We think of love as something mysterious, sublime, even divine, something that can only grow and be sustained organically. But love is just a human emotion with a biochemical basis that can be altered and manipulated. So what if we could ‘hack’ love and change the way we feel about our partner, say, at a difficult moment in our relationship, by taking drugs? Would that cheapen the love we feel for them? Would it make it less ‘authentic’? Despite some potentially negative consequences, Anders Sandberg argues that love-hacking can improve our lives, but also give rise to new types of relationships that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Read the full interview below.

What do we mean when we say that love can be hacked?

Hacking, in a generalized sense, is about changing something by manipulation outside the normal ways we change it.

Love, like all our emotions, is built on a biological basis. There are neurons firing and chemical signals. That means we can "hack" it by influencing these - we have the option not just to talk, go to couples therapy, write poetry, speed date, read handbooks, or any of the other countless normal ways we influence how we love.