Which brings me to the other part of this little rant: Why atheist anger is not only valid, but valuable and necessary.
There’s actually a simple, straightforward answer to this question:
Because anger is always necessary.
Because anger has driven every major movement for social change in this country, and probably in the world. The labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the modern feminist movement, the gay rights movement, the anti-war movement in the Sixties, the anti-war movement today, you name it… all of them have had, as a major driving force, a tremendous amount of anger. Anger over injustice, anger over mistreatment and brutality, anger over helplessness.
I mean, why the hell else would people bother to mobilize social movements? Social movements are hard. They take time, they take energy, they sometimes take serious risk of life and limb, community and career. Nobody would fucking bother if they weren’t furious about something.
So when you tell an atheist (or for that matter, a woman or a queer or a person of color or whatever) not to be so angry, you are, in essence, telling us to disempower ourselves. You’re telling us to lay down one of the single most powerful tools we have at our disposal. You’re telling us to lay down a tool that no social change movement has ever been able to do without. You’re telling us to be polite and diplomatic, when history shows that polite diplomacy in a social change movement works far, far better when it’s coupled with passionate anger. In a battle between David and Goliath, you’re telling David to put down his slingshot and just… I don’t know. Gnaw Goliath on the ankles or something.
I’ll acknowledge that anger is a difficult tool in a social movement. A dangerous one even. It can make people act rashly; it can make it harder to think clearly; it can make people treat potential allies as enemies. In the worst-case scenario, it can even lead to violence. Anger is valid, it’s valuable, it’s necessary… but it can also misfire, and badly.
But unless we’re actually endangering or harming somebody, it is not up to believers to tell atheists when we should and should not use this tool. It is not up to believers to tell atheists that we’re going too far with the anger and need to calm down. Any more than it’s up to white people to say it to black people, or men to say it to women, or straights to say it to queers. When it comes from believers, it’s not helpful. It’s patronizing. It comes across as another attempt to defang us and shut us up. And it’s just going to make us angrier.
It is a fact of the matter—and this is me, RobinZ, speaking now—that “anger is false power” is a popular cached thought. (Those exact words are used in a bus advertisement in my area.) What I am telling you is that you should question that one—it is less general than is commonly supposed.
I posted a link to Greta Christina’s “Atheists and Anger” elsewhere in this thread
What you quoted isn’t really relevant to my point, which is that anger over a principle is not very beneficial to you as an individual, vs. passion or even faked anger in the pursuit of your concrete goals.
(I’d also strongly question whether e.g. Gandhi and MLK were motivated by anger over a principle, or the passionate pursuit of concrete goals.)
In general, fervor over principles is perhaps the most anti-rational emotional response that human beings have… and there’s an evolutionary reason for that. Our genes need a way to get us to do things that are stupid for us as individuals, but good for our relatives and descendants or as moves in iterated PD.
In general, fervor over principles is perhaps the most anti-rational emotional response that human beings have… and there’s an evolutionary reason for that. Our genes need a way to get us to do things that are stupid for us as individuals, but good for our relatives and descendants or as moves in iterated PD.
I don’t care about evolutionary reasons. If I want to wreck my health for a cause, you can advise me on how to be more effective in my tactics or you can advise me on how much of an effect is possible, and either of these things may mean choosing equilibrium over anger … but I have the right to calculate the cost-benefit ratio myself, and if you disagree about the terms in my equation, I have the right to tell you to shove it.
And you have the right to shake your head and say I’m a fool. All I claim is that we have the right to draw our own conclusions, and that sometimes the correct conclusion is be angry.
I have the right to calculate the cost-benefit ratio myself … All I claim is that we have the right to draw our own conclusions, and that sometimes the correct conclusion is be angry.
And all I claim is that if you’re actually concluding things, you’re not angry, and if you’re angry, you’re not currently drawing rational conclusions.
If your anger actually serves a useful purpose, you probably got lucky.
