7 ms·

I think this has it the wrong way around. it's not that love is biological bribery, it's that someone studying biology has tried to redefine biological bribery

I think this has it the wrong way around. it's not that love is biological bribery, it's that someone studying biology has tried to redefine biological bribery to be love. Love comes in many shapes. Love for one's family, one's nation, one's profession, even God. It's at best uninformative, at worst nonsensical to try to reduce all of this to interaction found in sexual interaction / reproduction. It's a common thing with these evo-psych explanations. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The more scientific sounding version of thinking every skyscraper represents a phallus. I doubt this even makes sense across cultural boundaries. For example the fact that oxytocin is apparently indicative of how long a relationsihp lasts. In a Western culture where people nowadays are prone to form relationships spontaneously, sure. In a culture where parents organize relationships based on class, caste or faith? Probably not.

hoseja 5y ago
>one's nation, one's profession, even God Those are cases of institutions hijacking the mechanism of love.
- bencollier49 5y ago
  If someone wanted to bulldoze your home town to build a nuclear reactor, you'd be upset, right? That said, there are different sorts of love. The Greeks had many words for it. We're impoverished in that regard.
- blowski 5y ago
  If such institutions have successfully hijacked love pretty much universally for much of human history, then it's worth saying they're connected.
  - hoseja 5y ago
    Depends on what you consider history. Written history? Sure, writing is the DNA of memes; but humans have been around for much longer before these parasites learned to exploit our sociality.
raducu 5y ago
Surely love has functional meaning, just like all sensations and feelings. Love is one of the most powerful feelings that can bring joy or so much sorrow for some. Do the biochemical aspects of love matter that much? When it is no longer functional, sure. Besides, all pleasurable feelings/sensations are "bribes". Really funny how we make separations about male vs female dating strategy, and they are right to a great degree, but both men and women share a lot of DNA, I don't know if there are many male specific genes. Sure, all animals are the same and just a few different hormones make a huge difference (male vs female gorilla?) but not to that extent in humans. Men can be manipulated too when they fall inlove, I wish the article talked about that.
- sanxiyn 5y ago
  Re: sharing DNA. That's like saying why does this same binary behave differently depending on configuration: in other words, non sequitur. It is normal: some female fish is 10x larger than male fish.
  - raducu 5y ago
    But there's no need to look into fish or gorillas, as a child I was very different than today. Hormones, neurotransmitters, all make a big difference, sure. But humans do not show such a pronounced dimorphism and human minds are extremely complex things, surely the brains/minds of male/female share a lot more than they differ on average. There are outliers -- like a man pumped with testosterone, a leader's brain flooded with dopamine, an adrenaline junkie, a nymphomaniac and so on, but these are outliers. My problem is people who take the "men produce billions and billions of sperm and women ovulate once a month, therefore men and women are completely different" -- that's a tendency sure, and there are differences and different drives, but not to the extent people interpret them to be.
    - xenocratus 5y ago
      > and there are differences and different drives, but not to the extent people interpret them to be. Do you have any meaningful data that backs those claims up? I mean, first of all - "not to the extent people interpret them to be" - which people, more precisely, and what's that extent? And secondly, how do you know that it's not to that extent? Don't want to be pedantic here, but we could be rambling on about how "people say this, but it's actually like that" all day long - show me the numbers, how they were obtained, and your interpretation of them and we can discuss, something like [1], hopefully. [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261438 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
selestify 5y ago
Those other forms of love are fairly different from the sexual, romantic love that the article is focusing on. It's not "reduce all of this" to sexual interaction, it's focusing on romantic love instead of conflating it with other love. > It's a common thing with these evo-psych explanations. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If everything in reality is made from nails, then it makes sense to look for the hammer that hammered it in. Everything in human psychology was in fact molded through evolution, so of course it makes sense to look to evolution for potential answers. > For example the fact that oxytocin is apparently indicative of how long a relationsihp lasts. If a culture artificially forces relationships to last by, say, heavily stigmatizing divorce, then of course that's going to override the "natural" course of events. That hardly means there isn't useful information to be gleaned from our biological nature in situations where such artificial forces are not in force. (Or you could argue, where different artificial forces are in force.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chottocharaii 5y ago
