JustinCEO Topic

[JustinCEO]

@MetaCreation

Continuing the discussion from Bounded and Unbounded Emotions:

@MetaCreation

Responding to this article of Elliot’s:
https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/bounded-emotions

Overall I think this article is good.

Aside: I think this is part of what Howard Roark meant about his pain and suffering only going down to a “certain point”. He had them under control, within limits. That doesn’t mean he could limit his pain however he wanted. Maybe his pain got up to 500, and he didn’t know how to keep it lower. But he had enough knowledge, control over his life, reasonableness, etc., that his pain couldn’t go past (let’s say) 1000 in any direction, at any angle. And for what actually happened - the situation and type of pain it was – the limit was 500. And his pain stopped near or at the limit, that’s what the “certain point” was about. (Stopping at an exact number isn’t realistic, so I think Roark’s pain didn’t actually go down to a certain point, it approached a certain point and stopped short, with enough margin for error not to pass that point.)

This I disagree with. Of Rand’s characters, Roark is the last one that I think might say something not meant literally.

Precision is contextual. E.g. if an ordinary person takes some quick body measurements for clothes (once) and they’re not a tailor, you might expect a bit of error. If a tailor, less error. And there are contexts that involve extremely precise measurements on much smaller scales (such as engineering and physics).

With emotions, there are no objective measurements (can’t exactly use a ruler or other gauge to compare depth of emotional pain between two different people) and so any discussion of intensity or magnitude is inherently imprecise. In the context of the amount of precision we can achieve when discussing emotions, Roark could be speaking honestly and accurately regarding his emotions and it could still be compatible with what Elliot said.