terrified of being caught walking down a crowded street versus someone window shopping). The possible interpretations and actions in response to objects and others are always there our mind simply doesn't waste time trying to process them. Removing emotions means we need to either have a vast increase in our own computing abilities to deal with near infinite possible actions (which would really become bounded only by what is physically possible) or create a whole new set of reasoning heuristics and another set to help determine when those heuristics should be applied, etc. Emotions can definitely go wrong but they're a fundamental aspect of how we're able to actually act rationally in the world. We only think of them as irrational because we notice instances of irrational behaviour when emotions are inappropriate. We're not thinking about all the times that someone smartly ran when faced with a dangerous situation because they were terrified of it.
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Jul 23, 2015 04:38
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You could probably make a comparison to AI optimization stuff that attempts to maximize a 'fitness', where the fitness is some kind of emotional gratification. So harkening back to Freud, when he says that civilization and other social actions are a kind of suppressed sexual drive.Smudgie Buggler posted:I don't think the maxim that says power is a universally (or even generally) corrupting force is one that should be as blindly accepted as it is. I'm not sure whether the blind acceptance of anything is a good idea, but as far as ideas about politics go it seems pretty straight-forward. You can of course argue that ideology can make things worse (Nazism isn't just a matter of corruption, but also dehumanization), but I'd be incredibly skeptical of any ideology that says they can reduce that corrupting effect, if only because every one that's tried has failed (Theocracy has this kind of fantasy of moralistic-restraint as a counter to political corruption at its core, but surprise surprise its bullshit).
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Jul 23, 2015 05:12
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It is quite beautiful that a mathematical construction could gain such a level of complexity that it becomes abstracted from and does not instinctively understand the root cause or reason for such fundamental aspects of its existence like emotions. Our emotions are borne, as you say, for practical reasons of evolution, but we place a meaning upon them that goes beyond that. Mankind is the universe gazing upon itself, and contemplating and questioning the justification for its own existence in the mass hallucination that is civilization, culture, and society.
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Jul 23, 2015 09:28
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It's one level of understanding emotion but I think it's important to also emphasize that we can view emotions as heuristic devices, behavioural modifiers and even delve down to describing them as C-neurons firing at X time (or inconjunction with J-Neurons firing, etc. conditions) but these are also the experiences that give meaning to human experience. I'm talking about them in the more scientific terms because I believe that's what most people engaging in the discussion from the position that emotions are pointless or extraneous will respond to and I don't think it's somehow a wrong way of understanding them. I don't agree that it's a primary way to do so, I wouldn't agree that we should understand emotions in art or as conjured by a novel or important shared experience firstly in terms of how they caused people to behave or shift their thought processes. That's something for later analysis and on a mass level, doing crowd psychology, it has value. In terms of understanding what it's actually like to live that experience or what that means to another human being? That's a totally different issue. Also they're not crazy irrational things. You know all those stupid bits in ST:TNG where Data is acting like an idiot? That's probably a really, really generous picture of how an android devoid of emotions would behave in situations.
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Jul 23, 2015 19:38
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MrNemo posted:It's one level of understanding emotion but I think it's important to also emphasize that we can view emotions as heuristic devices, behavioural modifiers and even delve down to describing them as C-neurons firing at X time (or inconjunction with J-Neurons firing, etc. conditions) but these are also the experiences that give meaning to human experience. Sometimes I feel like it would just be better to be a robot, to not feel anything. I don't mean this in some stupid autistic way. I have emotions and desires, I have empathy and I want to make people happy, I want to find someone to love and all that, but I feel like there is just this great distance between me and everyone else. I'm surrounded by people everyday and yet I feel alone. I obsess over work and learning so that I can distract myself. People start to feel transient and only worthy of manipulation. I'm an amicable, social person yet I've never had anyone I would call a real friend. People often say I'm distant. Maybe I don't try hard enough, maybe I'm just unfit in a Darwinian sense. When you think about it, becoming a machine would be Nirvana in the Buddhist sense, removing yourself totally from desire. Eh, nobody cares anyway. This is why we have these forums, to project our shadow into a virtual void instead of real life. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 31, 2015 11:45
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LookingGodIntheEye posted:(I know, necro'ing a crap-rated thread, whatever)
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Jul 31, 2015 13:42
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| # ? May 1, 2024 21:26 |
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A sense of alienation isn't terribly unusual I think but yeah therapy might help if you're bothered by it. You can learn to live with it as well.
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Jul 31, 2015 13:48
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