I would almost classify myself this way, because in my teenage years I developed a coping mechanism for childhood trauma that entailed detaching myself from my emotional state and becoming an observer of myself. I think it's otherwise known as building walls to protect yourself. It took me many years to realize what i had done, and try to get back in touch with my feelings.
So far as lacking emotional response to major life events; there is so much going on during a wedding, and giving birth to babies, I don't imagine it's uncommon to not really feel joy in those moments; you're just to busy. Watching babies grow and transform into toddlers and big kids in front of your eyes, now that is joy of a lifetime, imo.
For instance, one day at school he was working with the student theatre.
All week he had been struggling to produce the right sound effects,
but it just wasn’t coming together. Eventually, his boss lost his cool
and started ripping into him. “My response was that something weird was
happening with my body,” he says. “I could feel a tension, like my heart
was racing, but my mind was distracted…
Isn't this an extreme case of repressing emotions, in the most classic sense? The disconnect between bodily reaction and lack of mindfullness seems to indicate it.
Maybe, since they're talking about Alexithymia, which is defined as "inability to identify and describe emotions in the self". (1)
Who actually has no emotions whatsoever and stays alive? What about primitive things like e.g. the feeling of shock and terror as you are crossing the road and turn to see a bus bearing down on you. This is a basic animal survival response. If all you can say is "my heart was racing" that's not exactly being unemotional, but uncomprehending.
I think it's more along the lines of an agnosia or aphasia. They receive the same somatic input, it's just not translated into affect the way most people do, in the same way that a face doesn't register 'faceness' to someone with prosopagnosia.
Maybe it was a bad example for the author to use because it sounds like whats been described to me as symptoms of a panic attack. Or it might be that pathological panic attacks are an example of the emotional problem in the story.
From talking to people who've had medical panic attack problems, it seems common for them to confuse how to name the bodily symptoms, so they show up in the ER confused why they're sweating bullets and feeling very confused and heart rate of 150 thinking they're having a heart attack or stroke instead of "just" an out of control emotional response.
Or it could be that their treatment plan for repressed emotions leading to panic attacks is a lifetime dose of a pill. Maybe that is the best treatment plan for them; none of my business, I guess, other than that specific example might have been a bad choice for the article because of confusing factors.
From what i understand panic attacks are easily treated exactly because, as you say, the primary problem is that the person having the attack erroneously confuses the physical symptoms with something more serious. Through cognitive behavioral therapy they can learn to fix this, and as a result the panic attacks disappear (or at least the initial panic doesn't spiral into a full-blown attack). Similar approaches have also been successful in treating phobias and other issues.
For anyone interested in the topic (and CBT in general) I can highly recomment [What You Can Change and What You Can't - The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement](http://www.amazon.com/What-You-Change-Cant-Self-Improvement/...) by Martin Seligman.
As someone who has recently developed a bit of an obsession with mindfulness/zen/meditation, this book is a good example of the parallels between that and the field of psychology.
I don't get it. Is the article exaggerating things? How can you function without feeling emotions? What is your motivation for getting married? Getting a job? Playing a game or watching a movie? Succeeding at any task? What is your reward mechanism?
For example
"All week he had been struggling to produce the right sound effects,"
How would you even know you hit the right sound effect? What is your judgement for good or bad on something that is subjective?
"Other people are getting married. I guess I should go on with the program (shrug). Hmm, this person took an interest in me (or my friends/mother/etc hooked me up with this person), I could marry them maybe.".
>Getting a job?
Hmm, I feel physical hunger. Maybe I need to get a job. Hmm, here's a sign for help wanted. Maybe I can apply there.
>Playing a game or watching a movie?
I'm physically tired. Maybe I'll sit in front of the TV for a little while. People do that.
>How would you even know you hit the right sound effect?
- Jack, we need thunderstorm sounds and dogs barking in the distance.
- OK, I know what those sound like. I'll try to replicate them. Let me find some thunderstorm recordings etc.
(No emotions needed -- at best you just need to consider them "faithful reproductions" not to feel enthusiastic or whatever about them. Good, in this case, is quantifiable -- "sounds a lot like the real thing").
Other people getting married is not something you would care about since you have not emotions.
With regards to the thunderstorm thats not how it works. It's not the rational request thats the problem but the intuition around when it feels right. Emotions are fundamental to making any kind of creative decisions.
