Tarkus
Member
Being trained in entomology, emergence to me means aquatic inverts emerging from the water to carry out their adult lives or terrestrial insects converting from larvae to adults.
It's amazing how different your profession becomes!
Is falling in love just a chemical reaction or not
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It's amazing how different your profession becomes!
ugaboga232
Member
I worked under a PI who was all about the emergent properties of neural circuits from neurons but that is more that looking at one part of a whole does not tell you much about the whole itself, not that putting 100 neurons and wiring them magically creates something new (ok that may be the case but we are ignoring qualia/awareness for now).
Tarkus
Member
Neurons are boring
Blackthorn
"hello?" "this is vagina"
It's funny how people talk about love being a chemical reaction when they want to sound edgy, yet every other human emotion - which is also a "chemical reaction" - doesn't get the same treatment.
Almost as if they're compensating for something 🤔.
Almost as if they're compensating for something 🤔.
ugaboga232
Member
Neurons are boring
As someone who has drawn far too many cortical neurons, yes they can be dreadfully boring but also sometimes cool (and we don't know shit about them compared to say a kidney cell).
Not necessarily no. Love has as little or as much importance and weight behind it as you want and feel it deserves since love is the most personal thing and as such it's incredibly subjective. Therefore whatever your thoughts on love are should matter to you and to you alone. What I or anyone else thinks about your views on on love should be completely irrelevant, don't let us decide for you OP.
That's my interpretation of it anyway OP, I have a very do as you want, and love as you wish kind of mentality.
hydrophilic attack
Member
For people wondering what specifically I'm talking about, this is it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4478040.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4478040.stm
ugaboga232
Member
Not trying to rain on your parade, but this is one of many chemicals responsible for the short term rush of infatuation/lust/whatever. Its cool they saw changes in some peptide but its all part of an absurdly organized and crazy dance that we call the nervous system. Probably has a lot to do with dopamine, I would figure people on dopamine antagonists or any of the shitty dopamine messing up diseases would feel less infatuation (and less rush/elation/happiness whatever but such is the sad state of neuropsychiatric medication).
Optimusdouche
Banned
My exgf said love is a spiritual bond between two souls. They don't have a choice. The compatibility of your energies determines if you are soul mates.
the-pi-guy
Member
Falling in love is "just a chemical reaction."
Music is just vibrations.
A piano is just wires, and hammers that hit those wires, and keys that cause those hammers to hit those wires.
Art is just a particular pattern of particular wavelengths of light that hit your eyes.
How can a man drown in water? It's just lots of hydrogen and oxygen. How does that make any sense?
Reducing things like this isn't wrong. It just reaches a point where it doesn't make any sense.
Saying things like "Food is just water, salt, _____, _____, etc" or saying that "Food is just a lot of atoms" doesn't change the fact that it's important to eat. Doesn't change the fact that food is delicious.
It isn't technically wrong, but it isn't useful. It doesn't change its importance, it doesn't change how it feels, it doesn't change anything.
Love is a wonderful feeling that is created by chemicals, and it's a beautiful thing.
Happiness is also a feeling that is created by chemicals. Whether those chemicals are caused by some food, another person's presence, or something else. It's still important.
Music is just vibrations.
A piano is just wires, and hammers that hit those wires, and keys that cause those hammers to hit those wires.
Art is just a particular pattern of particular wavelengths of light that hit your eyes.
How can a man drown in water? It's just lots of hydrogen and oxygen. How does that make any sense?
Reducing things like this isn't wrong. It just reaches a point where it doesn't make any sense.
Saying things like "Food is just water, salt, _____, _____, etc" or saying that "Food is just a lot of atoms" doesn't change the fact that it's important to eat. Doesn't change the fact that food is delicious.
It isn't technically wrong, but it isn't useful. It doesn't change its importance, it doesn't change how it feels, it doesn't change anything.
Love is a wonderful feeling that is created by chemicals, and it's a beautiful thing.
Happiness is also a feeling that is created by chemicals. Whether those chemicals are caused by some food, another person's presence, or something else. It's still important.
Senator Soufflé
Member
Don't fall in love with the moment and think you're in love with the girl.
TheLaughingStock
Member
What is the point though?
Is your username an epithet for her?
BladeoftheImmortal
Member
But she isn't special. He isn't either.
OpinionatedCyborg
Member
With an even more reductionist view humanity is all a series of electromagnetic reactions pulled down by gravity.
