81–90 of 101 posts
I don't get it. Is the article exaggerating things? How can you function without feeling emotions? What is your motivation for getting married? Getting a job? Playing a game or watching a movie? Succeeding at any task? What is your reward mechanism? For example "All week he had been struggling to produce the right sound effects," How would you even know you hit the right sound effect? What is your judgement for good…
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Other people getting married is not something you would care about since you have not emotions. With regards to the thunderstorm thats not how it works. It's not the rational request thats the problem but the intuition around when it feels right. Emotions are fundamental to making any kind of creative decisions.
> Other people getting married is not something you would care about since you have not emotions. They don't. They just copy what other people do because it's the default thing to do (everyone does it), and because they want to stop that annoyance (annoyance like we feel annoyance from a crappy seat belt or uncomfortamble shows, not emotional misery) and distraction (the nagging from other people, etc). No emotion mo…
The have an extra-rational pull towards doing one thing rather than some other thing. There's no real way to "carve reality at the joints" in a way that excludes what this person is feeling/doing vs someone with "real" emotions.
How should you know? Actually an interesting problem: A1. You say you don't experience emotions. A2. What you call emotions is what you see others do when they say they are acting emotionally. You don't think you are this way. A3. Your doctor says you're right. Or: B1. You say you experience emotions. B2. Others say you are wrong.
It reminds me of my inquiry into the mystery of why everyone "likes alcoholic drinks" but I don't. Eventually I broke it down into specific questions:
- Do you enjoy the feeling of alcoholic drinks passing through your mouth?
- Do you require the drink to be loaded down with non-alcohol flavors for it to be bearable?
- On taste alone, would you prefer a milkshake?
- Do you enjoy the feeling the drink produces on your mind? Does that matter to you more than the taste?
... and it turned out, I had the exact same answers to these questions as people who said they do like alcohol; it's just that they characterized that state as "liking alcohol", and I didn't.
If people similarly broke this issue down into specific questions on observables, I suspect a lot of the differences would vanish, and it would make more sense to characterize it as "different emotional response" rather than "no emotions" -- though a big part of the problem is the arbitrariness of the labels!
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If they don't have any emotions they don't care what other people do or that they nag them. Nothings annoys them, nothing excites them. You getting the order wrong. Of course you need to build up intuition when you create things that doesn't have a matemathical formula. Thats exactly what intuition is a combination of rational understand, experience and emotional awareness of what decision is right and which one is w…
> If they don't have any emotions they don't care what other people do or that they nag them. Nothings annoys them, nothing excites them. I think you conflate emotions with any kind of functioning at all. You can still function, think, try to avoid tension and people being angry or annoyed at you, without feeling any emotions. If you discover that something you do makes someone unconfortable for example, you can deci…
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If they don't have any emotions they don't care what other people do or that they nag them. Nothings annoys them, nothing excites them. You getting the order wrong. Of course you need to build up intuition when you create things that doesn't have a matemathical formula. Thats exactly what intuition is a combination of rational understand, experience and emotional awareness of what decision is right and which one is w…
> If they don't have any emotions they don't care what other people do or that they nag them. Nothings annoys them, nothing excites them. I think you conflate emotions with any kind of functioning at all. You can still function, think, try to avoid tension and people being angry or annoyed at you, without feeling any emotions. If you discover that something you do makes someone unconfortable for example, you can deci…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other people getting married is not something you would care about since you have not emotions. With regards to the thunderstorm thats not how it works. It's not the rational request thats the problem but the intuition around when it feels right. Emotions are fundamental to making any kind of creative decisions.
I think the english language conflates intuition with emotion, referring to two separate actions (intuiting and emotionally responding to) with the same word: "feel".
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Without emotions, what would cause a person to prefer physical comfort over physical discomfort?
Comfort and discomfort aren't emotions. Pain isn't an emotion, and the absence of pain is desirable by people who don't have emotions.
But beyond that everything else is an emotion - happiness, sadness, anger, annoyance, loneliness. Beyond the most basic tasks everything requires emotions to drive you. Why do you study for an upcoming exam? Because you are anxious about getting a good grade? Why are you anxious? Because you may not want to upset your parents? Why does that bother you? You love them or fear their displeasure. Why do you fear your parent's displeasure? Ignoring corporal punishment (which could be an avoidance of pain/injury), other reasons include wanting to avoid stress, or being upset when they confront you about it. And so on. You cannot get through life except the most basic functions (like avoiding pain, eating, sleeping, etc) without emotions.
The article seems to equate the reduced perception of emotions to a total absence of them.
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Because you ARE yourself, and the obvious thing is to maximize your strength. So what? Why is it logical to do the most obvious thing? And because caring for others implies "love", "affection", "altruism" (emotions, not rational calculations) and even sacrificing your interests for others, whereas helping yourself is immediately advantageous for you and is in your default interest. Even if there is a "default interes…
> So what? Why is it logical to do the most obvious thing? Because that's how logic works. We are not discussing Logic the mathematical formalism (A=A, A=C, A!=B => B!=C) here.
Logical thinking is reasoning; just doing something because it feels obvious doesn't sound like application of reasoning. Many obvious things are reveled to be inadvisable when carefully considered.
Also, I don't believe that taking care of yourself is obvious if you remove emotions. Self-preservation is an emotional instinct, not some logical axiom.
Isn't this textbook sociopathy?
No. > sociopath: a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. Nothing in not feeling emotions means that one would lack a moral responsibility or social conscience, or is antisocial and often criminal.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201305/confessions-...