Love

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AuthorTopic: Love
Agent
Member # 618
Profile Homepage #0
Answer the following, unless you're TM, because that'll probably result in another one of my threads being locked.

Do you believe in true love?
If so:
How do you define it?

Do you think you can love more than once?
Or do you think that there is only one true love out there - someone who you will never forget?

Toe: Nor me, but y'know, it's sometimes interesting to see the responses you get.

[ Wednesday, August 02, 2006 14:21: Message edited by: *Yawn* ]
Posts: 1487 | Registered: Sunday, February 10 2002 08:00
Agent
Member # 3349
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I can't see this going well...

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And everybody say....Yatta!
Posts: 1287 | Registered: Thursday, August 14 2003 07:00
Infiltrator
Member # 5991
Profile Homepage #2
Love is overrated and tends to ruin your life.

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George Bush is a Nazi - Eric Cartmen

I'm not as think you stoned I am
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Posts: 462 | Registered: Tuesday, June 21 2005 07:00
? Man, ? Amazing
Member # 5755
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I would rather see this in a poll format employing check boxes. That said; Yes, unconditional, yes, no, yes.

Why on earth would you be interested in the answers from this subset of the human population?

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quote:
Originally written by Kelandon:

Well, I'm at least pretty sure that Salmon is losing.


Posts: 4114 | Registered: Monday, April 25 2005 07:00
Lifecrafter
Member # 4682
Profile #4
If I had any other parents, I would say I didn't believe in true love, but, well...

How I define it also ties into my parents. See, my parents dated in high school, then broke up. My mom married someone else, and my dad dated a few other people. After my mom divorced the other guy, she got back in touch with my dad. They always say since they know what it's like to live without the other, they're going to make everything work. I think that true love is knowing that no matter how bad things get, they'd be worse if the other wasn't there.

I think you can love more than once. It will be different but still love. Honestly, with so many people on the planet, there's got to be more than one person out there.

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Posts: 834 | Registered: Thursday, July 8 2004 07:00
Law Bringer
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Love is a chemical stimulus for reproduction, but that doesn't make it any less real.

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Posts: 1556 | Registered: Sunday, November 20 2005 08:00
Agent
Member # 3364
Profile Homepage #6
Yes.
There is no greater love than this, that one would lay down their life for a friend. Has nothing to do with sex.
Absolutely.
With the right mindset, you can have a true love for anyone. Finding someone with the same mindset towards you, now that's the hard part.

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"Even the worst Terror from Hell can be transformed to a testimony from Heaven!" - Rev. David Wood 6\23\05

"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can." - John Wesley
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Tuesday, August 19 2003 07:00
BANNED
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quote:
Love is overrated and tends to ruin your life.
IMAGE(http://files.myopera.com/yourblankpage/albums/19427/poor%20emo%20kid.jpg)

quote:
Love is a chemical stimulus for reproduction, but that doesn't make it any less real.
Oh, look. An evolutionary psychologist.

See, thing with that is, it sure is nice-- but it's a platitude. Sure, love will trigger chemical reactions in people. Then again, so will tons of things that could not have possibly had a chance to arise from an evolutionary standpoint. Why take care of elders, when their capacity to reproduce has clearly ended years ago? Do we do it on the basis that we ourselves will someday be in that same position? But heck-- in that position, we too will be unable to spread our seeds anymore. So why? Or hell, why did mankind make deities? It has not particularly HELPED speed reproduction along.

I guess what I'm saying is this: Sure, we are who we are because of things that happened to us. Duh. But at the same time, claiming that it is genetic makes no sense, and even if it is, a great number of the behaviors we exhibit (again, assuming that they are genetic in origin) serve no immediate purpose, thereby proving that genetics isn't actually a laser-guided beacon immediately pointing us in the direction of reproductive paradise.

...

As for "true love"-- whatever love is, it's certainly real. People experience it, people talk and write about it, people live and die for it. Ultimately, any and all loves will only be as real as human beings are-- love is well and truly subjective, as it tends to only have any affect whatsoever on the subject: us. Did it come from the environments our ancestors came from? Is it genetic? And what does any of that matter? If you suddenly found out that love was not a metaphysical reality, would you fall into shock and come to some otherworldly realization that all of life is truly directed towards a higher understanding that surpasses all of human interaction which you have been raised and immersed in?

