If your suggestion is the correct answer, I will ship $25 to your Pstars account if you want. Goes for the Indiana Jones guy too.

oh I don't care about the money I just thought that was an especially amusing arbitrary & capricious ruling

ha scoopage

he shipped it and I took it, I'm such a whore

I'll enter a tourney with it, and use the winnings to throw a gigantic Vegas POG bash. All the freaks will be there.

tyty elrudo

I can be in Vegas in 6 hours just let me know.

I didn't realize dnky was serious.

Very sorry to hear that.

Atak, tell me what you were saying yesterday about that love-continuum thing, because I actually ended up giving it a lot of thought as I was falling asleep last night.

Well, I didn't think it out in great detail, but you had asked whether I thought (basically) a dog could love us in the same way a person can love another person (or so I thought). The implication, I think, is that a dog's less-developed cognition renders its emotions (if we call them that) simpler.

I don't disagree with that — and if you didn't say it, I will. But I'm not sure the fact that it's simpler makes it less meaningful in an obvious way. Also, the continuum thing includes the idea that a lot of the emotions/reactions/whatever that we call "love" really aren't that complicated either — they're the sort of thing a dog or cat could feel imo.

If love is, as I said yesterday, the anticipation of happiness, then a dog can love us if it can be happy, and its love is similar if its happiness is similar (which I believe to be true) and if it anticipates things in the same way (which I think is probably the main difference — a dog understands the future in a very different way than a human does).

Yeah. I remember I agreed with you and I still kind of do. I guess I just started thinking the basic question "is there a difference between like and love."

You were saying how you can love food, love sports, love a person. Basically its all just a question of degree. I started thinking though, is there a categorical delineation at some point, where eventually love is just a completely different entity that like? You like food, but is the feelings you have for a wife/husband just a greater degree of that, or is it actually a different thing all together? Thats not meant to be a loaded question, I could actually fall on either side I think. But if it is a different thing all together, does it require a more sever self awareness to make it possible? Like the ones humans have?

See, I guess (again, this is thinking out loud) that there really isn't a bright line. Prefer —> like —> love, and I don't think you can really draw any sensible lines... though I imagine people can come up with some worth considering, I just can't.

If you like this kind of question you might enjoy I Am A Strange Loop

I think this is well stated.

In other words, yes, I think it's all matters of degree, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

Yeah. Hmmmmm. I'm thinking.

I have learned that a lot of the things people interpret as love from dogs such as jumping on them for affection are actually dominant pack behaviors. Not sure what anyone interprets as love from a cat beyond letting you pet them.

I mean, does anyone see a difference between not liking someone and hating someone? Like I think its a difference of rationality. When you like food, as you said atak, you like it for the anticipation of happiness it will bring you. But that is a rational appraisal. Often I think the love that a human feels for another human, or for something abstract like god, the emotion is irrational--the anticipation of happiness does not fit with the actual reality of the situation.

Thats where I was going with dislike and hate. Certainly we can believe its possible to dislike someone so much that it is irrational rather than just survival instinct. Couldn't it go the other way around?

That link reminds me that I should reread Godel, Escher, Bach.

everyone should read GEB because it's the nuts

Hmm (to birdman's point).

I think I may be hampered here by rarely (never?) experiencing the irrational, highly charged version of liking something or someone for very long. I gather others do?

Mine is certainly usually short term, though I believe we may share a similar affliction.

watching birdman and atakdog discuss human emotion is like watching fish flop around on a riverbank

lollll

That was a good one.

Time for another beer! Spring break!

Sigh.

Unf*******believable. Brent Musburger is ruining yet another UT game. Moron.