After the watching the series of videos on love and how the brain works, and thinking critically about the homework readings, write a discussion post in which you do the following:
1) Provide your overall reaction to the videos.
2) Explain how love itself can be a fallacy OR, if you disagree or object, discuss your position.
3) Make connections to the other homework readings:
- "12 Angry Men," by Reginald Rose
- "Committees, Juries, and Teams: The Columbia Disaster and How Small Groups can be Made to Work," by James Surowiecki
- "The 12 Twelve Cognitive Biases that Prevent You from Being Rational" by George
4) In a SEPARATE post ("reply" to a classmate), responding to ONE other student, extending his/her ideas and entering into an academic conversation. Your comment should go BEYOND, "I (dis)agree," or "you make a [insert positive affirmation here] point." Instead, it should ADD to your classmates thoughts in a meaningful way. You may do this in ways that agree, disagree, or both.
1) I genuinely respect the emphasis on a biological connection to love with even specific organic compounds cited which affect our perceptions. In a way though, a sad notion was made that we are not designed to be happy, but to reproduce instead (Fisher). In the grand scheme of things, this is an impossible generalization to make, as it bring up the question, "Then why reproduce?" and the questions continue and so on. Regardless, love is a social function that allows us to be on the right path to reproduce, and it is hardwired into our brains.
ReplyDeleteOverall, this is a slightly depressing set of videos because it highlights the so called "fallacies" of love, and their downfalls. It portrays love as a very grim, limiting, and even depriving function that we as humans experience and can suffer greatly from. Lacking love has definite consequences but so does having love. It's the balance of individuality and interpersonal connection where the trade off is found, and it may not ultimatley be up to our conscious mind to determine just how that balance ensues.
2) Is love a fallacy? Not necessarily. Love is a very concrete thing, just look at how many biological ties it has exemplified in just the few videos shown. Love, however, can make you commit innumerable fallacies. For example, take confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is such where you surround yourself with people alike you, thus leading to a perpetuating attitude and further stagnation. Two people in love tend to have many blaring similarities. Thus, being with a person like you will cause you to have a confirmation bias.
HioLong Lei
ReplyDelete1. All those videos are using the scientific method to analysis love. It is interesting because it shows that human wants to prove everything with science and logic. Something is better with a mystery over it, love is a good example. Not everything is needed a solution, but overall, those videos do provide us a lot of information about the connection with love and brain.
2. I agree love is a fallacy, but it is a reasonable and necessary fallacy. It is because, without this fallacy, our society cannot function at all; people stop get marriage and reproduce. Therefore love is a necessary fallacy to confuse our brain and to balance the life.
3. Logical fallacies not only appear with love, but with many other similar expressions, like anger, fear, stress, etc. In "12 Angry Men," by Reginald Rose, most characters in the story make the wrong decision on a case they don’t even pay a bit attention to investigating, and some of them are influenced by peer pressure, hate and the incontinence bring by the case. The logic fallacy can be a small thing when you are just messing with your friends, but it can also be a huge thing if you are in the same situation as the characters of “12 Angry Men”.
HioLong,
ReplyDeleteMy confusion comes from your response number 2. You claim that love is a fallacy, but in what way? What support do you have that people would stop reproducing without love? Humans fall under the category of the animal kingdom. Yet, would you claim that all other animals require love to reproduce? My argument is that love is not a fallacy; it is a mechanism that is so biologically inrooted in us, supported with extensive biological and chemical data, that it is an instinct rather than a fallacy. Fallacies can only apply to non tangible objects, such as ideas. Love is associated with strong chemical signals in the brain that consistently get expressed when a stimulus is shown. In regards to love being absolutely necessary in reproduction, I think that is invalid. Take, for one, rape. There's an instance of possible reproduction without the need for love. What about artificial insemenation? Producing offspring no longer even needs the genes of your potential loved one. Love is a vehicle for reproduction, but it is not the sole one.
I think that some of the videos were interesting in showing how love can be seen as a biological thing that’s implanted in us. How Fisher’s talk is convincing but I guess thinking romantically I find it hard to completely agree with her. Her statement that “love is the most powerful drug” makes her argument seem valid in that the brain can aid in people do crazy things for the person they love, which is why some people kill for love and so on. We always wonder why people do these crazy things and after Fisher’s argument it seems safe to say that some part in the brain is helping by sending signals that it’s an okay thing to do “for love.” Altogether these groups of videos do a good job of persuading people to believe that love is about being romantic. I don’t think love is a fallacy. Definition of a fallacy is “a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound argument” if love were a fallacy we wouldn’t have these videos to understand that biology is a big role in love.
