Anger is an emotion which triggers
  when your expectations are dissappointed.[^anger-loss]
  The breach of expectations is interpreted as a harm
  (or in some cases, it might actually be a harm).
Anger orients you towards a blamed _source of harm_,
  and impells _defensive aggression_
  against that blamed source.
If the blaming reflex correctly identifies
  the source of harm,
  then attacking that source
  might injure it so it can no longer inflict harm,
  or might discourage further harm
  by demonstrating willingness to retaliate.

[^anger-loss]: See <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Anger and Frustration'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink> and <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Frustration-Centric Anger'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>. Anger is analagously triggered by restricting freedom (cf <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Anger and Freedom Restriction'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>).

## Misperceived Harm from Frustrating Expectations
> You told your friend last week that you were moving,
> and you thought they were going to help you out.
> When you call them that morning, they sound confused.
> "Oh, I'm sorry," they apologize, "I have work...I had no idea
> you thought I'd be there." You get mad that now you have to move alone,
> but after a few seconds, you realize that you should have
> voice your expectations.

The core of the trigger for Anger
  is a disappointed expectation.
  When reality does not meet our expectations,
  Anger destructively externalizes blame,
  instead of updating our expectations.[^panksepp-anger-extern]
  Sometimes this externalization is very helpful,
  impelling us to make a better world around us,
  to right injustices, or to protect ourselves from predators.

However, Anger will _feel_ justified for any expectation breach,
  even if it comes from an unrealistic or impossible expectation.
  It is critically important to evaluate how reasonable
  are expectations are when we get Angry,
  or else we might spend our lives
  tilting at windmills.

Even when our expectations are achievable,
  the defensive aggression which Anger impels
  can easily make things worse.
  If there is an actually malicious actor standing
  preventing your expectations from realizing,
  then lashing out against them might push them back.
  However, everyone involved was just doing their jobs,
  trying their best to be a good person,
  then defensive aggression might actually create malice
  where there wasn't any before.

Sometimes, we are disappointed by a system,
  dispassionate processes operating without any intent.
Being Angry at systems is generally futile and destructive.
  If your car doesn't work properly,
  kicking it or banging on the hood
  is far more likely to upset the system's functioning
  than to magically coerce it into functioning.
  Systems are not dissuaded by being attacked,
  and though they might be destroyed with enough ferocity,
  a measured recallibration or process adjustment
  is almost surely more likely to yield better results.
  Systemic malfunctions are simply always
  incorrect targets for anger.

[^panksepp-anger-extern]: <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Anger Externalization'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>

## Misperceptions of the Blame Reflex
> Walking to get some water in the middle of the night,
> you stub your toe on your table. Your Anger surges,
> and you curse at your table and hit it with your hand,
> inneffectually, only hurting yourself more.
> After a few seconds, the Anger subsides,
> and you feel quite silly having blamed the table
> for your mistake.

Not all emotions require a target.
  You can be afraid, for instance, of a situation,
  without being afraid of any specific identifiable feature in your environment.
  Anger, however, wants a target.
  To defensively lash out, it needs something to lash out _at_.
  To find this target,
  Anger is naturally paired with a strong _Blame Reflex_,
  which attempts to identify the source of the harm
  as some living agent[^panksepp-living] nearby[^panksepp-blame-near].
  Anger without a blame target is an uncomfortable, unstable state (cf Girard),
  so our natural blame reflex will happily settle on a poor explanation
  rather than leave a harm unexplained.  

Because blame orients a feeler towards defensive aggression,
  it must identify a single cause.
  If there are multiple causes for a harm,
  blame will prefer causes which are nearer and which seem like living agents.
  If there are no realistic living agents,
  we may anthropomorphize a non-living thing,
  as in the example above with the table,
  and will perceive malicious intent
  even if it doesn't exist.
  If there are many such living agents,
  blame may group these into a perceived "super agent",
  perceiving collaboration and conspiracy
  even if the agents are operating independently.

All of these biases for Blame are optimized for our ancestral environment.
  If our ancestor was hunting in a forest,
  and something went wrong,
  randomly attacking would at best likely
  dissuade any predators, and at worst
  wouldn't hurt anything important.
In our modern environment, however,
  these biases are far less useful.
  Most of our modern problems
  involve complicated systems,
  with many interconnected causes.
  Our expectations stretch far into the future,
  and can be breached by any number of
  unintentional side-effects.

_For more on how emotions influence causal reasoning, see "Cause and Affect"_.

## Transcending our Destructive Nature
> "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
> But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..."  
> 
> ― Jesus (Matthew 5:43-44, NASB)

In our modern world, the greatest predator of humans
  is other humans.
  Our myths recount many stories
  of revenge spiraling out of control,
  drawing more and more lives into the grave
  before it burns out.
  Modern societies try, and often succeed,
  to justly punish wrongdoers
  so that none of us have to realiate ourselves.
  In a just society, no one would need to be angry,
  because the rule of law would sufficiently deter
  unjust harm.

Forgiveness is one of the most momentous
  emotional innovations in history.
  A primary tenent of Christianity,
  it has spread across the world
  and now enjoys widespread acknowledgement
  as a strategy for peace,
  even if it is not always followed.
The initial Christian arguments for forgiveness
  did not ask for a just society as a prerequisite,
  it claimed forgiveness would provide intrinsic
  religious rewards.
Though less convincing to non-believers,
  there is certainly much to be admired
  in those who can bring justice and harmony
  with peace, not with war.

Perhaps humans will trascend Anger
  via the external path of making just societies.
Perhaps we will tread the internal path
  of forgiveness.
Or, maybe, we will hold on to this
  miscalibrated emotion until the end of our species.
If one day, us humans do destroy ourselves,
  Anger will likely have played a major role.


When is Anger Wrong?

Fear is Wrong

> *...you need to teach "critical feeling" to defeat groupfeel no less than critical thinking to fight groupthink.*
> 
> *― Eric Weinstein*

Over the course of a good education, we learn to subject our beliefs and judgements to critical scrutiny. When reflexive, errant thoughts arise within our minds, we know how to combat them within ourselves and bring them in line with reality. We call this process, this collection of corrective metacognitive tools, “critical thinking”.

But when feelings arise within us, we have been given no such toolkit, no similar standard by which to judge whether these feelings are in need of correction in the first place. At best (or, perhaps, at worst), we can apply often vague, sometimes contradictory religious prescriptions of which emotions are good, or bad, or evil. The precision with which we wield reason and logic may seem more taunting than inspiring, a nirvana beyond our reach.

There is a path to these elysian fields. When we recognize that our feelings
  are not in fact some representation of some "truer" self,
  but in fact are a kaleidoscope formed of naive, primal drives,
  we can tease apart each of these colors and,
  looking at them one by one, discern their purpose.
  Translated from flutters of the heart
  to context-specific goals,
  they become strategies no less amenable to inspection
  than any rational plan.

## The Path
1. <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotions-are-wrong'>When are emotions wrong?</InternalLink>
	- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-epistemology'>How can we investigate emotions?</InternalLink>
	- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-teleology'>What is the "purpose" of emotions?</InternalLink>
	- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-nature-and-nurture'>How do Nature and Nurture interact with emotions?</InternalLink>
2. <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/desire-is-wrong'>When is desire wrong?</InternalLink>
	- Compulsive Perception
3. <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/anger-is-wrong'>When is anger wrong?</InternalLink>
	- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/hate'>Resentment and Hate</InternalLink> 
	- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/mobs'>Mob Anger</InternalLink>
	- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/aggression'>The Three Kinds of Aggression</InternalLink>
4. <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/fear-is-wrong'>When is fear wrong?</InternalLink>
	- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/threat-spirals'>Threat Spirals</InternalLink>
5. When is care wrong?
    - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/cause-and-affect'>Cause and Affect</InternalLink>
7. <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/correcting-emotions'>Correcting Emotions</InternalLink>
    - emotional invalidation


Critical Feeling

For centuries, the fields of Europe were bathed in the blood
  of religious wars.
It is a strange thing, to fight and kill for "love", or for a "loving god".

Exhaustion from years of war finally birthed a spirit of tolerance;
  "liberalism", also known as "modernism",
  has been our great social experiment
  to let everyone live their own way,
  acknowledging the right for each to pursue happiness
  in their own way.

Humans have diverse natures.
Our different temperaments are reflected
  in everything we do,
  from the entertainment we most enjoy,
  to our professions where we contribute to society.
We would not fault a plumber
  for not becoming a policeman;
  we know that people are different,
  and that forceful dictates
  are far more likely to crush a soul
  than to kindle it.

