A Categorical Treatment of Romance

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Or, why Information Theory is more touchy-feely than classical E&M.

You folks are familiar with the concept of a duality, yes? Then what is the usual loser scenario for guys? You dote on some girl with all this attention but then she runs away with some motorcycle dude, right? And to add insult to injury, she complains about him to you afterwards.

What would be duality of this situation? Just reverse the arrows, yes? I don't want you to get to an answer without thinking about it, so take some time to muse a little, then highlight the text after this sentence. You're a girl. No one calls you, not even that motorcycle dude you gave it up for. "I hope he dies in an accident. Asshole." ;-)

Now there is a catch here, because this seems to have violated conservation of attention. It's like integrating the magnetic flux over a closed continuous surface, yknow? Should sum to zero.* Alas, the physically correct description of the world is totally useless to us. We have a glimmer of hope, however. See, if you step back and think about it,... If you give unconditional attention, is it still attention? ;-) Remember, it takes only one bit to encode unconditional attention.** One. Bit. :-) Admittedly, this reconciliation requires Information Theory, but what matters is that the math works!! :-D ***

I wonder how many analogies I can butcher with dualities, and which supplementary theories I will need to grease the axe uh I mean logic...

[*] Maxwell's equation for magnetic flux works particularly well here when you imagine how the positive and negative nature of the interaction would play out. ;-) And the fact that it sums to zero. Face it, kid. There is no magnetic monopole.

[**] Kindly consider that girls may find one-bit guys to be cute, but ultimately a little annoying. And that giving it up to those cool boys riding motorcycles can also be encoded in one bit. Happy romancing, and try to not say anything stupid! :-)

[***] The solution to maths is… MOAR MATHS!

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