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anonymous__ignorant t1_jat5m9n wrote

Reply to comment by minorkeyed in Our emotional experiences reveal facts about the world in the same way our sensory experiences do. Trusting in either requires a leap of faith to some degree. by IAI_Admin

"Emotional intelligence": have you ever heard someone say "i don't know how / what to feel about something" ? At first it baffled me, for me it was something obvious, like an instant reaction. But then i understood they have no IDEEA about it and with the lack of an ideea came the lack of an apropriate emotional response.

Some of us have that "gut feeling" or intuition or some other predictive, associative mechanism that drives our emotions for us beyond learned experience.

As an excercise think about this: how would you feel / percieve the news that an alien ship landed on Earth but no communication has been established? What would your emotion default to?

Somehow you would have to think about it first. Are you intelligent enough to extrapolate instantly with the information you have ? Would your current knowledge drive you to joy? Fear?

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minorkeyed t1_jatsdz0 wrote

Are you trying to explain what 'Emotional Intelligence'(EI) is? Or just discussing the topic in general? I'm a little confused what you're trying to explain.

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anonymous__ignorant t1_jatuf2c wrote

> 'Emotional Intelligence' is a phrase that makes me cringe for similar reason. I'm still not even sure what that's supposed to be as every definition sounds more like a skillset for, or knowledge base of, emotion, not intelligence.

I was trying to explain the link between emotion and intelligence in the expression itself and how to test for it.

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minorkeyed t1_jaumnzm wrote

Okay. The emotion part is pretty apparent but where is the intelligence part?

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anonymous__ignorant t1_jav67xp wrote

You can still have all the knowledge and not connect the dots, just like a toddler that has the knowledge yet still throws a tantrum. Or racists that insist in theyr hate while having all the needed knowledge. Or hate towards those different ... you get the gist.

Theyr feelings are primal, uneducated. They hate just because they picked some cues here and there while they grew, emotional cues that now are defaults and bypass even routine checks.

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minorkeyed t1_javjfeq wrote

In those cases emotion has overwhelmed reason. Higher reasoning and analysis are literally not functioning when emotions are so strong. I would argue they don't have access to most of their knowledge in those moments.

All emotions are primal, though, as the limbic system is one of the oldest parts of the brain, developing much earlier than the faculties of reason. Are you suggesting only emotional responses you deem 'bad' are primal and uneducated?

They hate because their experiences trained those coping responses and those coping systems worked effectively to protect them. Those responses are often still protecting them. They didn't just mimic others to learn deeply held responses, they almost certainly had traumatic experiences that provoked the creation of strong defenses the rnateojg motivators to keep those responses. Any attempt to highlight those defenses, triggers them.

I don't see how any of that relates to intelligence, though. Self awareness and emotional management skills would be more accurate in my mind, neither rof which are intelligence. Intellect is not a characteristic of emotions at all, it's a characteristic of reason, a faculty that is often in directly competition with the emotions of the limbic system for driving behavior.

This is why I think people who are easy to emotion, or mostly drive by emotion, may use 'emotional intelligence' as a term to gain validation and elevate emotion to the same level of respect and value as reason, especially when they may not possess much of capacity for reason.

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