More than a Feeling - It's a Decision!!

Going by Feel

Homo sapiens – literally ‘Rational Man’ – can’t make a decision without emotion to guide him (or her).

If you aren’t aware of the truth of that factoid, you may take yourself a few moments to browse a great number of articles on this subject on the internet – here’s a good starting point: http://discovermagazine.com/topics/mind-brain/memory-emotions-decisions

Are you now emotionally ready to accept the fact that you are a touchy-feely-driven, barely rational being?

One of the studies that really struck home was the case of a previously normal man who suffered a brain injury that damaged his center of emotions. Although still scoring very high on all IQ testing, he was utterly unable to make decisions – instead he’d enter a loop on endless analysis of pro and con merits on each side of a particular choice to be made, never coming to a fixed conclusion…

For me, after a life of Star Trek watching, this whole emotion-required-for-thought is a slap in the face for Mr. Spock – the icon of icy-cold, feelingless and decisive thought.

Flipside, too much emotion can be as bad as none at all – as anyone with anxiety attacks can relate. Instead of no decision, it can be nearly impossible to make the rational decision in face of strong emotion to the contrary.

Obviously, emotional levels are a factor in rational thought, or more precisely, what is taken by Homo sapiens to be rational thought.

So, why is our intellect chained to the fickle winds of emotion??

I think there are two prongs to the answer: one, we’re not that evolved, and two, it has survival advantages.

As for the first part, hey, it’s only been a few tens of thousand years that we’ve been, quote intelligent unquote! Our ancestors, prior to Homo sapiens, really weren’t that bright… Which neatly brings us to point number two – the survival advantage to being emotionally driven.

Consider for a moment, the opposite of emotion-based decision making. To decide a course of action, you carefully examine and understand all possible ramifications to the choices and act accordingly. Sounds good, right? Well, what if you were stupid? I mean real stupid – like stupid enough to take a bite out of a woolly mammoth on the hoof, because you are hungry… Not long for the world, eh?

On the other hand, if you were afraid to bite something big and angry looking, without benefit of reasoning you might still survive… and eventually evolve some intelligence.

You can see where that might have been real handy.

Are we beyond need for emotion in decision making?

Not yet, to be brief. It’s a tool that needs constant tuning, but still helps us where raw logic fails. Some of us need more help from emotion than others... I think it is recognition of the quality of emotionless reasoning vs. highly emotional flights that created the characterization of a ‘Mr. Spock’ as a desirable way to be.

Balance, is the key – not too much or too little emotion.

To turn the question right around, do robots need an emotional element to be truly functional?? One can picture a number of situations where a machine blindly does a very stupid thing – over and over again. Some sort of analog to emotion surely is required… like embarrassment?

My guess is that as we get smarter, less dependence upon emotion is needed (but not zero), and somehow we need to put a little feeling into our machines.