matabele comments on Rationality Quotes July 2012 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: RobertLumley 04 July 2012 12:29AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (466)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: DaFranker 27 July 2012 07:58:48PM 1 point [-]

There's one (okay, more like 1.6) major problem with that quote, everything else being otherwise good:

The implicitly absolute categorization of "love" as "ideal", and the likewise-implicit (sneaky?) connotation that love is not as real as it is ideal or marriage as ideal as it is real.

Love is a very real thing. There are very real, natural, empirically-observable and testable things happening for whatever someone identifies as "love". However, further discussion is problematic, as "love" has become such a wide-reaching symbol that it becomes almost essential to specify just what interpretation, definition or sub-element of "love" we're talking about in most contexts if ambiguity is to be avoided.