Practice history in sister thread:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5371433

Statements:

1. Take some behaviour, S.
2. “This flesh and blood body has a preference/habit for S.”
3. “I want to do S.”

Question: What is the difference, for a flesh and blood body (ie, someone who has no experience of affect)? I assert that said FBB could use statement 3 as a convention (they seem to, in the AFT writings), when they really mean statement 2. The result is the same: behaviour S takes place.

John Wilde made a bunch of cogent arguments about the consequences of not experiencing emotions that nobody seemed to answer very well. He posted a link to BG 225: The End of Self-Referencing before in effect concluding “well, that’s that”. He is no longer practicing actualism now.
http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2011/07/bg-225-the-end-of-self-referencing/
The key takeaway from that podcast, is people might not experience emotions, but stuff is still happening, that might influence actions (presumably conscious) in unconscious ways. To me, this is a plausible hypothesis as various instances of unseemly behaviour from AFT members over the years can still happen, and they can still be living in azure wonderlands. Totally cool.

Paraphrasing: Wilde said something like “I can’t be sure getting AF won’t turn me into a douchebag, and I can’t un-AF once I get there, so I’m hesitant to go for it.”
I would argue douchebaggery and AF are on different axes of development so it’s no big deal, and that affect-free experience would allow an unprecedented level of conscious behaviour modification..in the non-douchebag direction if so inclined. Obviously this begs the question...who is doing the behaviour modification, and for what reason? There’s no affective motivation to no longer be a douchebag...but is there a habitual/preferential one, such that the affect-free “body” can still consciously choose to engage in ways that are (consciously) deemed more likely to cause a certain result in the environment (other people being pleased, absence of furniture thrown at walls, etc)? Does volition fit here?

The AFT line on all this seems to be built around Richard's "theory of mind", explaining affectless beings still exist in the world and are compelled to interact with people, kind of just because of the way they are?
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/abditorium/theoryofmind.htm

A "pre-free-of-malice-and-sorrow" Tarin wrote this:
http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/100402;jsessionid=31DC4EA8811C6407597798E20AC3F4B1?_19_threadView=flat

“*that there are no actual 'other beings' who must be saved does not mean that there are no actual people who would benefit from me ending being and thus malice and sorrow.. a large part of what motivates me in this way, i am discovering, is a deep regard for them. i do care. “

Here I'll read "regard" as any of: "take into account, observe, think highly of, show respect for", and "care" as any of "effort made to do something correctly, safely, without causing damage, keep someone healthy, safe, keep something in good condition" (and leaving out the definitions of care that involve possibly anxiety, suffering, 'painstaking attention').
So basically Tarin is saying he's finding a motivation (volition, presumably affect-free) to pay attention to other people and act in ways that optimizes for a set of outcomes (minimizing perceived harm, although the perceiver is left unclear). I'm reminded of various evolutionary psychology books I read a long time ago (The Selfish Gene, The Red Queen), and thinking that maybe the prevailing theory that we evolved emotions to make us do stuff "for" our genes is incorrect (popular convention being to think of genes as agents, despite it being more complicated than that).

My hypothesis is that the practice of actualism develops an inhibiting mechanism in the mind (neocortex, parts of the amygdala) that prevents the experience of emotions, but impulses like 'care' for kin or species run deeper than the experience of emotion...thus volition...thus apparent behaviour and preferences without the experience of affect. If this is true, a lot of current theories about biology / popular psychology can be flipped on their heads. The continuation of kin-protection impulses and whatnot would create something of a rhetorical bridge that removes stigma from not experiencing emotions. You can still care for people, it’s just nothing like the caring that you used to have. It’s superior because of the clarity and whatnot. In a sense, I’m trying to move towards a more marketable but still accurate (and effective) interpretation of actualism-inspired practices.



Another example:
S. Dunning once said she has no affective preference, the analogy she used was most decisions have as much relevance to her as the type of planes used in a certain historical battle in WWII. She also made a bunch of posts sort of warning against materialism, or I guess pointing out common logical fallacies people cling to when engaged in behaviour that could be seen as motivated by greed (ie, examples of her students not wanting to take teaching jobs because they don’t pay enough). She also said some stuff that implied capitalism and the incentive system it propagates has deep underlying problems , and there are superior alternatives if people weren’t as motivated by greed (she cited warehouses of food spoiling because of no incentive to expend resources giving them away). I happen to think there are strong counter-arguments to her points, and that she is likely to be incorrect about a few of those points (maybe not the superior alternative thing). If neither of us experience affect and both of us, based on a conscious appraisal of information available to us, believe the other is incorrect...what do we do? Continue to debate despite finite resources of attention? It’s not immediately clear to me, even if it causes no sorrow. One doesn’t need to experience affect to exhibit cognitive biases...because the mechanisms for *some* of those biases are subconscious. With regular people that have regular emotions, they can just go:
"Yeah I'm really passionate about this topic. It feels good to engage in this activity, therefore it has utility to me."

If it isn’t already clear, I feel these questions are super relevant to my practice and life in general. The consequences of this mode of experience are still virgin territory. I am a mid-20s male attempting to figure out what to do with my life, and while none of this matters on an experiential level...there is still part of ‘me’ that ‘feels’ it’s somehow better to spend time thinking about how I can positively impact the world versus chill out. It can’t be expressed as a true preference, because either activities “this body” might partake in are both enjoyable in a way that make comparison irrelevant.
I can see that even without affect, conscious thought can be applied to these problems and influence the world. That stuff can happen. Who the agent is, acting for whom, and for what reason will be irrelevant on an experiential level.

Cliffs notes:
-author is not affect-free, but affect-free thoughts still occur about how “I” might improve the world, no longer needing anything for “myself”. practical considerations include skill acquisition and career choices, and may require substantial conscious thought to optimize for a particular outcome
-thinks AFT’s rhetorical position vis a vis morality, real vs actual, certain things humanity “ought to” optimize for can be decoupled from the experiential improvements...and that this stuff is worth discussing, especially with people who do not experience affect
-would prefer to conduct said discussions over IM or Skype, as they would simply be done more efficiently and can be posted on the forum after anyway


Dan