  I think this is overly reductive of the types of things that can result from darwinian forces
- raducu 5y ago
  > If everything in reality is made from nails, then it makes sense to look for the hammer that hammered it in. Everything in human psychology was in fact molded through evolution, so of course it makes sense to look to evolution for potential answers. What is the question and what are the possible answers? What difference would it make in our morals? That sounds like the reverse of the good old "Well, if God does not exist, why don't you just kill random people, then?" Anger and violence and rape and murder, are all bilogical and evolutionary based. So what? > "If a culture artificially forces relationships to last by, say, heavily stigmatizing divorce, then of course that's going to override the "natural" course of events. See the above argument, it changes nothing. And by the way, divorce is more normalized than ever and divorce rates are falling in the developed world. On the countrary, if lustful love is just a chemical process that eventually wears off, you're better off not divorcing. If love was this astral magestic thing, then sure, divorce and pursue it. People have this idea "yeah, but back then, there was no marriage and both men and women could just fuck arround". Sure, some people did just like today, but back then, we lived in small groups, a coule hundred individuals, the opportunities to fuck around were not as great as today and there was no anonymity as today. I've been 20 pumped with testosterone. Was it not for my religious education and moral sense, I would probably have slept with a lot more women. Between age 20-35 I think I only cried 3 times, when my grandparents died. As my testosterone levels are declining, my emotions are coming back. I'm still the same biological organism, evolution did not intend one course or the other. I just find a lot of satisfaction now from family life. There is no contradiction or dilema for me. I do not feel oppressed by society or morals or biology.
CipherThrowaway 5y ago
You are 100% right. The OP is textbook biological reductionism. This "love scientist" is not promoting science but instead passing off her pet theories as the final word on a nearly universal human experience that takes dramatically different forms across time and culture.
- esarbe 5y ago
  > on a nearly universal human experience Love is not a nearly universal human experience. Love is a whole lot of concepts and emotions and experiences that are highly dependent on the cultural context. That's one of the points of the article.
  - CipherThrowaway 5y ago
    It's quite the opposite. Culture is mentioned three times in the article and each mention is to point out that culture doesn't make a difference to the supposed immutable evolutionary truths.
- selestify 5y ago
  > The OP is textbook biological reductionism And is that wrong? Of course we're reducible down to biological impulses in the end. Part of understanding higher level cultural phenomena is understanding our biological interactions, how they were historically shaped by our evolutionary past, and how those adaptations affect us in a drastically different modern context. Certainly sounds a lot more scientific than, say, dismissing all the research as "biological reductionism."
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Biological reductionism is different from just simply science. There is a lot above love that we simply can't explain at the level of neurotransmitters because our understanding of such high level functions is highly incomplete. Trying to say that there is nothing more to it that the incomplete understanding we have is reductionism.
  - 5y ago
msoad 5y ago
This is about romantic love for reproduction. I feel like a lot of top comments in HN are from people who didn't read the article these days
golemotron 5y ago
> It's at best uninformative, at worst nonsensical to try to reduce all of this to interaction found in sexual interaction / reproduction. Understanding doesn't have to lead to disenchantment. Getting yourself into the frame of mind where you feel the wonder of things is worthwhile for topics like this, science and religion. Disenchantment is a choice and it comes from saying "X is `just' Y." We don't have to minimize things when people point out their aspects.
- mLuby 5y ago
  Well-said. Airplanes are relatively straightforward machines. Computers just do trivial math and logic very fast. Listening to Bach in a cathedral is just hearing metal tubes vibrating air in an artificial cave. But if you've never stopped and wondered that you're "partaking in the miracle of human flight"[1] or that the block of metal and sand in your desk lets you see loved ones across time and space, or that countless people worked for ages so you could experience the music and art in that building, well you're missing out. Humans are lucky that we experience both understanding and awe. [1] https://youtu.be/b3dYS7PcAG4 https://youtu.be/b3dYS7PcAG4 (CW:LCK)
adenner 5y ago
Part of the problem you are having is the English word love is an overloaded term.
scotty79 5y ago
Or maybe just word love is so vague and general and used in so many unrelated contexts that it's not useful when people attept to explain anything. And whenever somebody talks about something useful they discovered using word love, arguments like yours crop up.

