Owyhee Software Blog

Caffeine-Free Software

Checkpoint Dilemma

Question: If you are stopped at a police check point and asked if you have had anything to drink tonight and you have actually had something to drink, what do you say? I chose to tell the truth. I'm not sure if that was the best approach or not. When I told the officer that I had had about 3 glasses of wine (which was technically true, but on reflection was really about 3 half-glasses of wine so more like 1.5 glasses of wine), I was asked to step out of my truck. I went through the whole routine and ultimately passed. I wonder though, if I had said that I had not had anything to drink, if I would still have been subjected to the procedure. I was not confident enough at the time that I had not done anything suspicious (I had in fact slowed down abruptly upon seeing that I was heading for a check point), so I went ahead and told the truth. I think it just depends on how much confidence you have that you are not in anyway suspicious.

Emotional Evolution

Without having read any formal literature on the subject of the evolution of emotions, I hypothesize that different populations respond to the same situations with different emotions, and that the difference in responses is at least in part influenced by genetics.

If this is true, it means that:
  • Within any country or region with different groups of people, one group's set of emotional responses is likely more successful in reproductive terms than another's.
  • Some populations are happier, sadder, angrier, etc. than others overall.
  • In an environment in which many groups have been recently mixed together (such as the US), it is not reasonable to assume any sort of norm for emotional response.
  • There are likely very subtle and specific emotional responses that have evolved that are not describable with simple terms such as anger, sadness, happiness, melancholy and yet are quite common.
  • Different species are on the whole happier, sadder, angrier etc. than others.  For example, dogs might be happier than cats.

Growing up, I often felt like a Vulcan.  Emotions seemed to be noise.  As I've gotten older however, I've gotten better at interpreting them.  I would like to know more about why we have the emotions we do.  I would like to have a better language for expressing emotion, in order to understand it better.