>Other people getting married is not something you would care about since you have not emotions.
They don't. They just copy what other people do because it's the default thing to do (everyone does it), and because they want to stop that annoyance (annoyance like we feel annoyance from a crappy seat belt or uncomfortamble shows, not emotional misery) and distraction (the nagging from other people, etc). No emotion mostly means that they aren't enthusiastic about getting married, and they are not miserable because they are not married either. You can conform to something just by thinking about it, you don't have to have any emotions on the matter. Same way people used to have arranged marriages back in the day (and still in some cultures). They didn't necessarily have any affection to the other person, not they had any great urge to get married.
>With regards to the thunderstorm thats not how it works. It's not the rational request thats the problem but the intuition around when it feels right.
You don't need to feel emotion-based intuition for when it "feels right". "Feels" is just a word we use to describe our selection process but it doesn't mean there have to be "feelings" involved.
You just need to check that your sound effect sound as you remember those things to sound. No need to be dissapointed when they don't, or feel creative or elated when they do.
If they don't have any emotions they don't care what other people do or that they nag them. Nothings annoys them, nothing excites them. You getting the order wrong.
Of course you need to build up intuition when you create things that doesn't have a matemathical formula. Thats exactly what intuition is a combination of rational understand, experience and emotional awareness of what decision is right and which one is wrong to you. Without it you would have a hard time making any decisions at all.
There is a reason why humans have developed emotions.
The point is that I don't believe this person is completely without emotions whatever biochemical function it boils down to.
I think you're basically arguing that herd behavior or swarm behavior can't emerge without self conscious higher level adult emotions; I'm thinking that's a big stretch based on natural examples. I'm not even sure "monkey see monkey do" even is an emotion, if it is, which is it? Possession of empathy isn't possessing the observed emotion, its just observing it.
For another weird concept look at humanities universal habit of rationalizing irrational decisions. For no good reason I did XYZ, now listen to my detailed rationalization based on emotions or Vulcan-level logic, which doesn't really matter because I really have no idea why I asked ABC out on a date or decided to buy that car or eat that second piece of birthday cake, although in detailed post-rationalization I can dream up all kinds of sand castles in the sky explaining elaborate logical reasons or stark emotions that I supposedly experienced before I made a random decision. This adds an annoying second level of analysis, why do some people do random things just like everyone else, but their societal or cultural failure is rationalizing it as logic or admitting it was just random, whereas "everyone knows" we must, at least in public, declare it to be the result of emotion.
Marriage is a cultural institution NOT a biological one. There is a big and important difference between the two IMO.
I agree with your empathy description. In fact a lot of people think empathy primarily is about the ability to feel other peoples pain but it's much wider than that. But thats another discussion.
>If they don't have any emotions they don't care what other people do or that they nag them. Nothings annoys them, nothing excites them.
I think you conflate emotions with any kind of functioning at all. You can still function, think, try to avoid tension and people being angry or annoyed at you, without feeling any emotions.
If you discover that something you do makes someone unconfortable for example, you can decide to stop it, despite not feeling bad about doing it.
"Hmm, this guy says this thing I do makes him feel bad. I'm told that feeling bad is something people don't like. I should stop it, so that he doesn't feel bad, so that I'm like normal people or so I wont get into trouble for what I do".
Motivation for going with the flow doesn't gave to be "oh, I'll be miserable if I wont". It can be mere rational reasoning -- "I better not make waves" or things like "last time I did that they punched me and it hurt. I'd want to avoid being punched again".
That still sounds like "lack of specific emotions" and "acting mainly on response to irritation or loneliness", not "lack of emotional altogether".
The have an extra-rational pull towards doing one thing rather than some other thing. There's no real way to "carve reality at the joints" in a way that excludes what this person is feeling/doing vs someone with "real" emotions.
I think the english language conflates intuition with emotion, referring to two separate actions (intuiting and emotionally responding to) with the same word: "feel".
I wasn't saying the two were exclusive, merely that the use of the word "feels" conflates the two. "This (design|note|architecture decision|etc.) 'feels' right" could be taking from both column a and b (how much of each column would surely be dependent on the subject matter).
