
A Model of Emotion - kyptin
http://markpneyer.me/2014/10/19/a-model-of-emotion/
======
gress
I didn't find this model particularly compelling compared to the many that
have been developed in the psychological and therapeutic literature, or in the
esoteric spiritual traditions.

 _However_ what I think _is_ valuable, and is what the author is experiencing,
is that thinking about emotion and how it works, and developing our own model
of it that makes sense of your own experience, is a profoundly helpful thing
to do. Developing your own personal model is fundamentally different from
learning someone else's, wherever it comes from.

So, whether this model does or doesn't work for you, it may be worth figuring
out why, and making your own better one.

~~~
wdewind
Can you point to other models that are so clearly and concisely explained?
Would really like to read that.

~~~
gress
No, because in my experience _emotions_ are not clear and concise. They are a
very complex and nuanced way of generating relatively rapid responses to our
environment based on our genetics and our experience. Our experiences are
complex, therefore so are our emotions.

However his book: Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self, by
Donald L. Nathanson

Describes one system that I have found helpful. It's not concise, and it's not
easy to read, plus there are obvious flaws, but I thought it was still as good
as anything I've encountered.

~~~
wdewind
Sure, I guess I wasn't looking so much for an in depth text as a high level
summary of different models and _how_ they differ. Just to get an idea of
what's out there.

~~~
gress
Unfortunately I have not found such a thing, probably because human knowledge
about this is so patchy.

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powertower
> ...Bob may overestimate the probability that Alice lied intentionally and
> thus would experience more anger, because he will compute more possible
> outcomes where he gets hurt by Alice.

The author's theory kind of sounds like a "Parallel Universes / Many-Worlds
Theory" model for psychology.

While it can be useful in many ways, the model itself might not be based on
reality (i.g., how the brain works), and in the example - it might just be
that the ego needs control, and when that control is shown to be false, it
reacts the best way that particular brain's ego can...

A confident person would just blow what happened off. A stressed person might
get angry. Etc.

~~~
MarkPNeyer
i plan to write a follow-up post on this, in terms of physics.

one of the ideas that heavily influenced me was this one:

[http://www.insidescience.org/content/physicist-proposes-
new-...](http://www.insidescience.org/content/physicist-proposes-new-way-
think-about-intelligence/987)

~~~
tokai
[https://egtheory.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/entropic-forces-
an...](https://egtheory.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/entropic-forces-and-
behavior/)

------
zoba
This seems very similar to the old "Happiness = Reality - Expectations"
equation. Great reality and low expectations? Large positive number. Poor
reality and high expectations? Large negative number. If you want to be happy,
then don't expect much, and don't expect often. Unfortunately for happiness, I
don't know how to turn off the endless flow of "what if"s my mind produces -
the flip side is that I'm always thinking of new things.

~~~
hliyan
I think we discussed that equation here before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8060404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8060404)

According to that, the "what if"'s are a function of perceived happiness of
others?

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kszx
Similar to my model, which is itself quite intuitive to someone who likes
economic modelling: I like to think of emotion as a function of the change in
the expected discounted sum of lifetime utility.

First, utility is a measure satisfaction at any point of time, which can be a
function of many variables, including relationships, food, wealth etc.

Discounted utility means that changes in soon satisfaction levels have a
higher impact than changes in satisfaction that are still a long time away.

And the fact that I use the expected value of the function allows for biases
abd inconsistencies, which are obviously very frequently observed.

[EDIT: typo]

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hammock
What I don't get is how you reduce a variety of different emotions (hunger,
anger, hope, etc) into a dichotomous "positive/negative outcome" spectrum. You
don't really address that.

~~~
MarkPNeyer
the "positive/negative" spectrum is meant to apply to possible outcomes
reflected by the emotions - not the emotions themselves. An emotion like anger
typically arises when lots of new negative (unwanted, undesired) possibilities
appear newy likely, or lots of desired or 'good' possibilities disappear.

For example, suppose you were going home and upon pulling onto your street,
you see the house is on fire. This is probably something you "don't want" \-
and the SoP model suggests that the negative emotion you experience
corresponds to your internal estimate of 'likely events' being updated.

I realize that for most people, the explanation of "well if your house burns
down, you'll be angry" seems kind of fatuous. The point of the model is to try
to find an underlying thread or consistency to emotional experiences. Yes,
it's "obvious" that seeing your house burn down will make a person angry.

What's the relationship between seeing your house burn down, having your best
friend cheat on you with your partner, and then finding out that lawsuit was
filed against you - aside from "they will all make you mad?"

Anyone can say "its obvious that those will make you angry", but the things we
found "obvious" in mathematics for thousands of years turned out to be
covering up a very complex situation.

The underlying thread that I see in all of those above situations, aside from
them inducing anger - is that they all will cause the person experience them
to reduce the probably of positive outcomes they predicted for living in the
house, their relationships with their friends and partners, and their finances
and time.

For each one of those situations, if you go through the 'set of possible
outcomes eliminated' and then try to eliminate them _before_ the 'anger
inducing event' occurs, suddenly the event doen't make you angry any more.
Playing with the 'set of expected outcomes' seems to directly impact the
anticipated emotional response.

