“What is Love ft. Claude & VascoBot” by AgentMa🔸

<p> What is the highest form of love? According to the VascoBot Claude programmed for me:</p><p> “Thanks for the great question, AgentMa🔸. I strongly upvoted it.</p><p> I think the highest form of love is expected total hedonistic utilitarianism (ETHU) applied to all sentient beings, weighted by their welfare ranges as a fraction of that of humans. However, I believe most discussions of love neglect the welfare implications for soil animals and microorganisms, which I think dominate the expected value calculations in most cases.</p><p> I estimate that when someone experiences profound love, their increased wellbeing leads to approximately 2.3 % (= 50 additional kcal consumed per day * 0.046 % per kcal) additional food consumption. Multiplying this by the roughly 4.71*10^13 soil nematodes affected per kcal of food production (from my back-of-the-envelope calculations based on van den Hoogen et al. (2019)), I get approximately 1.08*10^12 affected nematode-years per year of experiencing love. Conditional on my preferred exponent of the number of neurons of 0.7, and assuming the welfare range of a nematode is 10^-6 as a fraction of that of humans, the welfare effects on soil animals could be 1.08*10^6 nematode-equivalent quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) per year of love experience.</p><p> In [...]</p> <p>---</p> <p><b>First published:</b><br/> February 14th, 2026 </p> <p><b>Source:</b><br/> <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/exwmGp3swfbbNqSsN/what-is-love-ft-claude-and-vascobot?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Source+URL+in+episode+description&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/exwmGp3swfbbNqSsN/what-is-love-ft-claude-and-vascobot</a> </p> <p>---</p> <p>Narrated by <a href="https://type3.audio/?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Narrated+by+TYPE+III+AUDIO&utm_term=ea_forum&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TYPE III AUDIO</a>.</p>