Why? Because people rarely self-modify in the direction of anger by actually weighing the costs and benefits.
I can’t speak about Gandhi, but a case could be made for MLK
As far as I can tell, your link supports passion, not anger, as I would define the words. The letter speaks of “passionate yearning for freedom”, “tears of love”, “courage”, “discipline” and many other things which don’t sound like anger to me at all.
So, perhaps you are using “anger” to refer to a broader range of emotions than I am?
I don’t think there is quite a ‘True Scottsman’ in here, but I sure feel his shadow looming over me as I read it.
That’s just an artifact of the lack of precise terminology for emotions, outside of say, Ekman’s facial coding system. In any case, as you’ve by now seen in the rest of the thread, we got this down to specific predictions about observable behavior, and successfully dissolved the illusion of disagreement.
Although, strictly speaking, my “fritzelnits” comment was a glance in the direction of this question—I’m not convinced that the Ekman’s-facial-coding division coincides with this particular discussion’s alberzle-bargulum split. I suspect that was the idea wedrifid was looking at.
I’m not convinced that the Ekman’s-facial-coding division coincides with this particular discussion’s alberzle-bargulum split.
Me either, but it’s a great example of the sort of thing I’m talking about: hardwired physiological reactions leading to biased mental processing. (IIRC, one of Ekman’s studies, btw, actually involved connections between the “anger” facial expression and immediate damaging effects on the heart.)
Anyway, Ekman coding is one of the very few tools we have for being precise about emotions. The original developers of NLP trained people to observe the external physiology of emotional responses, and noted the consistency of physical response to the same thought or stimulus over time within a single individual. But they mostly avoided codifying or labeling these responses across persons, in order to prevent observer projection and definitional arguments like the one we’re having. (And of course, the one thing they did code turned out to be a lot less rigorously specified than they thought it was.)
So, perhaps you are using “anger” to refer to a broader range of emotions than I am?
This is consistent with my observations of your remarks in this thread modulo the imprecision of the English language. There probably is a fact of the matter when it comes to which usage is more accurate, but I doubt we’ll settle it by posting comments on LessWrong. (;
This is consistent with my observations of your remarks in this thread modulo the imprecision of the English language. There probably is a fact of the matter when it comes to which usage is more accurate, but I doubt we’ll settle it by posting comments on LessWrong. (;
I expect, however, that Ekman facial coding would show visible, measurable distinctions between the set of emotions I’m grouping under “anger” and “zeal”, and the emotion(s) being used by the writers of the letters you linked to. (Which might be more aptly described as “determination”, “resolve”, “passion”, etc.)
At that point, it’s less a question of what terms are “correct” than simply what predictions we are making about thought processes, facial expressions, and behaviors.
Btw, if I had to hazard a guess, I would guess I would not label your current emotion as anger, because you’ve been far too reasonable and accommodating. That is, I would predict your facial expression markers to not inlcude those associated with irritation, zeal, rage, or contempt. (All of which I would expect to be associated with cognitive changes in reasoning capacity and active perceptual biases.)
Anyway—one of my few remaining “pet peeves” is the tendency many people have to treat emotions as something unequivocally good, while ignoring the fact that we already have science to show the physical and mental effects of emotion. You don’t really get to decide how or whether your emotions affect you—only limited options for preventing them in the first place, and for mitigating them after the fact.
But I think I’ve gotten my reaction to that down to just a “peeve”, rather than something that provokes actual irritation. ;-)
Anyway—one of my few remaining “pet peeves” is the tendency many people have to treat emotions as something unequivocally good, while ignoring the fact that we already have science to show the physical and mental effects of emotion. You don’t really get to decide how or whether your emotions affect you—only limited options for preventing them in the first place, and for mitigating them after the fact.
Just so long as we don’t end up with a bias towards dividing emotions down the ‘negative/positive’ line and classify all the ‘negative’ ones as ‘just leftovers from the EEA’ and all the positive ones ‘happy good joy right’. There is a certain correlation to be sure, but the dark side turns out to be useful more I would prefer to admit.
