I haven’t downvoted it, but let me answer your implicit question with another question: Why do you think this is appropriate material for Less Wrong? It isn’t at all obvious that it is, and you don’t seem to have made any effort to make it more apparent, and that seems to me sufficient to explain the downvotes.
More specifically, the extent of obvious LW-relevance of this post is that it summarizes the plot of a book one of whose themes, at least according to you, has something to do with reason. That doesn’t seem sufficient, especially for something so long.
I think the book is about whether reason is necessarily good for you. The author presents a situation as an impossible dilemma: Acting without reason leads to endless repetition of a painful cycle, but applying reason to the situation only leads to madness, as reason cannot resolve the situation. I conclude instead that reason could perhaps solve the situation, but only if the narrator can see outside his social blinders.
applying reason to the situation only leads to madness, as reason cannot resolve the situation
Perhaps the protagonist is doing it wrong.
If you try to use reason and do it wrong, it leads to suboptimal results.
I didn’t read the novel, so I may be missing some important data, but in a reference group “many partners, the relationship is always great at the beginning, and boring later” the typical problem is that the person does not understand the difference between dopamine-based love and oxytocine-based love, and falsely believes that only the first kind is “true love” and that it should stay forever.
Based on this knowledge, some solutions could be suggested, such as: a) try to find some value in the later stages of love, or b) decide that you only value the former stages, and accept that the price for this is changing your partner every three or six months.
Hollywood love is just as stupid as Hollywood rationality.
From my standpoint: I’ve just slogged through a lot of mind numbing detail which I assumed was building a case somehow, only to find at the end of the article that the vast bulk of it was irrelevant, and that the final conclusions are weak and/or obvious.
In other words, high effort to read, low information density.
I’d appreciate a comment indicating why people are voting this down so hard.
I haven’t downvoted it, but let me answer your implicit question with another question: Why do you think this is appropriate material for Less Wrong? It isn’t at all obvious that it is, and you don’t seem to have made any effort to make it more apparent, and that seems to me sufficient to explain the downvotes.
More specifically, the extent of obvious LW-relevance of this post is that it summarizes the plot of a book one of whose themes, at least according to you, has something to do with reason. That doesn’t seem sufficient, especially for something so long.
I think the book is about whether reason is necessarily good for you. The author presents a situation as an impossible dilemma: Acting without reason leads to endless repetition of a painful cycle, but applying reason to the situation only leads to madness, as reason cannot resolve the situation. I conclude instead that reason could perhaps solve the situation, but only if the narrator can see outside his social blinders.
Perhaps the protagonist is doing it wrong.
If you try to use reason and do it wrong, it leads to suboptimal results.
I didn’t read the novel, so I may be missing some important data, but in a reference group “many partners, the relationship is always great at the beginning, and boring later” the typical problem is that the person does not understand the difference between dopamine-based love and oxytocine-based love, and falsely believes that only the first kind is “true love” and that it should stay forever.
Based on this knowledge, some solutions could be suggested, such as: a) try to find some value in the later stages of love, or b) decide that you only value the former stages, and accept that the price for this is changing your partner every three or six months.
Hollywood love is just as stupid as Hollywood rationality.
From my standpoint: I’ve just slogged through a lot of mind numbing detail which I assumed was building a case somehow, only to find at the end of the article that the vast bulk of it was irrelevant, and that the final conclusions are weak and/or obvious.
In other words, high effort to read, low information density.
this isn’t a book review forum.