The great tolerance of liberalism
  was to establish _rights_ as the fundamental unit
  for social expectations.
Instead of expecting that other people
  would do all we would like them to,
  a standard which can only lead to disappointment,
  rights reframed human interaction
  into a model of consensual interaction.
If two individuals consent to an interaction,
  then their rights therein cannot be violated.
It was the social implementation of the silver rule,
  that great ethical tenet independently discovered
  by many civilizations.


Pluralism

## Chapter 1: Men Without Chests

> In filling their \[English] book with \[philosophical positions] they have been unjust to the parent or headmaster who buys it and who has got the work of amateur philosophers where he expected the work of professional grammarians. A man would   be annoyed if his son returned from the dentist with his teeth untouched and his head crammed with the dentist’s _obiter dicta_ on bimetallism or the baconian theory.

> For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes.

> Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it — believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt.

### Traditions on Virtue
> St Augustine defines virtue as _ordo amoris_, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in _Ethics_; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. it must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful. In the _Republic_, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her.’ In early Hinduism that conduct in men which can be called good consists in conformity to, or almost participation in, the _Rta_—that great ritual or pattern of nature and supernature which is revealed alike in the cosmic order, the moral virtues, and the ceremonial of the temple. Righteousness, correctness, order, the _Rta_, is constantly identified with _satya_ or truth, correspondence to reality. As Plato said that the Good was ‘beyond existence’ and Wordsworth that through virtue the stars were strong, so the indian masters say that the gods themselves are born of the _Rta_ and obey it.  
> The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. it is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator himself. it is nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things  everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar. ‘In ritual’, say the Analects, ‘it is harmony with nature that is prized.’  The ancient Jews likewise praise the law as being ‘true’.  
> This conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as ‘the Tao ’. Some of the accounts of it which I have quoted will seem, perhaps, to many of you merely quaint or even magical. but what is common to them all is something we cannot neglect. it is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are. Those who know the Tao can hold that to call children delightful or old men venerable is not simply to record a psychological fact about our own parental or filial emotions at the moment, but to recognize a quality which demands a certain response from us whether we make it or not. ...
> And because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it). No emotion is, in itself, a judgement; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. but they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

> Now the emotion, thus considered by itself, cannot be either in agreement or disagreement with Reason. It is irrational not as a paralogism is irrational, but as a physical event is irrational: it does not rise even to the dignity of error. On this view, the world of facts, without one trace of value, and the world of feelings, without one trace of truth or falsehood, justice or injustice, confront one another, and no _rapprochement_ is possible.

> Where the old initiated, the new merely ‘conditions’. The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds— making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. in a word, the old was a kind of propagation—men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.

> ...no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.


## Chapter 2: The Way

## Chapter 3: Abolition of Man


Reflection on Education With Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools

The Abolition of Man

## Communal vs Societal Ethics

### Communal Expectations
Entering and leaving a community is a commonplace occurence.
Entering a church, we might conform to expectations
  of quiet and respect.
When we leave, we re-engage our normal form of behavior.
While a priest might be endeavor to conform to such expectations
  on an ongoing basis, for the vast majority of the congregants
  such expectations would prove prohibitively difficult
  to live out constantly.
Even though congregants may aspire to a churchly mode of conduct,
  even if such aspiration is their highest goal in life,
  socially expectations are still confined to a specific location,
  so that individuals may associate or withdraw at their choosing.
On a particularly bad day, when disaster has struck
  or some other emergency has arisen,
  congregants might not attend church at all,
  acknowledging that even a focused effort
  to behave as expected might not be possible.

The voluntary nature of communal association
  opens the door to aspirational expectations.
You might attend community gatherings only on your best days,
  when you can muster the most effort to fill challenging expectations.
Even if the expectations are too burdensome for everyday life,
  that cost might be worthwhile in focused interactions.

### Societal Expectations
Societies cannot be easily engaged and disengaged.
  To leave a society is to uproot one's life
  and to effectively sever most social connections.
As such, burden from societal expectations
  must necessarily be lower than the burden
  from engaging with a community.

Societal expectations must be achievable
  even on our worst days.
If a conflict at work or home
  spilled over to an impolite interaction at a grocery store,
  that interaction should not result in excommunication.


### Positive Expectations
Any positive expectation is quasi-religous in nature.
To expect that someone _will do_ something
  means that you expect _nothing else_ is more important
  at that moment in time.
Totalitarian ethics, ie those with positive expectations,
  might be justified or even desirable in specific communities,
  where individuals may self-sort by temperament or value system.

However, imposing a totalitarian ethic on a whole population
  is tantamount to religious persecution,
  when you socially censure people
  simply because they do not follow your god,
  your highest good.

A pluralist, multicultural society permits a myriad of highest goods.
One person might pursue truth above all else.
Another person might pursue charity.
Yet another person might pursue their own financial gain.
In a pluralist society, all of these pursuits are allowed.
Differences in individual temperament make it unlikely
  that any one such goal will be motivating to all people.
Allowing all of these goals lets everyone pursue most fully
  whichever good seems highest to them.

Positive social expectations are incompatible
  with pluralism and multiculturalism.


Communal Vs Societal Ethics

## Motivation
In the course of purusing goals, intelligent agents naturally form plans.
In humans, it seems that the planning function and the expectation function are somewhat joint, so that deviations from a plan are jointly perceived as breaches of expectations.

The emotion of anger arises when expectations are breached.

Anger-fueled conflict between two intelligent agents is prone to escalation, as each harm breaks the fundamental expectation of (?? going concern ??), triggering Anger and additional retaliatory violence.

As technology progresses and we are provided with more affordances, individual's propensity for effective action also increases. This enables accelerated Conflict escalation.

Therefore, a crucial component of the survival of the human species, which is instrumental to all other goals, is to design social systems which avoid or inhibit conflict.

## Negative and Positive Expectations
Positive expectations (expecting another to act in a certain way) are fundamentally unstable.
While living in the world, a variety of situations present themselves, some of critical importance. If a critical situation emerges, addressing it will likely overwhelm any possible induced motivation to fulfill any positive expectation. Moreover, multiple positive expectations can conditionally trigger at once, causing an internal conflict.

Negative expectations (expecting another to not act in a certain way) are generally stable (though they can be constructed to be unstable).
Just as every effect has an infinitude of causes, so every goal has an infinitude of possible paths to achievement.
Negative expectations establish bounds on the kinds of behaviors one may employ in service of their goals, but because of the boundlessness of affordances in the world this tends to not exclude goals unless those goals are identical to that which is not expected to happen (such as a goal to kill someone in a society with a negative expectation against murder).

Negative expectations form the most stable and conflict-free basis for societies. Negative and positive expectations form a healthy basis for communities. This distinction between society and community is one of the most critical innovations for reducing conflict.


Expectations And Conflict

Social interactions can remain intuitive while every person in a group knows each other (cf "Dunbar's Number"). When an effective social network grows past this number (such as in towns or cities), social interactions with strangers must occur. These 0-(initial)-knowledge interactions must be mediated by some kind of social convention so that interactions to not lead to broken expectations (and therefore trigger anger and likely conflict).

### Negative and Positive Expectations
Any expectation can be negative (an expectation that a person will not do something) or positive (an expectation that they will). Positive expectations are highly unstable -- even if a person would like to perform the expected action, they may have any number of higher priorities. Positive expectations also compete; since people generally perform one conscious action at a time, multiple positive expectations are generally quite challenging to simultaneously guarantee. Even if the positive expectations are only conditional, they can easily co-occur and conflict (eg "when it's sunny, I expect people to say hello to me").

Negative expectations have no such conflict. Not doing one thing in general makes it no harder to not do something else. Negative expectations also do not conflict with spurious priorities, unless the priority is actually in direct contradictions.

While negative expectations only conflict with eachother or with priorities in sparse situations, positive expectation conflict is dense, and tends to provide intractable expectations.

#### Sidenote: Continuous Taxation
Continuous taxation is an example of a formally positive social expectation which is constructed so as to be pragmatically no expectation at all, which then sitesteps the above issues. Continuous taxation, i.e. taxing a sale during a transation, or taxing a paycheck before it reaches the employee, does not require any additional steps on the part of the buyer or employee, and as such there are no pragmatic steps which individuals must consciously undertake.


Scale

Anger is a powerful motivator.
  From our evolutionary history,
    Anger likely evolved to protect us from predators
    and to motivate fierce competition over discovered resoruces.
  The emotion of anger is triggered
    when our plans are frustrated
    or when our expectations are violated.
  In response, we locate some nearby human-like aggressor,
    or hallucinate one if none can be found,
    and attack them in hopes that harming them
    will allow our plans to proceed unhindered.