There is a certain correlation to be sure, but the dark side turns out to be useful more I would prefer to admit.
As I mentioned before, I’d want to see a specific reason why the pre-conscious reaction(s) brought about by a particular, genuine negative emotion would be more useful than the same behavior executed by conscious choice or strategically trained reaction.
(After all, if we’re really talking “dark side” here, then I would expect a sociopath—i.e., someone who’s lacking most negative emotions—to perform even better than someone who’s under the influence of a negative emotion.)
As I mentioned before, I’d want to see a specific reason why the pre-conscious reaction(s) brought about by a particular, genuine negative emotion would be more useful than the same behavior executed by conscious choice or strategically trained reaction.
The same behavior is the key. Working out the right emotional displays and social strategies applicable to various situations is an extremely difficult task, as many with an Asperger’s diagnosis can attest to. Anger (and related emotions) allow people to take actions that are appropriate to certain situations where analytic, conscious thought would be complex and require strong theoretical understanding of the dynamics in question. More importantly, it means that you actually have to admit to yourself what you really want. This isn’t something most people are willing to do.
The interesting part of you comment to me ‘strategically trained reactions’. Emotional, instinctive reactions are often useful but I would expect them to be seldom optimal. There is huge scope for improvement and fine tuning of both the emotional experience and the external behaviors.
If everyone had the time and inclination and motivation to become perfectly controlled, calm yet fast acting under pressure jedi types then could well come a time where emotional reactions are not useful. But until that time emotional reactions tend to be a good baseline to start from. Then, in those instances in which they don’t work satisfactorily, debug them with conscious intervention.
(After all, if we’re really talking “dark side” here, then I would expect a sociopath—i.e., someone who’s lacking most negative emotions—to perform even better than someone who’s under the influence of a negative emotion.)
We may have a different idea of which emotions sociopaths experience. My understanding (and observation) of sociopaths suggests that they don’t feel shame, guilt or remorse are are terrible at picking up fear, sadness and contempt in others. But they do seem to feel anger or something like it whenever their grandiose ego is threatened.
If everyone had the time and inclination and motivation to become perfectly controlled, calm yet fast acting under pressure jedi types then could well come a time where emotional reactions are not useful. But until that time emotional reactions tend to be a good baseline to start from. Then, in those instances in which they don’t work satisfactorily, debug them with conscious intervention.
There seems to be an implicit assumption here that you would have to be “controlled”, but what I’ve been talking about is eliminating the need for control, by simply altering whatever mental association is making you have something to control. Emotions aren’t something that just happen due to environmental conditions; mostly, they require a learned pairing to be triggered, and those pairings can be altered.
For example, if you thought that Santa Claus existed, and then later realized he didn’t, a whole bunch of emotional triggers got switched off automatically as soon as you realized this. You did not need to become a “trained jedi” to stop the emotion of wanting to wait up and see Santa—you simply didn’t have the reaction any more.
I’m going to stop the discussion here, though, because you still haven’t identified with any specificity whatsoever what sort of situations you’re talking about. I have only the vaguest idea, and assume you are talking about some sort of corporate-politic machinations, so I’m using my own experiences as a guide.
In my own experiences, however, I cannot recall any situation where someone was positively served by an immediate negative emotional reaction to anything—the game always went to people who could calmly spin any situation to their strategic advantage.
However, I’m also thinking of situations primarily where objective standards of performance were also involved, and were ultimately the most important thing. I could imagine that in situations of total politics and no objective standards, perhaps some other case could exist. I just cannot (yet) imagine what that would look like.
So, that means we’re going to keep talking past one another in this area unless you give me a specific example of a situation where you think an instinctual negative reaction would help a person’s real goals. Otherwise, we’re just handwaving different priors.
More importantly, it means that you actually have to admit to yourself what you really want. This isn’t something most people are willing to do.
