I absolutely agree that he’s missing out on a big thing that, in worlds where he doesn’t do, he will eventually regret. The rest of your points are why I mentioned burnout. I would not encourage someone who already feels love to do this, nor would I encourage almost any other researcher to consider their output high enough quality to try to maintain in such a way. Wentworth in particular is one of like 5 people I currently think are consistently making headway on a problem I think we need to solve, and since we seem to have failed to Just Make More Wentworths, I’d rather not lose the one we have due to it turning out he was motivated by an embarrassing thing like “pica for love”. Someone who does feel love would probably find themselves resourced by it; it’s possible he would too, but https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jk9yMXpBLMWNTFLzh/limerence-messes-up-your-rationality-real-bad-yo
I absolutely agree that he’s missing out on a big thing that, in worlds where he doesn’t do, he will eventually regret. The rest of your points are why I mentioned burnout. I would not encourage someone who already feels love to do this, nor would I encourage almost any other researcher to consider their output high enough quality to try to maintain in such a way. Wentworth in particular is one of like 5 people I currently think are consistently making headway on a problem I think we need to solve, and since we seem to have failed to Just Make More Wentworths, I’d rather not lose the one we have due to it turning out he was motivated by an embarrassing thing like “pica for love”. Someone who does feel love would probably find themselves resourced by it; it’s possible he would too, but https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jk9yMXpBLMWNTFLzh/limerence-messes-up-your-rationality-real-bad-yo