I think most of those examples have a rational basis and the non-emotional person could probably make better decisions than the rest of us e.g. choosing a job offer on the basis of benefits and prospects rather than because the office looked cool.
Such a person would make an astounding diplomat.
The reward mechanism would probably be in maximizing physical comfort in return for minimal physical effort.
This is one of those times that I'd remind everybody that words are labels that have no power on their own. "No emotions" does not necessarily mean "never experiences anything that could possibly be covered by any of the senses of the English word 'emotion'". When it really gets down to it, we don't have a great ability to distinguish between "comfort", "happiness", "satisfaction", or any of a dozen other related concepts in our own mental lives, let alone start getting really precise about analyzing somebody else's, let alone doing so to someone whose mental qualia appear to be substantially different than ours.
Pain, hunger, sexual urges, etc. can't be classified by emotions. Maybe we can include fear of injury or death in this as well. Even a baby can feel these things (except of course sexual urges).
But beyond that everything else is an emotion - happiness, sadness, anger, annoyance, loneliness. Beyond the most basic tasks everything requires emotions to drive you. Why do you study for an upcoming exam? Because you are anxious about getting a good grade? Why are you anxious? Because you may not want to upset your parents? Why does that bother you? You love them or fear their displeasure. Why do you fear your parent's displeasure? Ignoring corporal punishment (which could be an avoidance of pain/injury), other reasons include wanting to avoid stress, or being upset when they confront you about it. And so on. You cannot get through life except the most basic functions (like avoiding pain, eating, sleeping, etc) without emotions.
The article seems to equate the reduced perception of emotions to a total absence of them.
No, I study for an exam so I can get a degree so I can get a good job so I'll find it easier to have a more comfortable life. It's a purely rational choice.
One can still appreciate things on an intellectual level. A lot of people with depression experience something similar during depressive episodes. It's like someone dialed down a knob on the intensity of the world. In the absolute worst case you decide life isn't worth living and follow through on that, it happens hundreds of thousands of times a year around the world. In better cases you don't give up and you do the best with the muted world you've been given to live in and you try to figure out ways to dial it back up (through CBT, exercise, drugs (legal and not), etc.)
It is really weird to be honest, I wouldn't say the other replies on this comment at the moment cover it so thought I would try and add something.
On one had you're right those are genuine issues, there's little motivation to do anything really. I guess it is a spectrum but I still feel that if someone asks me to do something that I'm being a nice person if I do it, I guess others might be devoid of that. So if invited to do something I normally go, but I only originate plans if I feel I'm doing it for others e.g. if someone is visiting I'll setup a dinner for us all. At the end of a week when I've been busy I cab be annoyed at how much of my life is spent doing things for others, but I do know that's because I don't do anything at all for myself.
I'm married and I wouldn't say I am because it's something expected of me. I think I want to be healthy mentally later in life and I know I can put the work in to give my wife a happy life, also that I didn't hide the way I am from her. If I didn't do these things it would be equivalent to just kind of giving up and I guess I haven't done that so I do these kind of things for future me who I want to be in a good place. I do love, I don't think it's quite the feeling love is to others but love/loss are recognisable.
I work to succeed and for financial security basically, I can't fathom a job I "enjoy" but in my mind besides paying bills it's like a game and I win if I'm successful. A good way to think about it is when a big project finishes it's a bit weird for me because I don't really get happiness or pleasure or a sense of achievement from it, it's kind of like a vaccum. The day a system goes live is no different from day 1 on the project. Within the vaccum I just get hyper-critical of my performance I think my brain is thinking it's important to improve for next time and just immediately focusses on what it needs to do to make that happen.
I do watch films/games, although not that much, but I like being distracted and having something to do. I watch twitch and sport where I do find it easy to support teams. I would never be upset after a result in sport or anything, I don't get nervous before or excited after a win but I like the pattern, which players are good/bad, analysing tactics, following the story etc.
Reward mechanism - I don't think there's anything in my life like that I could google it but not sure what it means. I don't do anything to reward myself at all.
Yeah, making decisions is like a big pros and cons list. If there's no real way to split the two it's hard if it's something I care on some level about.
So for example picking a colour for a carpet or pick a new pair of shoes is a nightmare and I put that kind of thing off because ultimately I have no way in my brain to pick beyond that I want something plain so it's quite uncomfortable.