Perhaps this is the point of confusion: I’m not talking about most people. I’m talking about people who claim to be rationalists. If you’re a rationalist, admitting to yourself what you really want should be at the top of your frickin’ to-do list. ;-)
And really, that’s been my point in this thread from the get-go. Know what you want, then self-modify according to what will get you what you want.
Perhaps this is the point of confusion: I’m not talking about most people. I’m talking about people who claim to be rationalists. If you’re a rationalist, admitting to yourself what you really want should be at the top of your frickin’ to-do list. ;-)
And really, that’s been my point in this thread from the get-go. Know what you want, then self-modify according to what will get you what you want.
On this we are in total agreement!
On the other parts we would be rehashing the same old ‘built in instincts’ vs ‘learned emotional associations’ debate. We tend to agree that regardless of how they got there, the emotional triggers can certainly be modified by training (hacking).
We may have some difference in our predictions on how useful instinctive negative emotional responses to complex status risks can be for naive subjects. We seem to agree that there is always benefit to be had (neglecting opportunity cost) in replacing those emotional reactions with more finely tuned proactive habits. I’m not sure how we calibrate our respective ‘opportunity cost’ vs benefit functions over various cases of potential hacking. One would expect from our respective roles that you would on average predict a higher benefit/‘opportunity cost’ value than I!
(Naturally, this is my reading of our respective positions and subject to correction if I read you wrong.)
I’m not sure how we calibrate our respective ‘opportunity cost’ vs benefit functions over various cases of potential hacking. One would expect from our respective roles that you would on average predict a higher benefit/‘opportunity cost’ value than I!
And that’s mainly because I predict a much lower cost to changing than you do, as you seem to replace any mention of self-modification with references to “training”. Training, however, is an exceptionally costly form of self-modification by comparison.
Getting rid of a hot button does not require training; it simply requires awareness and reinterpretation of a situation, akin to my earlier example of realizing there’s no Santa Claus. When the right part of your brain “gets” that there’s no Santa Claus, the emotion simply stops. Training is not required, except for the one-time investment to develop the skill to intentionally perform such modifications.
Thus, I anticipate a much lower cost to changing responses than you. In fact, I consider it so much cheaper, that my routine attitude towards anything I feel bad about is to first remove that reaction.
And usually, the immediate result of removing the reaction is that I spontaneously think of a much better solution to whatever outside-world problem I’m encountering, than anything I could think of while still “under the influence” of the negative emotion.
And, this extends to people-problems as well as logistical problems: I find my brain models other people better when it’s not busy being obsessed with a perceived threat to me!
Anyway, given my extremely low cost to self-modifying, you can see why I’d view it as borderline insane not to do it at the drop of a hat (or the push of a berserk button).
(Of course, you could argue that I’ve already invested so much into becoming a person who can self-modify so easily, but then, it’s not as if there isn’t plenty of other payoff to even up that score.)
Btw, if I had to hazard a guess, I would guess I would not label your current emotion as anger, because you’ve been far too reasonable and accommodating. That is, I would predict your facial expression markers to not inlcude those associated with irritation, zeal, rage, or contempt. (All of which I would expect to be associated with cognitive changes in reasoning capacity and active perceptual biases.)
If only I had known! I could have videorecorded myself to post to Youtube, and we would have a testable hypothesis! :P
That said: this remark constitutes definite proof of “different definitions” theory, because I would have said I was angry. And I am sure I would have had a difficult time being as carefully phrased were I responding in realtime—introspecting on my feelings, I think I can detect places where I steered away from the transition into what you have called anger in order to maintain the tone of the conversation.
Anyway—one of my few remaining “pet peeves” is the tendency many people have to treat emotions as something unequivocally good, while ignoring the fact that we already have science to show the physical and mental effects of emotion. You don’t really get to decide how or whether your emotions affect you—only limited options for preventing them in the first place, and for mitigating them after the fact.
This is true—and a lesson I need to put into practice, to be honest.
