I think that, rather than stop benefits, those receiving benefits should be put to work and receive additional, functional training in order to secure a better, more suitable wage for themselves. — Book273

I agree entirely. We should start with Jeff Bezos, I think, might as well start with the biggest drain first. The benefits he receives in terms of all the infrastructure the government have built on which he bases his business, plus the legal protection he benefits from, the interest payments, government incentives and lobbied deals... If someone on a few hundred a week in benefits has to work 35hrs to earn it, poor Jeff's going to have to work 24/7 for the government to pay off even a fraction of his benefits. Still...fair's fair.

I was thinking more the "I'm too good to sweep a sidewalk, and I deserve a much higher wage than that." while having no education and no motivation while getting welfare type. You have a different tangent than I.

non-emotional suffering — Down The Rabbit Hole

Please explain non-emotional suffering. Is that like...physical pain? Otherwise, it's all emotional.

I was thinking more the "I'm too good to sweep a sidewalk, and I deserve a much higher wage than that." while having no education and no motivation while getting welfare type. — Book273

I know. Hence my corrective. Those who refuse to sweep the sidewalk are of no different a type. Everyone tries to do as little unpleasant work as possible for the maximum return the current legal system will allow. All the way from your broom-averse benefit scrounger to Jeff Bezos. Maximum return legally possible, minimum investment of undesirable work.

Why focus on the small fry?

Jeff does stuff for his money. It might not be sweeping the sidewalk, but it still amounts to doing something. I don't pretend to know what he does. Hell he could have inherited all of it and simply been smart enough to not lose it. Point is, he still needs to have skills to run the company, shmooze the politicians, etc to get the results he wants.

I am talking the willful dead weight. Those that feel the world owes them "their piece of the pie" but are too entitled to work for it. Be it physical work or intellectual investment. The ones that love the line "you're so lucky to have that good job."

Yeah right, because I pulled my education and training out of a cracker jacket box while I was high on meth. And I still have a job because I am lucky. Actually going to work, working, and being moderately good at my job have nothing to do with continued employment. It's all just luck.

Jeff does stuff for his money. It might not be sweeping the sidewalk, but it still amounts to doing something. — Book273

So do benefit recipients. The government pays them to keep themselves alive and available for work. They do so.

Point is, he still needs to have skills to run the company, shmooze the politicians, etc to get the results he wants. — Book273

So do benefit recipients. They successfully lobby (and vote for) governments who pay them to keep themselves alive and available for work.

I grant you they breathe, they take up space, and they provide a great number of social workers employment. Hard to support that kind of apathy, hence my position that stopping benefits to those who refuse self improvement. Dead weight is better as simply dead. Compost has a purpose.

Hard to support that kind of apathy, hence my position that stopping benefits to those who refuse self improvement. — Book273

What level of apathy? Are you suggesting that there's some objective relationship between work and remuneration? If Jeff Bezos works, lets be generous, a 40hr week to earn his $1.7milion at $800/hr your average benefit recipient would have to work for just 5 minutes a day. Are you suggesting they don't even do five minutes of work? If you're happy for Jeff Bezos to get $800/hr for the work he does, why not benefit recipients? Why shouldn't they earn $800/hr for the five minutes of work they do (attending the Job Centre, for example)?

Dead weight is better as simply dead. Compost has a purpose. — Book273

The government consider that a healthy workforce available for work have a purpose. Are you sufficiently qualified in economics to override their judgement?

I am suggesting that I don't actually care what Jeff makes, annually or otherwise. It is irrelevant to me. Benefits recipients should not be receiving benefits at all. Get a job. Find work, make money. If Jeff makes 1.5 million a year, he can have that lifestyle. If bob makes 25k a year he can have that lifestyle. If Trevor doesn't want to work he can bloody starve a while, or die. I could not care less. But I don't want to pay for Trevor to be an entitled ass. If he is willing to die rather than work or develop skills I fully support him in that position. Go personal autonomy!

Ah, bullshit then. Thought so.

you have a problem with personal autonomy?

Funny thing eh, it isn't a single direction thing. I support people's right to be self determining, for better and for worse. Somebody wants to work hard, get educated, develop a skill, and make a little money. Cool. I'll support that. Someone else wants to not work, do drugs and maybe die in the street. Not my personal choice, but I recognize that it's theirs and I support their right to do that too. Notice I won't stop either one eh. That's actual non-biased support.

