[6chars]

So true

Discounting the fact that humans aren't coldly rational is irrational. People love to hide behind "logic", but poking a bear and expecting it not to attack you because that would be an "irrational" emotional response is not smart, it's wishful thinking. I can understand why people crave a "grand unified theory" on how the world works and the importance of emotion is an obstacle to having an elegant, comprehensible model for the world, but that doesn't mean it's right to ignore it.

[mistermann]

> I can understand why people crave a "grand unified theory" on how the world works and the importance of emotion is an obstacle to having an elegant, comprehensible model for the world, but that doesn't mean it's right to ignore it.

I agree that emotion does provide somewhat of an obstacle to building an elegant, comprehensible model for the world, but is it really that complicated?

If one simply models emotion as a specialized type/instance of thought, and thoughts as processes that run on a biological neural network (where processes are not isolated and cross contaminate each other), and consciousness and "rationality" are higher level, complex ~thoughts (predictive estimations of reality, perceived as reality itself) that emerge[1] from all of this semi-organized complexity...doesn't it seem fairly obvious what's going on?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

[kzrdude]

That's thoughtful.

I think we can use rationally or emotionally-focused language to express our desires, wishes, demands etc. I think it's worth considering the language used to merely be the dress we give to what we want to say - we use the language we are accustomed to or that we think will have an impact.

So it's not always people are more or less rational/emotional, but they express their goals in that language.

We use rational language to express desire for ostensibly arbitrary choices all the time, for example. Rational language can also serve just as a way to dress up an opinion.