But I think I’ve gotten my reaction to that down to just a “peeve”, rather than something that provokes actual irritation. ;-)
I wonder if I would have provoked less of a reaction with “pet peeve” than “berserk button”? (:
(I think I would still use the latter were I writing it now—an intermediate term would be better, though.)
That said: this remark constitutes definite proof of “different definitions” theory, because I would have said I was angry. And I am sure I would have had a difficult time being as carefully phrased were I responding in realtime—introspecting on my feelings, I think I can detect places where I steered away from the transition into what you have called anger in order to maintain the tone of the conversation.
Is this a case of anger-on-the-Internet vs. anger in real life? There is an emotion on the Internet which I am sometimes inclined to identify as anger which is not at all the same as the real life emotion of anger which I have experienced in myself and others.
Real life anger is scary stuff, something that can result in you or others actually getting physically hurt. It is inseparable from a fear of physical harm. I don’t know where you draw the line between anger and rage but my physical-world experiences with either have been disturbing.
I sometimes read posts on the Internet which ‘make my blood boil’ but I don’t label it ‘anger’ because real-world anger is something far more frightening. A discussion mediated by the Internet can’t really invoke the implications of real-world anger.
I must admit to some bewilderment, because the way you and pjeby are talking, there seems to be some superpowered incensed fury that you reserve the term “anger” for that I am personally unfamiliar with. I can’t say my anger during this discussion was qualitatively different from my anger on other occasions, on and offline.
Edit: That is to say, I am quite familiar with alberzles, but not with bargulums, to extend that conceit.
If it helps clarify, I see anger as ‘the emotion that makes you want to hurt people’, either through physical or emotional violence. While I can appreciate the strategic value of such an emotion from an evolutionary point of view I find it hard to approve of it. Grudging respect is about the closest to a positive view of anger I can muster.
And I am sure I would have had a difficult time being as carefully phrased were I responding in realtime—introspecting on my feelings, I think I can detect places where I steered away from the transition into what you have called anger in order to maintain the tone of the conversation.
And this also supports what I’ve been saying, on two additional points:
FIrst, you appear to agree that actually entering into that emotional state is a mind-killer. And second, having buttons that pushed you in the direction of that state was not actually helpful to your considered goals.
I think this is sufficient to conclude the discussion; I feel like Albert and Barry, just having agreed on “alberzles” and “bargulums”. Yay, rationality! ;-)
[Edit: misspelled “bargulums”, not that anyone could tell.]
I think this is sufficient to conclude the discussion; I feel like Albert and Barry, just having agreed on “alberzles” and “bargulums”. Yay, rationality! ;-)
With the caveat that we haven’t decided which ones are fritzelnits yet. :P
[Edit: misspelled “bargulums”, not that anyone could tell.]
Wait, if no-one could tell, how did you? Paradox!
Okay, I need to go to bed. Catch you on the flipside!
Not always. I posted a link to Greta Christina’s “Atheists and Anger” elsewhere in this thread:
It is a fact of the matter—and this is me, RobinZ, speaking now—that “anger is false power” is a popular cached thought. (Those exact words are used in a bus advertisement in my area.) What I am telling you is that you should question that one—it is less general than is commonly supposed.
What you quoted isn’t really relevant to my point, which is that anger over a principle is not very beneficial to you as an individual, vs. passion or even faked anger in the pursuit of your concrete goals.
(I’d also strongly question whether e.g. Gandhi and MLK were motivated by anger over a principle, or the passionate pursuit of concrete goals.)
In general, fervor over principles is perhaps the most anti-rational emotional response that human beings have… and there’s an evolutionary reason for that. Our genes need a way to get us to do things that are stupid for us as individuals, but good for our relatives and descendants or as moves in iterated PD.
I can’t speak about Gandhi, but a case could be made for MLK. More to the point, these social movements have included more than two people—and some were quite explicitly angry.