Or picking a holiday destination is awkward, I live in Europe but I don't care whether I next go to Berlin, Paris or Rome. Even if I've been there before versus not I just don't care at all beyond if I consider it stressful being out of comfort zone or something in which case some places can be ruled out.
I suppose that's the trivial things, the bigger life decisions where I can't make a decision I guess ultimately my wife makes for us.
I don't think that's specific to this condition, I've read elsewhere that lots of people have a similar scientific approach to decision making.
I wonder how people with alexithymia respond to MDMA (ecstasy)? I've heard people say that the first time they really experienced emotions was on MDMA.
The hypothesis makes perfect sense and is very intriguing, however it doesn't seem to pan out.
There are narcissists and sociopaths who have tried it as a therapy. Unfortunately the only result seems to be increased love for themselves, or feelings of God like superiority over others.
I agree, it sounds like this all just regresses to the qualia problem: "does my internal experience have the same attributes as yours?"
It reminds me of my inquiry into the mystery of why everyone "likes alcoholic drinks" but I don't. Eventually I broke it down into specific questions:
- Do you enjoy the feeling of alcoholic drinks passing through your mouth?
- Do you require the drink to be loaded down with non-alcohol flavors for it to be bearable?
- On taste alone, would you prefer a milkshake?
- Do you enjoy the feeling the drink produces on your mind? Does that matter to you more than the taste?
... and it turned out, I had the exact same answers to these questions as people who said they do like alcohol; it's just that they characterized that state as "liking alcohol", and I didn't.
If people similarly broke this issue down into specific questions on observables, I suspect a lot of the differences would vanish, and it would make more sense to characterize it as "different emotional response" rather than "no emotions" -- though a big part of the problem is the arbitrariness of the labels!
You're completely right at it's heart is an innate doubt over whether this is actually a problem or just a manifestation of some weird thought process.
The only way to really get outside this kind of introverted bubble is to ask people or confide in them. This leads to conversations like whether an emotion like happiness is an actual thing or not that they can identify and actually feel. In the sense that they are actually sitting there and willing to state "I feel happy", it's different from yesterday. Most people are hence why I diagnose myself in line with this article.
Or, another way is people generally have an answer to the "Tell me about a time you were very happy"... a lot of people can reel something off really easily here. Sometimes it's like a wedding and you think "you could be saying that because it's accepted as a good answer" but other people say a certain day at the beach where something really specific happens and that lends credence to the idea they feel this emotion and I don't.
I personally believe it is a problem, having (mostly) been in that state and (sometimes) out of it, it is indeed quite a difference. When it happened for the first time (at age 33), it was like "oh my, so this is what all those people were talking about all along, isn't that something".
I do wish I could change states at will, but historically it has always been a result of some sort of external influence.
This reminds me of something Wittgenstein apparently talked about. I don't have a better explanation than the comic I saw about it though : http://existentialcomics.com/comic/94
Surely it's "repressed emotions" in some cases, but not always. There's strong evidence to support this assertion.
One of the "this would be funny if it weren't so morbid" truths about psychology is that much of our understanding of the brain springs from cases in which normally-functioning people have parts of their brains physically destroyed in accidents.
The most famous example is Phineas Gage, who experienced some specific personality changes (go figure, right?) after a railroad spike pierced his head but left him otherwise unharmed. His mishap provided visceral proof that the brain wasn't just an undifferentiated lump; it showed us that specific areas of the brain perform specific tasks including emotional and behavioral issues.
Alexithymia can sometimes be the result of a brain injury. A person with "normal" emotional responses can, after a brain injury, find themselves with alexithymia.
I'm not Caleb but I self diagnose myself as having the same condition so I can at least speak for myself.
I don't think my sense of humour is much different from anyone else's, I laugh at something I think is funny. My general mood is very flat a lot of the time but other than that I think funny is just funny. I wouldn't necessarily bother going to see a comedian I knew I would laugh at though, if that makes sense. i.e. I don't seek out situations I think will make me laugh and I wouldn't say I enjoyed a night I laughed for 2 hours more than one I watched a documentary or something. I do think I laugh at comedians a lot less than when I was younger, which is one way I think I'm becoming less rather than more emotional if that makes sense.
