What would life be like if we didn't have feelings?

"death"
it expresses "death"

white pen on white paper?

Could be relief or overwhelming joy.

>he'd spend hours agonizing of what color pen to use.
Isn't agony a feeling?

It would be incredibly boring and worthless

Exactly the same except I wouldn't get annoyed at things.

Resigned disappointment / exasperation, like the point when someone (usually your gf) realizes you're hopelessly retarded and gives up on trying to reason with you.
>Could be relief or overwhelming joy.
lol what the fuck?

We probably wouldn't have advanced very much. One of our main traits as humans is our social ability, to share information and warnings, to cooperate etc.

Image a world of nothing but psychopaths, and perhaps that is what it would be like.

Feelings give weight and meaning to our thoughts. This is a condition, I think I read about a case where there was a guy who got brain damaged and lost the ability to have emotions for the most part. The effect of not having feelings was that he couldn't make proper decisions.

He lost his job etc. because organizing his file folders suddenly became just as important priority-wise to his brain as 'do what the boss just asked'.

It didn't seem to affect his intelligence but it affected his ability to live and function, so it's probably bad for survival.

like Michael Fassbender in Alien movies

This guy here. We are talking about the same case, I'm pretty sure.

he lost more than emotion then
if he would've lost emotion only basically become logical only, he would've just picked a blue or black pen, whichever was nearest

>What happened was he became indecisive.
>organizing his file folders suddenly became just as important priority-wise to his brain as 'do what the boss just asked'.
So basically pic related, or the state of being you enter when you're on DXM or Ketamine (reptilian detachment).

No, get ready to completely reevaluate your view on this topic. You should look into brain damage / stroke case studies.
Contrary to what you're expecting, it's when damage is localized in the right hemisphere that delusional behavior happens.
eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/nlmc-daw011309.php
>NYU Langone Medical Center researcher Orrin Devinsky, MD, performed an in-depth analysis of patients with certain delusions and brain disorders revealing a consistent pattern of injury to the frontal lobe and right hemisphere of the human brain. The cognitive deficits caused by these injuries to the right hemisphere, leads to the over compensation by the left hemisphere of the brain for the injury, resulting in delusions.
And of course check out the Gazzaniga split brain experiments:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_brain_interpreter
Basically the left hemisphere is the source of reasoning / rationalization behavior, and when the right hemisphere is damaged or otherwise removed from the equation, the affected patient starts coming up with ridiculous delusional explanations for everything e.g. it's common with a stroke for one of your arms to become paralyzed, and stroke victims with damage to the right hemisphere will vehemently deny their arm is paralyzed even though it obviously is, giving reasons like "that's not my arm, it belongs to the patient in the other bed" when pressed on why they believe this.
Same thing with how you believe in completely ridiculous shit each night when you dream without questioning it. The reasoning part of our brain is actually the most susceptible to faulty decision making because it just assumes the conclusion and then comes up with a rationalization story after the fact, meaning it can make any proposition seem true no matter how absurd.

Diagnosed schizoid here, ama.

yes, you are only proving me right
he wasnt emotionless, he had serious brain damage
not the same thing
a healthy emotionless person would just keep making the most logical decisions to his knowledge

Do you experience anxiety / distress over a lack of emotions?
Someone on Veeky Forums a while back with that psychiatric diagnosis wrote something to that extent and it didn't make sense to me since I thought anxiety / distress were emotions themselves.

No, anxiety and distress are abstract to me. I don't think I've ever experienced any of these, at least I can't remember it.

That guys isn't me. (the one you originally responded to) but having said that, I think is right at least in essence of what he's saying.

Feelings do seem to give weight to our decisions, and prioritize them in terms of survival.

But I don't doubt some other form of brain damage could be a possible explanation for whatever happened in that guy's case.

>a healthy emotionless person
Oxymoron.

>a healthy emotionless person
^Why do you think this is a possible thing?
>the most logical decisions
Logical thinking is an after the fact rationalization, not an impetus for making decisions in the first place. That's the point. The emotional activity is what actually makes people decide things and then logic / reason is used to justify their behavior to both others and themselves after the fact.
Also dismissing any sort of injury or disease involved evidence as not applicable to "healthy" people is stupid, the vast majority of our knowledge on how healthy brain function works comes from cases of injury or disease. You learn a lot when you study what happens when different processes are disrupted, warped, and/or eliminated.

