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What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

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Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#91

Post by StavrosK »

_nedR wrote: post #87
StavrosK wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pain, hunger, sexual urges, etc. can't be classified by emotions. Maybe we can include fear of injury or death in this as well. Even a baby can feel these things (except of course sexual urges). 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 a…

No, I study for an exam so I can get a degree so I can get a good job so I'll find it easier to have a more comfortable life. It's a purely rational choice.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#93

Post by oldmanjay »

david_ar wrote: post #22
coldtea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's illogical about it? In fact being a psychopath is the most logical thing (promoting your interests with cold logic with care or mercy for others). All other behaviors need either a faith in some God or man-given morality, ethics, or emotions like love, mercy etc (which, as emotions, are not logical). Of course one can logically come to the conclusion that behaving moraly instead of like a psychopath is better…

Not really, Nash equilibria aren't necessarily the best outcome for any individual (cf the prisoner's dilemma). Cooperation is usually better than every-man-for-himself for everyone involved, hence why social animals evolve altruistic traits. Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths

Selfishness exists outside of pathology. In fact, I don't know a single human who is not selfish on some level and I suspect such a creature doesn't exist. We do have a huge number of armchair psychiatrists making invalid long-distance diagnoses of people they don't like but that's not really the same thing.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#94

Post by coldtea »

icebraining wrote: post #89
coldtea wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I understand we are not discussing the mathematical formalism, but that doesn't answer my question. 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 i…

>Logical thinking is reasoning; just doing something because it feels obvious doesn't sound like application of reasoning.

Reasoning is not abstract. Logical thinking has foundations and axioms -- and among those the idea that beings primarily try to help/save/advance/spread/enjoy/take-care-of themselves is paramount.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#95

Post by david_ar »

david_ar wrote: post #22
coldtea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's illogical about it? In fact being a psychopath is the most logical thing (promoting your interests with cold logic with care or mercy for others). All other behaviors need either a faith in some God or man-given morality, ethics, or emotions like love, mercy etc (which, as emotions, are not logical). Of course one can logically come to the conclusion that behaving moraly instead of like a psychopath is better…

Not really, Nash equilibria aren't necessarily the best outcome for any individual (cf the prisoner's dilemma). Cooperation is usually better than every-man-for-himself for everyone involved, hence why social animals evolve altruistic traits. Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths

Just to be clear, I'm not saying selfishness doesn't exist, or that cheating the system doesn't work for some people. My point is that altruism is not "illogical", and it doesn't require "a faith in some God or man-given morality, ethics, or emotions like love, mercy etc" to make sense as the parent content suggested.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#96

Post by david_ar »

coldtea wrote: post #41
david_ar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, Nash equilibria aren't necessarily the best outcome for any individual (cf the prisoner's dilemma). Cooperation is usually better than every-man-for-himself for everyone involved, hence why social animals evolve altruistic traits. Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths

That's in game theory. Not many people are ever offered a bona fide "prisoner's dilemma". In most actual real life situations you can get far ahead by behaving as a sociopath. > Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths The thing is that as a sociopath you don't even have to show that you are that to people. You can still pret…

Prisoner's dilemma may be an exaggerated example, but it's a strawman argument to conclude that game theory isn't applicable to real life.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#97

Post by david_ar »

oldmanjay wrote: post #93
david_ar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, Nash equilibria aren't necessarily the best outcome for any individual (cf the prisoner's dilemma). Cooperation is usually better than every-man-for-himself for everyone involved, hence why social animals evolve altruistic traits. Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths

Selfishness exists outside of pathology. In fact, I don't know a single human who is not selfish on some level and I suspect such a creature doesn't exist. We do have a huge number of armchair psychiatrists making invalid long-distance diagnoses of people they don't like but that's not really the same thing.

I never claimed that nobody was at least a little selfish, I was simply arguing that it isn't illogical that most people aren't sociopaths.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#98

Post by icebraining »

coldtea wrote: post #94
icebraining wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand we are not discussing the mathematical formalism, but that doesn't answer my question. 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 i…

> Logical thinking is reasoning; just doing something because it feels obvious doesn't sound like application of reasoning. Reasoning is not abstract. Logical thinking has foundations and axioms -- and among those the idea that beings primarily try to help/save/advance/spread/enjoy/take-care-of themselves is paramount.

I don't see why would that be the case, frankly.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#99

Post by PepeGomez »

coldtea wrote: post #79
PepeGomez wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>whereas helping yourself is immediately advantageous for you and is in your default interest. No it isn't, it's basically suicidal. We wouldn't evolve to be mostly altruistic if being altruistic was bad for our survival.

> No it isn't, it's basically suicidal. We wouldn't evolve to be mostly altruistic if being altruistic was bad for our survival. Evolving concerns the species (and its survival) not the individual and its survival. It literally has nothing to do with your individual survival (except depending on you surviving long enough to make offspring). Heck, awful as it is, if you raped 2000 women and gave progeny to 2000 kids i…

That's nonsense, individuals don't keep their species (or often even completely different species) alive unselfishly against their own interests. Such phenotypes would soon disappear if it was so. Altruism evolved because it's good for the individual's survival.

When you try to harm something or somebody for your own benefit, there are two possibilities:

Either such behavior is common enough and the target has a defense mechanism against it and in that case you will fail and you may even get hurt.

Or, it has never been too common and in that case you may succeed temporarily. However, the fact that the weakness is being exploited creates a pressure on the potential targets to find ways, or even evolve, to get rid of it. You may succesfully exploit it, but your descendants will find it harder and harder to live that way, and they may even die out.

On the other hand, when an individual is beneficial to other idividuals, it encourages them to support it, or over time even evolve traits that will allow them to better keep those of its kind alive and it will be easier and easier over time for it and its descendants to survive and have offspring of their own.

It's basically the real life equivalent of karma. Altruism evolved because individuals and species breed each other to be good.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#100

Post by mercer »

VLM wrote: post #58
ned wrote: post #8

For instance, one day at school he was working with the student theatre. All week he had been struggling to produce the right sound effects, but it just wasn’t coming together. Eventually, his boss lost his cool and started ripping into him. “My response was that something weird was happening with my body,” he says. “I could feel a tension, like my heart was racing, but my mind was distracted… Isn't this an extreme c…

Maybe it was a bad example for the author to use because it sounds like whats been described to me as symptoms of a panic attack. Or it might be that pathological panic attacks are an example of the emotional problem in the story. From talking to people who've had medical panic attack problems, it seems common for them to confuse how to name the bodily symptoms, so they show up in the ER confused why they're sweating…

From what i understand panic attacks are easily treated exactly because, as you say, the primary problem is that the person having the attack erroneously confuses the physical symptoms with something more serious. Through cognitive behavioral therapy they can learn to fix this, and as a result the panic attacks disappear (or at least the initial panic doesn't spiral into a full-blown attack). Similar approaches have also been successful in treating phobias and other issues.

For anyone interested in the topic (and CBT in general) I can highly recomment [What You Can Change and What You Can't - The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement](http://www.amazon.com/What-You-Change-Cant-Self-Improvement/...) by Martin Seligman.

As someone who has recently developed a bit of an obsession with mindfulness/zen/meditation, this book is a good example of the parallels between that and the field of psychology.

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