In a social environment, anger can easily escalate.
  Once one person identifies another as an aggressor,
    rightly or not, their attacks on the perceived aggressor
    mark them in turn as an aggressor to their aggressor,
    fueling mutual attacks until one side submits or is destroyed.

A society organized around _non-coercion_
  critically thwarts anger escalation.
  _Non-coercion_ requires that all people
    have the real option of withdrawing
    from any interaction; conversly,
    all interactions require the consent of all parties.
  If all interactions are voluntary,
    then if ever another person frustrates your plans,
    you always have the opportunity to withdraw
    and execute your plans elsewhere.
  If you persist in an interaction,
    then you are at least as much at fault
    as any aggressor who you choose to interact with.
  To more cleanly cover all triggers to anger,
    _non-coercion_ also requires that all promises be kept,
    and marks any breach of promise or fraud
    as tantamount to coerion.

If a society adapts the non-coercion principle,
  if its justice system and its individuals
  adopt expectations centered around consent,
  then coercion becomes the sole source
  of all anger, and injustice is identified
  precisely with coercion.
  The human urge of punitive justice,
    rooted in anger,
    aligns towards ensuring consent,
    which it can reasonably achieve.
  Any act of coercion inherently must have
    some person who coerces;
    a justice system based on consent
    punishes coercers
    and grants freedom wherever it falls.

## Social Expectations
Imagine a society which expected
  something besides consent;
  imagine a society which expects that,
  every day, whenever two people meet for the first time,
  they must smiile at eachother.
  At glance this seems like a kind rule,
    a harmless expectation.
  But simply granting the expectation
    justifies anger if that expectation is breached.
  If someone is distracted and they forget to smile,
    or if they are having a bad day and cannot find it in themselves to smile,
    or if they are an honest person who feels morally compelled to not fake their feelings,
    any of these situations
    may be met with socially justified anger.

Social expectations are not free.
  Each social expectation
    must be paid for in anger, in conflict.
  The expectation of consent
    inherently reduces conflict,
    so that it pays for itself.
  All other expectations,
    no matter how utopic they sound,
    cause more conflict
    and inhibit peace.


Non-Coercion And Conflict

All ethical ends are human ends.

## Fictive Corpora

There is no such thing as a corporation. A corporation is merely a story about people that people tell themselves. It may be a useful story, it may help coordinate action, give people meaning, or work towards the common good, but it is merely a story, a ghost of the imagination.

Imagine a democratic society where corporations could vote. Democracy would instantly fall to whomever's imagination could form the most corporate stories (or, without any controls, to whomever could register the most companies).

Should anything be legal in the context of employment in a corporation which is not normally legal? If an individual would otherwise be charged for a crime, how does participating in a story which tells them to commit crimes make them any less guilty?

We all live out stories every day. Most of our fictions are not formalized -- a dream to become a manager, a goal to help people in need, or some religious journey towards self-improvement. These fictions are no different in kind from corporations.

## Conservation of Rights and Responsibilities

Responsibility and rights can be delegated in fictions, but they cannot be created or destroyed. If an employee is less liable for some action which they've committed, then their manager must be equivalently more liable. If an employee is granted some extra-ordinary right, such as the right to enforce laws, that right must come from some other persons who have delegated that right.

## The State
There is no such thing as the State. A State is merely a story people tell themselves.

It is the case that a monopoly of force seems like a particularly stable arrangement for society. Without a monopoly of force, coercion can easily run rampant, and political manuevering can easily become a standard, critical feature of everyday life.

So people can, and often do, delegate their rights to retribution to the State. The sole source of the State's legitimate authority are the rights delegated by the people.

## Tyrants
Imagine a despot who claims to represent the State. He claims that all citizens have given up their right to private property, delegating it to him, so that he legitimately owns everything in his country.

Such an occurrence may have been commonplace, a few thousand years ago. Warlord and bullies may have been the first to monopolize force, the first to demand submission. Without any delegation of rights or responsibility, a warlord and his minions would win against uncoordinated resistance.

Rights are a fiction too. Like a monopoly of force, they are a stable state of society, which protects governments from overstepping and making individuals into rebels. A free society would need no rebels, because there would be no imposition to rebel against.

## Majority ???
What if, in a city of one million people, there are not just one, but two such tyrants? What about three, or four, or a hundred, or a thousand? What about five hundred thousand? At what point can one person legitimately demand rights from another?

---

Might prevails, as a matter of natural law. Unmediated, this devolves into a martial conflict. Coalitions of individuals can gather together to transform this Lockean (Hobbesean?) state of nature into a civilization, where they delegate ... .

Individuals delegate their rights to the State, or else rights do not exist at all. A State which claims extraordinary rights for themselves is a state which does not recognize rights.


Human Stories

> "Cause" means:
>   1. That from which, as immanent material, a thing comes into being, e.g. the bronze is the cause of the statue and the silver of the saucer, and so are the classes which include these.
>   2. The form or pattern, i.e. the definition of the essence, and the classes which include this (e.g. the ratio 2:1 and number in general are causes of the octave), and the parts included in the definition.
>   3. That from which the change or the resting from change first begins; e.g. the adviser is a cause of the action, and the father a cause of the child, and in general the maker a cause of the thing made and the change-producing of the changing.
>   4. The end, i.e. that for the sake of which a thing is; e.g. health is the cause of walking. For "Why does one walk?" we say; "that one may be healthy"; and in speaking thus we think we have given the cause. The same is true of all the means that intervene before the end, when something else has put the process in motion, as e.g. thinning or purging or drugs or instruments intervene before health is reached; for all these are for the sake of the end, though they differ from one another in that some are instruments and others are actions.
>   -- <InternalLink to='/ref/aristotle/metaphysics' frag='Part V.2'>Aristotle, _Metaphysics_</InternalLink>

## The World
World state -> "material cause" (material world)
Locality-centric transition function -> "efficient cause" (pragmatic world)

Material and pragmatic world are both multiscale.
Self-similarity is unstable (practically non-existence unless enforced, e.g. a model of a hydrocarbon, made of hydrocarbons).

! Causal sparsity allows for separation and composition of the pragmatic world. Comes from symmetry and non action-at-a-distance in physics. No action-at-a-distnce ~== "causal intermediation".

? Hoel for scale ?

## Abstractions
### Patterns
Patterns are compressive (non-predictive) abstractions.
Material patterns likely result from some causal connectedness.
So material patterns (1) simplify / compress information, and (2) suggest causal groupings.

### Goals and Stories

While most actions diffuse in chaotic systems,
  goal-seeking by intelligent agents introduces negative feedback,
  which induces stability.
In the same sense that a digital communication system
  can error correct and transmit information losslessly,
  goal-seeking by intelligent agents can resist entropy.

Goals are also multiscale.
I might open the door because I want to go outside because I want to mow my lawn because I want my house to look good.

Stories are a goal-patterns. Stories arise as patterns of intelligent agents pursuing goals.
Because goals can resist entropy, stories built on goals
  can form long-term predictions which also resist entropy.
However, goals are private to individual agents.
Multiagent stories require the imputation of private state,
  which may never be revealed.
Moreover, multiple goals may generate the same subgoals.
  Observing a subgoal may then have multiple "interpretations",
  or possible motivating arch-goals.

### Goal-Pattern Links
Functionalism...
(incl evolution)


The Elements of Explanation

Translated by W.D. Ross
from http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.html

## Book V

### Part V.2
"Cause" means (1) that from which, as immanent material, a thing comes into being, e.g. the bronze is the cause of the statue and the silver of the saucer, and so are the classes which include these. (2) The form or pattern, i.e. the definition of the essence, and the classes which include this (e.g. the ratio 2:1 and number in general are causes of the octave), and the parts included in the definition. (3) That from which the change or the resting from change first begins; e.g. the adviser is a cause of the action, and the father a cause of the child, and in general the maker a cause of the thing made and the change-producing of the changing. (4) The end, i.e. that for the sake of which a thing is; e.g. health is the cause of walking. For "Why does one walk?" we say; "that one may be healthy"; and in speaking thus we think we have given the cause. The same is true of all the means that intervene before the end, when something else has put the process in motion, as e.g. thinning or purging or drugs or instruments intervene before health is reached; for all these are for the sake of the end, though they differ from one another in that some are instruments and others are actions.  
  
