[extropy-chat] Fear and Hope

[Damien Sullivan]

On Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 09:00:29PM -0400, Robin Hanson wrote:
> Perhaps this is obvious to others, but it recently occurred to me that hope
> usually needs something more specific to latch on to than fear does.  You
> might fear strangers in general at night, but you need to know something

I'm not sure.  One might be nervous and primed to fear while walking alone at
night, but real full fear will require a target -- some moving shadow.  Right
now I'm thinking that emotions (as opposed to moods) don't exist in a vacuum,
but are emotions *about* something specific.

The something can be imagined, though, and it's often easy to imagine things
to be afraid of, especially if there's similarity to other things.  Small
particles of soot or asbestos are bad for the lungs, nanites are small
particles, it's easy to fear that nanites running around will be bad for our
lungs.  I'm not sure that's inaccurate, for that matter.

> of a technology becomes more specific, hope is easier to find.  Genetic
> engineering in general easily inspires fear, but a specific genetic

Do GMOs inspired fear, or disgust?  "Eww!  There's genes in my food!"

-xx- Damien X-)