Is love a good idea?

The obsessive part of love only lasts for three or six months, so it's not important in the long term. Think about it as an extra motivation to pay the initial costs of establishing the relationship. It would be evolutionarily maladaptive to become forever obsessed with your significant other, unable to focus on tasks of daily survival.

This is the part of love that most people get wrong: basicly anyone who gets their important life lessons from Hollywood movies. Hollywood describes the obsessive part as the "true love". People following this definition get into the predictable cycle of forming a new relationship, enjoying it intensely for a few months, noticing their obsession disappearing, interpreting it as an evidence that this actually wasn't the "true love", breaking apart and starting a new relationship... which again follows the same schedule; and some people can do this for decades. -- If this is what you noticed and want to avoid, you have a good point, but you are taking it too far.

(Some people express it cynically by saying that the main difference between eternal love and casual fling is that the casual fling lasts longer.)

I don't think about love as a blind precommitment forever, but rather like this: I found a person who cooperates with me in a Prisonners' Dilemma, so the game theory is telling me to keep cooperating... if the other person keeps playing by the rules, possibly forever, because that's the winning strategy. Of course there is some imperfection in humans, and some noise in human communication, so I'm ready to forgive some minor problems. But that's still because I am profitting in the long term. -- If I would realize that my significant other abuses me, I would get out of the relationship. The important part of love is finding a person who is able and willing to reciprocate love. (Many beautiful people aren't.) Also, being that kind of person. (It's a learnt ability.)

As a data point, living with my girlfriend makes almost every day of my life better. Just eating breakfast with someone else is better than eating alone: if I multiply it with the expected remaining days of my life, that's a huge stack of utilons; I would be stupid to give it up. And that's just the fucking breakfast. On a boring ordinary day. Which happens automatically, without me having to do anything special; even on days when I am tired or busy. -- For me the conclusion is obvious. But it took years of learning and experimenting.

I have a very reductionist viewpoint, on everything

As a reductionist you utterly failed to even define the phenomenon you describe. There are huge variations in what people mean by love, even if you only include the so called "romantic love". You probably have some vague model in mind, but without writing it down, giving a few examples and counterexamples to sharpen it up, you can hardly figure out whether the question you asked, "Is love a good idea?" is even meaningful.

Several things:

Title is vague. You say "love", looks like you mostly mean early-stage romantic love, which is a small subset of love.

So then, the idea of love bothers me, because you sort of throw rational thinking out the window, stop asking why something actually matters, and just decide that this significant other intrinsically matters to you.

So, most non-rational people do this about everything, not just (or especially) about love, and I don't think rational people particularly do this with love.

This article actually explores the brain chemicals involved in love, and suggests that the chemicals are similar to those that appear in OCD.

Chemicals don't "appear in OCD." As the article states, OCD is sometimes associated with low serotonin levels, as are many other mental disorders and things that aren't mental disorders. The only behavioral pattern the article notes that they say resembles OCD is "attempting to evoke reciprocal responses in one's loved one" which is something that happens in almost all intense human relationships, including mother-infant ones, and also is not actually closely associated with OCD.

Also as the article states, romantic love often moves into a calmer, less obsessive state on its own, so worry about excessive obsessiveness may be unfounded.

The conclusion of this paragraph does not follow from the explanation:

Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. “We are literally addicted to love,” Dr Young observes.

gut feelings+euphoria ≠ addiction.

Throwing rational thinking out the window is not at all necessary when it comes to love. Nor is thinking that your significant other is intrinsically valuable. Irrationality in relationships is a common trope, but actually rational thinking and relationships go together quite well.

You seem to be operating under the assumption that "love" is something that doesn't help people get happy. If you're trying to optimize for personal happiness and love (in whatever form) enhances your ability to be happy and/or directly causes you happiness, love is a perfectly rational thing to do.

You say:

So then, the idea of love bothers me, because you sort of throw rational thinking out the window, stop asking why something actually matters, and just decide that this significant other intrinsically matters to you.

But that doesn't have to happen. You can keep thinking rationally about love, even when under its effects. It's not because we are wired to love by evolution that the love for my family, partner, friends... stops being valuable and gives me happiness.

And I don't know why I'm typing all this, because you seem to have a very narrow definition of love, namely the very specific timeframe in the early part of a romantic relationship. Love is a lot broader than that.