What's the point of hunger?
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
I personally consider anyone who describes love or any other human emotions in such a reductionist terms like, "it's just a chemical reaction" as dead on the inside.
The joyous feeling of seeing your cherished person happy, and likewise when you are happy being together with him/her, the emotion of a mother crying when her son/daughter died to an accident, the nurturing love parents give to their children, the feeling where you will not hesitate to sacrifice your life if necessary to protect those who are important to you.... I can't fathom how anyone would just simplify it all to just "Oh it's just a bunch of chemicals."
The joyous feeling of seeing your cherished person happy, and likewise when you are happy being together with him/her, the emotion of a mother crying when her son/daughter died to an accident, the nurturing love parents give to their children, the feeling where you will not hesitate to sacrifice your life if necessary to protect those who are important to you.... I can't fathom how anyone would just simplify it all to just "Oh it's just a bunch of chemicals."
Wolf Dawgz
Member
I would say no. One reason is that it is multiple chemical reactions, rather than just one. The different behaviours are also interpreted differently via culture. It's also a process of how you seek it out as well. So different chemical reactions could possibly lead you to searching out love, and then falling in love.
Your friends might have been concerned about you taking a possible pessimistic view of love.Perhaps having a view that love is merely a reaction, rather than within your own control could be a sign of helplessness. It could also be a sign of denying that you want love due to externalizing it to "just a reaction".
Your friends might have been concerned about you taking a possible pessimistic view of love.Perhaps having a view that love is merely a reaction, rather than within your own control could be a sign of helplessness. It could also be a sign of denying that you want love due to externalizing it to "just a reaction".
riskVSreward
Member
Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die. Come watch TV.
John Kowalski
Banned
The point is that looking at things at their smallest scale only gives a very limited perspective. Like, you're an architect and you know that lots of windows makes a room feel less constraining than it really is, but you wouldn't figure that out by analyzing the atomic structure of glass or how it interacts with light waves.
Optimusdouche
Banned
Osama Bin Laden probably loved blowing up the Twin Towers. Love is over-rated. It's like a chicken drum. Tasty at first. But after a day or two that chicken drum has started to rot, just as love for anyone will eventually rot.
We need more apathy. Honestly, the world should be smoking more cannabis and watching more Gossip Girl.
We need more apathy. Honestly, the world should be smoking more cannabis and watching more Gossip Girl.
The problem with a lot of conversations about love is that the word means a few different but closely related things. As exemplified by the distinction between being in love with someone (which is pretty surface level emotional stuff that can be kind of a pain in the arse) and loving someone, which isn't necessarily romantic and runs a lot deeper.
I can see why you're no longer together
Optimusdouche
Banned
Yea she was a bit of a new age kook, only a bit. But you'd be surprised by how many people believe this, and think like this.
Even nerd messiah, Chris Nolan, told us in Interstellar the power of love is more powerful than any other force. People believe it.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
Life is meaningless. Act accordingly.
Reverend Funk
Comfy Penetration
Love is the most powerful force in the universe next to gravity and all the other real forces.
.
Its all about the sustainability. Thats when the work starts getting put in.
triplestation
Member
it is a chemical reaction and aliums
Right.
And I think OP, you are reducing a really complex thing way too much.
There's a lot more to love, especially sustaining a loving relationship.
I mean no offense to you personally, but when I see people say things like that, it comes across like a robot. Humans are complex, especially when involving emotions
Stereogatari
Banned
It is a chemical reaction, but so is everything that is part of the Human condition and comprises of life and culture.
Why is modern Anglophone pop culture so against falling in love?
Why is modern Anglophone pop culture so against falling in love?
When you take those chemical reactions as a whole, they give you an intense emotional experience, a quicker heartbeat, maybe a flutter in your stomach. When you take those neuron signals as a whole, they create a gestalt that thinks and feels and experiences and is conscious. When you take those little bits of refracting light as a whole, you get a beautiful arc of many colors resting across the sky. When you take all those zeroes and ones together, you get letters, words, sentences, communication between people far distant from one another.
You can reduce something down into its constituent parts, but that doesn't somehow invalidate the larger whole.
Stereogatari
Banned
Well said. That's what makes Humanity so awe inspiring. We're doing and feeling these things naturally with no God or w/e.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
There is no soul and if there were it surely wouldn't have anything to do with the heart. It is "just" a chemical reaction but a lot is just that and amounts to so much.
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