<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">A very interesting case came up: a man with brain damage (reported by Damasio, I think) between his frontal cortex and his amygdala (big emotional center). He was of high intelligence but could not hold a job - got distracted a lot and so on. But the main thing is that he could not make the simplest decision. Keep working or work on something else or stop. Coffee offers threw him into a dither which he could just not get out of.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">Bottom line: some emotional input has to happen to make a decision, even a simple one. Hume was right. Emotions drive behavior more than reason does. We seem to always worry about emotions taking over and making us make irrational decisions. Of course that can happen. No system is perfect. But without it we are lost. No, not orthogonal between reason and emotion.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">Have you ever had a situation arise where decision A looked better than B, but something told you that B was going to work better? You can call this intuition or whatever you choose, but what is happening is that your emotional center likes B better and you may never know the 'reason' for that emotion.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">Also, think of Thinking, Fast and Slow, which I hope you have read. Much data seem to point at this: our unconscious acts and our conscious notices that and gives it a reason even if the behavior that comes out makes little sense to us ('Why did I say/do that?") . The reason appears after the fact. That puts our ego in the position of just being a follower of our unconscious. Free Will? Hmmm.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">fMRI studies show that the beginning of an action taken by our motor cortex happens before we are aware of it. Ergo - we are not in control. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">Did you ever listen to the Austin Lounge Lizards? (bunch of lawyers who played at a bluegrass festival I attended) They have a little tune called 'We are in control' - maybe that's a bit like whistling through the graveyard.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">bill w</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 3:47 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" style="overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="gmail-m_-2985001660275714097WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div style="border-right:none;border-bottom:none;border-left:none;border-top:1pt solid rgb(225,225,225);padding:3pt 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org</a>> <b>On Behalf Of </b>William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat<br><b>Sent:</b> Thursday, May 27, 2021 12:15 PM<br><b>To:</b> ExI chat list <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>><br><b>Cc:</b> William Flynn Wallace <<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com" target="_blank">foozler83@gmail.com</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] restoration-ready<u></u><u></u></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black">Oh, don't tell me - you are one of 'those' - sunny disposition people, making everyone around them sick of you (and with envy as well, I reckon). Think of the people in AFrica, in Bangladesh, in downtown San Francisco - get your empathy going and try to think like them. Eat bad food, TAke up smoking cigars, make your wife mad at you. Probably won't work. bill </span><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">w<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">Billw, she knew how I am when she married me. We are Eeyore and Tigger.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">I had a thought on this today after I wrote the Despondex post. Recently I posted about a worry I have had about uploading: what if an upload can think but not feel?<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">Someone here posted that these two cannot be separated: a thinking being is a feeling being. I see those two types of thinking as being more orthogonal to each other, but I might be wrong on that.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">An idea occurred to me. We know that sometimes two separate traits co-evolve in such a way as to reinforce each other or drive each other. Perhaps human intellect drove emotion, then emotion drove intellect. It could even be fashioned into a mate selection scenario: deeply feeling people were more desirable as mates, and the offspring of deeply feeling people were capable of higher intellect.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">Another take: what if… we go with the well-known observation that comfortable people accomplish nothing. Uncomfortable people writhe and squirm, changing things trying to be comfortable. If humans were becoming the moodiest of beasts, then humans would be the most restless, which might drive technology, in order to increase the likelihood that our offspring would survive. Technology enabled humans to expand territory and produce more food, then later to preserve food, which enabled more developed brains, more intellect, more emotion. In that view, three human characteristics co-evolved: emotion, intellect and mastery of technology.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">spike<u></u><u></u></span></p></div></div></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>
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