= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
juliawise comments on Rationality Drugs - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (119)
I'd like to share one day's worth of experience with modafinil.
I noticed a huge difference in alertness. I was filled with an urge to be doing something every second. I don't believe I was more intelligent (some of the work I did that day turned out to be low quality) but I was much more productive. And happy. I felt like I was just "riding the day" -- that going through life, minute by minute, running errands, checking items off my to-do list, and seeing what happened next, was boundlessly fascinating.
I suspect that, at least for me, and maybe for others, most unhappiness is really fatigue, coupled with the guilt of not having accomplished much in a state of fatigue. Simply not being tired makes me deliriously happy. I am not surprised by the study that coffee reduces depression in women, though I know to be suspicious of medical study methodology. The symptoms of clinical depression look a lot like the symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation (fatigue, inability to concentrate, clumsiness, weight gain or weight loss, dramatic and irrational emotions). It's possible that some people with symptoms of depression are actually sleep deprived (or that a typical amount of sleep for a modern-day working or student life is too little for their biological needs.) I had a year when I thought I was losing my mind; in retrospect, it may have had something to do with getting no more than five hours of sleep a night.
What are "irrational emotions"?
An emotion is irrational if it is not appropriate to the situation - for example, social anxiety is irrational if it causes one to avoid pursuing some social opportunities which have a positive expected value (for any utility function, which may or may not carry a heavier penalty for failure than a bonus for success).
Who decides (and how) which emotion is appropriate to which situation?
See above. If your emotional state (and I assume the ability to distinguish a state of heightened emotion from a resting state) causes you to act in ways which do not reflect your evidence-based assessments, it is causing you to act against your rational decisions and is therefore irrational.
I would say that the ability to make this judgement belongs to the best-informed rationally-acting observer: someone who has knowledge of the your mental state in both emotional states, and from the available evidence, estimate whether or not the difference in behavior can be attributed to emotional causes. This observer may very well be you yourself, in a resting state; once you have regained your perspective, as you have a lot more information on your own mental state.
To expand on the example I gave above, someone experiencing social anxiety may suddenly focus on the various ways in which a social interaction can go horribly wrong, even if these futures are not very probable. Basically, anxiety hijacks the availability heuristic, causing an overestimation of the probability of catastrophe. Because this adjustment in probability is not based in evidence (though this point could be argued), it is irrational.
This definition of "irrational emotions" does not depend on the utility function used. If someone weights failure more heavily than success, and will go home unhappy at the end of the night if they have 9 successful conversations and 1 boring dud, they are not necessarily irrational. However, if, on previous nights with substantial frequency they have gone 10 for 10, and before entering a conversation they freeze in fear - then, their expected value has changed without sufficient reason. That is irrational emotion.