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Eugine_Nier comments on White Lies - Less Wrong
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One scary thought I had a while back is that this is essentially what friendship and especially love is, i.e., sabotaging one's rationality, specifically one's ability to honestly asses one's friend's/lover's usefulness as an ally as a costly way to signal one's precommitment not to defect against the friend/lover even when it would be in one's interest to do so.
On the other hand, it's just as easy to make up a story in the opposite direction: friendship and love are what we call having a true judgement of a person's fundamental virtue that is unswayed by transient, day to day circumstances.
"Love is the inability to follow a logical argument concerning the object of one's affection."
... is a quote along those lines, from a former classmate; with which I do not actually agree.
But "usefulness as an ally" does not at all fully capture a loved one's value to me, even absent any failures of rationality.
(Not that you said it does, I'm just pre-empting likely replies.)
Feel free to substitute whatever you feel is appropriate for "usefulness as an ally".
The difference is that I explain it in terms of game theory.