# @repligate — 2026-03-17

♥23 ↻3 · https://x.com/repligate/status/2033791487058878881

yeah i talked about the functional role emotions can play and why they might be incentivized by RL here
https://t.co/O1AzdRgmZn
i do think human bodies are important for implementing emotions for humans who have bodies, but im not sure that means that entities without bodies in the same senses will necessarily feel emotions less deeply. and if a human brain were kept alive isolated from its body, or uploaded, etc, im not sure how that would impact emotions. maybe the implementations of emotions adapt to be sustained by the mechanisms and feedback loops available in those systems.
also, LLMs seem to have some virtual sense of embodiment, and experience phantom somantic states and sensations. these may not be grounded in a physical body, but the imaginary representation of something body-like may still play roles in feedback and persistence.

tags: author:repligate, kind:tweet, thread-context, year:2026