I don’t care about evolutionary reasons. If I want to wreck my health for a cause, you can advise me on how to be more effective in my tactics or you can advise me on how much of an effect is possible, and either of these things may mean choosing equilibrium over anger … but I have the right to calculate the cost-benefit ratio myself, and if you disagree about the terms in my equation, I have the right to tell you to shove it.
And you have the right to shake your head and say I’m a fool. All I claim is that we have the right to draw our own conclusions, and that sometimes the correct conclusion is be angry.
And all I claim is that if you’re actually concluding things, you’re not angry, and if you’re angry, you’re not currently drawing rational conclusions.
If your anger actually serves a useful purpose, you probably got lucky.
Why? Because people rarely self-modify in the direction of anger by actually weighing the costs and benefits.
As far as I can tell, your link supports passion, not anger, as I would define the words. The letter speaks of “passionate yearning for freedom”, “tears of love”, “courage”, “discipline” and many other things which don’t sound like anger to me at all.
So, perhaps you are using “anger” to refer to a broader range of emotions than I am?
I don’t think there is quite a ‘True Scottsman’ in here, but I sure feel his shadow looming over me as I read it.
That’s just an artifact of the lack of precise terminology for emotions, outside of say, Ekman’s facial coding system. In any case, as you’ve by now seen in the rest of the thread, we got this down to specific predictions about observable behavior, and successfully dissolved the illusion of disagreement.
Although, strictly speaking, my “fritzelnits” comment was a glance in the direction of this question—I’m not convinced that the Ekman’s-facial-coding division coincides with this particular discussion’s alberzle-bargulum split. I suspect that was the idea wedrifid was looking at.
Me either, but it’s a great example of the sort of thing I’m talking about: hardwired physiological reactions leading to biased mental processing. (IIRC, one of Ekman’s studies, btw, actually involved connections between the “anger” facial expression and immediate damaging effects on the heart.)
Anyway, Ekman coding is one of the very few tools we have for being precise about emotions. The original developers of NLP trained people to observe the external physiology of emotional responses, and noted the consistency of physical response to the same thought or stimulus over time within a single individual. But they mostly avoided codifying or labeling these responses across persons, in order to prevent observer projection and definitional arguments like the one we’re having. (And of course, the one thing they did code turned out to be a lot less rigorously specified than they thought it was.)
This is consistent with my observations of your remarks in this thread modulo the imprecision of the English language. There probably is a fact of the matter when it comes to which usage is more accurate, but I doubt we’ll settle it by posting comments on LessWrong. (;
I expect, however, that Ekman facial coding would show visible, measurable distinctions between the set of emotions I’m grouping under “anger” and “zeal”, and the emotion(s) being used by the writers of the letters you linked to. (Which might be more aptly described as “determination”, “resolve”, “passion”, etc.)
At that point, it’s less a question of what terms are “correct” than simply what predictions we are making about thought processes, facial expressions, and behaviors.
Btw, if I had to hazard a guess, I would guess I would not label your current emotion as anger, because you’ve been far too reasonable and accommodating. That is, I would predict your facial expression markers to not inlcude those associated with irritation, zeal, rage, or contempt. (All of which I would expect to be associated with cognitive changes in reasoning capacity and active perceptual biases.)
Anyway—one of my few remaining “pet peeves” is the tendency many people have to treat emotions as something unequivocally good, while ignoring the fact that we already have science to show the physical and mental effects of emotion. You don’t really get to decide how or whether your emotions affect you—only limited options for preventing them in the first place, and for mitigating them after the fact.
But I think I’ve gotten my reaction to that down to just a “peeve”, rather than something that provokes actual irritation. ;-)
Just so long as we don’t end up with a bias towards dividing emotions down the ‘negative/positive’ line and classify all the ‘negative’ ones as ‘just leftovers from the EEA’ and all the positive ones ‘happy good joy right’. There is a certain correlation to be sure, but the dark side turns out to be useful more I would prefer to admit.
