> interpreting these emotions as human-like is a clear blunder. How do you tell the shoggoth likes or dislikes something, feels desperation or joy? Because it said so? How do you know these words mean the same for us?

I think you took it backwards

those vectors are exactly what it says - it affects the output and we can measure it

and it's exactly what it means for us because that's what it's measured against

and the main problem isn't "is its emotion same as ours", but "does it apply our emotion as emotion"