
Beyond reason: the mathematical equation for unconditional love - LeanCas
https://sinapticas.com/2019/08/29/beyond-reason-the-mathematical-equation-for-unconditional-love/
======
PascLeRasc
I'm not sure when this happened for me, but I noticed recently that I don't,
or maybe it's _can 't_, care about hypothetical big-picture philosophical
waxing like this. It just doesn't mean anything - I can't extract any useful
information from the text, it might as well be Greek. I used to be into
reading metaphysics and thinking about things like this as a college freshman,
but now a few years out of school I just don't care about trying to fit
mathematical models to intangible human behaviors. I don't care what model you
think governs the world, I want to see some statistics.

Has anyone else gone through a similar change?

~~~
proverbialbunny
No. I go in a different direction:

I started with the basic treating variables as placeholders for concepts. So,
for me, it's asking, "What does this symbol represent?" I realize due to
qualia, everyone's experiences vary, so we can both call x unconditional love,
but also understand x equals two different, yet similar, things between us.

When I started exploring philosophy I started getting recursively meta. Asking
questions like, how does this category of things work?

But then as time went on, I started going in the opposite direction, and feel
that it has yielded more fruit: If every singular thing in the universe is
actually a set of ideas, then how can I break x up into multiple pieces? How
do I label/name those pieces? What awareness does that increased resolution
give me?

By playing with this abstraction/decomposition paradigm, awareness can be
increased in both directions to ~inf.

This, as a side effect, increases one kind of intelligence. I frame this as
metaphysics, though, I admit, I am unaware if this is an incorrect way to
label it.

After all, labels (ie abstractions) are nothing more than our mind drawing
lines around objects in the world, like the lines in a coloring book. It's our
mind doing it, so we get to choose how we draw those lines. If someone wants
to label love in one way and I choose to label it in another way, that's
completely fine. The beauty in it, to me, is seeing how others see/perceive
the world.

When I read a text book, I'm not just looking to learn a new topic or further
my knowledge of a topic. I'm looking into how the author sees the world. This,
to me, is far more fun than simply learning the topic. I feel the average
person scratches the surface of what there is to explore.

So do I get bored of it? No. But it seems I'm exploring it in a different way
than you, and that possibly explains why. To me, learning is like socializing.
I get to see others in what they present, and that is beautiful.

~~~
PascLeRasc
I'm sorry, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. I have no idea what you
said between "I go in a different direction" and "When I read a text book...".
That might mean I'm just not intelligent enough, but phrases like "awareness
can be increased in both directions to ~inf" have the same over-generalizing
feel as astrology predictions.

------
AnimalMuppet
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that if you're thinking about
love using Bayesian theory, you're doing it wrong.

~~~
lonelappde
Here is a video presentation on the mathematics of love, by Rachel Bloom:
[https://youtu.be/Ck-UhvbCDAk](https://youtu.be/Ck-UhvbCDAk)

------
izzydata
I'm not convinced. What the author describes as irrational or for no reason
are likely just reasons that are too difficult to grasp or articulate. I bet
even people we would describe as clinically insane probably have reasons that
they do things that we simply don't understand.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems like believing anything truly unconditionally
is completely irrational and even more insane than any insane we've seen
before.

~~~
chibg10
>I bet even people we would describe as clinically insane probably have
reasons that they do things that we simply don't understand.

I'm not sure about this. I've had a head injury in the past that resulted in
(thankfully temporary) in anxiety issues. There were spells of anxiety where I
sort of had a reason to be anxious (e.g. deadlines), but I simultaneously had
a rational awareness during the bout of anxiety that my stress levels (so
nervous can't work) were completely incompatible with the consequences of
missing said deadline (of which there would be basically no consequences; not
even in terms of coworkers' view of me or my skills).

Granted I wasn't close to clinically insane I think, but the point is that the
brain is complex and ostensibly there seems to be multiple levels of
consciousness and activity going on in the human brain. One can reason
something in the abstract, yet emotionally feel completely at odds with their
reason.

------
pizza
Kinda related: relationships where one partner gains love for the other by
being hated by the other (but the other acts just mimics the other's
affection) as an unstable dynamical system.
[https://ai.stanford.edu/~rajatr/articles/SS_love_dEq.pdf](https://ai.stanford.edu/~rajatr/articles/SS_love_dEq.pdf)

------
julius_set
You can love and hate someone at the same time, it’s not an or situation

------
devoply
For me unconditional love equates to believing in human dignity, that's your
love for other people without question. But it does not go much further than
guaranteeing the rights and freedom of other people. Other sorts of love is
for most but the most naive almost entirely conditional, and for good reason,
as they can hurt you badly if you love them and they do not love you (as a
precondition)... and that's just for starters. There are many other pre-
conditions to love.

------
polyakoff
I have an unconditional credence of degree 1 that taxpayers money, for which
this "research" was granted, could have been used in a much better way.

------
forkerenok
I can also suggest a game-theoretic take on real love:

Let _U_ be your utility function Let _U '_ be your partner's utility function
Let _U_ and _U '_ be normalised against the same scale

A love is real iff

* U is defined in terms of _U '_: _U = C(U ')_

* and for any positive change _e '_ there is a _e >= e'_ such that _U + e = C(U ' \+ e')_.

Disclaimer: no guru, I know formulations are sloppy, but you get the idea :)

------
AgentME
I don't think it's useful to say you can have a credence of 1.0 in a belief
(love in this case), admit that 1.0 means it can't rationally change at all,
and then say that it can be irrationally changed. It sounds like a roundabout
way to say the credence is actually some number less than 1.0, and it takes a
very strong update (which the author mislabels as "irrational") to affect the
credence much.

------
bromuro
This was a special good reading for me, thanks. I loved the maths.

What about un/conditional gratitude, or un/conditional compassion?

------
qwerty456127
BTW, if you love somebody conditionally and would stop loving and withdraw
your commitment in some theoretically possible case (like if the person you
love becomes ugly, you find out they are cheating or they roam the city
killing kittens at night while you're asleep) then you are not actually loving
them, you just enjoy the combination of traits they currently possess.

~~~
izzydata
That's a nice sentiment, but everything you believe is conditional. I doubt
there is literally no changes that could ever occur that would change your
mind about anything including love.

Perhaps the likelihood of those things are close to zero, but that doesn't
mean it isn't in the realm of possibility. Although I suspect it wouldn't be
that difficult to introduce a change that would trigger one of those
conditions.

~~~
qwerty456127
I agree. Perhaps someone might use some kind of drug or whatever to erase my
memory about the choice I've made to love that particular person no matter
what.

------
carapace
There is a very small but non-zero proportion of humanity that will benefit
greatly from this (sort of thing.) Roughly those who are on what is called the
"mind-only" path. (Vulcans, from Star Trek.) For them this is a profound and
deep proof.

\- - - -

Once as a small child I experienced spontaneously _unconditional love_ for
approximately twenty seconds. Subjectively I felt a deep and abiding love for
all things everywhere. The Universe itself was a small thing embedded in an
unbounded ocean of love.

In a certain sense the experience never left me as the memory of it is a kind
of background and foundation to the rest of my life.

I won't wax too mystical here on HN, but in time I found that love is a
physical reality that undergirds the world of form, that the real world is an
expression in different modes and frequencies of love. E.g. gravity is love.
All matter/energy yearns to return to itself in the unity that existed before
Time.

\- - - -

BTW, there is a simple algorithm to enter and experience "higher" subjective
realities. It's called "Core Transformation Process" and, as I said, it's a
simple, easy, fast, effective algorithm.
[https://www.coretransformation.org/](https://www.coretransformation.org/)

