[ExI] Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2013-11-03 16:44, BillK wrote:
> Humans are emotion driven creatures. There are floods of constantly 
> changing chemicals coursing through our bodies and brains. If you lose 
> the emotions, you lose a lot of what makes you human. Perhaps the 
> benefit of increased rationality might have rather large unforeseen 
> consequences.

Something like this, said on a transhumanist mailing list?! What is the 
world coming to? Soon you will claim there might be downsides to radical 
life extension or being a cyborg! :-)

Note however that Adrian did not say we should get rid of emotions. He 
said that we should aspire to become more rational. *Very* different. 
Unfortunately we have a culture that somehow imagines emotions to be the 
opposite or counterpart to rationality, rather than part of the way the 
whole system works. I think it would be a great thing to be disgusted by 
bad arguments or feel delight when uncertainty is reduced in a Bayesian 
way.


-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University