What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

It is really weird to be honest, I wouldn't say the other replies on this comment at the moment cover it so thought I would try and add something.

On one had you're right those are genuine issues, there's little motivation to do anything really. I guess it is a spectrum but I still feel that if someone asks me to do something that I'm being a nice person if I do it, I guess others might be devoid of that. So if invited to do something I normally go, but I only originate plans if I feel I'm doing it for others e.g. if someone is visiting I'll setup a dinner for us all. At the end of a week when I've been busy I cab be annoyed at how much of my life is spent doing things for others, but I do know that's because I don't do anything at all for myself.

I'm married and I wouldn't say I am because it's something expected of me. I think I want to be healthy mentally later in life and I know I can put the work in to give my wife a happy life, also that I didn't hide the way I am from her. If I didn't do these things it would be equivalent to just kind of giving up and I guess I haven't done that so I do these kind of things for future me who I want to be in a good place. I do love, I don't think it's quite the feeling love is to others but love/loss are recognisable.

I work to succeed and for financial security basically, I can't fathom a job I "enjoy" but in my mind besides paying bills it's like a game and I win if I'm successful. A good way to think about it is when a big project finishes it's a bit weird for me because I don't really get happiness or pleasure or a sense of achievement from it, it's kind of like a vaccum. The day a system goes live is no different from day 1 on the project. Within the vaccum I just get hyper-critical of my performance I think my brain is thinking it's important to improve for next time and just immediately focusses on what it needs to do to make that happen.

I do watch films/games, although not that much, but I like being distracted and having something to do. I watch twitch and sport where I do find it easy to support teams. I would never be upset after a result in sport or anything, I don't get nervous before or excited after a win but I like the pattern, which players are good/bad, analysing tactics, following the story etc.

Reward mechanism - I don't think there's anything in my life like that I could google it but not sure what it means. I don't do anything to reward myself at all.

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 wrong to you. Without it you would have a hard time making any decisions at all.

There is a reason why humans have developed emotions.

The point is that I don't believe this person is completely without emotions whatever biochemical function it boils down to.

Alexithymia literally means "no words for emotions", and the article makes it clear that people with the condition do feel emotions, they just lack conscious awareness and the ability to verbalize their emotions. The title refers to the experience from the point of view of the subject - being outside of their conscious awareness, it is as if emotions do not exist for them, even though they still trigger the appropriate physical responses.

This reminds me of something Wittgenstein apparently talked about. I don't have a better explanation than the comic I saw about it though : http://existentialcomics.com/comic/94

I think you're basically arguing that herd behavior or swarm behavior can't emerge without self conscious higher level adult emotions; I'm thinking that's a big stretch based on natural examples. I'm not even sure "monkey see monkey do" even is an emotion, if it is, which is it? Possession of empathy isn't possessing the observed emotion, its just observing it.

For another weird concept look at humanities universal habit of rationalizing irrational decisions. For no good reason I did XYZ, now listen to my detailed rationalization based on emotions or Vulcan-level logic, which doesn't really matter because I really have no idea why I asked ABC out on a date or decided to buy that car or eat that second piece of birthday cake, although in detailed post-rationalization I can dream up all kinds of sand castles in the sky explaining elaborate logical reasons or stark emotions that I supposedly experienced before I made a random decision. This adds an annoying second level of analysis, why do some people do random things just like everyone else, but their societal or cultural failure is rationalizing it as logic or admitting it was just random, whereas "everyone knows" we must, at least in public, declare it to be the result of emotion.