[Aleader-dev] re-introduction

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2003 at 09:59:43AM -0500, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> Quick reply.  I'm still not sure I entirely understand where you are
> coming from.  Sometimes, I think I so radically disagree with you that it
> will be impossible to resolve our differences...Lets see if we can sync
> up via the following....
> 
> More later...I think determining precisely which emotion person will
> feel next is a very very hard problem.  It is about as hard as calculating
> precisely (i.e. within 1 millimeter) where and in what configuration
> (within one degree) a leaf falling from a tree will land.  Emotion depends
> on a cognitive process which all humans probably share to a substantial
> extent.  But it also depends on their personality, their life history,
> their body (the somatic influence on emotion is huge).  This probably
> interacts via a chaotic (i.e. highly sensitive to initial conditions)
> process.  For this reason I think trying to objectively predict what
> someone is feeling is too hard to tackle now.
> 
> On the other hand, if you just settle for a piece of the system. E.g.
> the cognitive piece, and allow yourself to predict a range of
> likely to be felt emotions, or emotions that would be believable then you
> might have a prayer of solving the problem.

Agreed.

Perhaps I should state again that I am only considering emotions
which are due to a cognitive process.  To limit things further, I do
not entertain _any_ cognitive process but only a specific cognitive
process which is characterized by the key questions of the Aleader
classification system.

No doubt there are plenty of emotions outside this narrow scope,
but we can consider them later.

> Here's another idea....If you want to build a good theory, start with
> a child's emotions.  Happy and sad might be a good place to start.

Perhaps I can't adaquately describe in email how I am looking at
emotions.  That's why I have invested 2 years averaging 50 hour
a week (has it really been that long? ;-) developing software
that makes it easy to explain.  And it's not like I don't have
anything better to do with my time, but this is important.

What I need you to do is burn the CD and take a look at it.
Load all three films from the File menu.  Click on stuff and
get familiar with the GUI.  If you need to, watch the films
in full -- three 20 minute segments.

Then look at the Cross Reference screen.  Use the Search
menu to find examples of these emotions, one at a time:

  celebrate presence
  limbo
  sleep / inner turmoil
  take by force
  struggle against thief
  criticize
  prediction
  dire prediction
  enthusiastic enforcer
  meticulous doubt

Watch all the examples for each emotion.  Then tell me what
you think.

If I could easily visit Texas then I would be happy to walk you
through it.  I really think this is the quickest way to get us
beyond the "what the heck are you talking about?" stage.

--
Victory to the Divine Mother!!         after all,
  http://sahajayoga.org                  http://why-compete.org