Two Updates: Working Definition of Emotion and Sample Neurological Model

Two updates to mention here:

1) The first is just a working definition of emotion I thought would be nice to add to the site.  I added it under the Building an Equation tab.

Emotion: A cognitive and physiological response that signals success or failure with regards to the acquisition of entities (both corporeal and non-corporeal) valued for the fulfillment of specific purposes that are either harbored by the self or vicariously interpreted as belonging to others, as in other people, animals, or anthropomorphized objects.  The cognitive/physiological response response may also be understood as a call to action if the deadline to act to acquire or safeguard an entity is imminent.

Building an Equation

2) The second is a variation to the sample neurological model to more closely model the exponential growth of valuations with base 2 (i.e., 2, 4 , 8, 16, 32, 64 . . .).  I added it under the Sample Neurological Model tab, though I have not yet created an image for the model.

Given that valuations are modeled to grow or decrease exponentially from base 2, the valuing neurons can alternatively be modeled to grow exponentially, with each neuron or neural group (i.e., representatives of Emotional Units) in a higher, smaller group branching off to two more neurons or neural groups in a lower, larger group.  The first tier would have 2, the second tier 4, the third tier 8, the fourth tier 16, the fifth tier 32, and so on.

Sample Neurological Models

Modeling Emotions with Math and More Fun!

The Building an Equation section of the site is complete! Granted, it is only a condensed version of the content, but it covers most of the important things.  I will come back and model schadenfreude in August, and possibly pick a few other emotions to map out as well.  For now though, I am taking a break from updating till August.

Building an Equation

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.

Modeling Schadenfreude with Calculus: Primer

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!