3 ms·

Well, no, not that. I'm not sure. I myself see the emotional landscape only dimly. My life got a lot better when two things changed for me. One: I accepted

Well, no, not that. I'm not sure. I myself see the emotional landscape only dimly. My life got a lot better when two things changed for me. One: I accepted that some people around me ("that happened to be" female) were remarkably better than I am at understanding my motivations and predicting my behavior than I am. Same for third parties. A fascinating aside: People (including me) are motivated more powerfully by emotions (like fear) when they aren't aware of them--and many people who don't think they don't experience strong emotions are really quite wrong. And two: that the goals emotionally intelligent people set are worthwhile, even thought they might sound like complete nonsense at first. By allowing women into my life (not just the technically apt ones) my life was improved. Note that I don't ask "how should I achieve X", I ask "what should my goal be in situation Z".

yummyfajitas 11y ago
I understand (1), that some people are better than others at detecting the hidden emotional motivation for behavior. What I don't understand is what those people will actually be using that skill for - I hypothesized one use, but you said I'm wrong, so I'm curious what the actual use of that skill is. Setting goals? Maybe tactical, rather than strategic, goals. E.g., emotional intelligence may say "exploit tribalism to get users to feel loyalty towards us" (a tactical goal) which would help in achieving the strategic goal of having more users and lower churn. In another reply, you suggest: "products need to be less harmful --> ... --> putting more emotionally competent people in the industry", but it's far from clear to me how the latter gets to the former. If anything, I'd suspect that emotionally competent people are better at building harmful products and exploiting flaws in the brain.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

I understand (1), that some people are better than others at detecting the hidden emotional motivation for behavior. What I don't understand is what those people will actually be using that skill for - I hypothesized one use, but you said I'm wrong, so I'm curious what the actual use of that skill is. Setting goals? Maybe tactical, rather than strategic, goals. E.g., emotional intelligence may say "exploit tribalism to get users to feel loyalty towards us" (a tactical goal) which would help in achieving the strategic goal of having more users and lower churn. In another reply, you suggest: "products need to be less harmful --> ... --> putting more emotionally competent people in the industry", but it's far from clear to me how the latter gets to the former. If anything, I'd suspect that emotionally competent people are better at building harmful products and exploiting flaws in the brain.