The obsessive part you describe is love, but so is:

Something along the lines of enjoying each others company, and caring for one another and stuff, but not being blindly committed to one another, and being honest about the fact that you wouldn't do anything for one another, and will in fact probably grow apart at some point.

And if I had to answer your opening question:

Yes, love tends to be a good idea, but you have to be specific about what type of love and to which degree.

ETA: After re-reading Feeling Rational, I think that the statement "Love is not something that can be destroyed by truth." works better than everything I wrote above and more or less sums up what I'm trying to get across.

What do you guys think?

My take is that coming to love X is a process whereby I extend my sense of myself to include X.

So when you say:

The answer to the question of, "why does this matter?" is always, "because it makes me happy". So then, the idea of love bothers me, because you sort of throw rational thinking out the window, stop asking why something actually matters, and just decide that this significant other intrinsically matters to you.

...you basically lose me. You're talking as though "me" refers to some kind of unchanging primitive whose boundaries remain perpetually fixed. That's not consistent with my experience at all.

You say you have a very reductionist viewpoint on everything. I wouldn't say that about myself; there are things I'm content to engage with as "black boxes" at a variety of different levels of abstraction, and I don't feel the need to constantly "drill down" into them. But in this particular case, I'm aware that my sense of myself is a not a black box; it's a psychological construct, and I'm typically aware of some of the things that contribute to and constrain it.

Some of those things include aspects of other people whom I love.

the idea of love bothers me, because you sort of throw rational thinking out the window, stop asking why something actually matters, and just decide that this significant other intrinsically matters to you.

Not at all. It's not that rational thinking goes out of the window, only your system of values changes.

You can stay perfectly rational, it's just that now "making that other person happy" is a huge value for you. A terminal value.

And you can ask yourself "why it matters" -- the answer is that you have a new terminal value and terminal values are where the "why" process stops.

How can you commit to something so permanently?

You can't. It's an illusion. But it's a useful and pleasant illusion :-)

there is probably a form of love that is rational to take.

You don't take love. Love takes you.

Out of "Understanding Humans for Vulcans 101":

Humans have things that are called emotions. The word love refers to one of them. From the positive emotions that humans can feel it's a quite strong one.

Feeling positive emotions has been shown to provide a bunch of health effects.

Human who are deprived of positive emotions also tend to do a lot of very irrational stuff to feel well. Especially when they are intelligent they are usually good at rationalizing their behavior. Once basic emotional needs are fulfilled it's usually easier for humans to make decisions that are actually rational in other area's.

Regarding your first point, which do you suppose is more likely: that love is a bad idea, or that having a very reductionist viewpoint is a bad idea?

Regarding the second, a lot of things are like "the brain chemicals involved in love." (The article only discusses low serotonin levels.) This doesn't provide a basis for thinking love is a bad thing.

Regarding permanence, "is lifelong commitment to a single person a good idea" is a different question from "is love a good idea?" Since you've asked, though, I think I disagree with the mechanics you describe. The benefit of a lifelong love isn't strictly limited to the loved one as an object, or the traits inhering to the loved one, but the interaction between you. This grows over time, while other interactions that you aren't having are likewise not growing.

Love is used not only as a constituent in moods and affairs, but also as the raw material from which relationships produce hour-later exasperations, regrettably fashioned restrictions, riddles laced with affections known only to the loving couple, and looks that linger too long. Love is also an often-used ingredient in some transparent verbal and nonverbal transactions where, eventually, it can sometimes be converted to a variety of true devotions, some of which yield tough, insoluble, and infusible unions. In its basic form, love supplies approximately thirteen draughts of all energy that is derived from relationships. Its role and value in society at large are controversial.

–– Vivec (emphasis mine)

If your gut reaction is that romantic relationships aren't for you, being aromantic is a thing. It's uncommon, but it seemed worth saying.

Finally, there's the issue of permanence. Not all love is intended to be permanent, but a lot of the time it is. How can you commit to something so permanently? The impression I get from seeing friends' and acquaintances' relationships is that the average length of time they last is comparable to how long a person stays at a job (but with a greater standard deviation). Even when you're trying to build a relationship that would be permanent, you haven't committed to making it permanent just by attempting it, and people consider it acceptable to break it off if it's not working well for you. Ending a relationship can still be very unpleasant, of course, but I don't think a broken commitment is the reason for that. The breakup is just a cost you have to expect when you decide to start a romance.