hoseja 5y ago

>one's nation, one's profession, even God Those are cases of institutions hijacking the mechanism of love.

bencollier49 5y ago
If someone wanted to bulldoze your home town to build a nuclear reactor, you'd be upset, right? That said, there are different sorts of love. The Greeks had many words for it. We're impoverished in that regard.
blowski 5y ago
If such institutions have successfully hijacked love pretty much universally for much of human history, then it's worth saying they're connected.
- hoseja 5y ago
  Depends on what you consider history. Written history? Sure, writing is the DNA of memes; but humans have been around for much longer before these parasites learned to exploit our sociality.

raducu 5y ago

Surely love has functional meaning, just like all sensations and feelings. Love is one of the most powerful feelings that can bring joy or so much sorrow for some. Do the biochemical aspects of love matter that much? When it is no longer functional, sure. Besides, all pleasurable feelings/sensations are "bribes". Really funny how we make separations about male vs female dating strategy, and they are right to a great degree, but both men and women share a lot of DNA, I don't know if there are many male specific genes. Sure, all animals are the same and just a few different hormones make a huge difference (male vs female gorilla?) but not to that extent in humans. Men can be manipulated too when they fall inlove, I wish the article talked about that.

sanxiyn 5y ago
Re: sharing DNA. That's like saying why does this same binary behave differently depending on configuration: in other words, non sequitur. It is normal: some female fish is 10x larger than male fish.
- raducu 5y ago
  But there's no need to look into fish or gorillas, as a child I was very different than today. Hormones, neurotransmitters, all make a big difference, sure. But humans do not show such a pronounced dimorphism and human minds are extremely complex things, surely the brains/minds of male/female share a lot more than they differ on average. There are outliers -- like a man pumped with testosterone, a leader's brain flooded with dopamine, an adrenaline junkie, a nymphomaniac and so on, but these are outliers. My problem is people who take the "men produce billions and billions of sperm and women ovulate once a month, therefore men and women are completely different" -- that's a tendency sure, and there are differences and different drives, but not to the extent people interpret them to be.
  - xenocratus 5y ago
    > and there are differences and different drives, but not to the extent people interpret them to be. Do you have any meaningful data that backs those claims up? I mean, first of all - "not to the extent people interpret them to be" - which people, more precisely, and what's that extent? And secondly, how do you know that it's not to that extent? Don't want to be pedantic here, but we could be rambling on about how "people say this, but it's actually like that" all day long - show me the numbers, how they were obtained, and your interpretation of them and we can discuss, something like [1], hopefully. [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261438 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