Unless you have Urbach-Wiethe disease and it's calcified your amygdala, this is probably not the case.

It is more likely that you would not be able to recognize your feelings than that you didn't have them.

And even people who have the rare condition that I said, not only the disease, but that the disease affected the brain in the right way, can still feel distress and anxiety if they are put under the right conditions (like breathing in too much Co2).

But if you really do have that kind of condition where you don't feel anxiety or stress, for whatever reason, you might want to write someone about it. It could be very valuable information for the medical community.

>Why do you think this is a possible thing?
an impotent man who cant make babies can still be a fully healthy, ie no brain damage unlike in that other case

he is a fully functional healthy human might even live 100 years old, the only thing he isnt is a fully functional male

I don't have that disease, but like I said, I don't remember ever experiencing anxiety. Maybe there is some problem with my amygdala, hence the SPD. To describe it further, had I won $100 billion lottery I wouldn't care. Someone could point a gun to my head and threaten to kill me, I wouldn't care either.

You know the satisfaction you get when you solve a pre cal problem? That’s a feeling. Now get over yourself you wannabe misunderstood autist fucktard.

amazing

>might even live 100 years old
You can live to 100 years old with brain damage, that's not an argument.
>an impotent man who cant make babies can still be a fully healthy, ie no brain damage
You're conflating "no brain damage" with "no damage." You just took an example where someone was damaged in a different part of their body.

What motivates you to make posts on Veeky Forums?

That sounds like Urbach-Weithe disease, have you ever had a brain scan for damage?

If you have SPD plus not feeling fear, it could be worth your time to get a proper brain scan. You're SPD might actually be a misdiagnosis, in which case you might find a better treatment if they find a different cause in your scan.

If they do find something, get multiple opinions and take the best course of action you can, of course. Pray you do well :)

They said no anxiety rather than no feelings at all.

No. Did you not even read the post that was in response to? Here:
>To describe it further, had I won $100 billion lottery I wouldn't care.
Or do you consider winning $100 billion a stressful event that would trigger anxiety in a normal person?

I don’t get satisfaction, I just get rage, because there is another problem afterwards.

Nothing. After so many years it's just become a part of my routine. I have no motivation for anything, I dropped out of high school because I was too lazy to get out of bed.
Well, reading about this disease there are many obvious symptoms including dermatological, none of which I have.
>Or do you consider winning $100 billion a stressful event that would trigger anxiety in a normal person?
That's not what I was trying to say, I was trying to give a picture of how it is like to have this disorder.

everyone would have less of an idea of what was good and what was bad

when they were robbed they would maybe have no reaction. when they were raped they would maybe have no reaction.

if they had a child and it became annoying they'd consider killing it every day

Even though you're deliberately reaching into what they said rather than the original context of the conversation, still fair enough.

Why /did/ they say they wouldn't care about the $100 billion.

>That's not what I was trying to say, I was trying to give a picture of how it is like to have this disorder.
I didn't say that's what *you* were trying to say.
Someone other than you made this claim:
>They said no anxiety rather than no feelings at all.
Which is wrong because you did actually claim not to have feelings at all. That's why I quoted your lottery sentence, to show why they were wrong, since winning the lottery is something a normal person would have good feelings about and you wrote you wouldn't feel anything, which contradicts their claim that you only claimed to not feel anxiety.

Sounds more like you're a kid with depression and or circumstantial problems (like being around people who mistreat you maybe?) who is just mildly lying about not having any feelings on Veeky Forums.

Nail on the head?

I'm the 'they said' guy. I'm not the person who made those claims. I repsonded to you here: .

Your question was fair.

>Even though you're deliberately reaching into what they said rather than the original context of the conversation
What?
It's not some subtle detail I'm nitpicking here. He never claimed to only not have anxiety, he was talking about no emotions in general from the very beginning. I think you got confused over this exchange here:
>Do you experience anxiety / distress over a lack of emotions?
>Someone on Veeky Forums a while back with that psychiatric diagnosis wrote something to that extent and it didn't make sense to me since I thought anxiety / distress were emotions themselves.
>No, anxiety and distress are abstract to me. I don't think I've ever experienced any of these, at least I can't remember it.
Which is NOT a claim to only be incapable of experience anxiety and distress. He was specifically asked about anxiety and distress which is why he responded about anxiety and distress.
By analogy if someone said they were allergic to lots of foods, someone else asked them "even rice?" and they responded "yes, I'm allergic to rice," it wouldn't be a correct interpretation to think they were only allergic to rice.