Hardly.

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Posts: 6936 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Agent
Member # 5814
Profile #8
Save it for your scenarios, TM.

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quote:
Originally written by Kelandon
Well, I'm at least pretty

Posts: 1115 | Registered: Sunday, May 15 2005 07:00
Agent
Member # 2820
Profile #9
Though Tyran acknowledged love as an effect of ultimately scientific and physical reactions, his assertion that it still feels real makes his viewpoint more sentimental than you make it out to be. Caring for the elderly is not so maladaptive as to counteract our strengths or to kill us off because it saps so much of our resources. Thus, as a behavior, it can persevere.

Love in a traditional sense is extremely beneficial to the proliferation of the family and the bloodline. The newer, modern concept of family, love, and marriage is no longer completely consistent with that, but I suppose old instincts can adapt to new situations, can't they?

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Thuryl: I mean, most of us don't go around consuming our own bodily fluids, no matter how delicious they are.
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Alorael: War and violence would end if we all had each other's babies!
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Posts: 1415 | Registered: Thursday, March 27 2003 08:00
Law Bringer
Member # 4153
Profile Homepage #10
quote:
Originally written by Garrison:

I suppose old instincts can adapt to new situations, can't they?
If they can't, we're doomed. :P

I don't know what to call love anymore... I think I'm in it, but I don't know how to define it. Ain't metaphysics a blast?

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Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice.

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Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00
Infiltrator
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This true love crap can work for some people and not for others. For me, I'm perfectly happy staying out of it. But if I do fall for it, I would'nt be able to do it twice, I'm too loyal and can get pretty attached to people.

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Posts: 615 | Registered: Friday, May 3 2002 07:00
Shock Trooper
Member # 6908
Profile #12
quote:
Originally written by Cairo Jim:

I would'nt be able to do it twice, I'm too loyal and can get pretty attached to people.
Write that down somewhere, since once you'll be very surprised, when you read it again and see, that it were you, who said that. :)

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radix: +2 nicothodes: +1 salmon:+1
Posts: 203 | Registered: Tuesday, March 14 2006 08:00
Lifecrafter
Member # 6388
Profile #13
quote:
Originally written by This:

Save it for your scenarios, TM.
Up yours, whoever the hell you are.

I'm genuinely surprised to see TM posting something insightful on this.

My opinion is that love is what happens when two people like each other and manage not to repel each other before they get permanently attached. I don't think there's anything deeper than that.

[ Wednesday, August 02, 2006 22:52: Message edited by: The Worst Man Ever ]
Posts: 794 | Registered: Tuesday, October 11 2005 07:00
...b10010b...
Member # 869
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As anyone who's played tennis knows, love is what you have when you have nothing else.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
Profile #15
I also think TM's post was very reasonable. What I might say though is that it is attacking an extreme version of evolutionary psychology, and it wouldn't be fair to tar the whole endeavor with the same brush. Not everyone who looks for evolutionary explanations for behavior necessarily assumes that evolution is perfectly efficient, or assumes that evolutionary efficiency is easy to assess.

Of course, taking a less dogmatic view on those two issues tends to make evolutionary explanations less satisfactory as explanations. Since you're always making retrodictions anyway, your explanations inevitably tend to degenerate into mere commentary. That acknowledgement probably isn't made often enough; but even if it is made, I think evolutionary psychology can still find lots of things worth saying.

Also, the original remark did acknowledge love as a real phenomenon, and not just a misnomer for pheremones. I'd say that no amount of evolutionary utility really has any implications for ontology. Many organisms rely on gravity for reproduction or even survival, but gravity is hardly a figment of evolution.

Speaking of which, Alec's theory of love reminds me of Aristotle's theory of gravity, which was more or less, 'Things fall because it is their nature to fall'. Hard to argue with as far as it goes, but is that really the best we can do?

(Okay, that's an oversimplification of Aristotle, who had this whole picture of the natural places of things in concentric spheres of the four elements; but in comparison to Newton, let alone Einstein, it's not a big one.)