selestify 5y ago

Those other forms of love are fairly different from the sexual, romantic love that the article is focusing on. It's not "reduce all of this" to sexual interaction, it's focusing on romantic love instead of conflating it with other love. > It's a common thing with these evo-psych explanations. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If everything in reality is made from nails, then it makes sense to look for the hammer that hammered it in. Everything in human psychology was in fact molded through evolution, so of course it makes sense to look to evolution for potential answers. > For example the fact that oxytocin is apparently indicative of how long a relationsihp lasts. If a culture artificially forces relationships to last by, say, heavily stigmatizing divorce, then of course that's going to override the "natural" course of events. That hardly means there isn't useful information to be gleaned from our biological nature in situations where such artificial forces are not in force. (Or you could argue, where different artificial forces are in force.)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chottocharaii 5y ago
I think this is overly reductive of the types of things that can result from darwinian forces
raducu 5y ago
> If everything in reality is made from nails, then it makes sense to look for the hammer that hammered it in. Everything in human psychology was in fact molded through evolution, so of course it makes sense to look to evolution for potential answers. What is the question and what are the possible answers? What difference would it make in our morals? That sounds like the reverse of the good old "Well, if God does not exist, why don't you just kill random people, then?" Anger and violence and rape and murder, are all bilogical and evolutionary based. So what? > "If a culture artificially forces relationships to last by, say, heavily stigmatizing divorce, then of course that's going to override the "natural" course of events. See the above argument, it changes nothing. And by the way, divorce is more normalized than ever and divorce rates are falling in the developed world. On the countrary, if lustful love is just a chemical process that eventually wears off, you're better off not divorcing. If love was this astral magestic thing, then sure, divorce and pursue it. People have this idea "yeah, but back then, there was no marriage and both men and women could just fuck arround". Sure, some people did just like today, but back then, we lived in small groups, a coule hundred individuals, the opportunities to fuck around were not as great as today and there was no anonymity as today. I've been 20 pumped with testosterone. Was it not for my religious education and moral sense, I would probably have slept with a lot more women. Between age 20-35 I think I only cried 3 times, when my grandparents died. As my testosterone levels are declining, my emotions are coming back. I'm still the same biological organism, evolution did not intend one course or the other. I just find a lot of satisfaction now from family life. There is no contradiction or dilema for me. I do not feel oppressed by society or morals or biology.

CipherThrowaway 5y ago

You are 100% right. The OP is textbook biological reductionism. This "love scientist" is not promoting science but instead passing off her pet theories as the final word on a nearly universal human experience that takes dramatically different forms across time and culture.

esarbe 5y ago
> on a nearly universal human experience Love is not a nearly universal human experience. Love is a whole lot of concepts and emotions and experiences that are highly dependent on the cultural context. That's one of the points of the article.
- CipherThrowaway 5y ago
  It's quite the opposite. Culture is mentioned three times in the article and each mention is to point out that culture doesn't make a difference to the supposed immutable evolutionary truths.
selestify 5y ago
> The OP is textbook biological reductionism And is that wrong? Of course we're reducible down to biological impulses in the end. Part of understanding higher level cultural phenomena is understanding our biological interactions, how they were historically shaped by our evolutionary past, and how those adaptations affect us in a drastically different modern context. Certainly sounds a lot more scientific than, say, dismissing all the research as "biological reductionism."
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Biological reductionism is different from just simply science. There is a lot above love that we simply can't explain at the level of neurotransmitters because our understanding of such high level functions is highly incomplete. Trying to say that there is nothing more to it that the incomplete understanding we have is reductionism.
- 5y ago

msoad 5y ago

This is about romantic love for reproduction. I feel like a lot of top comments in HN are from people who didn't read the article these days

golemotron 5y ago

> It's at best uninformative, at worst nonsensical to try to reduce all of this to interaction found in sexual interaction / reproduction. Understanding doesn't have to lead to disenchantment. Getting yourself into the frame of mind where you feel the wonder of things is worthwhile for topics like this, science and religion. Disenchantment is a choice and it comes from saying "X is `just' Y." We don't have to minimize things when people point out their aspects.

mLuby 5y ago
Well-said. Airplanes are relatively straightforward machines. Computers just do trivial math and logic very fast. Listening to Bach in a cathedral is just hearing metal tubes vibrating air in an artificial cave. But if you've never stopped and wondered that you're "partaking in the miracle of human flight"[1] or that the block of metal and sand in your desk lets you see loved ones across time and space, or that countless people worked for ages so you could experience the music and art in that building, well you're missing out. Humans are lucky that we experience both understanding and awe. [1] https://youtu.be/b3dYS7PcAG4 https://youtu.be/b3dYS7PcAG4 (CW:LCK)

adenner 5y ago

Part of the problem you are having is the English word love is an overloaded term.

scotty79 5y ago

Or maybe just word love is so vague and general and used in so many unrelated contexts that it's not useful when people attept to explain anything. And whenever somebody talks about something useful they discovered using word love, arguments like yours crop up.