Music/Art again I don't think are really affected. I listen to some music and subscribe to spotify but I don't use it a huge amount. Clearly I couldn't tell you a song I found uplifting, that's two concepts that I just don't see as related. When people say that my gut reaction is that they're just saying it because they like how it makes them look, I'm not sure if I believe it's an actual feeling as such. I'm not into art but I like things that are nice to look at. I have no appreciation of abstract art at all but I don't think that's uncommon
I'd imagine that never having felt an emotion is probably akin to being blind. A blind friend of mine once described it to me: "I don't 'see' blackness, like you might think. Describe to me what it's like to see something out of your elbow, it's exactly like that."
This is all self-reported, and people who don't have emotions don't reach out to support groups or express their feelings about not having feelings on message boards.
Also, there has never been a thing called an emotion detected in or on the body of a human. I think the leading theory is that 'emotion' is a rationalization of the current state of one's sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. It's a self-application of theory theory.
Funny. I mentally translated the headline to "What does it feel like to have never felt an emotion?" I think this means that I have no clue what it's like...
Along the same lines are those who have low affect or have emotions, but they are very weak. I would classify myself in that category, so I can perhaps understand a bit of what alexithymia would be like. For example, I took a roller coster once, and it was interesting by emotionally void.
So imagine the "feeling" of just sitting in a chair in an empty room. Now imagine "feeling" that way all through a roller coaster. No excitement, fear, enjoyment, etc...
I really wish I could meet these people or someone who claims to be like this, none of it is easy to describe, but I think it'd be interesting to experience.
> The condition is found in around 50% of people with autism
Oh please, journalism .
Wordless about emotions? Maybe. Not knowing the words for emotions? Maybe. Emotionless? Ha. Spend time with any group of people with autistic spectrum disorders & tell me 50% are emotionless. Confusing words with the phenomena & further contributing to the barriers they have to express their inner life, not on.
To say it matter of factly like this in science journalism with no sense of the controversy to popular perception or those who have relationships with neurodiverse people, or motivating <with references> the point of view behind a scientist, but instead, reporting as fact. This view is surely contravertial in the scientific community, let alone with the public in contact with autistic people - and the worse thing is, if you tell an autistic person, they could believe it.
The only basis I have for saying "this is surely controversial in the scientific community" is 1. my faith in that community 2. my experience of the emotional lives of people on the autistic spectrum. 1 says they'd find out about 2 because it's a real thing.
They have empathy & emotions - like colonization - the one's trying to 'help' can sometimes be the cause of the most harm.
The article doesn't characterize the disorder as being without emotions. It quotes researchers as saying that while sufferers display the physical signs of emotions, there is some sort of breakdown either in the expression (as you mentioned) or self-awareness of emotions.
Alexithymia literally means "no words for emotions", and the article makes it clear that people with the condition do feel emotions, they just lack conscious awareness and the ability to verbalize their emotions. The title refers to the experience from the point of view of the subject - being outside of their conscious awareness, it is as if emotions do not exist for them, even though they still trigger the appropriate physical responses.
“It may be hard to believe, but it is possible for someone to be cut off completely from the emotions and imagination that are such a big part of what makes us humans,” he says. “And that a person can be cut off from emotions without being heartless, or a psychopath.”
What's illogical about it? In fact being a psychopath is the most logical thing (promoting your interests with cold logic with care or mercy for others).
All other behaviors need either a faith in some God or man-given morality, ethics, or emotions like love, mercy etc (which, as emotions, are not logical).
Of course one can logically come to the conclusion that behaving moraly instead of like a psychopath is better for humanity. But even in that case, giving a damn for what's better for humanity (instead of what maximizes your benefits in your lifespan) is illogical.
Why would caring for yourself be "more logical" than for others? I don't think the concept even applies.
Logic concerns itself with the validity of reasoning: Given X and Y, you can validly infer Z - it doesn't concern itself with the goals. So, unless there's an underlying axiom that supports the assertion that you should promote your interests above others', it's not "more logical" to do so than to dedicate your life to others.
If you wish to understand Spock the character, and the Vulcans in general, at least to the extent that a species written by dozens of writers has a philosophy, it's important to understand that they don't follow lower-case "logic", but upper-case "Logic". It is, itself, essentially a religion (or philosophy if you want to be perhaps a bit more kind) that does in fact carry some base assumptions at its core.
