Dr. Martin Picard

feeling really excited about something, right?

A new idea, a new person.

And then, you know, you have butterflies and, you know, there are emotions going on in your body.

I suspect emotions, the best kind of first principles definition of an emotion is energy in motion.

And we can talk more about what we experience in terms of energy, but I think it's pretty clear we don't experience energy per se.

You don't have a direct experience, an empirical access to how much fat you have in your body.

There are hormones that communicate and how much energy is in your liver or how much heat is in something.

What you feel, what you experience is a change in energy.

When energy moves, you feel that, right?

And I suspect that's what emotions are.

There's like a movement of energy, something shifts, and then you experience that.

A bit like if you're in a car and your eyes are closed and you're going constant speed, right?

Kinetic energy.

You have no way of knowing from first experience if you're going at 100 miles an hour, 10 miles an hour, or if you're standing still.

These are very different energetic quantities, right?

The kinetic energy.

What you do feel is acceleration and deceleration.

You feel the delta in energy.

The change in energy, acceleration, deceleration.

Same with temperature.