ReplyDeleteSo you are saying that love is not based on an unsound argument just because love is real? Why can't real things be fallacies. I think the videos do show that love is real it is biological, but as humans the emphasis we put on love as magic, romantic, universal fates entwined, etc. is NOT real and that part of the construct is the fallacy. Love is really just our brains firing dopamine in order to get us to reproduce.
DeleteI can finally understand the saying, "Love is a fallacy" and how it relates to our rhetorical studies. The videos show a few ways in which the mistaken belief is constructed and how it drives our behavior. My main takeaway is that our biology does not take into account our happiness that we place so much emphasis as that hazy beacon in the distance. Our biology would much rather prefer us to be in a frenzied, irrational, and supremely unhappy state if, in the end, a baby is produced our brains will maintain this state of evolution.
ReplyDelete2) Love is a fallacy because, as the videos showed, it is often based on irrational arguments. The mathematical models showed that you have to be irrational to even attempt to hopefully obtain a positive outcome.
3) I can see some connections between groupthink and love. The mathematical love video showed how impossibly irrational finding a positive outcome can be. And that groupthink can make us behave in strange ways. Rationally, alone, I would not pursue romance. But groupthink is possibly forcing my behavior.
For the third point, Love is definitely a type of fallacy, but not as group think. I would said love is more like a cognitive bias because love will, as Helen said in the video, will make you focus on someone's good only. Therefore, love is a different type of fallacy.
DeleteIs it irrational to hope for the best? I think it would be more irrational to hope for the worst. These mathematical equations were constructed to help those who want to meet the “perfect” partner or to at least be used as a reference to guide them on their next step in finding their “one”. If humans were meant to be unhappy and only reproduce isn’t that counterproductive? If an entire species was unhappy what would motivate them to reproduce or to reproduce even more unhappy beings? The idea of humans only existing to reproduce and be unhappy sounds like a fallacy itself. I disagree that we have evolved to only reproduce. I believe that we have evolved to love in order to reproduce. Sex will always be sex no matter who is it with, but love is a different story. An individual will not love everyone he/she will meet, love is more specific. So yes love can be defined as the brain being flooded with dopamine but true love is much more than just physical, it is spiritual.
DeleteWith the use of the scientific method and empirical data, the videos were able to provide a fresh view on love which has been ever-present since pre-recorded history. The videos provided advice on how to approach love in all its aspects such as providing the right approaches when meeting someone for the first time, how to have a successful relationship and even how to deal with divorce. The videos build their credibility on the premise that they're based on gathered data. The overall tone of the videos present love as an irrational force that moves people against their will and thus provides backing to the claim that love is a fallacy.
ReplyDeleteOne aspect that the videos, such as Helen Fisher's "Why we love, why we cheat", neglects how they take a very Western view on love and present it as universal among all cultures and races. By failing to qualify the scope of how these views only apply to Westerners, these perspectives are made less convincing. There are different social hierarchies and customs attached to love in various cultures. What works in approaching a prospective life partner in the US may not necessarily work in Qatar given that there are a different set of expectations in different societies.
1) The videos do provide how and why the brain picks and sometimes is controlled by our emotions when we fall in love. i do believe most of this is true and that humans are vulnerable to fall sick and have an obsession with the person you call your first love. Making you think about the person and this thought takes over your reasonable thinking and production.
ReplyDelete2) In the video "The brain in love" by Helen FIsher does provide some arguments that prove that love is a fallacy through tolerance, withdrawal and relapse in the human psychology. How chemicals in the brain do take part in why we chose fall in love with one person rather than another.
3) I understand that the connection between "The Brain In Love" and "A cognitive bias" both define the genuine deficiency in our thinking a flaw that arises from errors of memory, social attribution, and miscalculations and why we chose to love the person that we do. I am in love, i do admit it does take control but i know my limits to what and how i live my life.