As I mentioned before, I’d want to see a specific reason why the pre-conscious reaction(s) brought about by a particular, genuine negative emotion would be more useful than the same behavior executed by conscious choice or strategically trained reaction.
(After all, if we’re really talking “dark side” here, then I would expect a sociopath—i.e., someone who’s lacking most negative emotions—to perform even better than someone who’s under the influence of a negative emotion.)
The same behavior is the key. Working out the right emotional displays and social strategies applicable to various situations is an extremely difficult task, as many with an Asperger’s diagnosis can attest to. Anger (and related emotions) allow people to take actions that are appropriate to certain situations where analytic, conscious thought would be complex and require strong theoretical understanding of the dynamics in question. More importantly, it means that you actually have to admit to yourself what you really want. This isn’t something most people are willing to do.
The interesting part of you comment to me ‘strategically trained reactions’. Emotional, instinctive reactions are often useful but I would expect them to be seldom optimal. There is huge scope for improvement and fine tuning of both the emotional experience and the external behaviors.
If everyone had the time and inclination and motivation to become perfectly controlled, calm yet fast acting under pressure jedi types then could well come a time where emotional reactions are not useful. But until that time emotional reactions tend to be a good baseline to start from. Then, in those instances in which they don’t work satisfactorily, debug them with conscious intervention.
We may have a different idea of which emotions sociopaths experience. My understanding (and observation) of sociopaths suggests that they don’t feel shame, guilt or remorse are are terrible at picking up fear, sadness and contempt in others. But they do seem to feel anger or something like it whenever their grandiose ego is threatened.
There seems to be an implicit assumption here that you would have to be “controlled”, but what I’ve been talking about is eliminating the need for control, by simply altering whatever mental association is making you have something to control. Emotions aren’t something that just happen due to environmental conditions; mostly, they require a learned pairing to be triggered, and those pairings can be altered.
For example, if you thought that Santa Claus existed, and then later realized he didn’t, a whole bunch of emotional triggers got switched off automatically as soon as you realized this. You did not need to become a “trained jedi” to stop the emotion of wanting to wait up and see Santa—you simply didn’t have the reaction any more.
I’m going to stop the discussion here, though, because you still haven’t identified with any specificity whatsoever what sort of situations you’re talking about. I have only the vaguest idea, and assume you are talking about some sort of corporate-politic machinations, so I’m using my own experiences as a guide.
In my own experiences, however, I cannot recall any situation where someone was positively served by an immediate negative emotional reaction to anything—the game always went to people who could calmly spin any situation to their strategic advantage.
However, I’m also thinking of situations primarily where objective standards of performance were also involved, and were ultimately the most important thing. I could imagine that in situations of total politics and no objective standards, perhaps some other case could exist. I just cannot (yet) imagine what that would look like.
So, that means we’re going to keep talking past one another in this area unless you give me a specific example of a situation where you think an instinctual negative reaction would help a person’s real goals. Otherwise, we’re just handwaving different priors.
Perhaps this is the point of confusion: I’m not talking about most people. I’m talking about people who claim to be rationalists. If you’re a rationalist, admitting to yourself what you really want should be at the top of your frickin’ to-do list. ;-)
And really, that’s been my point in this thread from the get-go. Know what you want, then self-modify according to what will get you what you want.
On this we are in total agreement!
On the other parts we would be rehashing the same old ‘built in instincts’ vs ‘learned emotional associations’ debate. We tend to agree that regardless of how they got there, the emotional triggers can certainly be modified by training (hacking).
We may have some difference in our predictions on how useful instinctive negative emotional responses to complex status risks can be for naive subjects. We seem to agree that there is always benefit to be had (neglecting opportunity cost) in replacing those emotional reactions with more finely tuned proactive habits. I’m not sure how we calibrate our respective ‘opportunity cost’ vs benefit functions over various cases of potential hacking. One would expect from our respective roles that you would on average predict a higher benefit/‘opportunity cost’ value than I!
