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How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

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Re: How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

#51

Post by Invictus0 »

lcall wrote: post #45
Invictus0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really reconsider the UI for your site. Yours is the most aggressively hostile website I have encountered in recent memory.

Thanks for your candor. I grant you it's not very prettified. For someone with my personality (sounds like not for yours, that's OK), that could be a good thing: I like text, lightweight and skimmable (though I know elegance and pictures are more popular and pleasing). I try to make it so someone can read a page, and click parts of interest for more details, something like an outline, to make it navigable & useful to…

I am no UX designer, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. I would suggest increasing the text size, increasing the spacing between lines, and maybe organizing things a little better. Clicking down a rabbit hole of links with no sense for where I am in your organizational scheme or when I'll actually arrive at the content I'm looking for feels very disconcerting. The actual content is a monospaced font text file which extends across my entire monitor because I'm browsing in full screen, which makes for an extremely bad reading experience. Lots of hate for Medium on HN but notice how text on Medium has a font that is easy on the eyes and the width of the reading window is not very wide; I would try and mimic that experience.

Re: How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

#52

Post by lcall »

Invictus0 wrote: post #51
lcall wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your candor. I grant you it's not very prettified. For someone with my personality (sounds like not for yours, that's OK), that could be a good thing: I like text, lightweight and skimmable (though I know elegance and pictures are more popular and pleasing). I try to make it so someone can read a page, and click parts of interest for more details, something like an outline, to make it navigable & useful to…

I am no UX designer, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. I would suggest increasing the text size, increasing the spacing between lines, and maybe organizing things a little better. Clicking down a rabbit hole of links with no sense for where I am in your organizational scheme or when I'll actually arrive at the content I'm looking for feels very disconcerting. The actual content is a monospaced font text fi…

Thanks. As time permits I will plan to look at what you've said. I'd like to balance that with my desire for an "outline" so I can have large amounts of easily-navigable info without creating huge pages.

I see what you mean about the text file: I just haven't evolved it into a web page yet, so I can shorten the lines easily enough, but not sure how to integrate it best into my organizer software beyond that.

One idea is that, I can export content with the software into single-page (text) outlines of selected subsets of the content, showing the outline structure with indentation (just using white-space for indentation, like org-mode, only farther in, currently 6 space characters per level) or 1.1, 1.1.1, 2.1.3 -style numbering with some indentation, down to N levels at a time. Perhaps sometime I could automate linking pages to/from such text outlines (they are 80-columns by default), when I generate the site. At selected places, or through out. Hmm.

If I drop off here for a while or you want to continue conversation later, feel to email per the bottom of each page.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

Edit: Another way to put the problem is this: I have enough content, with much more probably to come, that I want to make it useful while avoiding the whole "TL/DR" syncrome for someone who would only want to read some. And let them easily choose which "some", while skimming or skipping others, thus my thinking in terms of outline-like structure. I hope that makes sense.

Re: How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

#53

Post by emit_time »

tempromance1 wrote: post #42
emit_time wrote: post #12

This really doesn't relate too much, but I've realized over time that I'm essentially in love with one of my best friends (of the opposite gender). We've been friends for 10 years, and just spending time around her makes me feel so relaxed and satisfied with life, it's a unique feeling to someone like me who hasn't been in much of a relationship so far in my life. I'm able to maintain a good friendship despite this,…

Same here. Friends for 5 or 6 years. All the same feelings you mentioned. Thought it would never go anywhere but was happy with it as it was. She initiated it being something more. Now we're coming up to our 4th wedding anniversary and I can confidently say both of us could not be any happier and we're even trying for kids. Anything can happen. Never say never.

Congrats!

She's asexual, so I don't think it'd work out.

Re: How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

#54

Post by antidesitter »

nitrogen wrote: post #43
Invictus0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really reconsider the UI for your site. Yours is the most aggressively hostile website I have encountered in recent memory.

It looks like raw html styling. Maybe browsers' default stylesheets aren't keeping up with the needs of all users.

Agreed. Browsers need better default stylesheets so authors can focus on content.

Re: How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

#55

Post by mistermann »

tokenpreneur wrote: post #33
mistermann wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there's lust involved, it's by definition not unconditional Can you elaborate on this?

Lust is conditioned by pleasurable sensory inputs and the prospect (or consummation, if you're lucky) of the sexual encounter.

Right, but how is that necessarily a condition (pre-requisite) for love?

