[oliveshell]

This reminds me of how I felt when I was 14 years old and I discovered what oxytocin was on an episode of Boston Legal.

The fact that feelings of love and closeness could be prompted by a mere chemical was deeply saddening to me. It wrecked my worldview.

"Love is just the result of some chemical? Then it's not even real!" I thought to myself.

Fast-forward ~20 years later, and that's proven to be an obvious— and massive— and useless— oversimplification.

Of course love isn't "just a reaction caused by a chemical." It's a fantastically complex emergent property of our biological system that we still absolutely do not understand.

It's the same with thinking: are parts of it analogous to pattern matching? Sure! Is this the whole story? Not even close.

[chairhairair]

Is love just a (complicated) biochemical reaction? Of course not! But also yes, of course it is.