Marvin Minsky "The Emotion Machine": Chapter 1. Love

O life is a great song cycle,
Intertwining accidents
And love is always true
And I am Maria Romanian.
- Dorothy Parker.

Many consider it absurd to argue about a person as a kind of car - why we periodically hear statements like this:

Citizen: Well, of course cars are useful for us. We can let them stack giant columns of numbers or collect cars in factories. But nothing mechanical can have real feelings, such as love.

Nowadays, no one is surprised that machines are capable of performing logical operations, because the logic itself is based on transparent, simple rules - just such that can be easily operated by a computer. However, Love, some will say, cannot be explained in these simple terms, it’s not worth trying. Recall the words of Pablo Neruda:

Love should be such
Enticing and comprehensive,
Exceptional and terrifying
Honored and yet grieving,
Blooming like stars
And immense - like a kiss.
“From Extravagario.”

What is love and how does it work? Do we need to try to understand it, or maybe we should take such poetry as a hint of our unwillingness to understand the question? Let's take a look at our friend Charles’s attempt to describe his own recent hobby:

Charles: I just fell in love with a wonderful person. It is hard for me to think of anything but her. My beloved is incredibly perfect - indescribable beauty, impeccable character, unimaginable mind. There is nothing that I would not do for her.

On a superficial level, these statements seem positive; they consist entirely of superlatives. But what is strange is that most of these laudatory phrases contain such syllables as “not” and “without”, and they describe not the subject of the speaker’s passion, but himself!

Wonderful, indescribable ...
- (I can not understand what attracts me to it)

It is difficult to think of at least something other than her.
- (Most of my mind stopped working)

Incredibly perfect, unimaginable ...
- (A reasonable person will not believe these things)
')
Impeccable nature ...
- (I abandoned critical thinking)

There is nothing that I would not do for her.
- (I gave up most of my permanent goals)

And all these things for our friend have a positive color. They make him feel cheerful and productive, alleviate his despondency and loneliness. But what if these pleasant emotions were caused by attempts to protect themselves from thoughts about what his girlfriend said:

Celia: Oh, Charles, the woman has needs. She wants to be loved, desired, honored, popular, you need to take care of her and seek her, she wants flattery and affection. She needs sympathy, affection and loyalty, understanding and tenderness, passion, adoration and admiration - do I ask too much, Charles?

Thus, love can make us ignore most of the defects and shortcomings, and take flaws as beautiful - even, according to Shakespeare, when we are fully aware of their reality:

When love swears it is made of truth,
I believe her, even though I see, she lies;
So I pretend to be the youngest kid,
That falsehood and falsification of the world does not keep records.
In vain, believing that I seem young to her,
And knowing that the light of youth is lived by me,
With a smile I praise her deception,
Love flaws traded on the disastrous peace.
But what does she lie that she is young?
And I repeat to her that is not old at all?
Love knows how to be flattered,
But does not like to remember about age.
I will lie with love and lie side by side with her,
And together we will be blind to the flaws of our past days.
- Sonnet 138.

A person has a tendency to self-deception - not only when it comes to personal life, but also in working with abstract ideas. Even there, we often have conflicting, divergent views on the problem - cognitive dissonance. Recall the words of Richard Feynman:

It was at first, the idea seemed so obvious to me that I fell in love with it. Being in love with an idea, like with a woman, is only possible as long as we do not know enough about her to see her shortcomings. They will become apparent later - when love is already strong enough so that they do not interfere with it. So, despite all the difficulties, my youthful enthusiasm forced me to continue to love.
- From a lecture on the occasion of the Nobel Prize, 1966

In fact, what exactly loves love? It would seem that this word should completely describe the object of your adoration; but if your goal is to prolong the pleasure that results from the suppression of doubt, you are in love with love itself, and nothing more.

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Citizen: your definition of love, given above, describes only temporary adoration - lust and extravagant attraction. It does not include many of the concepts that we usually mean when we say this word — such as loyalty and tenderness, affection, trust and empathy.

Indeed, as these short-term affections fade, they may be replaced by more reliable relationships, within which we give priority to the interests of the partner, rather than our own.

Love (n) is an inner state or disposition towards a person (resulting from the recognition of attractive qualities, instincts of natural origin or sympathy), manifesting itself in anxiety for the well-being of an object, along with the pleasure of his / her presence and the need for his / her encouragement; tenderness, affection.
- Oxford English Dictionary

However, even this concept of love is seen as too narrow, since Love is a kind of "chest word", which also includes such concepts as:

• Parent's love for the child.
• Child's love for parents and friends.
• Friendship for life.
• Attachment of group members to the groups themselves or their leaders.

Also, under the word "love" we can mean our attachment to objects, events and beliefs:

• The new believer's commitment to dogma or the holy scripture of his faith.
• The loyalty of the patriot to the state or nation.
• Scientist's passion for finding new truths.
• Honoring evidence mathematician.

Thus, we apply the concept of love to things that we value, which we desire, or to those that give us pleasure. We apply it to both sudden and transient connections, as well as to those that have only strengthened over the years. Some of them occupy a tiny space in the human mind, others seem to permeate their entire life.

But why do we "add" so different things to this "word-chest"? The same applies to our other "emotional" concepts; each of them defines a huge set of heterogeneous mental states. So, Anger can change our perception, turning innocent gestures into threats; it also changes our reactions, leading to a direct collision with a visible danger. Fear also affects how we react, but, on the contrary, makes us retreat before dangers (including those that can give us too much pleasure).

Returning to the meaning of “Love” - it seems that all these concepts are united by one thing, namely, each of them in a certain way influences the way we think :

When a person whom you know well falls in love, a new person appears in his place, another person thinks differently, with excellent goals and priorities. As if someone had switched the lever and started another program.

This book is mainly filled with ideas about what processes in the human brain are reflected by such a radical change in thought processes and perceptions.

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For the translation, thanks to Savva Sumin, who responded to my call in the "previous chapter." Who wants to help with the translation - write in a personal or mail magisterludi2016@yandex.ru

By the way, we launched the translation of another cool book - “The Dream Machine: The History of Computer Revolution” .

about the author

Marvin Lee Minsky (Eng. Marvin Lee Minsky; August 9, 1927 - January 24, 2016) - American scientist in the field of artificial intelligence, co-founder of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [ Wikipedia ]

Interesting facts:

• Minsky was a friend of critic Harold Bloom from Yale University (Yale University), who spoke of him as “sinister Marvin Minsky”.
• Isaac Asimov described Minsky as one of two people who are smarter than himself; the second, in his opinion, was Karl Sagan.
• Marvin is a robot with artificial intelligence from the cycle of Douglas Adams novels Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film).
• Minsky has a contract to freeze his brain after death in order to be “resurrected” in the future.
• In honor of Minsk named the dog of the protagonist in the movie Tron: Legacy. [ Wikipedia ]