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> I was so confident that it was not only possible, but correct to be an emotionless decision maker. That somehow you could navigate the rational path through e

> I was so confident that it was not only possible, but correct to be an emotionless decision maker. That somehow you could navigate the rational path through every problem. You can. And probably you should. Just accept it is not the _only_ tool. You have a life too, things come at different angles, from everywhere, and impact you and the people you love differently. I've been working hard for the past 25 years to become an emotionless decision maker when it's about my primary job: writing software. I don't keep code around because I'm attached to it, if there's a better way to execute the same thing. I don't reject other people's code just because it's not the way I would write it. I don't research pureness, I know that to be useful and, most importantly, correct, software has to solve a lot of edge cases and inevitably is going to be full of trade offs. I don't only work on new software or features, I don't plan complete rewrites of legacy systems if I can work around the problem, I do maintainance, even of legacy systems, maybe nobody is gonna credit you for doing it, but it's what keeps the World spinning and rationally it's one of the most important tasks. I used to care about "what will people think if I'll solve this with an 'if'?", now I know that it was my emotions blocking me from doing the right thing. I don't take bug reports personally, although there are times I struggle with the usual "haven't read the documentation" or "it doesn't work it's not really helpful as a description of the problem", but I try to let my emotions out of it, I try to stay away from them as much as possible. Emotionless doesn't mean rude or "acting like a killing machine" it means you're detached from emotions and when a problem arise you help to find the solution instead of blaming someone or something. Emotionless is that alert on the plane that tells you to put your oxygen mask first, before helping your children. Because it's the most rational and logic thing to do, the opposite of what a parent would instinctively do out of love. > Turns out I was just an asshole Don't be an asshole is a good start too :) But sometimes is hard when you're young and everyone older around you talks about tricking the system while you just want to fix it (at least that was my struggle with it when I was younger).

dragonwriter 7y ago
> > I was so confident that it was not only possible, but correct to be an emotionless decision maker. That somehow you could navigate the rational path through every problem. > You can. This is narrowly true in theory, noting particularly that it applies only after the problem is defined, because defining a problem is an application of values which ultimately are rooted not in rationality but in emotional preference. In practice, people don't and probably practically cannot fully define problems in advance of approaching them, but feel out the parameters of the problem in the course of addressing it, so attempting an unemotional approach invaluable means accepting an incomplete understanding of the problem.
- chinesempire 7y ago
  > This is narrowly true in theory There is no switch that make it true just by flipping it. That's why I said I've been trying for the past 25 years, it's a process. On the other hand empathy doesn't work much better in practice. People (we) are largely irrational. > attempting an unemotional approach invaluable means accepting an incomplete understanding of the problem. Of course!
  - Sammi 7y ago
    All you do by ignoring your emotions is that you become unaware of them. They don't go away. Psychology and neuroscience have again and again found how irrational and emotional we are even when we think we are rational.
    - chinesempire 7y ago
      > All you do by ignoring your emotions is that you become unaware of them That's a bit silly to say. It doesn't work like that, it's like saying that if you ignore your arm it stops working. And nobody ever said you should ignore emotions, but that you are perfectly capable of behaving differently in different situations. You're not always emotionally charged, you are not always made of steel, you can control what happens to you much more than you imagine. > Psychology and neuroscience have again and again found how irrational and emotional Irrational and hormonal, as in "driven by hormones", the layman term is emotional, but it isn't entirely correct. Emotional is about emotions (nobody consider rage or sadness or loneliness or "I wanna be left alone" emotions, they are considered bad things, something to be removed), but being autistic is not being emotional, for example. There are a lot of behaviours not caused by emotions, which, BTW, are located in our brain, our logic processing unit, not in our hearts. They are in its backend, the irrational brain, and they are perfectly rational: they are a tool humans used to survive and take life-saving decisions in the span of milliseconds. They are the same thing as a fire alarm, they signal a change of state, possibly for the worse. I'll go further and say that we all are at the mercy of our selfish genes, as R. Dawkins proved.
      - 7y ago

dragonwriter 7y ago

> > I was so confident that it was not only possible, but correct to be an emotionless decision maker. That somehow you could navigate the rational path through every problem. > You can. This is narrowly true in theory, noting particularly that it applies only after the problem is defined, because defining a problem is an application of values which ultimately are rooted not in rationality but in emotional preference. In practice, people don't and probably practically cannot fully define problems in advance of approaching them, but feel out the parameters of the problem in the course of addressing it, so attempting an unemotional approach invaluable means accepting an incomplete understanding of the problem.

chinesempire 7y ago
> This is narrowly true in theory There is no switch that make it true just by flipping it. That's why I said I've been trying for the past 25 years, it's a process. On the other hand empathy doesn't work much better in practice. People (we) are largely irrational. > attempting an unemotional approach invaluable means accepting an incomplete understanding of the problem. Of course!
- Sammi 7y ago
  All you do by ignoring your emotions is that you become unaware of them. They don't go away. Psychology and neuroscience have again and again found how irrational and emotional we are even when we think we are rational.
  - chinesempire 7y ago
    > All you do by ignoring your emotions is that you become unaware of them That's a bit silly to say. It doesn't work like that, it's like saying that if you ignore your arm it stops working. And nobody ever said you should ignore emotions, but that you are perfectly capable of behaving differently in different situations. You're not always emotionally charged, you are not always made of steel, you can control what happens to you much more than you imagine. > Psychology and neuroscience have again and again found how irrational and emotional Irrational and hormonal, as in "driven by hormones", the layman term is emotional, but it isn't entirely correct. Emotional is about emotions (nobody consider rage or sadness or loneliness or "I wanna be left alone" emotions, they are considered bad things, something to be removed), but being autistic is not being emotional, for example. There are a lot of behaviours not caused by emotions, which, BTW, are located in our brain, our logic processing unit, not in our hearts. They are in its backend, the irrational brain, and they are perfectly rational: they are a tool humans used to survive and take life-saving decisions in the span of milliseconds. They are the same thing as a fire alarm, they signal a change of state, possibly for the worse. I'll go further and say that we all are at the mercy of our selfish genes, as R. Dawkins proved.
    - 7y ago