In my mind, there’s a difference between “conversation was valuable” and “conversation was fun”. They often go together, but not necessarily so.
Valuable: The best thing I can come up with is something like: my understanding has grown thanks to this conversation, or I have seen a bigger picture (not necessarily being able to legibilize/verbalize this new piece of my understanding). I feel like my mind is drawn to the inquiry, especially when it’s challenging, but I’m having some minimum of traction to keep me going and retain mostly positive valence.
Fun: Some sort of intellectual/cognitive camaraderie (“meeting of minds”) is often a big part of the fun. Not even super high-falluting bluesky conversations, I can bond with someone by helping them fix a pernicious bug in code. Something something, we are acting a bit more like one superagent that is trying to do something through conversation or spread one part’s understanding to other parts?
Part 2
I mostly don’t feel emotions in my body that much, at least much less so than other people, and when I do, it’s usually either clearly negative emotions (strong stress, panic) or “raw”/ambiguous excitement/arousal. (If it feels like part 1 doesn’t quite answer your question, that’s why (though it might also be some sort of skill issue on my side, lol).) So, no, no warm fuzzy feelings in my chest.
Part 1
In my mind, there’s a difference between “conversation was valuable” and “conversation was fun”. They often go together, but not necessarily so.
Valuable: The best thing I can come up with is something like: my understanding has grown thanks to this conversation, or I have seen a bigger picture (not necessarily being able to legibilize/verbalize this new piece of my understanding). I feel like my mind is drawn to the inquiry, especially when it’s challenging, but I’m having some minimum of traction to keep me going and retain mostly positive valence.
Fun: Some sort of intellectual/cognitive camaraderie (“meeting of minds”) is often a big part of the fun. Not even super high-falluting bluesky conversations, I can bond with someone by helping them fix a pernicious bug in code. Something something, we are acting a bit more like one superagent that is trying to do something through conversation or spread one part’s understanding to other parts?
Part 2
I mostly don’t feel emotions in my body that much, at least much less so than other people, and when I do, it’s usually either clearly negative emotions (strong stress, panic) or “raw”/ambiguous excitement/arousal. (If it feels like part 1 doesn’t quite answer your question, that’s why (though it might also be some sort of skill issue on my side, lol).) So, no, no warm fuzzy feelings in my chest.