These, then, are practically all the senses in which causes are spoken of, and as they are spoken of in several senses it follows both that there are several causes of the same thing, and in no accidental sense (e.g. both the art of sculpture and the bronze are causes of the statue not in respect of anything else but qua statue; not, however, in the same way, but the one as matter and the other as source of the movement), and that things can be causes of one another (e.g. exercise of good condition, and the latter of exercise; not, however, in the same way, but the one as end and the other as source of movement).-Again, the same thing is the cause of contraries; for that which when present causes a particular thing, we sometimes charge, when absent, with the contrary, e.g. we impute the shipwreck to the absence of the steersman, whose presence was the cause of safety; and both-the presence and the privation-are causes as sources of movement.  
  
All the causes now mentioned fall under four senses which are the most obvious. For the letters are the cause of syllables, and the material is the cause of manufactured things, and fire and earth and all such things are the causes of bodies, and the parts are causes of the whole, and the hypotheses are causes of the conclusion, in the sense that they are that out of which these respectively are made; but of these some are cause as the substratum (e.g. the parts), others as the essence (the whole, the synthesis, and the form). The semen, the physician, the adviser, and in general the agent, are all sources of change or of rest. The remainder are causes as the end and the good of the other things; for that for the sake of which other things are tends to be the best and the end of the other things; let us take it as making no difference whether we call it good or apparent good.  
  
These, then, are the causes, and this is the number of their kinds, but the varieties of causes are many in number, though when summarized these also are comparatively few. Causes are spoken of in many senses, and even of those which are of the same kind some are causes in a prior and others in a posterior sense, e.g. both 'the physician' and 'the professional man' are causes of health, and both 'the ratio 2:1' and 'number' are causes of the octave, and the classes that include any particular cause are always causes of the particular effect. Again, there are accidental causes and the classes which include these; e.g. while in one sense 'the sculptor' causes the statue, in another sense 'Polyclitus' causes it, because the sculptor happens to be Polyclitus; and the classes that include the accidental cause are also causes, e.g. 'man'-or in general 'animal'-is the cause of the statue, because Polyclitus is a man, and man is an animal. Of accidental causes also some are more remote or nearer than others, as, for instance, if 'the white' and 'the musical' were called causes of the statue, and not only 'Polyclitus' or 'man'. But besides all these varieties of causes, whether proper or accidental, some are called causes as being able to act, others as acting; e.g. the cause of the house's being built is a builder, or a builder who is building.-The same variety of language will be found with regard to the effects of causes; e.g. a thing may be called the cause of this statue or of a statue or in general of an image, and of this bronze or of bronze or of matter in general; and similarly in the case of accidental effects. Again, both accidental and proper causes may be spoken of in combination; e.g. we may say not 'Polyclitus' nor 'the sculptor' but 'Polyclitus the sculptor'. Yet all these are but six in number, while each is spoken of in two ways; for (A) they are causes either as the individual, or as the genus, or as the accidental, or as the genus that includes the accidental, and these either as combined, or as taken simply; and (B) all may be taken as acting or as having a capacity. But they differ inasmuch as the acting causes, i.e. the individuals, exist, or do not exist, simultaneously with the things of which they are causes, e.g. this particular man who is healing, with this particular man who is recovering health, and this particular builder with this particular thing that is being built; but the potential causes are not always in this case; for the house does not perish at the same time as the builder.


Metaphysics

## Defensive Aggression


## Predatory Aggression


## Intermale Aggression


The Three Kinds of Aggression

The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions

Affective Neuroscience

> *Everyone knows what an emotion is, until asked to give a definition. Then, it seems, no one knows.*
> 
> *― Fehr & Russell, 1984*

The human brain is inconceivably complex.
  Billions of connected neurons form the substrate
  for diffuse interactions which somehow encompass
  all of conscious and nonconscious experience.
  Discovering any consistent patterns from that raw chaos
  is a tremendous undertaking, and moving beyond patterns
  and into a causal understanding is even more difficult.[^panksepp-parsimony] [^panksepp-indirect]

Navigating this chaos cogently is difficult,
  but not impossible.
  From past research, there is a clear path
  to validating a functional theory of "basic emotions".

[^panksepp-parsimony]: <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Lack of Parsimony In Neurology'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>
[^panksepp-indirect]: <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Indirect Measurement of Emotions'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>


## Behavioral Clustering
> You are told to repeatedly pick numbers between 1 and 10.
> You pick _1, 5, 3, 5, 5, 1, 3, ..._ and your picks go on,
> only every picking 1, 3, or 5.
> Despite having 10 options, one can infer
> that you effectively pick from a less complex space.

The first step in emotional epistemology
  is **clustering emotional outputs**.
From the vast number of possible facial configurations,
    some are far more common than others.
  You can generally look at a human's face
    and understand them to be angry, or bored, or sad,
    or any of a limited set of emotions,
    or else apparently blank and emotionless.
  Only on rare occassions, someone will make a "funny face",
    incongruent with your expectations.
  Empathy and emotional communication
    is greatly facilitated by this intelligibility.
  This facial intelligibility is not merely rooted
    in cultural understanding―
    emotional expressions transcend culture,
    and even transcend our human species.[^emotions-universal] [^emotions-interspecies]

The clustering of emotional expression
  presents us with evidence that there are,
  at the very least,
  meaningful clusters of emotional experience
  which induce sparse responses.

[^emotions-universal]: Ekmen, Sorensen, Friesen 1969; Izard 1971; 
[^emotions-interspecies]: Parr, Waler, Fugage 2010

{/* addl:
Heider-Simmel animations, imputing emotions from behavior?
Cross-species behavioral emotional inference?
"efferent clustering"
*/}

## Trigger Equivalence Classes
After clustering emotional outputs,
  the next step is to determine the situational inputs
  which generate those emotional outputs.
  We can call the set of situations which might induce an emotion
    the "trigger" for that emotion.
  A good model of an emotional trigger
    accurately predicts whether an emotion
    will be expressed in a given situation.

{/* addl:
ethology school...
"afferent equivalence classes"
*/}

## Neurological Intermediaries
Once there is a clear mapping from situational inputs
  to emotional expression outputs,
  neuroscientists can experiment to determine
  the causal path between the inputs and outputs.
  The experiments general take one of two forms ―
    suppression or stimulation.
    In suppressive experiments, scientists inhibit, suppress, disrupt, or lesion
    subsystems in the brain. If disruption of a subsystem
    changes an otherwise clear input/output relationship,
    then we know that subsystem is somehow involved
    in that input/output relationship as an intermediary.
    In simulative experiments, scientists do the opposite.
    If that stimulation induces the output relationship
    when the inputs are not present,
    then that is also evidence that subsystem
    is involved as an intermediary.[^non-uniqueness]

Establishing neurological intermediaries
  bring emotional theories into the realm of technology.
  Ultimately, the neurological theory of basic emotions
  has established technology for inducing or suppressing
  emotional behavior, while other theories
  have yielded no such technologies.
  
[^non-uniqueness]: Note that neither of these approaches establish uniqueness. Often, many subsystems are involved in any brain function. Just because one region is involved in some function does not mean it is "the region" for that function.

## Folk Psychology Consilience
Despite the methodological difficulties,
  billions of people use emotional inference
  in their lives every day.
  While it is important to never slack on rigor,
  ultimately the purpose of theories
  is to be useful to people.
  Some models of emotions
  ignore usefulness to laymen.
  The most useful model of emotions
  is one which ties in naturally
  to existing models.
  If a rigorous methodological approach
  converges on a model similar
  to that which has culturally evolved
  over thousands of years,
  so much the better.


{/* addl:
 - The Insufficiency of Behaviorism ??? statelessness / statefulness
 - Ekman arguments, Panksepp arguments
*/}

<InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Open and Closed Neurological Systems'>affective neuroscience</InternalLink>


Epistemology of Emotion

! specify appetitive desire, anticipation 

! Dopamine as Desire (/Anticipation?), not reward

False target (misfire)
 - unwanted desire / empty target of desire
 - "fool's gold"
 - esp spillover (eg sex sells) since DA is undirected
   - incl eat food when thirsty

Dopamine chains ...
 - goal displacement:
    - intermediate goals without final goals
    - esp easy / clear affordances feel more valent (eg video games): "A clear path to a less valuable end may feel more desirable than an unclear path to much better ends."


?? utilization behavior ??

Evolving beyond: predatory aggression

---

(desire / anticipation essentials)


## Misperceived Potential Reward
 - goal displacement

## Mistaken Imitation (?)

## Unhealthy


When is Desire Wrong?