Based on conversations I've had with non-rationalists about their romances, some of them make poorer decisions when romance is involved, and others don't. From what I've seen, it looks like the people who are usually the sanest under other circumstances are also the least prone to making poor decisions about romance and regretting it later. It really, really depends on the person.

So my take is that there is probably a form of love that is rational to take. Something along the lines of enjoying each others company, and caring for one another and stuff, but not being blindly committed to one another, and being honest about the fact that you wouldn't do anything for one another, and will in fact probably grow apart at some point. This sounds sort of like what I'm in right now (we're both rationalists). It also doesn't sound too different from my sister's relationships, and she doesn't pay any particular attention to rationality - it's just that she's in college and everyone in her social circle knows that people may go their separate ways because of personality clashes or the demands of starting a career. If you'd be looking for a relationship with someone who shared your values anyway, then making it a sane one wouldn't add many additional constraints.

In my experience, during the addiction-like phase, you get some pretty intense emotions, but you don't loose control of yourself or stop caring about other things. I get really happy about things that ordinarily wouldn't be a big deal (ex: person started a conversation with me in chat, which means they were thinking about me), and get tempted to invest more than I should, but that's about it. Given that most people in romantic relationships don't strain their other friendships or have difficulty at work because of it, I suspect my experience was similar to most peoples'.

I think the core issue here is that the stories we like to tell about how love and romances work are different from the reality. When you analyze the story closely, you realize it wouldn't actually be a good story to live. But the way romances actually go is different from the way humans like to say they go in most of the aspects you didn't like.

So, can I take it you've never experienced love?

I know we don't say this anymore, but your metaethics is vulnerable to several criticisms which appear in the metaethics sequence (and elsewhere, no doubt).

Congratulations, you have violated Betteridge's law.

When I think about it, I come to the conclusion that I'm always trying to optimize my happiness.

Better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.

-J.S. Mill

Obsessions are BAD for empathy. "“basic” ToM abilities of OCD patients are generally preserved, but they show significant reduction in their “advanced” ToM abilities, which seem to be related to their reduced memory capacities. The possible reasons for the relation between memory and ToM impairments, as well as the clinical significance of ToM deficits in OCD are discussed."" I think empathy is a good idea - it's probably the foundations of my intuitive conception of moral reasoning.

It comes down to a definition of "love".

I, for one, think of love as a conscious choice to invest in the well-being and flourishing of another person. It is preferable that the person reciprocate, but not necessarily a requisite of my ongoing commitment. In this way, love is sacrificial, and I don't see how LW could make a case for it.

Of course, you could be in a romantic relationship where both parties benefit, creating a situation where the sum is greater than the parts in regard to fuzzies, utilons, etc. That's academic. To the extent you can keep the situation intact, you can reap the benefits.

You could, if you were malicious and willing, create a situation where you benefited from a romantic relationship in which your partner was not seeing any benefit. They added utility to you at their own peril. I think that happens a lot.

Anyway, I think love is best defined as the choice you make to sacrifice, if need be, for the sake of other people. In a traditional marriage commitment, that choice is lifelong, made to one person and exists "for better or for worse".

There are some personal benefits derived from honoring such arrangements. There are also some drawbacks. Is love good or bad for you in a utilitarian standpoint in the context of marriage? Depends on you and the marriage.

Is "falling in love" good for you? Depends on you. In my experience, it's been the most intense euphoria I've ever felt. But it also has been debilitatingly painful when it ends. You'd have to do the cost-benefit analysis for yourself based on your disposition, utility function, etc.

I'd personally recommend love strongly, even if it ends up yielding negative results in utilitarian sum total...But Choose to love, and don't spend to much time worrying about getting people to love you. Similarly, don't get the idea that love is ethereal, esoteric, magical woo. It can, and often, involves that, but it necessarily involves lots of intentional choice to benefit another person with no guarantee of reciprocation.

When I think about it, I come to the conclusion that I'm always trying to optimize my happiness.

Optimizing it keeping what constant? I mean, in the prisoner's dilemma what optimizes your score for a given strategy of your opponent is to defect, but if you and your opponent both do that you get a worse score than if you both cooperated.

