Emotions have one important function: Emotions measure subjective importance.
The entire continent of Australia is more important to me than my little toe, but guess which one has more sway on my emotions? Emotions are behavior-modifiers—they approximate “rational” behavior in the ancestral environment. [lesswrong’s definition of rational as goal-optimizating behavior. Emotions are irrational as per the normal definition because they are involuntary and don’t involve deliberative reasoning].
My ex-wife was frustrated that she couldn’t reach me with her emotions. She could have better dealt with me mirroring her anger and ‘fighting it out’.
It’s up to your meta-cognition to decide when it’s best to clamp down on emotions and when to ramp them up. The instinctive thing to do for most people is to clamp down as much as possible and then give up at some point, and I’m guessing evolution selected on negative-emotion-intensity and emotion-clamping-ability under the condition that everyone maximally clamps negative emotions because they hurt. As a result our clamping abilities are exactly, slightly under, or slightly over the maximum clamping strength we need in life.
I think this, combined with the fact that the modern environment is more stressful means, means most people aught to try to train themselves to strengthen that clamp down that muscle more, and correctly so. But there are some whose clamping muscles are just fine, and now they’re ready for Step 2 which is learning when the correct time to not clamp is.
The entire continent of Australia is more important to me than my little toe, but guess which one has more sway on my emotions? Emotions are behavior-modifiers—they approximate “rational” behavior in the ancestral environment. [lesswrong’s definition of rational as goal-optimizating behavior. Emotions are irrational as per the normal definition because they are involuntary and don’t involve deliberative reasoning].
It’s up to your meta-cognition to decide when it’s best to clamp down on emotions and when to ramp them up. The instinctive thing to do for most people is to clamp down as much as possible and then give up at some point, and I’m guessing evolution selected on negative-emotion-intensity and emotion-clamping-ability under the condition that everyone maximally clamps negative emotions because they hurt. As a result our clamping abilities are exactly, slightly under, or slightly over the maximum clamping strength we need in life.
I think this, combined with the fact that the modern environment is more stressful means, means most people aught to try to train themselves to strengthen that clamp down that muscle more, and correctly so. But there are some whose clamping muscles are just fine, and now they’re ready for Step 2 which is learning when the correct time to not clamp is.