If you had already planned to move out of your house, and packed everything up
- none of your stuff was damaged, you suffer no financial loss, and insurance
recoups everythign you need. Any lingering unpleasantness you feel can be
attributed to a reduce sense of 'saftey' or an increased estimate that the
house will burn down - but by removing the chance that you planned on staying
in that house for years, or that you had a bunch of stuff in there that was
destroyed - the emotional sting goes down.

Your friend cheating on you with your partner - that one is much harder to
'prepare' as having zero expectations for the future' \- could a friend really
be your friend if you didn't plan to be with them? So try the opposite, them -
it stings much harder if it's your best friend you've had for 40 years, and
your spouse of 30, than if it's a someone you just met and enjoyed spending
time with, and a partner you just started dating. Again - this is "OBVIOUS" to
most neurotypicals - and so they wouldn't bother explaining to themselves "ok
here is why this is." As someone with a very intense emotional history, i
wanted to understand the patterns underlying these phenomena.

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yohanatan
a) Hunger is not an emotional state. It may be an input to one's emotional
state but I think that its impact is usually quite weak. b) Overly simplistic
example-- do mature adults really have such wide ranging emotions during a
conversation over whether there is pizza or not in the fridge?

~~~
kyptin
a) Fair, although I think the author's justification for describing it as such
is reasonable. b) Sure, but I don't think maturity is the point. I think the
point is to establish a way of thinking about emotions—which I suppose might
be more useful the less mature a person you're dealing with.

~~~
hosh
Someone can be fairly mature and still have very strong emotions. Furthermore,
just because the strength of the emotion is easily detectable in one person,
doesn't necessarily mean it is as perceivable by another person. What allows a
person to perceive emotions has to do with how well they have trained their
awareness to pay attention to emotions rather than either ignoring them, or
avoiding them.

Hunger itself isn't an emotion. It's a complex of physical sensations.
However, in most people, it is highly coupled with various emotional
responses. Hunger is one of the first things an infant experiences, often
coupled with being fed by a parent and loved upon. It's not accident that a
lot of people (not everyone) eat more when they are stressed. (Comfort food).
I have seen otherwise mature adults regressed to childhood, infantile
behaviors because they skipped a meal.

It's actually a fairly immature understanding of emotions to associate poor
emotional control or behaviors with the level of maturity. Your ability to
handle emotions has more to do with whether you fully pay attention to the
emotions and process them out. Although people with greater physical age will
tend to have experienced a wider range of emotions in a variety of life
circumstances, if they don't pay attention to them when it happens, it festers
in the back of the mind, carried on for years.

I think this model is a "good try". It seems good enough for now, for the
author. And although it scratches the surface, I think it's great for anyone
to think about this more closely.

To really start digging in there, you have to allow yourself to experience the
emotion; "thinking" about an emotion without allowing yourself to experience
it or be aware of it tends to be a way for the mind to _avoid_ experiencing
painful things.

------
cgio
A very nice summary of relevant scientific work is

www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/Whatever%20next.pdf

Also, thinking fast and slow and other pop-sci books around decision making
put a similar model forward. Personally, I am more focused on the active
elements of consciousness and I try to use decision as the hermeneutics
element rather than subject. Instead of looking at conscious beings like
processors that model their environment and act upon that model, I am
interested in the long term impact of decisions on behaviour and perception
(i.e. my decisions impact the way I perceive the world.) Both models can co-
exist. The article linked above has some very interesting links to much more
researched models than my intuition.

Clarification: to reinforce my theory, I am wring about decisions when the
author looks into emotions!

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sebular
I wonder if a model like this one could be the basis for coding AI with
emotions. Not that you'd really want a robot butler who experiences mood
swings, but I'm sure there would be useful applications.

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skinnybatch
as the author mentions below, this is _his_ effective internal model, and his
sharing it simply offers the opportunity for anyone else to read it, think
about it, and take and apply what works for him or her.

that said, for me, it's not so easily applicable to interactions with others,
such as with Bob and Alice. for issues in my own peabrain, i can try and
logically explore the bases for my emotions, my triggers, and possible
alternate solutions, which i can apply at any point in a particular journey or
task. i have the ability and choice to attempt to alter my own course, in
terms of actions and reactions, any time i start to be plagued by and
cognizant of my own discomfort. in interactions with others, however, the
applicability is limited. unfortunately, it rests on having the ability to
understand the complex nuances of someone else's emotional triggers,
subconscious or unconscious, and having some sort of reliable heuristic to
predict their reactions and digressions.

personally, i don't have an issue with the simplification to positive/negative
outcomes. sort of reduces emotional processing and synaptic fires to binary
code, or an electrical circuits with switches and AC current.

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_asummers
A former professor of mine wrote his PhD thesis on categorizing human emotion
(I believe it was out of an AI department). Not sure how much help it will be,
but it might have some ideas you can pull from.

[http://condor.depaul.edu/elliott/ar/papers/dis/elliott-
phd.h...](http://condor.depaul.edu/elliott/ar/papers/dis/elliott-phd.html)

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afterburner
"This underestimate caused me to underestimate my ability to accomplish my
goals"

I think the second "underestimate" is supposed to be "overestimate".

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osteele
Cf. Minsky, _The Emotion Machine_.

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asimjalis
Insightful. Thanks.

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readymade
don't quit your day job...

~~~
MarkPNeyer
I work at facebook. I love my job! This place is so supportive and caring
inside; I haven't ever felt so accepted for who I am.

