Category: Deconstructions

Using the Equation to Deconstruct a Situation

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An Overview of Affect Engineering

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This has been a long time coming, and it is something I have wanted to do for at least ten years since publishing Affect Engineering. In the coming weeks I plan to break down and explain the basic tenets of Affect Engineering as a theory of emotions into its simplest terms for the layperson with as little math as needed to understand it as a theory and to grasp the concepts within to ideally make personal use of it. The principles to which Affect Engineering adheres will also be explained where needed.

Below I have listed an outline of what I will be covering over the next several months. This includes an organization of how emotions are classified and described in Affect Engineering. I may add or modify this page as I go, adding questions if I deem them necessary or combining questions together if their topic is similar enough. The bullet points with a solid square and question mark will each eventually become their own page. Wherever possible, I will give real world examples, either from history or modern day events, to supplement an explanation. This page will be updated with links to each of the topics as they are created. Additionally, this page has been added as a sub-item under the tab “What is Affect Engineering?”

  • Introduction to the Framework of Affect Engineering
    • On the Nature of Emotions
      • What is an emotion considered to be in Affect Engineering? How is emotion defined within its framework?
      • What role do emotions serve in Affect Engineering?
      • How are emotions quantified or measured in Affect Engineering? What is emotional arousal in Affect Engineering?
    • Anxiety in Affect Engineering
      • What are the implications for considering anxiety to be a resource to be managed in Affect Engineering instead of an emotion in and of itself?
      • What is the relationship between anxiety and value with respect to goals in Affect Engineering?
      • What is the 1:1:1:1 Ratio and why is it used to avoid erroneously conflating two emotions into one in Affect Engineering?
    • Appraisals in the Context of Affect Engineering
      • What is an appraisal towards the restoration of equilibrium between a goal and its complementary goal or opposing goal in Affect Engineering?
      • What are the implications of the 1:1:1:1 Ratio for appraisals in Affect Engineering? Why are there two sets of functions in the Affect Engineering?
      • What happens when equilibrium between a goal and its opposing goal is not sought? Under what circumstances might this occur?
  • Emotional Regulation in Affect Engineering?
    • Emotional Responses in Affect Engineering
      • What is an emotional response in Affect Engineering?
      • What does heeding an emotion’s call to action mean in Affect Engineering?
      • What variables can amplify, or contrarily, reduce, an emotion’s call to action to the individual? Can any of these variables be influenced by the individual?
    • Empathy in Affect Engineering
      • How is empathy represented in Affect Engineering?
      • Can empathy be regulated by the individual in Affect Engineering?
      • Can empathy be extended towards other sentient lifeforms, towards inanimate objects, or towards intangible entities in Affect Engineering?
  • Categories of Emotions
    • Overview of Emotions in Affect Engineering and How They Are Organized
      • What are the core distinguishing features of each emotion in Affect Engineering?
      • What is a scenario that would exemplify each emotion?
      • What would a general description of the emotion sound like?
      • Under what situations might this emotion have survival value or be considered advantageous?
    • Category I Emotions: Intra-personal Emotions or Emotions of the Self
      • What is a Category I Emotion?
      • What are the Pursuit of Pleasure Emotions?
        • What is Happiness?
        • What is Euphoria?
        • What is Courage
        • What is Guilt?
        • What is Content in the context of the Pursuit of Pleasure?
      • What are the Avoidance of Pain Emotions?
        • What is Anger? How is Anger distinguished from Disgust if at all?
        • What is Grief?
        • What is Fear?
        • What is Content in the context of the Avoidance of Pain?
    • Category II Emotions: Inter-personal Emotions or the Four Degrees of Empathy
      • What is a Category II Emotion?
      • What are the Four Degrees of Empathy when the self is passive?
        • What are Vicarious Pride and Love?
        • What are Vicarious Shame and Sympathy?
        • What are Vicarious Humiliation and Hatred?
        • What are Vicarious Mercy and Antipathy?
        • What are Vicarious Loneliness and Neutrality?
      • What are the Four Degrees of Empathy when the self is active?
        • What are Vicarious Love and Pride?
        • What are Vicarious Sympathy and Shame?
        • What are Vicarious Hatred and Humiliation?
        • What are Vicarious Antipathy and Mercy?
        • What are Vicarious Neutrality and Loneliness?
    • Category III Emotions: Compound Interactive Emotions
      • What is a Category III Emotion?
      • What are the Indulgent Type Emotions?
        • What is Indulgent Type Benevolence (Happiness + Loving Pride)?
        • What is Indulgent Type Jealousy (Guilt + Sympathetic Shame)?
        • What is Indulgent Type Malevolence (Happiness + Hateful Humiliation)?
        • What is Indulgent Type Envy (Guilt + Antipathetic Mercy)?
      • What are the Protective Type Emotions?
        • What is Protective Type Benevolence (Anger + Loving Pride)?
        • What is Protective Type Jealousy (Sadness + Sympathetic Shame)?
        • What is Protective Type Malevolence (Anger + Hateful Humiliation)?
        • What is Protective Type Envy (Sadness + Antipathetic Mercy)?
    • Category IV Emotions: Emotive States
      • What is a Category IV Emotion?
        • What is Surprise?
        • What is Joyfulness?
        • What is Restlessness?
        • What is Helplessness?
        • What is Confusion?
        • What is Greed?
        • Can additional miscellaneous or culturally specific emotions be modeled in Affect Engineering? If so, then how? Limerence? Schadenfreude? Sonder? Callosity?