>I think you got confused over this exchange here:

I could have. I have no motivation to argue, I'm curious about the poster too.

Yes, I just looked at the post you said you're right, I missed the original lack of emotions part of the beginning of the convo.

I'm not completely apathetic, but I don't feel very much anxiety either.

If something goes BANG I rarely flinch, but sometimes I duck.

I attribute it in part to introverts being humourless killjoys.

damn, you got me
it's not that I do not feel any emotions, just that my emotions are like listening to music at 1% volume
and don't worry about people mistreating me, I haven't exchanged more than 2 sentences with anyone except my parents in 10 years
not completely apathetic either, but there aren't many things I can enjoy slightly

Take a look at people with brain damage to the vmPFC. They were emotionless wrecks and either made: no decisions at all or bad decisions. Their personal lives were a complete mess. We rely on emotional intuition for much more than we think to even exist.

Yeah but to deal with emotional shit, real shit doesn't need emotions.

You're wrong. Rationalization doesn't tell you what you should do, it just retroactively justifies what actually motivates your decisions which is your emotions. It's an illusion that you're using logic to make your decisions.

Everything we do involves emotional intuition. Why else do you think we disagree so fervently on issues of morality?

Pretty much what this guy said as well. We use logic to justify intuition and behavior to ourselves and other group members. It's not there to inherently seek truth.

>real shit doesn't need emotions
Is–ought problem.
Intellectual reasoning can tell you the way things are, but they say nothing about what you *should do* about those things.

I don't know if "emotionless" is the same as numb, but after my dad's death I felt so numb that I didn't even feel the little aches and pains of being alive.
It was really fantastic, I wish I could activate that feeling at will. It didn't last long enough to be able to say if it would have interfered with my cognitive capabilities, I distinctly remember the super numbness came on when I went to take a shower; there was a bunch of family drama going on, dad's body hadn't been cremated yet because the death certificate hadn't been signed, a lot of stressful things were going on and it all caught up with me right then and that's when I went numb.
Anyway, I was able to take a shower, go on about my normal routine, I was even able to objectively think about the stuff that had just been bothering me.

I think it might be what Zen Buddhists strive for.

Start taking antidepressants

But rationality

there is a movie, equilibrium. Pretty much that

Nah, taking meds like that causes more problems than it fixes.

Maybe a temporary med for like a week at max if you're having a severely bad time, like you just had an accident or something and you literally can't sleep for days at a time.

But long term mind-altering meds like anti-depressants, at least in my experience, make life so much worse and potentially for a lot longer than the real problem.

Best to find what your problem is in reality and deal with that, instead, where possible. Where not possible, reach out to those who can really help, etc. pretty much anything except drugs would be a smart idea, as long as it deals with the real issue.

We wouldn't even be here. We would have gone extinct thousands of not millions of years ago.

Confusion
Worry but hidden
Sadness
anger
sadness but hidden
resignation

autistic people have feelings though.

Better for depressed people and worse for happy people.

what made you start posting here? do you have difficulty making choices? do you have any sense of right and wrong or is just "whatever gets the job done"? are you into any fucked up sexual stuff? do you even have sexuality?
I'm just intrigued by this, probably has to do with my own mild autism and moderayely severe anxiety; I'd like to think I could get by with no emotions because of the decisions and habits I've made but I don't really know

No they would never kill the child unless the child is a resource load, if you have no feelings you cannot feel annoyed so a screaming baby would produce no reaction from you.

>what made you start posting here?
Curiosity probably, then I stayed on Veeky Forums because I used to be very good at math and physics before the disorder developed, now it's just a part of my routine and a way to kill time
>do you have difficulty making choices?
not sure what you mean, I'm rarely in a situation where I need to make a choice, can't think of any example
>do you have any sense of right and wrong or is just "whatever gets the job done"?
definitely the latter, I'm an egoist
>are you into any fucked up sexual stuff? do you even have sexuality?
I'm asexual, tried jerking off once for 5 minutes but couldn't get hard

Take some Xanax and find out.

You're asking a question that the answer is obvious to.

Can man exist without emotion? Is such a creature man?