People talk about unconditional love and conditional love. Maybe I’m out of the loop regarding the great loves going on around me, but my guess is that love is extremely rarely unconditional. Or at least if it is, then it is either very broadly applied or somewhat confused or strange: if you love me unconditionally, presumably you love everything else as well, since it is only conditions that separate me from the worms.

I do have sympathy for this resolution—loving someone so unconditionally that you’re just crazy about all the worms as well—but since that's not a way I know of anyone acting for any extended period, the ‘conditional vs. unconditional’ dichotomy here seems a bit miscalibrated for being informative.

Even if we instead assume that by ‘unconditional’, people mean something like ‘resilient to most conditions that might come up for a pair of humans’, my impression [...]

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First published:
April 17th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rwBbTaN9WLfCA7MAo/mid-conditional-love

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Mid-conditional love” by KatjaGrace

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Mid-conditional love” by KatjaGrace