Re: How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

#56

Post by tokenpreneur »

mistermann wrote: post #55
tokenpreneur wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lust is conditioned by pleasurable sensory inputs and the prospect (or consummation, if you're lucky) of the sexual encounter.

Right, but how is that necessarily a condition (pre-requisite) for love?

You can't call a (romantic) love unconditional, if there's lust involved. The lust conditions the (romantic) love. This is not the same as saying lust is a necessary condition for love (but is usually a factor in romantic love), which I have not said nor implied.

Re: How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

#57

Post by majos »

IgorPartola wrote: post #3

So I’ll just leave some bits here. For me the quote that started to conceptualize romantic love was “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” from Robert Heinlein. But really that’s not the whole story. Just like we have many different kinds of non-romantic love (kids, candy, outdoors, parents, friends, motorcycles, precision instruments, algorithms) we also experienc…

Not trying to criticize here, but if "love" becomes freely applicable to all sorts of relationships of varying intimacies and understandings and bonds, doesn't that cheapen the word?

Maybe the word doesn't need to be love -- but I think we need a word that expresses commitment. Perhaps not exclusively, but at least through-thick-and-thin support. Love without this sounds oxymoronic to me.

Re: How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

#58

Post by ak39 »

lcall wrote: post #31

Long experience, observation and reading lead me to say that the pop-culture idea of "falling in love" is just hormones and curiosity and adventure. Real, true love is a decision to faithfully be there and serve a person through thick and thin. It is best if that decision is well-made. Related to courtship and marriage, I have put many thoughts here (based on experience, research and lots of observation): http://luke…

So basically?:

“Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken."

~ Bill the Bard

Re: How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

#59

Post by oftenwrong »

lcall wrote: post #45
Invictus0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really reconsider the UI for your site. Yours is the most aggressively hostile website I have encountered in recent memory.

Thanks for your candor. I grant you it's not very prettified. For someone with my personality (sounds like not for yours, that's OK), that could be a good thing: I like text, lightweight and skimmable (though I know elegance and pictures are more popular and pleasing). I try to make it so someone can read a page, and click parts of interest for more details, something like an outline, to make it navigable & useful to…

When sites are heavily styled, it makes it annoying to go from site to site. On one site, text is big and navigation is at the top. On the next site, the text is smaller and lower-contrast, and navigation is on the left. On the next site there is a sticky navigation bar that follows me down the page. The result is constant adaptation. It is like (hand)writing a book, but after each page you have to reach into a big bin of pens and find a new one. Each one requires a slightly different grip, a slightly different pressure, a slightly different lift, etc. I go so far as to read most sites with the provided CSS blocked (via uMatrix) just to achieve a relatively uniform experience. Your lightly-styled, simple page design is basically my ideal.

Re: How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

#60

Post by lurquer »

tokenpreneur wrote: post #26
lurquer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. I'll leave it to you to parse adjectives. All I'm saying to the delightfully Spock-ian logical HN poster is that all the cynicsm and scientific Mumbo-jumbo about endorphines and the like vanish upon laying eyes on your soul-mate. I could never convince you of true love. I don't mean to even try. I hope you have the distinct pleasure and privilege of discovering it for yourself.

The GP was making a distinction regarding the application of the quality of unconditional to romantic love. At the minimum , if there's lust involved, it's by definition not unconditional. You snarkily leave me to parsing adjectives all the while triumphing your definition of true love over others. One can accept the notion of 'true (romantic) love' but pretending its unconditional is lying about facts. I'd also argu…

Didn't mean to be snarky. Your post below regarding your wife and her definition of unconditional evidences great self-awareness on your part; namely, acknowledging when you were being unreasonable. I'm not that great at a parsing the differences in meaning between all the different types of emotion-laden words. Not my forte. That is, I can read books and whatnot about the 'five different love languages' and stuff like that, and it just doesn't compute. Maybe I'm the one who is Spock-Ian.

But, at the end of the day, all I know is I saw this chick once and utterly fell head-over-head in love and it hasn't worn off or diminished in any respect... it just gets better and better each and every day. Maybe I'm unique. I don't know. Or, maybe SHE's unique. Like I said, it's embarrassing how ridiculously blessed in this regard I am. I just perceived, from reading the comments, that behind all the analytical profundities, there is a sad hoplelessness lurking whereby some posters have resigned themselves to the dismal idea that 'True Love' ain't real. Well, I'm just here to say they're wrong. Thank god. They are utterly wrong. And thats all I have to say about that.

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