childofbaud comments on Open Thread: October 2009 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: gwern 01 October 2009 12:49PM

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Comment author: childofbaud 07 October 2009 03:13:13PM *  0 points [-]

The conjecture you offer here has been floating about in philosophy and psychology circles for some time. It was a view heavily promoted by Freud, who used the term sublimation to describe the diversion of unfulfilled (sexual) desires into constructive pursuits. A search of this term may yield further findings.

Comment author: gwern 07 October 2009 04:14:19PM 0 points [-]

Hm, yes, I was a bit familiar with Freud, but I was hoping for ties to biochemistry; it's one thing to intuit that the mind has n bits of energy & forces sloshing around and if they can't come out in sex they have to come out elsewhere, and entirely another to have a specific, materialist model of what's going on. I haven't found anything for the latter.