Hi Josue,
DeleteI agree with what you are saying in regards to #1. Humans do have a tendency to become obsessive over and they also tend to quite often lose their own train of thought sometime. One can be in a setting needing to focus on something extremely important but the obsessive thoughts and wariness about the one that individual loves can also be a big distraction.
The videos were focusing on how to find love mathematically or find out why we love scientifically, but I believe that somethings cannot be solved with an equation. I understand that people are curious and try to find ways to explain certain things, but people do such things in order to make themselves feel better or feel more confident on their mission to find love. Something else that came to a shock to me was a statement by Fisher, that “we were not meant to be happy but to only reproduce.” This is a very dark thought and begs the question, wouldn’t our happiness affect our drive to reproduce? Without happiness we would not have the drive or motivation to reproduce. Being enticed is in itself a form of happiness. I believe love is not a fallacy, but that is does drive people to do crazy things that are the opposite of love, like Fisher’s example of killing for love or dying or love. Love is not just our brain flooding with dopamine or action potentials in our brain. This may be a portion of love but what about the heart? Why is the heart the universal symbol of love? Love it’s a constant struggle for power between one’s brain and one’s heart. While the brain is flooding with chemicals, our heart is racing causing us excitement, nervousness, anxiety basically making us want to jump off of the walls. These videos were too focused on the brain aspect and did not give enough attention to the heart, too much attention on the “how” we love and not the “why” we love.
ReplyDeleteHey Ernesto,
DeleteI completely agree with your reaction to fishers statement that "we were not meant to be happy but to only reproduce." I too was taken back at this statement because as I stated in my initial reaction I am a firm believer that love is something that does not need to be explained scientifically. So how then does one come to the conclusion that humans were only meant to reproduce only? If that was the case then why would concepts such as love, happiness, motivation or other things that drive us to be happy exist? If reproducing was our only job everything else in life would be irrelevant.
1) My overall reaction towards the videos is that I personally do not think that love can be scientifically defined or explained. With my regards towards the "Why we love, why we cheat" video, I do very much agree that when you do fall in love you can become extremely possessive. I know when I love someone I want to be with them every second of the day everyday of the week and every week of the month and years to come. I was not aware at the fact that one can also become obsessed with their significant other.
ReplyDelete2) I very much disagree with love being a fallacy. We all love lots of things and loving another person is not anything different. Not everyone may find love but that does not mean love isn't there. You're not always going to find that person that makes you hole but you will find love whether it be true or not. Just because it didn't work out doesn't mean that the love wasn't there. In "The Brain in Love" I do agree with love being in the brain and having a good understanding of each other is a big deal.
3)With "The Brain in Love" and "12 Angry Men", what I got out of both the reading and the video is that it is good to have an understanding of each other. In "12 Angry Men" Juror 8 eventually convinces majority of the jurors to look closely into the case instead of looking on the outside of it. He started to give more examples on how the defendant might be innocent and the others understood why. I am with someone who've gotten to known and had a better understanding of them and started see what I needed to see instead of seeing what I wanted to see in them.
Amerika Gillett
ReplyDelete1) The videos demonstrate a clear break down of the scientific part of love through explaining how the brain works with this concept of love. The videos do provide good information in regards to the brain connected with love; however, I feel that love does not necessarily need to be broken down and explained in a scientific way. What ever happened to finding things out through experience instead of listening to professionals go on about love and the brains and all the components to understand? At such a young age I have little to no experience with love as far as relationships and I'm not really interested in the "science" of love, I'd much rather understand it through experience.
2.) Is love a fallacy? Love is not a fallacy, love in fact is very real. It is the expectation around love that is a fallacy.
The videos analyze the logical and biological components of love. The credit given to our primitive drive and innate instincts to explain the love phenomenon is saddening because the emotional aspect of love is understated, precisely the aspect that cannot be logically or biologically explained. That's not to say that the scientific reasoning in the videos does not help us to better understand romantic relationships, but they cannot encapsulate the totality of love.
ReplyDeleteGiven that there is indeed a biological component of love, it should not be considered a fallacy. It is a genuine feeling that arouses from social and biological factors like those explained in the videos, not "unsound arguments."
Although the videos show a more hollow, unemotional perception of love, the points discussed give a lot to think about. Many logical factors that are used to explain love are true to innumerable romantic relationships. For example, confirmation bias compels us to seek relationships with those who are similar to us, while disregarding those who are not.