Non-linearity

This entry will be the first of a few trying to explain why you should have no more than one emotional argument when trying to make a decision, and that you should spend most of your time figuring out which to pick. This will help you a lot when trying to philosophize over though questions.

I kick this off by the following statement: Humans react to inputs non-linearly. If you believe this you are all set for continuing to the next entry. If not, I'll try to explain why I believe this.

If you are not trained in the field of non-linear processes (which is the case if you for example don't know what a non-linear process is), I'll summarize it in a few lines. When the cause and effect of something (almost anything I guess) doesn't seem to be proportionate, the cause and effect are probably goverened by a non-linear process. Here are some examples:

When you shake a ketchup bottle and for a long time nothing happens; then without any proportion to how much you shake all the ketchup suddenly decides to come out.

When you play on a slot machine and bet the same amount every time. At some time you may win alot of money even though your input was just the same as the time before when you won nothing.

When you fall from 1 meter you land on you feet, from 3 meters you may fall and scratch yourself. From 5 meters you may sprain your foot but from 7 meters you could actually die.

This morning I was late for work and waited for hot water in the bathroom. I turned the heat up and suddely realized the water was so hot that it hurt. If you think about it like this it makes more sense.
Holding your hand in 20 degree water is tolerable
So is doing it at 40 degrees
I sort of hurts at 60 degrees
It is completley untolerable at 80 degrees.
So for some reason the difference is way bigger between 60-80 than from 40-60. We of course know this. I suspect that the reason for this is that the skin receptors start to send impulses to the brain that this hurts at maybe 40 degrees. The brain interprets these impulses non-linearly and will we will experience non-linear pain. I am no neuro scientist so I may be wrong on the mechanisms, it can also be that the receptors send out signals non-linearly based on heat input, but right now we only care that we do experience it this way.

Non-linear processes are difficult to predict. This is because the input has to be determined very well in order to get an accurate estimation of the output. This is partly why weather is so difficult to predict.

When you have to make a decision based on emotions in any way (this is almost allways the case, few decisions are not related to emotions), you will MAKE the desicion based on one argument, but when you think about it you BELIEVE that you make the desision based on careful consideration based on many arguments. This may require some explanation.

When inputs are non-linearly connected to output, like the case when our senses create input for the brain to produce emotions, even similar (but not identical) input from senses will affect our emotions very differently (remember the oven and how seemingly similar temperatures affected our brain very differently). This has two implications:
(1): When our brain has created the emotion based on the input from our senses, it is very difficult to use the output (emotion) to determine the input(you know that putting your hand in hot water hurts like hell, but you can't use that knowledge to derive the temperature)
(2): The probability that two inputs derived from different senses or will affect your emotions with comparable strength is small. To do that the objective facts has to be very very similar to each other AND connect in the same way to different inputs. The emotions however are of the same kind and will sort of add up in your brain and affect your overall well being. It will be difficult to separate your overall emotion into components AND THEN determine the quantity of the input.

This affects you a lot! But more about that next time.