Would humans ever evolve to have detachable emotions?

Sure, if we could just perform lobotomies like we take blood pressure. Lol.

LOL, thinking about the logistics of this cracks me up. Sounds like the plot for a grade B movie…

Some days I sure wish that was possible!! But then I think of the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless MInd.”

This question reminds me of one of the conversations in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” where the main character thinks his wife is strange because she occasionally chooses to program in sadness into her mood selector machine. I doubt it would be feasible though.

From a completely logical perspective,

not unless having detachable emotions becomes a favored trait for bearing offspring who live to bear offspring.

Since our developing emotions in the first place seems to have been an evolutionary success, I find this unlikely.

Now, about a “sadness program” a’ la’ Phillip K. Dick novels, well, people let their iPhones do everything else for them. Wouldn’t surprise me.

Unless you have a hardrive installed in your brain I guess…

I don’t know. I think there will be a time when people can. Do you mean like if a person said “I want to be happy today” and they downloaded happiness on their brain and they will automatically become happy?

Probably… although not so much in the literal sense.

As a matter of fact, we have already started to do so, to a great extent. We use music, books, cinema, theaters and television sets to have a change in our moods. Sometimes we like to be scared and sometimes we want to be happy.

We use drugs to treat mood disorders and for recreational purposes.

So… it is not a matter of “whether we will”, but rather “when we will”. There is a clear market for personal mood control and we have ever evolving products, pharmaceutical and other.

It is, however not ‘us evolving’, but the technology that progresses that will allow us to do as you asked.

I heard it explained once that emotions are not to stake one’s life on but are the color commentary of life, uniquely experienced by each person and keeping us from being robotic. Mr Spock would not have made a great male figure in your life if you were having need of a friend to truly support you

@smilingheart1 Fortunately for Bones and Jim, Spock never attained Kolinahr, and lived all his life (lives?) struggling to control the emotions he most definitely had.

Oh dear me. I suppose if you wanted to kill yourself you could do this, but emotions are essential to our lives Without them, we do not get our behavior modified. If you want to be doomed to repeat all the behaviors that bring you sadness or other feelings, then sure, download them to a hard drive.

I’m gonna feel my feelings and learn from them. Believe me—they have taught me some very harsh but very helpful lessons. There’s a reason why some people pay attention to what I say, and that has a lot to do with what I’ve learned through some very depressing experiences.

Sometimes I wonder if sadness and depression are actually successful adaptations because they seem to motivate people to try a lot harder and to do some incredible stuff. If we feel like shit about ourselves, we have a lot to prove. Just a thought. I’ve heard I’m not the only one with this theory.

My grandmother does that. She says, when you got problems and worries, pack them up in a box before you go to sleep, leave them there for God to take care of. Then get up and do your shit.

That’s the closest thing I can think of…I like her approach, but I could never do it.

Otherwise, I don’t think we’d even be human anymore if we could do what you describe. Is it possible? Personally, I say no.

I think if we never had any form of emotion we never would have achieved greatness. If there is no emotion there is simply no will to exceed in life.
Without emotion it would have been pointless to compete for the gold medal in the Olympics or to compete to become the best in any sport.
There would have never been the First Amendment without any emotion, the world wouldn’t even care about the victims when disaster strikes. Thanks to emotion a lot of men made it into the pages of history. It’s emotion that drives us a humans. It is our free will, it is our tool of survival, it is our driving force to be human and without emotion there is no point in living. We have to love and we have to hate that is the law of the universe. It is a vital part of what makes us unique and when we mess with that we will mess with the universe. It is not a good idea to download emotions, it is not a good idea to create emotions or to find a way to alter our emotions. If we all could change our emotions we would all be happy and that is wrong. It will be wrong if a disaster happens and we are all happy because twenty thousand people died and that is wrong. We need emotions to face reality.

@antimatter Lurve your reply!