Why It’s Good to Be Buffeted By Your Emotions

According to artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Dr. Ben Goertzel, one weakness of your legacy brain is that your emotions can buffet you around.

When Ben and I talked at the BilPil 2009 Unconference about AI of the future and how they might have emotions, he said that AI would probably avoid this human weakness:

“I doubt that many AI would choose to be kind of buffeted by their emotions in the way that people are.”

People get depressed, distraught, and distracted.

And they’re often at the mercy of their negative emotional states.

But why is this undesirable? Something that a “smarter” AI would avoid?

Because you lose control of your life? And become highly unproductive at achieving your life goals? Well…

• Being buffeted by your emotions can help you realize that you’re never “in control” of life in the first place, and that all you can control are your responses to it.

• Being buffeted by your emotions can help you be even more productive at achieving your life goals than you would have been without them. That is, if you choose to work with them.

How it feels to be buffeted by your emotions

When you’re buffeted by your emotions, you’re the losing boxer in the ring. No matter how hard you pack a punch, you take every hit. And land flat on your face. You don’t have a chance. Your emotions get the best of you every time.

So, you end up feeling horrible. And like a loser, because you did lose the fight — of regaining emotional composure.

And emotions suck so much you might try to think of ways to kill them. (It won’t work.)

What it means to be buffeted by your emotions

Put differently, when you’re buffeted by your emotions, it starts out with the trigger.

That gives cause for some negative emotions to scratch the surface so you can experience them.

But you prevent them from coming up, hoping they will go away.

But they don’t; they just get stored for later.

And when they resurface — they calls the shots. They dominate the ring of your life.

You’re no longer able to regulate the experience, you’re ravaged by it.

Through a fit, or uncontrollable crying, or depression for days.

So you’re buffeted by your emotions because you didn’t take the time to experience them when they first came up.

Emotions buffet you because you ignored them

And this is a really important point.

When you chose not to deal with your emotions in the first place. Not to be mindful of them. Not to feel them full force. Not to work with them.

You pay the price by getting knocked out.

Here’s how it happens:

1. Negative emotions come up (due to some trigger).
2. You neglect experiencing them, by trying to control your emotions or something unproductive like that.
3. The negative emotions “go away” for a time.
4. Under the right circumstances, they pop right back up.
5. This time they’re stronger and you can’t beat them down. Because whatever the emotions signaled as being “wrong” or “dangerous” before was ignored — meaning whatever was “wrong” or “dangerous” just got worse over time, or “more wrong”/”more dangerous” … so the signal is even stronger now to reflect that.
6. Your body/subconscious knows something is very wrong/dangerous, and will just keep signaling it until you fix the problem. Fixing the problem may mean figuring out that there isn’t even a problem, just cognitive distortions or dysfunctional beliefs clouding your thinking.
7. While you may want to listen to the signal and start looking at the problem, the signal is so amplified and unbearable that it’s hard to think straight, let alone figure out what went wrong
8. You’re left buffeted by the emotions because they’re amplified and unbearable. At this point, they’re also illogical because you don’t know why you’re experiencing them… because you didn’t ask why earlier on (#1) when it was much easier to tackle the problem. So you’ve got your work cut out for you.

Here’s the process with the example of George the boxer:

1. George loses a big match, blames himself for it, starts to feel ashamed of himself.
2. He neglects experiencing the shame, by drinking with some buddies instead.
3. The shame goes away for a time.
4. When he loses the next big match, the shame comes back up.
5. This time it’s stronger and he can’t drink it away. Because the cognitive distortion (“Because I lost this match, I have no worth as a human being, let alone a boxer…”) that the shame signaled as being “dangerous” before was ignored — meaning the cognitive distortion that was “dangerous” just got worse, or “more dangerous” … so the signal is even stronger now to reflect that.
6. George’s body/subconscious knows something is very dangerous (his cognitively distorted thinking), and will just keep signaling it until he fixes the problem. Fixing the problem would mean picking apart his distorted thinking letting go of dysfunctional beliefs.
7. While he may want to listen to the signal and start looking at the problem, the signal is so amplified and unbearable that it’s hard to think straight, let alone figure out what went wrong
8. George is left buffeted by the emotions because they’re amplified and unbearable. At this point, they’re also illogical because he doesn’t know why he’s experiencing them… because he didn’t ask why earlier on (#1) when it was much easier to tackle the problem. So he’s got his work cut out for him.

Why it’s good to be buffeted by your emotions

So here’s the point.

If you’re being buffeted by your emotions, it’s because you weren’t paying attention to them earlier on so that you could fix the problems they signaled in the the first place.

When you don’t fix those problems, the only way to know they exist is if there’s a loud and clear signal to jolt you out of denial — to face the issue head-on.

Your negative emotions are designed to do just that.

They’re there so you can can take a mindful look at what the problems are.

So you actually need to be buffeted by your emotions if your head’s too thick to let your heart feel.

The healthy alternative to being buffeted by your emotions

Of course, Dr. Ben Goertzel went on to talk about something entirely different in our discussion.

About why AI wouldn’t be so buffeted by their emotions, and how we could learn from them to better regulate our own emotions. We’ll cover this in the next article in the series.

Until then, let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And do holler if there’s anything else you’d like to see this article series cover.

This is the second article in the series, “Your Legacy Brain.” Subscribe to stay tuned for the rest of this series.