Emotion (CF view)

CF treats emotion as a normal part of rational living — not as the enemy of reason. Emotions are subconscious processes that signal things and motivate action.

What emotions are

• Signals. "Something is wrong." "Something is good."
• Motivators. "Approach." "Avoid."
• IGCs at the subconscious level. "I notice X."
• Often accurate. When automatized from good experience.

What they're not

• Not authoritative. Like all IGCs, they can be wrong.
• Not opaque. They can be investigated.
• Not the enemy of reason. They're part of it.
• Not immutable. They can be improved.

CF's recommendations

1. Don't suppress. See Don't Suppress Your Intuition.
2. Investigate. What is the emotion telling you?
3. Improve. Build better emotional responses via practice.
4. Use reasoning alongside. Emotions + reasoning > either alone.

When emotions mislead

• When biased. See bias.
• When from bad experience. Childhood, trauma.
• When triggered by mistake. Misreading the situation.
• When overwhelming. Clouding other judgements.

Improving emotions

• Practice good responses. Like any skill.
• Postmortems on emotional reactions. What triggered them? Were they right?
• Update automatized patterns. New habits.
• Reduce overreach. overreach worsens emotional regulation.

Connection to introspection

CF treats introspection carefully:

• Useful for noticing emotions.
• Unreliable for explaining them.
• Can become overthinking.
• Best combined with objective-reasoning.

"Improving Emotions" is a CF essay title. — criticalfallibilism.com