[extropy-chat] Fear and Hope

[Damien Sullivan]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 06:40:22AM -0400, Robin Hanson wrote:

> OK, but if you are lost in the woods at night, all it takes is a weird sound
> or an unknown shape to inspire fear, while hope requires far more and more
> unusual detail, such as the visual outline of a cabin where you could stay.

How about a yellow light, gleaming through the leaves?  I'd head for that.  Or
for the pre-electric age, a fire or the smell of smoke.  Well, you'd have to
decide whether it was embryonic forest fire or someone's hearth or chimney.
Or any human sound, apart from screams.

So, not so much detail.  I would agree that there are probably many more
stimuli which inspire fear than hope.  Probably because there are many more
things which can hurt than which can help.  Whether something completely
strange inspires fear, hope, or just curiosity probably depends on one's
expectations and temperament.

(I've been reading Paul Ekman's _Emotions Revealed_, on emotions with
universal facial expressions.  He says that fear and surprise weren't reliably
distinguishable in or by New Guineans, but are for modern literate people.  I
imagine that could reflect strange things tending to be bad things, for New
Guinean highlanders.)

-xx- Damien X-)