Emotions are behavioral instincts, triggered in a specific context,
  which impell a specific behavior.
Generally, successfully executing the impelled behavior
  alleviates the contextual trigger,
  which then brings about "catharsis" (the resolution of the emotion).[^alleviation]
Given this structure of emotions,
   we can say an emotion has an implicit "purpose",
   which is to alleviate the triggering condition,
   and an implicit "strategy",
   which is to engage in the impelled behavior
   until the trigger is alleviated.

There is strong <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-epistemology'>neuroscientific evidence</InternalLink>
  for this structure of emotions, but even without any of that evidence,
  defining emotions as motivational states with triggers and impelled behaviors
  is sufficient to embark on an evolutionary analysis
  of the purpose of emotions.[^ledoux-fn]
From the ubiquitous presence of emotions throughout the animal kingdom,
  we can infer that emotions have been tremendously useful for the propagation of species.

[^alleviation]: If the impelled behavior does not alleviate the trigger, then the emotion can trap the feeler in a behavioral loop. This kind of dysfunction is typical of OCD. See <InternalLink to='/ref/gray-mcnaughton-anxiety'>_The Neuroscience of Anxiety_ by Gray and McNaughton</InternalLink> for more information on OCD.
[^ledoux-fn]: <InternalLink to='/ref/ledoux-emotional-brain' frag='Functionalism'>LeDoux, _The Emotional Brain_</InternalLink>

## Emotions for Homeostasis
One frame for linking emotions to purpose
  focuses on the curious, multifaceted nature of survival.
In the modern world, most of our tasks can be framed as a single-dimensional optimization problem.
At work, we want to maximize the money we can take home as salary or bonus.
To do that, we are told perhaps to maximize sales, or perhaps to maximize the production of some goods.
In these situations, there is a clear, singular metric which we can use to measure "goodness".

Biological life, fundamentally, does not have a single metric.
Life is a multidimensional satisficing problem.

Biological living beings require a delicate
  homeostasis, a dynamic equilibrium
  where all of our processes can function in harmony.
To maintaining this homeostasis, we must satisfy
  a host of biological needs.
We must have enough water to drink,
  enough air to breath,
  enough food to eat,
  so that we do not die from lacking any of these.
We must find a way to regulate our body temperature,
  which for humans generally means clothes and shelter.
We must find a way to avoid threats to our bodily integrity,
  which may require shelter, and may also mean staying on good terms
  with fellow humans.
Failing on any of these will lead to death,
  even if all the other constraints are satisfied.
Excess resources for any of these is also generally not useful --
  if we have twice as much water as we need,
  that is not any better than having just enough.

To stay alive, we must balance the goals
  of satisfying all of these needs.
If a deer is thirsty, and also being pursued by wolves,
  escaping from the wolves should likely take priority.
Our emotions provide us with prioritized strategies
  for maintaining our body's homeostasis,
  to avoid deadly circumstances long enough
  for us to propagate our genes to the next generation.

Note that, in the homeostasis model,
  emotions are inherently _pre-emptive_ --
  they must trigger _before_ the homeostatic constraint has been failed,
  because failing a constraint causes death,
  and the impelled corrective behavior would be too late.
Thus, emotions are inherently involved
  in predicting the future (what situations might kill you)
  and in causal reasoning (what can you do to not die).


## Emotional Triggers as Fundamental Life Tasks
Another similar model which links emotions to purposes
  focuses on common problems organisms face.
Throughout the course of an animal's life,
  from birth up to reproduction,
  there are a host of archetypical problems
  which the animal will encounter.[^ledoux-flt]
For example, an animal may need to forage, or to hunt,
  or to escape another animal hunting it.
Emotions can be analyzed as coupled with
  particular strategies (the impelled behavior)
  for solving the fundamental life task (associated with the trigger).

While triggers (the fundamental life tasks) are generally common
  across mammals, different species may have highly variation
  in behavioral strategies for approaching the life tasks.[^panksepp-diff]
  The psychological evolution of a species, then,
  is intimiately involved with developing their emotional strategiies
  so that their behavioral adaptations harmonize with their physical adaptations
  in their ecological niche.

[^ledoux-flt]: <InternalLink to='/ref/ledoux-emotional-brain' frag='Fundamental Life Tasks'>LeDoux, _The Emotional Brain_</InternalLink>
[^panksepp-diff]: <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Differential Emotional Expression Across Species'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>

## Emotional Homology
Emotional triggers and reactions
  are largely shared across mammalian species.
  From neurological investigation,
  we can confirm that
  this is not a shallow similarity.
  It is _not_ the case that mammals
  independently converged to the same
  emotions in the course of their evolution.
  Rather, the shared emotions use largely
  the same neuromodulators (signaling chemicals)
  and the same brain architecture in emotional processes.
  If you look at a dog and it looks sad,
  that is not a perceptual error caused by anthropomorphizing your perception,
  but rather it is actually participating in the same neurological processes
  as humans.
  That is, shared emotions across species are _homogolous_ (they _are_ the same),
  they are not simply _analagous_.[^panksepp-homo]

The homology of emotion should give us a great deal of comfort
  that when we feel empathy for another being,
  we are in a very deep sense _sharing in that experience_.
  We use the same chemicals and the same brain structures,
  so that we do, in fact, know what they are going through.
  The supposed siloing of emotional experience
  is a myth.

In the course of evolution, oftentimes
  new functions arise from the modification of previous functions
  rather than being evolved from scratch.
  Evolution is frugal in her adaptations,
  and will more often repurpose old tools
  than create new ones.
  This repurposing is called "exaptation".[^panksepp-exaptation]

[^panksepp-homo]: <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Emotional Homology'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>
[^panksepp-exaptation]: <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Exaptation'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>


The Purpose of Emotions

> "Trust your feelings!" ― But feelings are nothing final or original; behind the feelings there stand judgments and evaluations. ... The inspiration born of feeling is the grandchild of a judgment—and often a false judgment! And in any event not a child of your own! To trust one’s feelings means to give more obedience to one’s grandfather and grandmother and their grandparents than to...our reason and our experience.
>  
> ― Nietzsche

Inborn behavioral instincts work wonders in the lives of animals.
  Salmon migrate for breeding, bears hibernate, and birds build nests.
  Critically, all of these behaviors can occur _without any example_ for the animals to emulate.
  These behaviors are not mimicked, or learned by trial and error.
  They are inborn patterns of behavior, <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-teleology'>evolved over millions of years</InternalLink>, which activate in particular contexts, to particular effect.

Our emotions are inborn behavioral instincts, just like these.
  Infants, held down, will get angry[^panksepp-baby-anger].
  Even if blind and deaf, children will laugh[^panksepp-blind-laughter].
  Our emotional triggers and patterns of behavior exist within us before we begin to learn.

The fact that our emotions <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-nature-and-nurture'>arise from our nature</InternalLink> does not make them immutable —
  humans are incredibly adaptable, especially in our ability to cognitively regulate emotional behavior.
  On the contrary, knowing the built-in triggers and behavioral patterns
    can equip us to <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/correcting-emotions'>understand, evaluate, and integrate</InternalLink>
    our emotions and goals into a more holistic harmony.

[^panksepp-baby-anger]: <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Baby Anger'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>
[^panksepp-blind-laughter]: <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Blind and Deaf Laughter'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>

For our purposes here, there are two critical components of each emotion:
  the "trigger" and the "behavioral pattern"[^terms-aka].
  **Emotional triggers are a kind of perception**, and can be correct or incorrect just like any other perception.
  **Emotional behavioral patterns are actions**, and can be healthy or unhealthy just like any action can help or hinder an organisms' goals.
  These two equivalences are the keys to translating emotions into a critical framework.
  Taken together, triggers and actions can be interpreted
  as strategies for solving "<InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-teleology'>fundamental life tasks</InternalLink>".
[^terms-aka]: Some literature refers to "triggers" as "appraisals", and "behavioral patterns" as "primed action patterns", "action plans", or "expressions".

## Emotional Perceptions can be Incorrect
> You notice the Halloween decorations draped on every tree
>   as you approach the front door.
>   Smoke wafts from the bottom of the door, probably fake,
>   but it scares you a little anyway.
>   You take a step forward and deliver your knock.
>   As your kuckles rap the door, a spider drops down onto you —
>   you shriek and jump in your startle, and swat it off your shoulder.
>   As your hand makes contact, the plastic spider moves readily,
>   and you know you've been tricked.

Emotions are behavioral instincts which are each triggered under specific conditions.
  These triggers are based on interpretations of events in our environment.
  An emotion is **incorrect** if it is trigged by an incorrect perception.

