The logical argument in favor of love

Oct 25, 2022

The game of dating

Consider dating to be a game of giving and receiving with two players. I’m player 1 and the people I date are player 2. If I was a logically thinking person I would only date if there was a net positive for me in dating. This means that the odds of winning over time are at least 51%. There are some scenarios where that’s the case.

I’m a better player than the people I date. I’m “dating down”. I’ve a higher chance of winning.
I’m a cheater. I know how to cheat the dating game and get an advantage. I’ve a higher chance of winning.

In these scenarios, it makes logical sense for me to play the dating game. Consider this scenario:

Myself and player 2 are equally good players. We both have a 50% chance of winning.

In that case, we both would be indifferent to dating. Over time there would be no gain or loss for both of us. Now, we humans experience loss more intensely than gain, meaning loosing the dating game will weigh heavier on us than winning the dating game. This means that if both players are equally good players and both have a 50% chance of winning, the losses will still be perceived to outweigh the gains. Over time both players would loose. Therefore, both players would be better of not dating at all.

In brief, unless we are a cheater in the game of dating or are “dating down” meaning we are selecting partners less likely to win, we don’t want to play the dating game at all. We are guaranteed to have a net loss over time.

This perspective of dating is based on the assumption that dating is a “zero sum game”, meaning that it always produces a net gain of zero, with one party winning and the other party losing.

So is everyone who’s dating, dating down or a cheater?

I don’t think so.

There is love and love changes the dating game. The game becomes a “non-zero sum game”, meaning there is a net gain/positive or a net loss. It now makes sense for all players to play the game. All players playing the non zero sum game of dating are playing it for love. To win there is no need to cheat or to date down anymore.

What is love? Baby don’t hurt me... don’t hurt me... no more.

But seriously, what’s love?

I like to believe that it’s something magical and out of this world but in the end my logical brain tells me that we humans are just biological beings, just like everything else in this world. And biological beings have one thing in common since the dawn of time. They want to survive and to survive they need to evolve and to evolve they need to solve problems and to solve problems they come up with tools that allow them to do that. Sorry to throw it at you like that but love is just another of these tools. Just because it’s a tool doesn’t make it less romantic or less extraordinary, quite the opposite. It’s an awesome thing that we have at our disposal and therefore begs to be used.

Love transforms every game into a non zero sum game. It’s the tool that makes us evolve on a fundamental level and can take us to heights that zero sum players can not reach.

3 assumptions to keep in mind for what follows

In the dating example I’m making some assumptions:

Humans are logical thinking beings.
Humans are capable of weighing gains and losses (with losses weighing more per unit) and act accordingly.

To generalize this dating example to all kinds of games in life, I would like to add one more assumption:

Some humans are more competitive/driven than others.

With these 3 assumptions in mind we can now proceed.

Practical Part

Based on our previous assumptions and conclusions, there is 3 generalisations we can make about how people go through life:

If you are a non competitive being and go through life seeing everything as a zero sum game you will not take chances at playing the different games of life. That’s because your logical brain came to the conclusion that it doesn’t make any sense to do so.
If you are a competitive being and go through life seeing everything as a zero sum game you will take chances at playing the different games of life and consequently suffer. That’s because, unless you cheat or are a better player than your opponents, you are damned to experience a net loss over time.
If you are about love and go through life seeing everything as a non-zero sum game, competitiveness doesn’t play a role anymore and you will take chances at playing the games of life and evolve instead of suffer. Competitiveness and suffering is replaced by evolution which ironically makes you way more competitive than before.

Businesses know about these generalisations

Reminder: Biological organisms want to survive and to survive they need to evolve and to evolve they need to solve problems and to solve problems they come up with tools that allow them to do that. In other words: They are problem solvers.

Of the previous 3 generalisations the first one doesn’t help us to solve problems. It’s a neutral state where nothing really happens. No problems are getting solved and the game you have settled in and keep playing is most likely a net positive for you, whether you cheat or are better player than the other players. But that’s the game you play and that’s it. That’s also the state where your logical brain tells you that there is no other game for you to play and that’s fine with you.

So now that you have settled there is a lot of time and energy for other things and that’s what some businesses in specific industries take advantage of. We could label them as all non productive products or services, or leisure. Some examples can be found in the entertainment industry and mass consumerism.

The second generalisation’s take away is “people don’t mind or like suffering and believe there to be a net gain over time”. Lots of businesses are taking advantage of that and it works, mostly because people learn to taper their emotional response to loosing and get used to suffering, while perceiving benefits of still going for the game they are playing. Over time it’s a net loss, unless you play against weaker players or cheat. This does two things: it makes people want to become the stronger player by going harder and perform better, or makes people cheat.

This pattern can be found everywhere, whether it’s business schools, competitive banking or consulting jobs, high performance sports, CrossFit or Ultra endurance races. They all use one or multiple elements of the second generalisation. This approach is effective in a zero sum game and might even get you ahead compared to the other players.

Some researchers have come to argue that what drives the hype of CrossFit and Ultra endurance races are other factors such as “being in charge again” or “functional self punishment” but at the most fundamental level these reasons do not make sense. “Being in charge again” would mean that our goal is to stagnate, to go back to a previous state while “functional self punishment” would mean we are all masochists since this tendency of suffering in CrossFit or Ultra endurance races is the same as what allows us to suffer in all other areas of life. Instead, I believe, that we are learning how to suffer to get ahead.

From the outside, the third generalisation looks a lot like the second one only that on the inside love gets involved which changes the whole game to a non zero sum game. There is no industry that is built on this generalisation yet.

To understand that generalisation better, we need to talk about one more aspect of non zero sum games. Only then we can grasp the value of of love in games.

Love changes a zero sum game to a non zero sum game with a net positive

“Zero-sum games always produce a net gain of zero, with one party winning and the other party losing, while non-zero-sum games produce a net positive or net loss.”

Non zero sumness only tells you that outcomes will be correlated. It does not tell you that it’s a net positive. Injecting love into a game however will do both, make it a non-zero sum game, if it wasn’t already, and guarantee a net positive.

I defined love as a tool earlier but what are the characteristics that make up that tool?

acceptance and no judgement
perspective taking
…

that’s all I’ve got so far… (I’ve written about these two points and some of their components in detail, in the the past)

Learning how to embody these characteristics is learning how to love. It will lead to the expansion of your heart and your capacity to love. Ultimately, love itself will turn into a non zero sum game.

The non zero sumness of love combined with the non zero sumness of the games you play is what guarantees the net positive of life.