= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Kaj_Sotala comments on Avoid misinterpreting your emotions - 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 (32)
it's lines like this that make me a little uneasy about your essay. If you say that sometimes emotions are worth listening too and sometimes not, doesn't this imply that they are quite worthless as an advisor? If they are wrong roughly the same amount as they are right, that does not mean that they are "half good" it means they totally fail, as a coinflip would give you the same result. Shouldn't it then be the conclusion that one should just ignore emotion all together and rethink issues from scratch if they are somehow relevant? In other words: if you are forced to reconsider all the data given by emotional input anyway, what good is it in the first place?
If ithey were never any better than a coinflip, then yes, you might as well ignore them completely. But they're not always wrong - like I mentioned in my post, my emotions seem to generally have been right when they've been warning me not to trust someone. So you should figure out when your emotions are right and when they're wrong, and then either listen to them or ignore them based on their historical track record in similar situations.
Yes, it can pay off to briefly consider alternative explanations even in situations when your emotions have usually been correct or when they've usually been incorrect. And if the stakes are really high, you might be best off spending some extra time thinking about the issue regardless. But that doesn't make emotions different from any other source of information. Even if you got advice from an intelligent and exceptionally rational friend whose advice had always been correct so far, it would still be a good idea to spend a moment checking the argument for flaws before relying on it in some very high-stakes decision.