Our emotional perceptions naturally involve both an automatic reaction,
  and a cognitive appraisal which may inhibit (or invalidate) the initial reaction.
  The automatic reaction is instinctual, faster, less precise, and overeager,
  and serves to direct our attention towards a potential emotional event.
  The cognitive appraisal is slower, but can be far more precise,
    and tends to inhibit or orient the emotion.
  If the automatic reaction isn't triggered,
    then the cognitive appraisal likely won't happen at all —
    the automatic reaction is what grips cognitive attention.
  Because of this, well-functioning automatic reactions are overeager,
    that is, they trigger on _potential_ emotional events,
    and leave more precise discernment to more cognitive processes.[^ledoux-emotional-cognition] [^ledoux-system-2]
  When cognitive appraisal is disrupted, humans and animals act out on unvalidated emotional responses.[^brain-lesions]

[^ledoux-emotional-cognition]: <InternalLink to='/ref/ledoux-emotional-brain' frag='Emotional Learning and Cognition'>LeDoux, The Emotional Brain</InternalLink> 
[^ledoux-system-2]: <InternalLink to='/ref/ledoux-emotional-brain' frag='System 2'>LeDoux, _The Emotional Brain_</InternalLink>
[^brain-lesions]: When certain areas of the brain relating to cognitive control of emotion are destroyed, animals and humans react violently to "trivial" stimuli (see <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Decerebrate Temperament'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink> and <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Cortical Control'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>). Damaging other cortical areas induces hypersexuality (see <InternalLink to='/ref/panksepp/affective-neuroscience' frag='Temporal Lobectomy'>Panksepp, _Affective Neuroscience_</InternalLink>). Both of these classes of experiment demonstrate the inhibitory effect of cognitive areas on emotional activity.

Cognitive inhibition of emotion is a natural and critical part of human emotion.
  It is not some strange Stoic or Victorian repressive ideal;
  it pervades our nature across cultures and across species.
  Disrupting cognitive inhibition guarantees dysfunction,
  because the natural balance in our minds is for automatic reactions to be overeager,
  and for our thoughts to discriminate from among our emotional triggers.

_Each class of emotions has specific trigger archetypes,
  and thus specific ways in which it can be incorrect:_
  - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/desire-is-wrong'>When is Desire incorrect?</InternalLink>
  - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/anger-is-wrong'>When is Anger incorrect?</InternalLink>
  - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/fear-is-wrong'>When is Fear incorrect?</InternalLink>

{/* addl:
 - "Emotional illusion"
 - Emotional perceptions can occur without any learning.
    Part of our emotional instincts are "natural triggers"[^natural-triggers],
    situations which trigger our emotions even if we've never encountered them before.
    (esp natural triggers as spandrels -> dubious triggers)
*/}

## Emotional Reactions can be Unhealthy
Not all opportunities should be pursued. Not all enemies should be attacked. Not all threats should be fled. An emotion may correctly perceive some emotionally salient feature of our environment, yet might suggest an unhelpful or ineffective approach.

Emotions are behavioral instincts — they suggest action plans as we feel them. An emotion is **unhealthy** if it motivates an unhealthy reaction.

In almost any situation, there are several possible correct interpretations.
  Perhaps someone cut you off while you were driving,
    but perhaps they were also avoiding a threat in their own lane.
  Perhaps a job in another city will look great on your resume,
    but perhaps it will also take you away from your friends and family.
  Some of these emotional interpretations
    will set you up for failure.
  Others are empowering and can motivate personal growth.
  But most emotional interpretations fall somewhere in between —
    useful in some situations, but not in others.

It is a profound act of self-creation
  to curate our own emotional interpretations.
  A curated set of interpretations
    can be correct and yet still
    unpleasant to other people,
    or ineffective at achieving goals.
  In choosing an interpretation of "anger",
    we might empower ourselves to lash out at an adversary
    and might show that we are not to be trifled with,
    but that same interpretation might cause us to lose a friend.
  Our interpretations drive our motivations and emotional presence,
    and, more than most choices, define who we are. 

As stated above, an emotion is only "unhealthy" if the emotional reaction
  is worse than whatever reaction would have happened otherwise.
  This definition of "unhealthy" does not provide any insight
    into what is "better" or "worse", it only moves the question
    from the dark of subjective emotional experience into the light of objective actions.
  However, because emotions correspond to solving <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-teleology'>fundamental life tasks</InternalLink>,
    we can assume[^emo-infer-general] that the feeler of an emotion
    is motivated to solve that emotion's fundamental life task.
  For example, if someone is angry,
    we can assume[^emo-infer-general] they want to eliminate the impact of some future threat.
  When that assumption holds, we can evaluate when emotional reactions
    are unsuccessful at achieving their own implicit goals,
    which would make those emotions self-defeating
    and unhealthy to pursue.

[^emo-infer-general]: We can only say "in general" here, because the feeler may have other motivations more important or relevant than this one. The vast majority of the time, this assumption holds, but it is important to acknowledge it as an assumption.

The "goodness" of an emotional reaction is far more subjective
  than the accuracy of an emotional perception.
  Whether an action achieves our goals
    can be very hard to determine,
    especially because the consequences of actions
    are hard to know,
    and because sometimes our goals are hidden
    even from ourselves.
  When our goals are clear to us,
    we can use that as a guide
    to choose the emotional interpretations
    which best support those goals.
  When our goals are unclear,
    we can look to the emotions themselves
    to guess at our own intents
    and avoid clear failure patterns.

_Because each emotion corresponds to specific fundamental life tasks,
  they each have different corresponding unhealthy failure patterns:_
 - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/desire-is-wrong'>When is Desire unhealthy?</InternalLink>
 - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/anger-is-wrong'>When is Anger unhealthy?</InternalLink>
 - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/fear-is-wrong'>When is Fear unhealthy?</InternalLink>

## Emotional Instincts can be Transcended
> ...highly complex \[instincts] have been developed through the preservation of variations of pre-existing instincts—that is, through natural selection.  
> — Darwin

Emotions are behavioral instincts which have been formed by the evolutionary problems of our ancestral environment. But our environment is not the environment of our ancestors.

It is important to understand emotional archetypes,
  to look into our evolutionary past
  and appreciate the wondrous adaptivity of our nature.
  But not all that is natural is good.
  Our evolved instincts do not have to define us.
  We can be better than our natural instinctual reactions.

When we are harmed,
  our anger tells us to harm in retaliation.
  When we see opportunity,
    our desire tells us to take it, even if it hurts others.
  Our care drives us to especially help
    those we've spent the most time with.
  But these emotions are not our destiny.
  Harm can be forgiven.
  Predation can be scorned.
  Care can be extended.

We can aim for a transcended nature,
  and aim to free ourselves from our instinctual shackles
  from an evolutionary past long passed.

_Transcending emotions is more speculative than
  emotional perceptual accuracy or
  emotional reaction health.
  Many religious and social movements throughout the ages
    have propoposed specific modes of transcendence
    for different emotions:_
 - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/desire-is-wrong'>How can we transcend Desire?</InternalLink>
 - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/anger-is-wrong'>How can we transcend Anger?</InternalLink>
 - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/fear-is-wrong'>How can we transcend Fear?</InternalLink>


---

## The Journey
With the above framework,
  we can begin to look critically at each emotion in turn
  and discover misperceptions, self-defeating goals,
    and potential for transcendence.
To read about specific emotions analyzed in this framework,
  please visit the following:
 - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/desire-is-wrong'>When is desire wrong?</InternalLink>
 - <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/anger-is-wrong'>When is anger wrong?</InternalLink>
 - ...

For more information on the reasoning behind the above framework,
  please read these:
	- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-epistemology'>How can we investigate emotions?</InternalLink>
	- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-teleology'>What is the "purpose" of emotions?</InternalLink>
	- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-nature-and-nurture'>How do Nature and Nurture interact with emotions?</InternalLink>

---


When are Emotions Wrong?

The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotinal Life

The Emotional Brain

> ...emotions evolved for their adaptive value in dealing with  
_fundamental life-tasks_.


Argument for Basic Emotions ??

<InternalLink to='/ref/ledoux-emotional-brain' frag='Stress-Fear Spirals'>ledoux emotional brain</InternalLink>
<InternalLink to='/ref/ledoux-emotional-brain' frag='Amygdala Spirals'>ledoux emotional brain</InternalLink>


Threat Spirals

> *Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.*
> 
> *― Baruch Spinoza*

Emotional regulation & virtue... (a la Abolition of Man)


Correcting Emotions

### Male Jewel Beetles
> Male jewel beetles...fly about, searching for females, which are shiny, dimpled, and brown. Recently, some male primates of the Homo sapiens species have been driving through the beetle’s haunts in Western Australia and littering the outback with emptied beer bottles, known as “stubbies.” As it happened, some of the stubbies were shiny, dimpled, and just the right shade of brown to catch the fancy of male beetles. Forsaking real females, the male beetles swooned over stubbies with their genitalia everted, and doggedly tried to mate despite glassy rebuffs.