The text above can be accessed on the second tab underneath “What is Affect Engineering?” and is entitled An Overview of Affect Engineering

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Building an Equation

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Now that summer has rolled around and I have more free time, it is time to get on the ball with things. Before modeling schadenfreude though, I thought it would be best to briefly describe the functions from my book.  So I have added a new section to the website called Building an Equation.  The link is on the home page, under the tab “What Is Affect Engineering?” tab, or you could just click the first picture under the slider.  It will take a number of posts and some time to present everything more succinctly than the 700+ pages in the book, so some patience will be required.

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Modeling Schadenfreude with Calculus: Primer

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New ideas always seem to come after I have finished something.  I had forgotten about schadenfreude (satisfaction or pleasure at someone else’s misfortune) up until recently.  I used the term malevolence as a substitute for it in my book, but it would have been nice if I had mentioned it.  I’ll do a series of posts explaining how to model it.

Another idea that came too late for me to add the book regards salience, specifically the choice of a specific action among others.  Basically, it would hold that whatever valuation possesses the most salience (e.g., highest or is anticipated to be the highest) at the time of a deadline for action would be acted upon.  I suppose it could be intuited from it, but oh well.

Brace yourselves!

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Folly and Failure in the Effort to Foster Catastrophic Climate Destabilization

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Dear Ecologists,

In the scientific community, catastrophic climate destabilization (a.k.a. climate change or global warming) is almost undoubtedly the most serious self-inflicted threat of harm to human civilization and the survival of hundreds of thousands of species on earth. Yes, almost . . . thank goodness for the scientific method. Otherwise, there would be no wiggle room for naysayers like myself to make a wager.

I did not want to have to bring up the fact that the ever-present possibility of a nuclear holocaust has given global warming a run for its money for more than half a century. I am saving that as my trump card. In the race to extinction one always needs to hedge a bet.

Gamblers of the world unite!

True, it has been an uphill battle on all sides. Trying to dissuade millions of people from changing their lifestyles, debunking nearly irrefutable scientific evidence, and demobilizing nations from taking substantial action to avert the smoldering carbon crisis has been incredibly taxing, figuratively speaking. However, there are many things that could have been done better with far fewer hassles, and affect engineering has helped me realize them.

Let us say the entity being valued is human civilization, and catastrophic climate destabilization is threatening to end it. What sorts of arguments should one make to alleviate concerns about perfectly legitimate hazards? Here are some samples.

Self-Distinction and Identification: Discouraging people from even identifying with civilization is a brilliant first step. The supposedly doomed human civilization is sometime in the future, not the here and the now. People have a hard enough time trying to identify with present-day society; what on earth could have made one think they would identify with future ones? Why overestimate their vicariously felt affect? Why encourage them to identify in the first place?

Existence and Attention: A tried and true favorite. If no one knows about catastrophic climate destabilization, then no one will think twice about it threatening civilization. If one stops talking about civilization, then maybe people will stop thinking it exists too. Time to stop using “How’s the weather?” as an icebreaker. Problem solved.

Uniqueness and Uniqueness: There could be plenty of civilizations out there, maybe in outer space too. What’s the harm in losing one? Another one will show up. There are probably extra ones already had that nobody even knows about.

Sufficiency: Civilization alone is not enough to make anyone happy. People will need something else too, perhaps some new land that no pioneer has despoiled.

Sentiment: There are other things more important than the survival of the species, like having the newest car model or a vacation getaway.