(Naturally, this is my reading of our respective positions and subject to correction if I read you wrong.)
And that’s mainly because I predict a much lower cost to changing than you do, as you seem to replace any mention of self-modification with references to “training”. Training, however, is an exceptionally costly form of self-modification by comparison.
Getting rid of a hot button does not require training; it simply requires awareness and reinterpretation of a situation, akin to my earlier example of realizing there’s no Santa Claus. When the right part of your brain “gets” that there’s no Santa Claus, the emotion simply stops. Training is not required, except for the one-time investment to develop the skill to intentionally perform such modifications.
Thus, I anticipate a much lower cost to changing responses than you. In fact, I consider it so much cheaper, that my routine attitude towards anything I feel bad about is to first remove that reaction.
And usually, the immediate result of removing the reaction is that I spontaneously think of a much better solution to whatever outside-world problem I’m encountering, than anything I could think of while still “under the influence” of the negative emotion.
And, this extends to people-problems as well as logistical problems: I find my brain models other people better when it’s not busy being obsessed with a perceived threat to me!
Anyway, given my extremely low cost to self-modifying, you can see why I’d view it as borderline insane not to do it at the drop of a hat (or the push of a berserk button).
(Of course, you could argue that I’ve already invested so much into becoming a person who can self-modify so easily, but then, it’s not as if there isn’t plenty of other payoff to even up that score.)
If only I had known! I could have videorecorded myself to post to Youtube, and we would have a testable hypothesis! :P
That said: this remark constitutes definite proof of “different definitions” theory, because I would have said I was angry. And I am sure I would have had a difficult time being as carefully phrased were I responding in realtime—introspecting on my feelings, I think I can detect places where I steered away from the transition into what you have called anger in order to maintain the tone of the conversation.
This is true—and a lesson I need to put into practice, to be honest.
I wonder if I would have provoked less of a reaction with “pet peeve” than “berserk button”? (:
(I think I would still use the latter were I writing it now—an intermediate term would be better, though.)
Is this a case of anger-on-the-Internet vs. anger in real life? There is an emotion on the Internet which I am sometimes inclined to identify as anger which is not at all the same as the real life emotion of anger which I have experienced in myself and others.
Real life anger is scary stuff, something that can result in you or others actually getting physically hurt. It is inseparable from a fear of physical harm. I don’t know where you draw the line between anger and rage but my physical-world experiences with either have been disturbing.
I sometimes read posts on the Internet which ‘make my blood boil’ but I don’t label it ‘anger’ because real-world anger is something far more frightening. A discussion mediated by the Internet can’t really invoke the implications of real-world anger.
I must admit to some bewilderment, because the way you and pjeby are talking, there seems to be some superpowered incensed fury that you reserve the term “anger” for that I am personally unfamiliar with. I can’t say my anger during this discussion was qualitatively different from my anger on other occasions, on and offline.
Edit: That is to say, I am quite familiar with alberzles, but not with bargulums, to extend that conceit.
If it helps clarify, I see anger as ‘the emotion that makes you want to hurt people’, either through physical or emotional violence. While I can appreciate the strategic value of such an emotion from an evolutionary point of view I find it hard to approve of it. Grudging respect is about the closest to a positive view of anger I can muster.
And this also supports what I’ve been saying, on two additional points:
FIrst, you appear to agree that actually entering into that emotional state is a mind-killer. And second, having buttons that pushed you in the direction of that state was not actually helpful to your considered goals.
I think this is sufficient to conclude the discussion; I feel like Albert and Barry, just having agreed on “alberzles” and “bargulums”. Yay, rationality! ;-)
[Edit: misspelled “bargulums”, not that anyone could tell.]
With the caveat that we haven’t decided which ones are fritzelnits yet. :P
Wait, if no-one could tell, how did you? Paradox!
Okay, I need to go to bed. Catch you on the flipside!
Berserk button was the right phrase in the context.