Good point, forgot it, deserves reprint
While looking for hrefs to connect with the moth infrared sense stuff, I ran across this item from three years ago. The main point, moods are the error signal, is a sharp observation. I forgot it after writing it, which is the unfortunate aspect of writing.

It needs to be rehashed.

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This "scientist" thinks he has found something interesting.

Headline: Moods may have an evolutionary purpose

"Mood mostly reflects how outcomes differ from expectations, so whether things are going better or worse than what's expected," said Dr Eldar from the University College London. "Mood also affects how we perceive outcomes, so if we're in a good mood, outcomes seem better than when we're in a bad mood."

True but not interesting or new.

First, EVERYTHING in a living creature is "outcomes differ from expectations". This applies equally to bacteria and bacteriologists. All sensory mechanisms detect the departure of input value from a template or baseline value. At some levels in a sensory system the template is simply the value at the previous instant, so the nerve (or other mechanism in plants and protists) is reading dv/dt. More complex creatures form more complex templates, based on previous seasons or previous days or imagined pictures of future seasons and future days.

Moods are the total delta between current situation and template. Moods are the error signal in a feedback loop. If current situation is close enough to template, contented mood drives low action. If current minus template is large, bad mood drives big action. Mood is another word for tropism.

The most complex mammals have the most complex abilities. (1) We can intentionally adjust our own template. When a male elephant or a male human figures out that no females want him, he adjusts his template. He stops wasting energy on actions that normally attract females, and turns Hardass. (2) We can remotely adjust templates in other animals. A cat nonchalantly licking his paw, or a human army building a dummy invasion of Calais, is creating a template in his victim, preparing for a Gotcha.

Beyond the individual, an entire population has templates that can be adjusted. In very recent years biologists have finally understood what Grandma meant. Epigene switches can adjust the entire population's template when BIG conditions change.

How about "evolutionary purpose"? First, there's no such thing as "evolution". Populations of living things adjust to conditions by moving or dying or altering genomic templates. Moving and dying don't require a theory of "evolution". They're obvious. The genomic switches are also obvious in terms of consequences, but the underlying mechanism wasn't seen because evolutionists are not complex enough to adjust their own templates.

Evolutionists are still holding onto their old template of "random" mutations driving permanent changes in otherwise fixed genes. "Random" doesn't exist, and the epigene switches are sufficient to explain observed changes.

So the real "evolutionary" question moves to a different level. Why don't evolutionists have moods? Or why does their mood remain contented when their observations are so dramatically far from their template?

Best guess: Observation is not the input and theory is not the template. An evolutionist's template is Maximum Status And Maximum Grants. Input agrees with template, so mood is contented. All is well.

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  ¶ 6:20 AM