[ Thursday, August 03, 2006 03:03: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ]

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
...b10010b...
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quote:
Originally written by Student of Trinity:

Also, the original remark did acknowledge love as a real phenomenon, and not just a misnomer for pheremones. I'd say that no amount of evolutionary utility really has any implications for ontology. Many organisms rely on gravity for reproduction or even survival, but gravity is hardly a figment of evolution.
So you're implying that love might be written into the laws of physics? That rustling sound you just heard was my right eyebrow disappearing above my hairline.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Loyal Underling
Member # 13
Profile #17
I am a hopeless romantic.

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[i]Great Potato[/i]
"Unless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth; for if such is their meaning, I admit that I am eloquent." -- Socrates
Posts: 126 | Registered: Thursday, September 27 2001 07:00
Law Bringer
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Yay hopeless romanticism! Where would we be without it?

quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

As anyone who's played tennis knows, love is what you have when you have nothing else.
*facepalm*

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Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice.

I hate undead. I really, really, really, really hate undead. With a passion.
Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00
Shaper
Member # 3442
Profile Homepage #19
As much as I want to quote Thuryl's tennis line again, I'll refrain.

I do believe in true love. Although the phrasing of it makes me frown. I believe in unconditional love too. And as for a definition... if poets have been trying for centuries to do it, I'm not going to be able to do so in this one post.

I also think there are different kinds of love, and so of course we can love more than once. Ont he same note, I think that you can only have one "true" love (whatever that means - I'm having difficulty finding the right words). What I'm trying to get at is that I think we can only love someone completely once, but we can get close to it at other times...

Oh, I honestly don't know. I think I'm in love. I'm almost sure of it, and right now, I can't imagine not being with the person in question. But I'm not blind enough to say it will always be this way.

*shrugs*

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And when you want to Live
How do you start?
Where do you go?
Who do you need to know?


*Name by Slarty, so blame him if it's filthy...
Posts: 2864 | Registered: Monday, September 8 2003 07:00
Agent
Member # 3364
Profile Homepage #20
When love is true, caring and commitment do not waiver, even when feelings do.

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"Even the worst Terror from Hell can be transformed to a testimony from Heaven!" - Rev. David Wood 6\23\05

"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can." - John Wesley
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Tuesday, August 19 2003 07:00
By Committee
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Profile #21
I don't know that there's such a thing as true love - I think it's more like something that can be measured in volume, like, say, alcohol. And like alcohol, too much love without the right forethought or precaution can lead to woe, and then a heck of a "hangover.".

It's always true love until it's not, unless you weren't ever in love in the first place. But then, what would be the point?
Posts: 2242 | Registered: Saturday, April 10 2004 07:00
Agent
Member # 5814
Profile #22
quote:
Originally written by The Worst Man Ever:

quote:
Originally written by This:

Save it for your scenarios, TM.
Up yours, whoever the hell you are.

I'm genuinely surprised to see TM posting something insightful on this.

quote:
Originally written by Student of Trinity:

I also think TM's post was very reasonable.
I certainly was suprised and I'm sure that if I cared enough to closely examine what I just read, I would have thought it reasonable too. That was why I made a joke about the fact that TM's posts are usually either one-liners about mothers or long dissections of Christian theology, while his scenarios are usually in the same style as his post.

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quote:
Originally written by Kelandon
Well, I'm at least pretty

Posts: 1115 | Registered: Sunday, May 15 2005 07:00
? Man, ? Amazing
Member # 5755
Profile #23
quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

quote:
Originally written by Student of Trinity:

Also, the original remark did acknowledge love as a real phenomenon, and not just a misnomer for pheremones. I'd say that no amount of evolutionary utility really has any implications for ontology. Many organisms rely on gravity for reproduction or even survival, but gravity is hardly a figment of evolution.
So you're implying that love might be written into the laws of physics? That rustling sound you just heard was my right eyebrow disappearing above my hairline.

Isn't there some constant that is missing from the UToE?

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quote:
Originally written by Kelandon:

Well, I'm at least pretty sure that Salmon is losing.


Posts: 4114 | Registered: Monday, April 25 2005 07:00
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
Profile #24
quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

So you're implying that love might be written into the laws of physics?
No such luck. Just saying that some things can be evolutionarily useful because they are important factors in reality; it's not necessarily the other way around.

Having said that, from a hard AI perspective love must be some particular kind of pattern, or property of some class of patterns, or something like that. As such, sure, it would be an emergent phenomenon of physics. Whether that counts as being 'written into' physics would seem to depend on how one conceives of the writing.

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We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00

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