Today's post, The Gift We Give To Tomorrow was originally published on 17 July 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

 

How did love ever come into the universe? How did that happen, and how special was it, really?


Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

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[-][anonymous]00

It could be love isn't here for any reason or advantage, it's just a thing that happened that is not enough of a disadvantage to be bred out yet. Because that's how evolution works: a large number of things pop up, and some of them that don't work get bred out, and some that aren't a bother but aren't an advantage either stick around, and some that are an advantage last longer. Love might be a thing that just happened that isn't enough of a bother yet.

<3 <3 <3 xoxo

[-][anonymous]00

Things don't just happen in evolution.

For love to have out-replicated nonlove as hard as it did (it's at fixation) for as long as it has (it's present in many other species), it needed to either piggyback on some other useful thing or be useful itself.

My favorite sequence post, although it's only good in the context of dozens of other important posts.