Romance can be similar. See the xkcd comic “Drama”. (See also “Objective Versus Intersubjective Truth” by Nick Szabo.)

You say you're trying to optimize your happiness... Why not consider taking the leap into classical Utilitarianism and optimize happiness generally?

I actually recently made a Utilitarian argument for romantic love, on the Felicifia forums for Valentine's Day. You may find that an interesting little argument to consider, though I admit it isn't the most intellectually rigorous argument I've ever come up with.

As for the issue of the permanence of love, here's a copy of something I wrote, about just that, almost four years ago:

The Essential Tragedy of Love

Fundamental to the nature of all human existence is the irreconcilable temporality of all things. Thus, it is a dark truth that every single person one falls in love with is doomed to pass from this world in the unforeseeable future, short of some absurd change in the nature of human existence, such that eternal life becomes real.

However, in the shorter term, not all things are as temporary as others. Thus it behoves us that if we must fall in love, it should be for reasons more immutable than mere circumstances such as wealth and beauty, that can change on a whim, or will inevitably pass with time. Rather, if true love is what you seek, it is wiser to search for those immutable characteristics that will last perhaps as long as you will, things like kindness, intelligence, and the innate traits that are fundamental to a person’s being.

To do otherwise is to invite the situation where what you have fallen in love with has changed, and is no more. As much love is foolishly laced together with commitments binding very souls to unite, it is a terrible place to be in to be trapped with someone who is no longer what you loved. Worse still, it is preventable by simply refraining from such brash commitments until you are certain that what you love is in fact, an immutable presence in that person, and not something that will pass away beforehand.

It is therefore folly to have something such as love at first sight, since what superficial knowledge one can glean from first sight is unlikely to be sufficient to make such a responsible judgment with any sort of reason. Opportunities are transient and momentary, so it is equally foolish to simply wait around in the hopes that perfection is just around the corner. Rather one must balance risk and caution, and more importantly, one must take full responsibility for their actions, their words, and their promises.

Never make a promise you cannot keep. The harm that such bindings cause can be severe when used whimsically. It requires a maturity to know that what you seek to accomplish may never come to be, but that it is better to try than fail automatically, and in this context, to know what you can genuinely promise and make happen. In this manner, you must be earnest and sincere about your intentions and needs. If they are truly worth your admiration, they will be mature enough to understand you, just as you should be mature enough to understand them in that deep, caring sense that allows you to swallow pride and make those elemental compromises for their sake.

Always be aware that life is ethereal, that we are born with a want that can only be fulfilled by the affection of love. The genetic forces that shape us have arguably a will of their own, and this procreative instinct is a base desire from which the primal emotion of love has evolved. But love has exceeded its original form, and become intertwined with the root grace of empathy, a conscientious wisdom that is the source of all human decency. True love then is a conscious decision by a free will. And as such, it is able to function beyond the mere selfish desire and rather form decisions that will gravitate towards the ideal interests of the beloved. And even if such decisions require a painful admission that the beloved is better off with another, it is only true love that will make that sacrifice willingly.

If you truly love her, you will never abandon her, but you will let her go if she wishes. For you want her dreams to come true, regardless of whether you exist in them.

And with such conscious awareness comes the awareness of a misfortunate reality. Love is always bound to eventual, inevitable loss, the tragic circumstance that is the short breath of life. Be forewarned that the more beautiful and wondrous the love, the more painful will be its star-crossed end.

Your genes want you to reproduce successfully, they don't want to optimize for happiness. As such it may be necessary to make an extraordinary effort to acquire a decent mate, a task that goes against many of our other instincts. Such an effort is harder to do if you realize that the person in question is in fact fairly average and not The Most Perfect Person Ever. Note that some of the reasons you choose to fall in love are important yet hidden from your conscious mind, such as the importance of choosing a mate with a dissimilar major histocompatibility complex so as to produce healthier offspring. You should be careful when arrogantly rejecting the opinion of your specialized mate choice function with millions of years of evolutionary experience because you think you can make better choices in its area of expertise. Perhaps in the future we will be able to find mates that are agreeable to both our conscious and our unconscious, so that we don't get into a relationship with someone the other rejects. For example, in the future online dating sites will probably all require your DNA (which will be cheap to read) to check for genetic compatibility.

On a different note, you should be careful when you use a word that means both "hormone-induced insanity" and "a one word summary of many people's values system".