It is certainly not my argument, nor implied by the example, that the only reason someone would do something is because of Jealousy or Envy. Things like pleasure and admiration motivate us as well, but most people don’t wonder why we have them or wish they would go away.
Sure, but if the positives of Envy can be better obtained by less destructive emotions, does it really serve a purpose?
I mean, if Inside Out 2 was about the exploration of Envy being gone, and the best it could do is “Riley is still motivated, but just, a bit less than she would be otherwise” it wouldn’t really make for a dramatic change.
And if I were building a person, and had the option to give them Envy, instead of upping their Admiration or Pleasure (as you name), I don’t know why I would.
(Edit: that may be overly unfair. I can come up with reasons why. But they feel anti-altruistic. For example, Envy could push you to steal from people who have things you don’t. This is good for you, because then you’ll have more stuff. But in the same way society and the people in it are better off if no one steals, they’d also be better off if no one felt Envy. So I am still struggling to come up with reasons why I should endorse Envy.)
Ah, yeah, see again my emphasis that I did not name this article “Emotions Are Good” :P
If you pick scenarios where people can find other emotions by which they end up doing the Morally Good and Personally Optimal thing… yeah, envy isn’t needed there.
But my claim is there are situations where people are driven by envy to do things that make their liklihood to survive and thrive better than if they had not felt it. If you disagree with that, this is what the article is trying to accomplish as a step 1, and integration happens after that.
But none of that requires “endorsement” in the way you seem(?) to mean it. Envy is not Nice. To put it in another frame, it is MtG: Black, and the value it brings to the table needs to be understood seperately from “is it good/altruistic/endorsed.”
To some degree. And I agree on most emotions, they exist for a reason and someone who discounts them without reflection is making a mistake. But I think Envy, on reflection, still strikes me as something better for the goals of evolution and in the environment of our ancestors than one that “makes sense” for us and in the modern world.
I think, insofar as Envy drives people to steal, it decreases people’s likelihood to survive and thrive (jail isn’t the optimal place for either of those, and if you’re stealing from Envy, not desperation or something, it probably wasn’t worth the risk). Cheating, another behavior driven by Envy, can lead to suffering violence at the hands of the spurned party (tho if you have “has more sex than otherwise” as a non-trivial term in “thrive” then possibly this one is a wash).
To me, Envy seems to be the drive to defect against a cooperator in some cases, which is, let’s call it “effective” (to differentiate “good/nice”) to take advantage of when you can. But it’s calibrated for a situation where there are tribal levels of coalition with the cooperators, and now there are societal levels of coalition with the cooperators, so this is a much worse value proposition.
It “makes sense” that it evolved the way it did. And of course, if it didn’t, it wouldn’t have evolved that way. But that doesn’t mean it must continue to “make sense” and I’m not sure it does.
It is certainly not my argument, nor implied by the example, that the only reason someone would do something is because of Jealousy or Envy. Things like pleasure and admiration motivate us as well, but most people don’t wonder why we have them or wish they would go away.
Sure, but if the positives of Envy can be better obtained by less destructive emotions, does it really serve a purpose?
I mean, if Inside Out 2 was about the exploration of Envy being gone, and the best it could do is “Riley is still motivated, but just, a bit less than she would be otherwise” it wouldn’t really make for a dramatic change.
And if I were building a person, and had the option to give them Envy, instead of upping their Admiration or Pleasure (as you name), I don’t know why I would.
(Edit: that may be overly unfair. I can come up with reasons why. But they feel anti-altruistic. For example, Envy could push you to steal from people who have things you don’t. This is good for you, because then you’ll have more stuff. But in the same way society and the people in it are better off if no one steals, they’d also be better off if no one felt Envy. So I am still struggling to come up with reasons why I should endorse Envy.)
Ah, yeah, see again my emphasis that I did not name this article “Emotions Are Good” :P
If you pick scenarios where people can find other emotions by which they end up doing the Morally Good and Personally Optimal thing… yeah, envy isn’t needed there.
But my claim is there are situations where people are driven by envy to do things that make their liklihood to survive and thrive better than if they had not felt it. If you disagree with that, this is what the article is trying to accomplish as a step 1, and integration happens after that.
But none of that requires “endorsement” in the way you seem(?) to mean it. Envy is not Nice. To put it in another frame, it is MtG: Black, and the value it brings to the table needs to be understood seperately from “is it good/altruistic/endorsed.”
Does that make sense?
To some degree. And I agree on most emotions, they exist for a reason and someone who discounts them without reflection is making a mistake. But I think Envy, on reflection, still strikes me as something better for the goals of evolution and in the environment of our ancestors than one that “makes sense” for us and in the modern world.
I think, insofar as Envy drives people to steal, it decreases people’s likelihood to survive and thrive (jail isn’t the optimal place for either of those, and if you’re stealing from Envy, not desperation or something, it probably wasn’t worth the risk). Cheating, another behavior driven by Envy, can lead to suffering violence at the hands of the spurned party (tho if you have “has more sex than otherwise” as a non-trivial term in “thrive” then possibly this one is a wash).
To me, Envy seems to be the drive to defect against a cooperator in some cases, which is, let’s call it “effective” (to differentiate “good/nice”) to take advantage of when you can. But it’s calibrated for a situation where there are tribal levels of coalition with the cooperators, and now there are societal levels of coalition with the cooperators, so this is a much worse value proposition.
It “makes sense” that it evolved the way it did. And of course, if it didn’t, it wouldn’t have evolved that way. But that doesn’t mean it must continue to “make sense” and I’m not sure it does.