In the particular case of Vulcans, you can definitely have huge, raging arguments about what exactly those base assumptions are, again, given that they were written by dozens of writers, many of whom really weren't trying.
Today you can see the real-life equivalent in the Rationalist movement, which while it certainly permits a certain amount of variance in the base assumptions, does tend to come with a basic set of axioms at the bottom as well.
It would go beyond the scope of what fits in an HN message to actually explain those. (Plus I have some serious philosophical criticisms, which would make it even longer, and also means perhaps I'm not the best person to even try.) My point is merely that when discussing this sort of "logic" it is very important to separate strict mathematical "logic" from the vague set of quasi-religion/philosophical "Logics" that do in fact come with enough base presuppositions to make it possible to debate things like whether enlightened self-interest is or is not "better" than, say, some degree of deliberately self-negating altruism. Upper-case Logic and mathematical lower-case logic are two different words. (And Logic is a family, too, not one well-defined thing.)
>Why would caring for yourself be "more logical" than for others?
Because you ARE yourself, and the obvious thing is to maximize your strength.
And because caring for others implies "love", "affection", "altruism" (emotions, not rational calculations) and even sacrificing your interests for others, whereas helping yourself is immediately advantageous for you and is in your default interest.
Because you ARE yourself, and the obvious thing is to maximize your strength.
So what? Why is it logical to do the most obvious thing?
And because caring for others implies "love", "affection", "altruism" (emotions, not rational calculations) and even sacrificing your interests for others, whereas helping yourself is immediately advantageous for you and is in your default interest.
Even if there is a "default interest", you don't arrive to it by logical reasoning - it's no more logical than an emotion.
I understand we are not discussing the mathematical formalism, but that doesn't answer my question.
Logical thinking is reasoning; just doing something because it feels obvious doesn't sound like application of reasoning. Many obvious things are reveled to be inadvisable when carefully considered.
Also, I don't believe that taking care of yourself is obvious if you remove emotions. Self-preservation is an emotional instinct, not some logical axiom.
>Logical thinking is reasoning; just doing something because it feels obvious doesn't sound like application of reasoning.
Reasoning is not abstract. Logical thinking has foundations and axioms -- and among those the idea that beings primarily try to help/save/advance/spread/enjoy/take-care-of themselves is paramount.
The "obvious thing" is an assumption of the person's preferences. It is entirely possible for a person's happiness/utility to depend on happiness/utility of other people, and it seems likely for such dependence to be evolutionary advantageous -- in the most trivial example, it is clearly advantageous to be helpful to own children -- plus, as someone said, people are not stupid.
It is of course also possible to rationally emulate such behavior, as well as emulate emotions, but it may not be easy, and might come at a substantial cognitive cost.
In addition, I would imagine that being able to feel certain emotions yourself must be of great help in predicting behavior of people who do feel those emotions. For example, I am still not sure what can or cannot trigger jealousy, having never felt it myself -- there is a learned list of things that can do it, but by construction it is never complete; it would have been nice to have some sort of an intuitive understanding. And it extends much further, e.g. I've seen studies demonstrating how people with good emotional intelligence tend to be better stock traders.
>No it isn't, it's basically suicidal. We wouldn't evolve to be mostly altruistic if being altruistic was bad for our survival.
Evolving concerns the species (and its survival) not the individual and its survival.
It literally has nothing to do with your individual survival (except depending on you surviving long enough to make offspring).
Heck, awful as it is, if you raped 2000 women and gave progeny to 2000 kids it would be considered great from an evolutionary aspect -- far more than "being altruistic".
That's nonsense, individuals don't keep their species (or often even completely different species) alive unselfishly against their own interests. Such phenotypes would soon disappear if it was so. Altruism evolved because it's good for the individual's survival.
When you try to harm something or somebody for your own benefit, there are two possibilities:
Either such behavior is common enough and the target has a defense mechanism against it and in that case you will fail and you may even get hurt.
Or, it has never been too common and in that case you may succeed temporarily. However, the fact that the weakness is being exploited creates a pressure on the potential targets to find ways, or even evolve, to get rid of it. You may succesfully exploit it, but your descendants will find it harder and harder to live that way, and they may even die out.
