Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Love, Ordinariness and the Hysteresis loop
Is it an excellence in your love that it can love only the extraordinary, the rare? If it were love’s merit to love the extraordinary, then God would be — if I dare say so — perplexed, for to Him the extraordinary does not exist at all. The merit of being able to love only the extraordinary is therefore more like an accusation, not against the extraordinary, nor against love, but against the love which can love only the extraordinary. Perfection in the object is not perfection in the love. Erotic love is determined by the object; friendship is determined by the object; only love of one’s neighbor is determined by love. Therefore genuine love is recognizable by this, that its object is without any of the more definite qualifications of difference, which means that this love is recognizable only by love-- Søren Kierkegaard
Ideal World
Kierkegaard says that love, in its purest form, should not depend on the excellence of the object in question. To justify this he (who btw is also a theoligian) uses the accepted theological fact that 'god loves all' in his arguments. I agree with Kierkegaard and I also believe that ideally, love should not be a function of the object's charecterestics.
Let me give you another reasoning for this. Suppose a person A claims that he/she 'loves' B because B posesses some quality x. Now I ask, if suddenly B loses this quality x, will A stop 'loving' B?
case 1: No, A does not stop loving B
Then clearly the quality 'x' is not important and A is 'capable' of loving any person even if that person may not posess the quality 'x'.
case 2: Yes, A stops loving B after B loses 'x'
The clearly A does not love B, he/she only loves 'x' in B.
Note:
Based on the above I think it is possible to categorize different kinds of love, in decreasing order of the quality of love:
1. Unconditionally loving every person in the world: I think this is what people mean by 'love your neighbour' - i.e loving all people we encounter. Since true love is not a function of the object's charecterestics, true love implies that one should love everybody.
2. Love between child and the Parents, siblings: In all these cases, love just exists due to the relationships; it does not depend on the charecterestics of the people. In other words, we do not pick and choose our parents, yet we love them. If we were to replace our parents with people with a different set of charecterestics, we would still love them.
3. Friendship, Erotic love : In these relationships the 'love' exists because we gain some physical, emotional or intellectual benefit.
Practical World
In the practical world, it is not possible categorize love into clear-cut subdivisions. For example, consider two friends. The driving force of the 'love' between the two friends might be the intellectual pleasure they derive by interacting with each other. Supposing, suddenly one of the friends develops amnesia (or some other mental deficiency), because of which the two friends can no longer interact with each other and gain the same kind of pleasure as before. But this may not prevent them from interacting with each other. In other words, 'love' between them does not terminate as soon as one of them develops amnesia.
I think in the practical world, the charecterestics of the object does play a part in love. So, consider a person A and for the him/her let X be the defining set of charecterestics that love is a function of. In other words, the love of A towards any B is proportional to the amount of X contained in B. But supposing due to the passage of time, B loses some of the charecterectics that made A love B, i.e X in B decreases, the love of A towards B does not exactly follow the curve backwards. This phenomenon is not unlike magnetic hysteresis. It is a phenomenon in which a metal is magnetized when a magnetic field is applied to it and alternatively gets demagnetized when the field is removed. But interestingly, when the magnetic field is reduced, the demagnetization does not follow magnetization curve. In some sense, it resists the process of demagnetization and consequently the magnetization/demagnetization curve is actually a loop.
The analogous resistance exhibited to stop loving, when the apparent 'reason' for love ceases to exist is commonly referred as "commitment". Commitment is one of the situations in which love in the practical world tries to attain the ideal. In my opinion, the area enclosed by this loop is measure of the quality of the love.
Ideal World
Kierkegaard says that love, in its purest form, should not depend on the excellence of the object in question. To justify this he (who btw is also a theoligian) uses the accepted theological fact that 'god loves all' in his arguments. I agree with Kierkegaard and I also believe that ideally, love should not be a function of the object's charecterestics.
Let me give you another reasoning for this. Suppose a person A claims that he/she 'loves' B because B posesses some quality x. Now I ask, if suddenly B loses this quality x, will A stop 'loving' B?
case 1: No, A does not stop loving B
Then clearly the quality 'x' is not important and A is 'capable' of loving any person even if that person may not posess the quality 'x'.
case 2: Yes, A stops loving B after B loses 'x'
The clearly A does not love B, he/she only loves 'x' in B.
