/sci/ - Science & Math

What is love?

>>1848844

But they're collectively made up of smaller organisms called-- get this-- cells.

These cells, at one point in biological history would have never formed colonies, but would have eaten each other instead.

There is a sense of cooperation, call it love if you like, that binds together multicellular organisms and the communities they form. There is a glue, be it physical or metaphysical.

Just because some harmless scientific illiterates who like humanities and enjoy lots of sex choose to have some rhetorical differences from you, at least you can agree that both of you have an unbounded admiration (CALL IT LOVE IF YOU LIKE) for the universe and its workings.

Also, you're both naturally-occurring organisms that sprung forth from the initial chaos of the big bang.

Shit kicks ass. And I love that. Maybe you should too. Honest love for science trumps a sense of obligation to do it any day. Whether or not it's the glue that holds the universe together is subjective anyway. Everything holds everything together.

alsobabydon'thurtme

Love is something that is perceived but does not exist (unless you call the neurological interactions responsible for it "love", but thats like calling certain neurons "color").

>>1848889

thank you. i needed that cleared up.

>>1848889

Well scientifically speaking love is when a colony of trillions of cells finds another colony of trillions of cells to make a third colony of trillions of cells.

But it also ensures that species smart enough to refuse sex out of instinct (Such as ourselves) still reproduce and have sex out of, I dunno, love for some reason. And I was going to say something else here.

Oh right.

Without love sufficiently intelligent species would stagnate and decay and die, and the Universe would be permanently stuck at a set level of complexity, the point in sentient evolution where the sentients are no longer guided by instincts. Since the Big Bang the complexity of the Universe has been increasing exponentially.

We are the machinery of the Cosmos pondering its origins, the greatest algorithm ever made.

Without love there's no Technological Singularity because we all die :3

>>1848988

>Without love sufficiently intelligent species would stagnate and decay and die, and the Universe would be permanently stuck at a set level of complexity

the other points are interesting, but that one i think is untrue. the universe has increased in complexity because, since the big bang, the universe has been cooling, allowing for particles to clump together and remain stable. and as the universe cools and cools, particles of larger and larger complexity are able to remain stable without breaking apart.

>>1848922

Reductionism is silly. It's perceived because it does exist. In the form of neurological phenomena, yes, but unless you're an extremely dry person there's no reason that should discourage you.

I personally love the neurological phenomena that arise when my collective organic matter thrusts in and out of other collective organic matter.

Dehumanize or reduce it to phenomena all you want, that doesn't make it any less real.

Sure it's vague and isn't a specific event, but rather a general observed behavior, but unless you're a total square who needs a label for everything, that general event should be good enough for you.

Love doesn't exist, it is never percieved. It's just dumb people thinking their lust or hidden egoism has some sort of deeper meaning.

>>1849025

I mean complexity in the way information is stored.

Billions of years in which is was just stored in atomic structures, then life appeared.
A few billions of years later, sentient life.
A few hundreds of thousands of years later, books.
A few hundreds of years later, the computer.
A few decades later, the Internet.

The universe has been increasing in complexity because of this.

WE'RE THE ENGINES OF THE COSMOS WOOGIE BOOGIE

>>1849055

Aww, look. The cute little cynic who's never experienced love thinks can speak for others without evidence.

Tell me, have you ever loved another human being so much that you felt the need to forgo instinctual behavior and your best interests to insure that their life ends up a little bit easier?

Because that's love.

And you might fiddle with semantics and say that I only act in their best interests rather than mine because I'm selfish and enjoy the good feeling I get from helping them more than I enjoy having my best interests fulfilled.

And you'd be right.

But guess what? That selfish selflessness is called love. It's easily observable, even in this shallow age of self-entitlement and Altruism-deprived Randian revivalists, and no amount of infinitely picky logic and spinning of semantics is going to successfully disprove it.

Stop saying phenomena don't exist just because you can reduce them to slightly more fundamental physiological phenomena.

It's stupid, counterintuitive, pointless, depressing, and makes you look like a sociopath.