On the other hand, when an individual is beneficial to other idividuals, it encourages them to support it, or over time even evolve traits that will allow them to better keep those of its kind alive and it will be easier and easier over time for it and its descendants to survive and have offspring of their own.
It's basically the real life equivalent of karma. Altruism evolved because individuals and species breed each other to be good.
Not really, Nash equilibria aren't necessarily the best outcome for any individual (cf the prisoner's dilemma). Cooperation is usually better than every-man-for-himself for everyone involved, hence why social animals evolve altruistic traits. Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths
That's in game theory. Not many people are ever offered a bona fide "prisoner's dilemma".
In most actual real life situations you can get far ahead by behaving as a sociopath.
>Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths
The thing is that as a sociopath you don't even have to show that you are that to people. You can still pretend to be altruistic (to your advantage) and still push your personal agenda whenever possible covertly.
>The thing is that as a sociopath you don't even have to show that you are that to people. You can still pretend to be altruistic (to your advantage) and still push your personal agenda whenever possible covertly.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying selfishness doesn't exist, or that cheating the system doesn't work for some people. My point is that altruism is not "illogical", and it doesn't require "a faith in some God or man-given morality, ethics, or emotions like love, mercy etc" to make sense as the parent content suggested.
Selfishness exists outside of pathology. In fact, I don't know a single human who is not selfish on some level and I suspect such a creature doesn't exist. We do have a huge number of armchair psychiatrists making invalid long-distance diagnoses of people they don't like but that's not really the same thing.
There's no logic (as in hard rational calculation about getting your maximum advantage) involved that argument -- it's a value judgement promoting sacrificing personal enjoyment, needs, interests etc. for others.
Desiring personal enjoyment is illogical according to:
Buddhism, Stoicism, Cyncism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Neopythagoreanism.
All schools of thought that actively advocate against self desire and state that it is something that you must first purge yourself of before you can achieve happiness.
A lot of pure logical schools advocate that want and desire is the root of all suffering. The difference between these schools and say Randianism is they reject one can suffer of the soul.
You do not desire an end of suffering, but you desire an end of desire.
> sociopath: a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
Nothing in not feeling emotions means that one would lack a moral responsibility or social conscience, or is antisocial and often criminal.
Well, there surely is a big difference in not having words for emotions, or being unable to feel them, and them not arising in the first place, at all.
> Individuals high on the alexithymia spectrum also report less distress at seeing others in pain and behave less altruistically toward others.
Which doesn't surprise me, really; at least for me, for how I operate, there is a clear distinction between acting to avoid punishment or to seek reward, and a conscience; the latter is always connected to emotions, for me.
Here's another admittedly random tidbit from Wikipedia:
> As a highly social animal living in large groups that are relatively stable, we need ways to deal with conflicts and events in which we inadvertently or purposefully harm others. If someone causes harm to another, and then feels guilt and demonstrates regret and sorrow, the person harmed is likely to forgive. Thus, guilt makes it possible to forgive, and helps hold the social group together.
and
> When we see another person suffering, it can also cause us pain. This constitutes our powerful system of empathy, which leads to our thinking that we should do something to relieve the suffering of others. If we cannot help another, or fail in our efforts, we experience feelings of guilt.
Don't get me wrong. I absolutely agree with the impulse to reject any sort of "witch hunt" or even "just" looking down on people. It's not the fault of people who can't feel remorse that they can't feel remorse, especially since "harder variants" like NPD are very often the result of abuse and trauma (and in so far they are genetic, there's no fault either), and since all of this is on a spectrum, and most of us likely are on it, they also must not serve as scapegoats. But it's fascinating and important, and while the person this story is about is probably a decent guy, it can also be a very unsettling and sinister topic, yet still important - I'd even say we shy away from it at our own risk.
"There is one, slim advantage: he finds it easier to cope with medical procedures, since he doesn’t attach the fear, sadness or anxiety to it. “I can put up with an awful lot of pain or unpleasant experiences because I know very shortly I won’t have an emotional memory associated with it,” he says. “But it means that positive memories get washed away too.”"
So far as lacking emotional response to major life events; there is so much going on during a wedding, and giving birth to babies, I don't imagine it's uncommon to not really feel joy in those moments; you're just to busy. Watching babies grow and transform into toddlers and big kids in front of your eyes, now that is joy of a lifetime, imo.