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This is a bit Pollyanna. People aren't logic robots that start from first principles and then derive all knowledge from logical reasoning. People are emotional,

This is a bit Pollyanna. People aren't logic robots that start from first principles and then derive all knowledge from logical reasoning. People are emotional, irrational beings. Those of us who fancy ourselves rational are constantly involved in irrational motivated reasoning helping us maintain that desired worldview. Not to say we shouldn't try to live up to the ideal you set forth. We should do our best. But there's not some category of honest people among whom you can avoid human nature.

elefantastisch 7y ago
To the point of "honest people": I added "honest" in editing to distinguish from people who are just arguing because they like fighting and wouldn't agree if you told them 2 + 2 = 4. There are plenty of those online too, and their reasons for disagreeing clearly aren't covered by my "reasons people disagree" principle. But as I understood you, point taken. The distillation of principles, information, and interpretation into an opinion does not actually occur as idealized in my breakdown. I wouldn't disagree with that.
- fragmede 7y ago
  More explictly: the hardest person to be honest with is yourself.
Accujack 7y ago
Hey, hey. Speak for yourself. ;-)
iovrthoughtthis 7y ago
I’m not so certain emotion and logic are so fundamentally separate you know. Perhaps logic is just our way of explaining our otherwise unexplainable decision making systems.
- yazaddaruvala 7y ago
  My belief is that intuition and emotion are just complex sets of logic that we haven’t understood yet. Put in the time and focus, and one day it will just click.
  - lanstin 7y ago
    I think the emotions and really the whole operation of the mental states is reasonable, but not internally logical. They arise in predictable patterns from experiences and so on, but they can very easily override logic. To understand your emotions, you have to see and admit you aren't the nice logical person you might have expected.
  - zzzeek 7y ago
    they will be understood someday, but only by highly advanced mathematical models developed through machine learning. models which humans will not actually be capable of understanding.
    - hindsightbias 7y ago
      Decades ago, my coworkers and I would draw FSMs of our mgmt on the white board with cryptic lables. While they did get complicated they were understandable.
- adamredwoods 7y ago
  It's biological (aka biological determination). There's the famous study of how judges handed out verdicts based on what or when they ate: https://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889 https://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889
munificent 7y ago
People are not robots, but in terms of reaching agreement between humans, "emotion" is more or less just a difference in priorities, which is one of the ways reasonable people can disagree. If we agree on the facts and we agree on their implications, but we still disagree, it's likely because we weight things differently. Emotions are simply a large component for how we weight things.
- zzzeek 7y ago
  emotionalism is strongly linked to irrationality. once someone is irrational I'm not following how that can be reduced to a "difference in priorities". I'm an open source maintainer of some very popular projects. more in the early days, I was certainly irrational on a few occasions where someone called out things that I did wrong and I refused to see it. It wasn't like I had de-prioritized "making sure the code is not completely broken". my own fear that I was going to have to rethink a whole huge set of assumptions (which of course I had to do anyway) prevented me from working with people.
  - fsckboy 7y ago
    But rationality (in the human sense) is completely governed by emotion. Curiosity about an unsolved problem? that's emotional regulation of the brain. Satisfaction that a problem is solved? also emotion. Beauty in a better solution? emotion. This has significance, it's not just a restatement of "the problem" using different terminology. It's significant because the brain, like every other part of the body, evolved parsimoniously, and it does not have spare capacity lying around, so anything that "distracts" the emotional parts of the brain will diminish rational capacity. "Hangry" is not just a pun/quip about being hungry, it's empirically measurable, it affects outcomes. Debating rational topics with your rational friends, whether at work, at school, or after hours over a beer, it's fun (emotion), can be frustrating (emotion) but does it ever not get heated (more emotion)? The brain is an emotional organ. All the other organs are rational, they do what they do in entirely predictable and logical ways.
    - zzzeek 7y ago
blueprint 7y ago
What if it's actually only those who are honest who have human nature?

elefantastisch 7y ago

To the point of "honest people": I added "honest" in editing to distinguish from people who are just arguing because they like fighting and wouldn't agree if you told them 2 + 2 = 4. There are plenty of those online too, and their reasons for disagreeing clearly aren't covered by my "reasons people disagree" principle. But as I understood you, point taken. The distillation of principles, information, and interpretation into an opinion does not actually occur as idealized in my breakdown. I wouldn't disagree with that.

fragmede 7y ago
More explictly: the hardest person to be honest with is yourself.

Accujack 7y ago

Hey, hey. Speak for yourself. ;-)

iovrthoughtthis 7y ago

I’m not so certain emotion and logic are so fundamentally separate you know. Perhaps logic is just our way of explaining our otherwise unexplainable decision making systems.

yazaddaruvala 7y ago
My belief is that intuition and emotion are just complex sets of logic that we haven’t understood yet. Put in the time and focus, and one day it will just click.
- lanstin 7y ago
  I think the emotions and really the whole operation of the mental states is reasonable, but not internally logical. They arise in predictable patterns from experiences and so on, but they can very easily override logic. To understand your emotions, you have to see and admit you aren't the nice logical person you might have expected.
- zzzeek 7y ago
  they will be understood someday, but only by highly advanced mathematical models developed through machine learning. models which humans will not actually be capable of understanding.
  - hindsightbias 7y ago
    Decades ago, my coworkers and I would draw FSMs of our mgmt on the white board with cryptic lables. While they did get complicated they were understandable.
adamredwoods 7y ago
It's biological (aka biological determination). There's the famous study of how judges handed out verdicts based on what or when they ate: https://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889 https://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889

munificent 7y ago

People are not robots, but in terms of reaching agreement between humans, "emotion" is more or less just a difference in priorities, which is one of the ways reasonable people can disagree. If we agree on the facts and we agree on their implications, but we still disagree, it's likely because we weight things differently. Emotions are simply a large component for how we weight things.

zzzeek 7y ago
emotionalism is strongly linked to irrationality. once someone is irrational I'm not following how that can be reduced to a "difference in priorities". I'm an open source maintainer of some very popular projects. more in the early days, I was certainly irrational on a few occasions where someone called out things that I did wrong and I refused to see it. It wasn't like I had de-prioritized "making sure the code is not completely broken". my own fear that I was going to have to rethink a whole huge set of assumptions (which of course I had to do anyway) prevented me from working with people.
- fsckboy 7y ago
  But rationality (in the human sense) is completely governed by emotion. Curiosity about an unsolved problem? that's emotional regulation of the brain. Satisfaction that a problem is solved? also emotion. Beauty in a better solution? emotion. This has significance, it's not just a restatement of "the problem" using different terminology. It's significant because the brain, like every other part of the body, evolved parsimoniously, and it does not have spare capacity lying around, so anything that "distracts" the emotional parts of the brain will diminish rational capacity. "Hangry" is not just a pun/quip about being hungry, it's empirically measurable, it affects outcomes. Debating rational topics with your rational friends, whether at work, at school, or after hours over a beer, it's fun (emotion), can be frustrating (emotion) but does it ever not get heated (more emotion)? The brain is an emotional organ. All the other organs are rational, they do what they do in entirely predictable and logical ways.
  - zzzeek 7y ago

blueprint 7y ago

What if it's actually only those who are honest who have human nature?