>>1849055

Would you like a hug? Has anybody hugged you before?

I think you need a hug :3

>>1849116

i don't think he actually meant the phenomena of love doesn't exist, he's just noting how we aggrandize it to a point of absurdity because of how powerfully it affects our feelings. no one could claim that love doesn't exist, because 98% of humans' subjective experience disagrees with that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that love isn't just an extreme case of emotion, in which feelings of lust is combined with the instinct to nurture and protect.

>>1849157

Stop putting words in his mouth. If that's what he meant, then that's what he should've said.

Yes emotions can be taken too far. No shit. Doesn't mean we shouldn't have them.

Drink responsibly.

Love responsibly.

Live responsibly.

It's all good.

>>1849235

>Doesn't mean we shouldn't have them.

you're wrong. research indicates that we should NOT have them. google is your friend.

>It's all good.

that's wrong too. you're on a roll.

>>1849235

but all trolling aside, your bung is just hurt because you want love to have a meaning beyond mate retention, and it hurts you when someone demeans it.

>>1849235

sounds like your bung is hurt. you want love to have a meaning beyond mate retention. i guess it hurts when someone demeans something you hold sacred.

and how your point relates to fatherly advice about being responsible, i have no idea.

>>1849391

Sorry, objective "research" never gives answers to subjective problems like whether or not we should have emotions. Things like that are usually opinion (read: emotions) held by idiots like you who make sweeping judgments based on their own limited, shitty experiences with life.

Sucks that your biggest aspiration must be to be a machine.

Humans seem to be advancing so that they can relieve suffering (or at least standardize it) and experience a life more abundant with the emotion of enjoyment.

Pure pragmatists like you only want things to do and be done over and over again for no discernible reason.

Reason depends on emotion. If there are no emotions to be satisfied, then life is kinda dull. You want to kiss the emotion of curiosity bye-bye? Then no more science. Science is done to satisfy the human emotion of curiosity, regardless of how dry or objective it seems, the very basis of its existence is to satisfy people.

How about love? Hate? Preferences of any kind?

What robotic, reptilian sociopaths like you fail to realize is that emotions are necessary for progress because decision-making, which is inherently biased, is necessary for progress.

As for the "it's all good" statement, you know damn well what I meant. Stop taking casual conversation literally and pull the stick out of your ass.

"love" is simply a mating instinct. nothing less, nothing more.

>>1849444

emotional, irrational, sensitive, and delusional. you're a person who has failed to make it in a dog eat dog world, so you deal with your inadequacy by criticizing the system that you couldn't deal with. using the words "reptilian" and "sociopathic" only makes more obvious the chip on your shoulder.

>>1849235

Good game resorting to shit like "sounds like your bung is hurt" rather than a real argument.

The advice about responsibility, since apparently you can't draw conclusions that aren't spelled out literally and riddled with citations because you're fucking inhuman (which is good in your boring, standardized, machinated book of life's rules, I guess), was basically that it's okay to have emotions if you handle them maturely. That means not hurting other creatures unnecessarily and pursuing noble causes. Subjective shit, I know, but nothing would get done if it weren't for subjective decision making, now would it?

Again, if you want to simplify human emotions into biological phenomena, be my guest. You're absolutely right from your purely scientific perspective, but you'll never enjoy life like that.

>>1849461

I'm not delusional. I know about determinism and biology and all that good stuff. I know that if you want to be a complete robot you can give up trying to understand other people and just eat them the first chance you get.

I know that if you want to be a complete robot you can reduce everything into this or that behavioral label. Okay. So it's an instinct. Big deal. I never said that love was written in the stars or made of pixie dust. I just said that it's part of the human experience and that I enjoy it. Oh boy, 99.99999% of everyone in existence must be failures by your ridiculous standards, including many of the people who built the world that your dry ass seems to be taking for granted.

And I'm far too young to be a person who has "failed to make it", so good job on making more sweeping judgments without any real observations of me as a person to back them up.

