When I was researching for an experiment earlier this year, I came across the concept of the "Default Mental Mode". It's an actual neurological phenomenon, that when you're not engaged by a novel or interesting task, you revert to a review of past unsolved concepts. Makes sense evolutionarily- your brain eats up like a third of the calories you use, so you'd better use it for something even if you're bored. And then there's the bit where if you eat something and get sick afterwards, like with me I got food poisoning from Quiznos once, and for years got queasy at the thought of eating there. They're natural mechanisms to make sure you learn a super-hard lesson with appropriate emphasis. But we're not (at least theoretically) exclusively emotional anymore. It's good to be able to turn this extreme emotional and physiological response off- it's not like people will be like, "Wait, that time I got raped, was that good or bad?"
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Date: 2007-10-03 04:42 pm (UTC)And then there's the bit where if you eat something and get sick afterwards, like with me I got food poisoning from Quiznos once, and for years got queasy at the thought of eating there. They're natural mechanisms to make sure you learn a super-hard lesson with appropriate emphasis.
But we're not (at least theoretically) exclusively emotional anymore. It's good to be able to turn this extreme emotional and physiological response off- it's not like people will be like, "Wait, that time I got raped, was that good or bad?"