Not that "I'll only support you if you do what I want you to" crap most people shovel lately.

Somebody wants to work hard, — Book273

It's your definition of 'work hard' that's bullshit. You're just including in that definition everything that's done under standard western capitalism and excluding stuff you don't like. There's nothing honest, down-to-earth, hard working about most corporate goings on, they do as little as possible for the maximum return. I'm asking you for clear distinction between that and a benefit recipient who's doing as little as possible (attending the benefits office) for the maximum return (benefits payment).

Alright, so you hate corporations, for whatever reasons you think are valid. Never mind that every corporation started out with someone who wanted to improve their lot and busted their ass to get there, risked money and time and more. Forget all that shit. In your world the evil corporation just magically showed up; a fully functional monster just out to squish the innocent and plunder the world. Do you actually believe that shit? Next you will try and tell me that Satan runs all corporations and that God loves me.

I am not donating to your cause.

Benefits recipients should not be receiving benefits at all. — Book273

5% of the British population (plus unemployed not claiming unemployment benefit) are taking reasonable steps to find work. They are not choosing to remain unemployed, and neither are the disabled, deemed unfit for work by a doctor, plus an assessor for the government.

It will be the same around the world, not everyone can find or do work, and it will only get worse and worse with automation.

Please explain non-emotional suffering. Is that like...physical pain? Otherwise, it's all emotional. — Book273

Yes physical pain. Reduction of suffering is my ethical priority, and I am worried that a world void of emotions, while good for the lack of emotional suffering, would lead to more physical pain.

Suffering is such an interesting thing. It is entirely individualized and almost entirely based on perspective. I am not sure how an increase in physical pain equates to an increase in suffering, again, perspective I guess. Not all pain is bad.

I think people want to believe in an easy formula to guide their lives. The world is a giant machine and all we have to do is figure out how it works.

I think we need to distinguish affections and emotions from feelings.
Affections and emotions, according to Neuroscience and the latest Theory on Consciousness by the founder of Neuropsychoanalysis Mark Solms, are the "driving force" behind the content of our conscious states. They are what force our conscious attention to focus on specific stimuli and how "meaning" is induced in our emergent interpretations of them, known as "feelings".
Feelings are the result we get when we try to reason and understand our emotions.
So in my opinion, the opening statement should ask whether feelings are unnecessary and the obvious answer is of course they are.
Now we should also distinguish the practice of managing our feelings(a valuable practice) from rejecting them completely. That would be like trying to ignore our attempt to understand our emotions thus remove "meaning" from our thoughts and behavior.
Since this is my first post in this platform, I don't know if references are allowed as links.

Predictive processing approaches are quite popular these days. What I think is most valuable in them is their understanding of feeling in terms of prediction of events.Howver, I don’t think the claim to distinguish between emotion, affect and feeling in terms of distinct functional systems will hold up. They are all instead inseparably interconnected.

-"Predictive processing approaches are quite popular these days. What I think is most valuable in them is their understanding of feeling in terms of prediction of events."
-I don't really understand what that means. Are you talking from a Psychiatric perspective?

-"Howver, I don’t think the claim to distinguish between emotion, affect and feeling in terms of distinct functional systems will hold up."
-Well that a scientific description that describes the evolution of an organic stimuli from an affect to a full blown concept that offers meaning to a thinking agent who acts on meaning.
So not only it hold ups its an essential framework in the role of emotions in the content of our conscious states.

-"They are all instead inseparably interconnected. "
I never said they weren't connected under the same system.
Interconnection says nothing about those three evolutionary phases of a stimuli "inflicting" an affect, producing an emotion, where our symbolic thinking reasons it in to feelings.
You must know numerous cases where people realize a "feeling". " I realized I don't really hate you", " I am more disappointed than mad". In order to distinguish those really thin lines that separate every fuzzy and undefined emotion....we NEED to introduce "theory"...to reason in order to find meaning in what we feel and inform our mental model and then our actions.

i.e. "social rejection" or "insecurity" are complex feelings that includes many emotions. Only through our "theory" we can produce this final concept of a feeling.

btw how many times you happen deal with some problems, you manage to solve them but there is still there something bugging you. When you remember what it is ...its when you are able to apply a accurate"label' on that "bugginess". So that is how we know emotions need a narrative, a theory to become and be understood as feelings.

