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DanielLC comments on The Gift We Give To Tomorrow - Less Wrong
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You seem very impressed with love, as our entire culture is. Might that be a bias?
It's hard to point to concrete ways that love helps people (cooperation, parenting, and various other things are perfectly possible without love).
It's easy to point to many known ways that love hurts people. First, there are broken hearts and divorces. Then there's external pressure on who we love or not (if you don't love me I'm going to leave you; if you love her, I'm going to leave you). And then there is the theory that my love for you gives you obligations to me. People use love as a claim on others. When people love you they start wanting things from you, like time and attention. People also use your love as a burden for you (if you really loved me, you would...).
All these bad aspects of love are commonly ignored and disregarded, rather than seen as urgent problems that ought to be, and can be, solved. If love is a great thing we ought to be able to get it to stop hurting people so much and so often. That people don't have a problem-solving attitude towards love, and instead close their eyes to its flaws, is a sign that points to people having biased views on love not rational views.
The utility function is not up for grabs. If you value love, this has nothing to do with your beliefs. Valuing love can trigger biases, such as wishful thinking, but it is not of itself a bias. It's neither rational nor irrational, but arational.
Trust emerges from the proliferation of differences that is love, and trust is equally arational; if we are evoking a society that values trust over love while still embracing individuals who value love over trust, have we not created inconsistency in our rationality, thus creating a bias toward valuing trust over love and substance over style?
Sometimes i feel the styling of love (not the substance of trust) is the only thing that keeps Turing machines at bay.