Falling in love, Minsky-style

“We are equally apt to deceive ourselves, not only in our personal lives but also when dealing with abstract ideas. There, too, we often close our eyes to conflicts and clashes between our beliefs.”
[Marvin Minsky, mathematician and computer scientist, from Chapter 1: ‘Falling in Love’ in his book, ‘The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind’ as quoted on Edge 203.]

We’ve all gone through it, for better or worse, and we all want to know about it. But seldom do we have the time to research or write a treatise on love – or, more accurately, on falling in love – like Marvin Minsky does.

In ‘Falling In Love’, Marvin Minsky very simply asks, what is love, and how does it work? However, in supplying the answer(s), he takes us through a long journey that covers discussions on Infatuation, The Sea of Mental Mysteries, Moods and Emotions, Infant Emotions, Seeing a Mind as a Cloud of Resources, Adult Emotions, Emotion Cascades, and Theories of Feelings, Meanings and Machines… with quotes and diagrams to boot.

Not quite what Shakespeare wrote about, right? But surely, you didn’t expect any explanation on love to be easy? At least, not from someone like Marvin Minsky who compares man to machines as easily as we compare apples and oranges over the breakfast table.

You’d probably like to know what ‘Falling In Love’ is all about yourself. So, without much ado, here’s the Edge 203 link.
[You’ll need to scroll halfway down the page for the article.]