Note:
Based on the above I think it is possible to categorize different kinds of love, in decreasing order of the quality of love:
1. Unconditionally loving every person in the world: I think this is what people mean by 'love your neighbour' - i.e loving all people we encounter. Since true love is not a function of the object's charecterestics, true love implies that one should love everybody.
2. Love between child and the Parents, siblings: In all these cases, love just exists due to the relationships; it does not depend on the charecterestics of the people. In other words, we do not pick and choose our parents, yet we love them. If we were to replace our parents with people with a different set of charecterestics, we would still love them.
3. Friendship, Erotic love : In these relationships the 'love' exists because we gain some physical, emotional or intellectual benefit.
Practical World
In the practical world, it is not possible categorize love into clear-cut subdivisions. For example, consider two friends. The driving force of the 'love' between the two friends might be the intellectual pleasure they derive by interacting with each other. Supposing, suddenly one of the friends develops amnesia (or some other mental deficiency), because of which the two friends can no longer interact with each other and gain the same kind of pleasure as before. But this may not prevent them from interacting with each other. In other words, 'love' between them does not terminate as soon as one of them develops amnesia.
I think in the practical world, the charecterestics of the object does play a part in love. So, consider a person A and for the him/her let X be the defining set of charecterestics that love is a function of. In other words, the love of A towards any B is proportional to the amount of X contained in B. But supposing due to the passage of time, B loses some of the charecterectics that made A love B, i.e X in B decreases, the love of A towards B does not exactly follow the curve backwards. This phenomenon is not unlike magnetic hysteresis. It is a phenomenon in which a metal is magnetized when a magnetic field is applied to it and alternatively gets demagnetized when the field is removed. But interestingly, when the magnetic field is reduced, the demagnetization does not follow magnetization curve. In some sense, it resists the process of demagnetization and consequently the magnetization/demagnetization curve is actually a loop.
The analogous resistance exhibited to stop loving, when the apparent 'reason' for love ceases to exist is commonly referred as "commitment". Commitment is one of the situations in which love in the practical world tries to attain the ideal. In my opinion, the area enclosed by this loop is measure of the quality of the love.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Birthday Distribution
How do you think are birthdays distributed over the days of the year? Do you think certain months (days) will have significantly more (less) births than others?
Here is the distribution in the United States. (Source Hallmark)
Note that the expected value for months with 31 days is 8.49% and for months with 30 days is 8.21% and 7.67% for february.
Rank Month Percent
1. August 9.07 (+0.58)
2. July 8.80 (+0.59)
3. September 8.62
4. October 8.60
5. March 8.51
6. May 8.30
7. January 8.25
8. June 8.15
9. April 8.12
10. December 8.07 (-0.42)
11. November 7.96 (-0.25)
12. February 7.55 (-0.12)
Given the data, Do you think this is a random distribution, or is there a bias?
Ok here are two more facts:
October 5 is supposedly the most popular birthday and May 22 is the least popular. (source wikipedia)
I seem to remember this as a joke, but it is worth noting that October 5 - 9 months = approximately New years eve!
Looking at the table again, the birthdays probably are not randomly distributed - seems like there is a bias caused by more conceptions happening in colder months??
Here is the distribution in the United States. (Source Hallmark)
Note that the expected value for months with 31 days is 8.49% and for months with 30 days is 8.21% and 7.67% for february.
Rank Month Percent
1. August 9.07 (+0.58)
2. July 8.80 (+0.59)
3. September 8.62
4. October 8.60
5. March 8.51
6. May 8.30
7. January 8.25
8. June 8.15
9. April 8.12
10. December 8.07 (-0.42)
11. November 7.96 (-0.25)
12. February 7.55 (-0.12)
Given the data, Do you think this is a random distribution, or is there a bias?
Ok here are two more facts:
October 5 is supposedly the most popular birthday and May 22 is the least popular. (source wikipedia)
I seem to remember this as a joke, but it is worth noting that October 5 - 9 months = approximately New years eve!
Looking at the table again, the birthdays probably are not randomly distributed - seems like there is a bias caused by more conceptions happening in colder months??