Predictive processing approaches are quite popular these days. What I think is most valuable in them is their understanding of feeling in terms of prediction of events."
-I don't really understand what that means. Are you talking from a Psychiatric perspective? — Nickolasgaspar

Are you familiar with Lisa Barrett’s work on affect and emotion? This is what I’m mainly drawing from.

-Well that a scientific description that describes the evolution of an organic stimuli from an affect to a full blown concept that offers meaning to a thinking agent who acts on meaning.
So not only it hold ups its an essential framework in the role of emotions in the content of our conscious states — Nickolasgaspar

I am comparing one scientific framework (representational, computational realism) with another (embodied enactivism). Both offer theories of affect, feeling and emotion, but the enactivist approach rejects representationalism and predictive processing’s arbitrary separation of brain from body and body from environment.

emotions need a narrative, a theory to become and be understood as feelings. — Nickolasgaspar

I am disputing the idea that an emotion prior to an interpretive construal is a coherent notion.

-"I am disputing the idea that an emotion prior to an interpretive construal is a coherent notion. "
-So you agree with me that an emotion needs to be processed in order for us to interpret and define an "upset" under a specific feeling ?

No I haven't followed Barrett's work on Affective science, but it sounds interesting and in agreement with how Neuropsychoanalysis approach.

-"What I think is most valuable in them is their understanding of feeling in terms of prediction of events."
-So I think it is in line with our understanding of the brain that predictive machine?(Anil Seth).

Now unfortunately I am allergic to "isms" so I will skip that part. That has nothing to do with you but I scientific descriptions than philosophical interpretations.

So you agree with me that an emotion needs to be processed in order for us to interpret and define an "upset" under a specific feeling ? — Nickolasgaspar

I would put it this way. Rather than assuming an unformed pattern of sensations ( negative or positive) arising out of core physiological bodily maintenance processes that only later undergoes higher perceptual processing and is turned into a feeling through our interpretation of it, emotion , affect and feeling are indissociable aspects of an integral organizational feature of cognitive-affective systems. That is to say, the cognitive system is normatively driven toward goal-directed aims. Affectivity arises out of that integral process. Experience is always relevant and significant to us moment to moment in relation to our goals , and feeling always accompanies that experience as the expression of the particular ways in which the world is significant to us.

Yes. Emotions are how our organism inform us for its urges and needs and "feelings" are the interpreted result helping us to identify our goals. I am not sure that the oversimplification of emotions in to "unformed" sensations" describes the actual phenomenon.
Cognition is a separate mind property responsible for the interpretation of affects and emotions. This is what connects the dots and interprets our emotions.
i.e. You may have a serious misunderstanding with two ndividuals but just because you know one of them has different mental capacity your emotional expressions are dumb down in his case.
Using the similar names to interpret different experiences i.e. feeling disgust when dealing with a really dirty public W.C or a dishonest lying interlocutor, shows the overarching role of cognition in the interpretation of our emotions.

I believe that emotions have become unnecessary in this modern world, and that the future doesn't need it anymore. — Kinglord1090

Necessary to whom and what does that person or those people have as values?
When were they necessary and to whom and for what purpose and according to what values?

And take away his corporate charter while we're at it. Corporate charters were seen as priviledged relations with the government and society and misbehavior, if problematic enough (breaking laws, say, avoiding taxes, say) could lead to losing that charter.

as a random spotcheck...

Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is currently estimated at over $190bn, didn’t pay any federal income taxes in 2007. The stock value for his company, Amazon, more than doubled that same year.

Bezos also didn’t pay federal income taxes in 2011.

That same year, he apparently claimed a $4,000 tax credit for his kids.

from the Guardian

1. I hate emotions.
2. I love reason.

3. I love emotions.
4. I hate reason.

5. I love both emotions and reason.
6. I hate both emotions and reason.

7. I neither love nor hate emotions.
8. I neither love nor hate reason.

Can you see the paradox? I can't! :confused: :sad:

How different are "I think x is not reasonable" and "I dislike x" and "I hate x." Similalry, how distinct are "I think y is reasonable" and "I like y" and "I love y"???

I think, the emotions are naturally workout by our bodies reactions from inner sensations mad by thing into us. I think, the question should get related to our scale of values and where do we put on it our emotions? How important those are for ourselves and which degree of relevance those should get in our life. I my consideration our emotions importance are far below our conscience.