The Case Against Reality

## Seeking Tools

## Blaming Threats

## Caring Holistically


Cause and Affect

Mob Anger

Hate is essentialized anger - anger at who they are, not what they do

Resentment is suppressed anger


Resentment and Hate

Building blocks of natural instinct
Example: birdsong


Emotional Nature and Nurture

## Chapter 1
### Summary
> In summary, we hold that the the septo-hippocampal system acts to detect conflict between concurrently available goals; that it resolves this conflict by increasing the weight given to affectively negative information by goal-processing areas; and that this increase in the weight of affectively negative information produces increases in anxiety in some tasks while reducing the effects of interference on memory in others.

#### Summary 2
> We shall argue that the role of the septo-hippocampal system in the control of memory is to resolve conflicts between similarly, and highly, attractive concurrent goals and, hence, in many cases to reduce the effects of interference. Critically for the relationship of memory control to anxiety, we postulate that the septo-hippocampal system achieves this resolution by increasing the valence of affectively negative associations of those goals.

### Defensive Distance and Defensive Direction
> The crucial point...is that the forms of behaviour that are appropriate when, for example, a rat must leave an area where there is a cat are quite different from those that are appropriate when a rat must enter an area where a cat has been or might be. ... Also important is Blanchard’s concept of defensive distance. Different forms of behaviour are appropriate at different distances from the cat (e.g. fight is only appropriate when the cat is close), but this ‘intensity’ variable is independent of the cat/cat odour distinction. The Blanchards included the cat-related behaviours in a ‘fear defence battery’ and the cat-odour-related behaviours in an ‘anxiety defence battery’. Having already distinguished ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety’ on purely theoretical grounds, they then showed that the anxiety but not the fear behaviours are affected by anxiolytic drugs. Consistent with this analysis, simple phobia in people is also insensitive to anxiolytics (Sartory et al. 1990).  
> The Blanchards themselves base this categorical distinction between fear and anxiety on whether the predator is actually or only potentially present. However, learning-theory analysis (Chapter 3) suggests, rather, that the critical issue is whether the behaviour functions to remove the animal _from_, or to facilitate entry _into_, a dangerous situation—i.e. whether active or passive avoidance is involved: in the former case, fear is involved, in the latter, anxiety. This categorical distinction of ‘defensive direction’ is separate from the smoothly graded dimension of ‘defensive distance’ mentioned above.  
> It should be noted, however, that defensive distance, as defined by the Blanchards, is a cognitive construct. It does depend on physical (or temporal) distance from a danger, but also on the perceived amount of threat: the greater the perceived threat, the greater is the physical distance from it that combines with perceived threat to produce a particular value of defensive distance.

### Anxiolytics Weaken Anticipatory Frustration
> Second, a key feature of human anxiety lies in apprehension of the possibility of, not
pain, but failure or loss of reward. There are a number of well-controlled experimental
paradigms in which such ‘anticipatory frustration’ (Amsel 1962, 1992) can be measured in animals; and there is much experimental evidence that anxiolytics weaken this state
(Gray 1977).

### Neuromodulator Mechanism
> Putting together these new observations with the earlier ones, our theory now holds that anxiolytic drugs directly reduce the release of noradrenaline and serotonin into the septo-hippocampal system and directly alter the encoding of theta frequency via areas such as the supramammillary nucleus. These direct effects on modulatory systems then degrade (but do not totally eliminate) information processing in the septo-hippocampal system. In turn, the changes in septo-hippocampal function then account for the bulk of the behavioural effects of all clinically effective, centrally acting, anxiolytic drugs. 

### Hippocampus as Context Mapping
> In essence, the function these workers attributed to the hippocampus is that of forming, in subhuman animals, spatial maps. At the human level, it was proposed that this spatial mapping faculty becomes a more general faculty of cognitive mapping, applicable to sensory and conceptual domains of all kinds.  
> ... Consistent with these findings from lesion experiments, we have shown recently that virtually all of several hundred cells recorded from the hippocampus proper and entorhinal cortex had task-related correlates in a non-spatial timing task (Young and McNaughton 1997). Most of these ‘timing fields’ were unique and virtually none was consistent with the coding of a ‘place field’ by the cell in question.  
> ...we review extensive data which suggest that ‘place fields’ do not code unambiguously for places, change with non-spatial changes in the environment, and are not topographically mapped into the hippocampus. All of these data suggest that the ‘placeness’ of fields is not the result of uniquely spatial encoding. They also demonstrate that no structure receiving output from the hippocampus could, from that output alone, determine unambiguously and at all times where the animal is in space.  
> ...The spatial environment and spatial location constitute the most important forms of context that mammals encounter.

### Behavioral Interrupt
> More specifically...the septo-hippocampal system is seen as responding to stimuli associated with punishment and non-reward (i.e. to threat) by interrupting ongoing behaviour so as to allow information gathering (the ‘attention’ output of the behavioural inhibition system).

### Hippocampal Goal Inputs
> Here we resolve these problems through a linked set of ideas: that all inputs to the hippocampus represent goals (conflating the stimuli, memories, responses, motor programs, and plans of the first edition); that the hippocampus detects when there is conflict between concurrently active goals (conflating the just checking, comparator, prediction, and mismatch functions of the first edition); and that, when conflict is detected, the hippocampus produces output which increases the valence of affectively negative stimuli and associations...  
> ‘Goal’ as an explanatory concept in psychology has always been contentious (George and Johnson 1985). However, we use it simply in the sense described by Hinde (1982, p. 307; see also Towe and Luschei 1981):
> > Some authors have labeled behaviours as ‘directive’ or ‘goal directed’ on the sole criterion that variable means are used to achieve a consummatory situation . . . [but if] each type of behaviour is stereotyped, its cessation could be due merely to inhibitory effects consequent upon performances, rather than to error signals. . . . [In contrast] if rats are subjected to spinal or cerebellar operations so as to interfere with their motor coordination, they may nevertheless use quite novel movements to make errorless runs through a maze. The essential point here is that the new movements are not stereotyped, but selected from variable patterns in such a manner as to bring the animal nearer the goal. Furthermore, the new patterns are ‘directly and efficiently substituted without any random activity’.
> For our current purposes, the most important feature of the term ‘goal’ is that it can be distinguished from both ‘stimulus’ and ‘response’ in their pure sense—and represents a necessary conflation of the two. The goal of the rat running down the runway has both a stimulus (in this case, place) component and a response (the animal’s tendency to run towards it) or motivational component. Take either of these aspects away and it would cease to be a goal. As discussed in detail in Chapter 7, we see the firing of hippocampal cells as reflecting information about goals. Goals often have fixed locations in space, hence the place fields often found with hippocampal cells. But they may not, hence the non-spatial fields seen in the majority of cells in non-spatial tasks. Furthermore, they depend on the animal’s (as opposed to the experimenter’s) intent, hence the changes in the location of place fields when reinforcement contingencies change, and the fact that hippocampal cell firing does not always reflect the contingencies which experimenters think that they have embodied in the paradigm.

### Hippocampal Goal Comparison
> ...the hippocampus itself need only know that there are a number of goals, not precisely what they are...  
> When it receives information about only one prepotent goal, the hippocampal formation is, effectively, in ‘just checking mode’. When, in addition, it receives information about a second conflicting goal, it detects the multiplicity and effectively enters ‘control mode’. Note that no real change in the nature of processing occurs between these two modes. At all times information enters the comparator and is integrated, but when the summation of inputs passes some threshold it also produces output.
> The output from the hippocampal formation involves the return of information to those areas whose activity has given rise to conflict. At present we view the hippocampal output as providing a simple, quite general, affectively negative biasing function. The effect is to increase the valence of affectively negative stimuli and associations of stimuli (memories), and hence to shift approach–avoidance conflict in the avoidance direction both on the current and future occasions. The net result of this process is determined, however, not by the hippocampal formation but by its target structures.
> ...
> The septo-hippocampal system produces such an increase in negative weighting at every cycle of a series of computations which progressively increase bias (and hence suppress goals) until one or other goal is sufficiently predominant to take control of the motor mechanisms. This increase in negative bias has two consequences. It affects current motor output directly, and it affects future motor output indirectly through its biasing of associations (including those that are just being formed). Additionally, while its recursive operations continue to fail to resolve the conflict, the septo-hippocampal system produces additional output which engages exploratory mechanisms designed to resolve the conflict through the obtaining of new information about the environment (thus preventing the animal from getting locked into an impasse). We also presume that during consolidation, and particularly during sleep (Appendix 7), the hippocampus can direct a similar ‘internal exploration’, which in human beings may best be thought of as rumination.
> ...
> A final point to note is that goal conflict may result from the activation of quite different response systems (e.g. approach, avoidance) or from the activation of an essentially single response system (e.g. lever pressing) equally by two different stimulus sources (left lever, right lever).

