> Risks associated with war will begin to look smaller. This is not a "cognitive bias" but a design feature of a mind shifting from navigating a prestige-based world to a dominance-based world.
That's absolutely a cognitive bias, and that's exactly the manner in which cognitive biases emerge over time. It being a "normal" biological or social adaptation does not mean it is not a cognitive bias: all cognitive biases are "normal" adaptations (although they are often maladaptive).
> Your psychology was designed for a world of small-group aggression. Not a world of nukes. This mismatch means that your intuitions are not always optimal guides. Balancing emotions for group-aggression with cold reason is key over the next days and, possibly, years.
> Emotions are coordination systems designed to refocus your entire cognitive architecture towards a specific task
This is a really powerful way of looking at emotion. Of course emotion serves an evolutionary purpose, but it's such a basic part of our lived experience that it's hard to view it critically like that.
I think it’s problematic to reduce human emotions and the human experience to mere cause/effect. Is the Mona Lisa paint on a canvas, a representation of one man’s artistic expression? Or is it a window into the soul of humanity? It can be dangerous to overly simplify consciousness.
There have been studies that have associated emotion with decision making - people who, for some reason, lack an emotional state, find it basically impossible to make a decision.
> BUT: Your psychology was designed for a world of small-group aggression. Not a world of nukes. This mismatch means that your intuitions are not always optimal guides. Balancing emotions for group-aggression with cold reason is key over the next days and, possibly, years.
Emotions do not serve any purpose. It's a abstract concept describing certain psychogical process in human that is not characterized by so-called rational thinking.
Most non artificial things are not serving any purpose, they are coincidents filtered through natural selection.
Most artificial things serve some purpose of its makers.
They may certainly be counterproductive at times, but if they truly served no purpose it seems unlikely we'd have them? Also there's at least mixed evidence for the existence of similar states in animals[1].
I understand why you're being downvoted, but I do think there is value in your comment. It's perhaps not the most artful articulation of ideas, but it points to serious (afaik) philosophical questions. Whether emotions have a purpose is both a semantic and a philosophical question.
There seems to be an oblique critique of people that are suddenly pro-intervention and pro-war that are classified as traditional anti-war/peacenik.
This analysis may be true, but seems to be trending here because of that undercurrent running through discussions of Russia/Ukraine.
I do not think this is some irrational fear stirring within people in the abstract sense. There are very good reasons to see this as far more than just another regional conflict.
Ukraine is a line in the sand against the very idea of modern authoritarianism. What has been occurring for the last 10 years politically is a disturbing trend towards authoritarianism. China is now much more authoritarian under Xi. "Populism" movements with leaders openly admiring Putin.
Putin is the perverse hero of these ambitious strongmen.
Putin's cult of personality among wannabe far right wing movements is a disturbing trend undermining not just some idealistic dream of true liberal democracy, but even the more mundane functional republic we generally have.
Here we have Putin nakedly expressing aggression, as a sort of apex achievement of decades of psy-ops, "fomenting despair", and other KGB manipulations.
What's important here is not to just rebuke Putin's ambitions in the realist/actual political and power sense, in the immediate sense. What is important here is to destroy this god of the dangerous radical far right, embarrass his armies, shame him, show him impotent and powerless before a nascent Ukrainian national identity that should have no fighting chance.
As an interesting allude performing the following substitutions and the content reads exactly the same with exactly the same result, because it isn't about war but behavior.
Readit News
That's absolutely a cognitive bias, and that's exactly the manner in which cognitive biases emerge over time. It being a "normal" biological or social adaptation does not mean it is not a cognitive bias: all cognitive biases are "normal" adaptations (although they are often maladaptive).
> Your psychology was designed for a world of small-group aggression. Not a world of nukes. This mismatch means that your intuitions are not always optimal guides. Balancing emotions for group-aggression with cold reason is key over the next days and, possibly, years.
Case in point.
This is a really powerful way of looking at emotion. Of course emotion serves an evolutionary purpose, but it's such a basic part of our lived experience that it's hard to view it critically like that.
Emotions do not serve any purpose. It's a abstract concept describing certain psychogical process in human that is not characterized by so-called rational thinking.
Most non artificial things are not serving any purpose, they are coincidents filtered through natural selection.
Most artificial things serve some purpose of its makers.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_in_animals
I would point anyone who thinks this comment is unreasonable to discussions about teleology and science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology#Science
there is no purpose without emotions.
This analysis may be true, but seems to be trending here because of that undercurrent running through discussions of Russia/Ukraine.
I do not think this is some irrational fear stirring within people in the abstract sense. There are very good reasons to see this as far more than just another regional conflict.
Ukraine is a line in the sand against the very idea of modern authoritarianism. What has been occurring for the last 10 years politically is a disturbing trend towards authoritarianism. China is now much more authoritarian under Xi. "Populism" movements with leaders openly admiring Putin.
Putin is the perverse hero of these ambitious strongmen.
Putin's cult of personality among wannabe far right wing movements is a disturbing trend undermining not just some idealistic dream of true liberal democracy, but even the more mundane functional republic we generally have.
Here we have Putin nakedly expressing aggression, as a sort of apex achievement of decades of psy-ops, "fomenting despair", and other KGB manipulations.
What's important here is not to just rebuke Putin's ambitions in the realist/actual political and power sense, in the immediate sense. What is important here is to destroy this god of the dangerous radical far right, embarrass his armies, shame him, show him impotent and powerless before a nascent Ukrainian national identity that should have no fighting chance.