Severity and Susceptibility: Catastrophic climate destabilization is not that bad a thing, it might even miss earth.

Response Efficacy and Self Efficacy: Whatever one person could do to minimize catastrophic climate destabilization would likely be ineffective, and nearly impossible to achieve besides.

Benefit Intensity and Susceptibility: Climate destabilization might be a good thing.

Reasoning and Entropy: There are plenty of other things to worry about, like the economy. Why fuss over things that cannot be controlled? Best to divert one’s energy elsewhere.

Sincerely,
A Catastrophic Climate Destabilization Naysayer
P.S.

If a writer has to point out sarcasm, then the reader’s discernment has been overestimated.
If a writer has to point out sarcasm, then the reader’s discernment has been underestimated.

Both of these statements are true.

1) In the case of the former, the reader does not know that sarcasm is at play. The writer learns this and knows the point was lost.
2) In the case of the latter, the writer doubts the reader knows that sarcasm is at play. The reader learns this and knows the point was lost.

Pointing a finger at sarcasm is the only way to kill it.

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Cobweb Cleaning and Caged Combat

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I figured it was about time I surfaced from editing, and a minor cold that has clouded my ability to think for the last couple of weeks. Possibility two is that I have a hidden allergy I do not know of, not sure which. Maybe I am missing some vitamin/mineral from my diet, which would be possibility three. Whatever it was, it certainly clouded my thinking ability. A few days ago I could not remember the word for antioxidant to save my life, and had to look it up on Google by using its definition. Anyone who knows my drinking habits personally would understand the severity of the mental fog I have been in (*hint* I consume more orange juice than water and drink lemon juice in shot glasses. I should know what an antioxidant is). My updates will be more frequent than they have been recently.

The manuscript to the book is underway (publishing company established, ISBN’s purchased, and permissions sent out). I also have a few beta-readers out there, to whom I would like to give thanks again for being guinea pigs. Moving on to today’s topic, I will start with what happened last night.

Yesterday I made myself watch an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight (UFC) for the first time, it was the Fabricio Werdum vs. Travis Browne match and the matches immediately before it. It did not dawn on me there would be so much bloodshed, mostly nosebleeds I assumed, but still it was much more than I expected. Though it is not something I will likely watch again, I have nothing to say about it ethically, good or bad, and I cannot really say anything about it ethically without denouncing sports in general. I did not know who any of the fighters were beforehand, as I do not follow mixed martial arts. Whatever factors I might possibly have used to decide which fighter to empathize with would have been superficial at best, and I am anything but that. From what I saw after each match, it looked like all of the competitors exhibited good sportsmanship, shaking hands and hugging the person who just some five minutes prior they were exchanging roundhouse kicks, elbows, jabs, uppercuts, and take-downs.

If one wanted to levy a charge that Ultimate Fighting Championships is unethical on the grounds that it promotes insensitivity to violence and the suffering of others, one would actually have to denounce every competitive endeavor. One cannot safely hope to vicariously experience the success of two competitors if one’s fortune comes at the misfortune of the other because they are in a duel. Vicarious malice will be felt for one’s purpose and vicarious joy for the other’s purpose. Simply wishing that they each compete well (i.e., conflict for the sake of conflict) does not avoid this conundrum, as a competitor would additionally judge his or her competitive effort based on the means along with the ends. Instead of just being a war between two competitors, an insurrection within the individual would also be added to the mix.

All sports are metaphors for armed conflict; it is part of their appeal. There are the obvious ones like football, but also the javelin throw, boxing, tennis, wrestling, boxing, and even many of the solitary sports like the marathon or archery have their origins in war, and the world has a love affair with conflict. Does anyone know the last time there was no war on earth? No, case in point.

Some of you may be thinking, “But what about mountain climbing?” That type of conflict would be man vs. nature. It would not be fair to call it a war when Nature holds all the cards and calls all the shots. It is more like a siege and game of brinkmanship, where some choose to see how close to the cannon they can make it before turning back to the safety of a crumbling fort.

In these lights mixed martial arts is no different, save that it is sport in its basest form, minus the trappings of most rules. I did note that attacks to the groin, even if incidental, are not permitted, and the referee stopped the clock to permit a fighter to walk it off. It also seemed that the referee would also stop the fight if a knock out is apparent, or if one of the fighters resigns (e.g., one is being suffocated and surrenders).

For some, the days of gladiatorial combat in arenas probably seem like relics from the past. The keener eye will note that they never really left us.