on feelings

June 28, 2025

Your feelings are a fact about your mind, not about the world. -Neel Nanda

This does not mean feelings are unimportant. But, it is a reminder to be careful how you think about emotions / intuitions / feelings -- they're quite liable to be wrong. Most of this post will be about examples where I think feelings should be given less weight.

Career#

The following message is highly prevalent in modern society:

You should do what you enjoy. -Society

I think this message is actually kind of dangerous, and is missing some important considerations. As a simple thought experiment, suppose you really enjoyed playing video games. Then, should you do that? Clearly not (imho). Basically, I think this advice is missing the consideration that you should also "try to make the world a better place".

You should try to find a method for doing good that you are capable of enjoying, or else its not going to be very sustainable. But I think agonizing over "how much am I going to enjoy this" is not really the right approach -- it's not the primary thing to optimize for.

altruism#

The amount of altruism that I feel varies wildly, being determined primarily by things like how much I've slept, and how immediate/personal something feels. But that doesn't mean that the importance of altruism is variable. Honestly, I think the idea that we can choose to act contrary to our emotions is beautiful.

Because I can't choose how I'll feel, at least locally (ofc globally I can do things like sleep and controlling the stimuli I expose myself to). But I can choose what I'll do!

One example of this recently is that I've decided to be vegetarian.

I don't have a strong emotional reaction to eating meat.
- Probably because I've done it for so long, and it is so socially acceptable.
But my lack of an emotional reaction doesn't change whether this is right or wrong.
Life is precious. Sure, animals don't really have the same type of conscious experience as humans.
I think my lack of discomfort with regards to eating animals is mostly caused by the distance from me to actually killing animals. And, logically, that is not at all ethically important.
Anyways, I'm not really making a claim here about where this should be on your moral priority list. (although maybe this is an instance of double standarding)
But part of my purpose in sharing this is just as an example of an instance of acting in the absence of strong emotion.

distraction#

I think another scenario where "feelings aren't very important" / are misleading is distractions. I think my brain would often like to convince me that indulging in distractions is a necessary response to, e.g., stress. But this is silly. This is not a fact about the world. I can make systems, and thereby actually live with intention.

As discussed in taking social initiative, I still often flinch away from creating deep positive social experiences. But there is something intrinsically valuable about social interactions! So this aversion to creating positive social interactions is not something worth heeding.

One nice technique that I'd add to the list for "how to do this" is, if you know you're systematically biased towards under-doing social things, then just re-adjust your threshold! E.g., if you're borderline on whether to make a social invite then have "do it" as the default policy.

bad feelings#

Sometimes I'll have bad feelings, e.g., anger or jealousy. But, since feelings truly are a fact about my mind and not the world, if I feel slighted or hurt, then I can choose to just forget this, or to just act as I would if my feelings where otherwise. Feeling disagreeable needn't make me act disagreeable. Feeling like I don't know how to talk about something needn't restrain me.

Alignment#

One last place where it'd be good for me to remember that "feelings are a fact about the mind, not the world" is how I approach thinking about xrisk.

I'm pretty bought on the arguments that there are some risks, and I'd like to do something about them. Understanding viscerally and realistically that the situation is dire is important for making sure that I take appropriate actions, to actually try to change things, rather than to just change the way I feel about them -- e.g., make myself feel better. I care about doing things much more than the feeling of doing things.