### Hippocampal Forgetting
> Given the power of recursive networks, what use might the hippocampal system make of them? Our general answer to this question is that the hippocampal system acts so as to increase the valence of adverse outcomes associated with items (locations in space, associative bonds in memory, or motor programs). This ‘association’ can be innate or acquired. In relation to memory, this general approach makes our position the antithesis of most others (including that of Eichenbaum et al. 1994, with whose views we other- wise have much in common) by supposing that the hippocampal formation acts, not to strengthen associations that are retained, but to weaken those that are discarded. Consistent with this position, there is evidence that the errors made in memory tests by patients with hippocampal damage over-represent items that would have been correct under slightly different circumstances. Such a pattern of errors cannot come from enhanced forgetting, as would be predicted if the role of the hippocampus were simply to facilitate the formation of (correct) memories. It is predicted, however, if this role is to eliminate competing (incorrect) memories. Similarly, our theory predicts that hippocampal deficits will be seen only in those tasks in which interference is actually overcome by control subjects, not in those in which interference is present but not overcome by controls.

### Panic as Undirected Escape
> The periaqueductal grey is activated by an immediate predator, by an immediate dominant conspecific, by pain, and by high levels of carbon dioxide. As noted earlier, Graeff (1994) has suggested that activation of the periaqueductal grey is the basis of panic attacks. The flight (escape) elicited by stimulation of this region is undirected, so much so that the animal is likely to crash into obstacles rather than leap over them.  
> The dorsal periaqueductal grey is connected to the medial hypothalamus, where more sophisticated escape mechanisms appear to be located. This in turn is connected to the amygdala, which coordinates simple avoidance. In LeDoux’s formulation, the amygdala is then viewed as being connected to the hippocampus, which mediates complex, particularly inhibitory, avoidance. However, in Chapter 6 and Appendix 3 we find extensive reasons to see the anterior cingulate as representing several additional levels of the active defence system, and hence as lying directly above the amygdala in the ‘danger avoidance’ hierarchy. By contrast, the hippocampus proper and, above it, the posterior cingulate appear to be parts of a parallel ‘danger approach’ hierarchy.

### Comparison to LeDoux
> Our analysis of the defensive system has, so far, closely followed those of LeDoux and
Graeff (see Chapter 6 and Appendix 2). However, we differ from them in thinking
that the hippocampus should not be viewed as, say, a source of contextual stimuli which
can come to control the amygdala (in which case there should be strong hippocampal–
amygdala connections rather than, as is predominantly the case, the other way round).
Rather, we think of the hippocampus as a device which can resolve conflicts (as outlined
above), not only between separate programs concurrently activated within the amygdala,
but also between programs in the amygdala and those outside the defence system. It is
important in this context, as with the case of mirror drawing, to emphasize that the
septo-hippocampal system is involved in the resolution of goal rather than motor conflict.

### Mechanism for Hippocampal-Initiated Investigation
> This can be achieved by way of the projection, described by Lavin and Grace (1994), from the nucleus accumbens, via the ventral pallidum and nucleus reticularis thalami, to virtually the entire thalamocortical sensory processing system. Analysis of this projection (Gray et al. 1997) suggests that activation of this subiculo-accumbens–nucleus reticularis pathway should provide an overall boost, by disinhibition, to sensory processing. Thus, two of the key outputs of the behavioural inhibition system (Fig. 1.1), interruption of ongoing motor programs and increased attention to the perceptual world, are perhaps achieved simultaneously by activating the subiculo-accumbens projection.

## References to Investigate:
 - defensive distance: Blanchard and Blanchard: 1990a, Blanchard et al. 1993
 - place fields: O'Keefe & Dostrovsky 1961, Nadel 1991, O'Keefe Nadel 1978


An Enquiry into the Functions of the Septo-Hippocampal System

The Neuropsychology of Anxiety

Emotion is the foundation of motivation.

Liturgy provides an ideal pattern to mimick. One way to read a liturgy is to rediscover the original emotional intent (to reinvent it for yourself, a la Piaget). The other way to read a liturgy is as a dry script, devoid of emotion.

The latter is dead -- branches without roots. When connected to the original motivation, the ideal pattern can adapt to the situation. Without the connection, the mimicked behavior cannot bend, it can only break.

Any pattern of behavior devoid of emotion is dead. Its lingering expressions are mere echoes of motivations past. Its extinction becomes not a question of if, but when the actors will cease their inauthentic performance.


Liturgy

by Norber Weiner, 1948, 2021 (quotes from the 2nd edition)

## Introduction
> ...the main quantities affecting society are not only statistical, but the runs of statistics on which they are based are excessively short. There is no great use in lumping under one heade the economics of steel industry before and after the introduction of the Bessemer process, nor in comparing the statistcs of rubber production before and after the burgeoning of the automobile industry and the cultivation of _Hevea_ in Malaya. Neither is there any important point in running statistics of the incidence of venereal disease in a single table which covers both the period before and that after the introduction of salvarsan, unless for the specific purpose of studying the effectiveness of this drug. For a good statistic of society, we need long runs _under essentially constant conditions_, just as for a good resolution of light we need a lens with a large aperture. The effective aperture of a lens is not appreciably increased by augmenting its nominal aperture, _unless the lens is made of a material so homoeneous that the delay of light in different parts of the lens conforms to the proper designed amount by less than a small part of a wavelength. Similarly, the advantage of long runs of statistics under widely varying conditions is specious and spurious._

> We have contributed to the initiation of a new science which, as I have said, embraces technical developments with great possibilities for good and for evil. We can only hand it over into the world that exists about us, and this is the world of Belsen and Hiroshima. We do not even have the choice of suppressing these new technical developments. They belong to the age, and the most any of us can do by suppression is to put the development of the subject into the hands of the most irresponsible and most venal of our engineers. The best we can do is to see that a large public understands the trend and the bearing of the present work, and to confine our personal efforts to those fields, such as physiology and psychology, most remote from war and exploitation. As we have seen, there are those who hope that the good of a better understanding of man and society which is offered by this new field of work may anticipate and outweight the incidental contribution we are making to the concentration of power (which is always concentrated, by its very conditions of existence, in te hands of the most unscrupulous).

## Chapter 1


Cybernetics

The goal of this knowledge graph is to construct the following syntheses:
 - selected ideas from affective neuroscience, pragmatism, and economics (especially game theory) into a generalized, auditable theory of motivation
    - the above motivation synthesis and evolutionary anthropology into an emotion-primary theory of superorganisms
 - pragmatism, statistics, and Peripatetic philosophy into a theory of epistemology


Goal

by Charles Darwin, 1872


## Natural Selection
> ...highly complex \[instincts] have been developed through the preservation of variations of pre-existing instincts—that is, through natural selection.

## Action Patterns
 > ...Certain complex actions are of direct or indirect service under certain states of the mind, in order to relieve or gratify certain sensations, desires, etc.; and whenever  the same state of mind is induced, however feebly, there is a tendency through the force of habit and association for the same movements to be performed, though they may not then be of the least use.


The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals

This collection of notes is an attempt at synthesizing several schools of thought:
 - Peripatetic Epistemology
 - Ecological Psychology
 - Epistemological Pragmatism
 - Statistics
 - Affective Neuroscience (namely Basic Emotional Theory)
 - Virtue Ethics
 - some Anthropology, especially Girard and theories of superorganisms

Other schools and disciplines may be included as well. The primary goal of these notes is a synthesis, not an in-depth discussion of the current state of the literature in each of these disciplines. As such, there will be less of a focus on "teaching the controversy" (for example, there is little to no time given to alternatives to Basic Emotional Theory).

The fact that this synthesis is possible points to a consilience which I believe validates these schools and elevates them over their competitors. Even on an individual discipline basis, I'm not aware to any competing schools which have a substantial chance of eventually turning out to be correct.

Some other schools may be exposited with only the goal of refutation.


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