I'm just an intelligent person who realizes that emotions are part of the fabric of this universe, the fabric of me, and that deeming them unnecessary is a subjective opinion that emotions themselves gave birth too.

Have you stopped to consider that you wouldn't exist if it weren't for the emotional needs that your parents once experienced?

Again, good day. Enjoy alienating anyone who might step into your life with your inhumane ideas. Guess what? Human cooperation (via altruistic EMOTIONS that our brains are hard-wired to produce, meaning, you can't control them completely or make them disappear) is necessary for scientific pursuits to continue.

Quit with your troll arguments shaking on top of a flimsy foundation of adhoms and your angry, brooding, inhumane dog-eat-dog logic.

>>1849484

young, stupid, and full of energy to argue your point. one day you'll look back and realize your philosophies were based on your irrational emotional compulsion to be with others, and your logical justifications of them are just you trying to make sense of your internal conflict between what you wish were true (that mommy wuvs you), and what you know to be true. no amount of wordiness and pseudo-philosophies will fix that.

>>1849562

You are so incredibly butthurt.

You need to get yourself a girlfriend.

>>1849562

What I wish were true? That mommy "wuvs" me? Need to result to childish misspellings to make your point now? My mother does love me. It's not what I wish were true, it's what is true. And yes, her love can be reduced to biological and behavioral phenomena, but that doesn't mean that it isn't there and that the fact that universe gave birth to a world where such a chemical bond between two people could exist isn't amazing. Having realized that I'm young and not some however-old failure like you initially envisioned me to be (without ANY evidence at all, mind you), you've resorted to MORE SWEEPING JUDGMENTS about my relationship with my mother. Do you not get how unrealistic and unscientific you're being? You're ideas are just cynical, not at all based on an objective analysis of observations, but rather a negative analysis of observations (very limited observations, too). And you didn't even have the humility to admit you were were wrong about your initial assumptions. You just converted your insults from ones geared towards an older person to ones geared toward
a younger person. STILL BASED ON ASSUMPTIONS, which are based on emotions, which you argue shouldn't exist despite their being the catalyst behind all human ambition.

You're not actually refuting my points. You're just being a dick, so I'm going to spell out what I'd like you to do to prove yourself correct.

1. Prove to me, with a coherent argument and evidence backing it up, that science is not driven by human emotions like curiosity and that the idea of "progress" isn't driven by an emotional desire to end suffering.

2. Tell me why, with a coherent argument and evidence backing it up, eliminating emotion wouldn't somehow render us unconscious beings with no particular desire to do anything besides some mundane specialized task we were made to do (machines working to satisfy no emotion).

Without goals, humans would just sit around and starve. It's a simple fact of life that everything we do is because we're happiness junkies. Love is but one facet of that, along with eating and self-improvement. If you don't like love, consider all the other basic human drives. Why are they any better? Why should people strive to prevent the suffering of others if it's only based on emotion? Why should I eat if it only prolongs my meaningless life? Why should anyone do anything if it's just to get a jolt of dopamine? You're just singling love out.

cont.

3. Tell me why, with a coherent argument and evidence backing it up, you consider me to be an "idiot" despite my having proven to be smarter than the majority of kids my age and the supermajority of kids in my country just because I stand behind the philosophical idea that emotions are a necessary part of human existence (as they are catalysts for ambition, innovation, and cooperation) and because I've decided that I enjoy being loved by others.

4. Tell me how, with a coherent explanation, you manage get through your day pretending you're somehow better than everyone else because you've convinced yourself that an integral part of your existence (and the driving force behind your half-baked ideas) are unnecessary and that the world is a big bad scary place, despite all the love and cooperation that is evident in everything from the architecture around you to the computer you're typing on.

Sorry, Monsieur Troll, you're not going to convince me of your cynical, self-degradating ideas through these hastily-typed, presumptuous replies that ignore nearly all of the points I make.

>>1848844
How an starfish love one another? The don't even have an anus!

>>1849718
I have an anus, but I am unable to find true love

>>1849718

It can be based on mutual interest :3