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PhilGoetz comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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Sorry if this is overly tangential, but as a sex educator I'm interested to know what you all think are your tribal beliefs around sexuality, and what kind of sexuality-related arguments would lead you to consider someone to be defending a non-mainstream belief.
Someone who believes that homosexuality is not immoral, but believes it is a dysfunction.
Actually I have more answers, but this question is just too toxic. So I'll go meta: Anyone who responds to this question either by saying that rationality is indicated either by signalling acceptance of more-outlandish sexuality, or by signalling intolerance, is indicating their own irrationality; they are turning this question into a tribal test.
How far can you judge a person's rationality by what sort of evidence they use to support their beliefs about sexuality?
That's a specific instance of what this post is about, right?
I'm having difficulty parsing your meta observation.
There's a large community where you are expected to be open to anything except sex with children; and a large community where you are expected to not be open to anything except sex between a monogomous man and woman.
I'm not arguing whether either of these points of view is valid. But both have enough adherents that no position that can be characterized entirely as more liberal or less liberal can identify its holder as rational. Therefore, anyone who says that such a position (for instance, being open to polyamory) indicates rationality, is merely stating their tribal affiliation. The fact that they think that such a stance demonstrates rationality in fact demonstrates their irrationality.
I can think of a few possible exceptions (sexual practices that are far enough beyond the pale that even tongue-pierced goths disclaim them, yet which have no rational basis for being banned), but they're too toxic for me to mention.
"Merely" is incorrect. If people are employing consistent justifications for their beliefs, that indicates rationality. If their beliefs rely on inconsistent justifications, then they are not.
Suppose I believe polyamory is OK, because I believe that sex between consenting parties will make people happier. If you provided me with overwhelming evidence that most people who practice polyamory are especially miserable specifically because they practice polyamory, that would test my rationality. If I continue to be OK with it, I have an inconsistent belief system. If I cease being OK with it, I am consistently adhering to my beliefs.
Conversely, suppose I believe, "Homosexual sex is wrong because two men can't procreate." If you point out, "Post-menopausal women can't procreate," then, if I say, "Well, they shouldn't have sex either!" then I may be a bit crazy, but I'm consistent. If I say, "Well, that's different" without providing a very specific "that's different" principle, my beliefs are inconsistent, and I am irrational. If I say, "Homosexuality is wrong because the bible says so," then I'd better not be wearing clothing made from both cotton and wool while I burn oxen for the Lord.
I think most of what you see in the "internet crowd" is approval of any sexual activity between consenting adults, which is (usually) a highly consistent principle. I am not aware of any such consistent principle among the married hetero-only crowd. I'm not saying there aren't consistent principles that support a married hetero-only lifestyle, only that it is not my understanding that a large group of people embrace such principles.
If this observation is correct, beliefs about sexuality can be a very strong indicator of rationality if inconsistent, or (at least) a weak indicator if consistent. If they remain consistent through difficult or unusual hypotheticals, that is a strong indication of rationality.
The problem is if the supposedly rational beliefs also happen to be the tribal belief system of a large, pre-existing tribe. Then someone was rational, sometime back in the history, but it isn't necessarily the person you're talking to right now.
A better test would be to ask them to defend a sexual view of theirs that they see as unconventional, or at least, not a typical view of their tribe as yet.
This is absolutely true and I've changed the last paragraph to reflect that.
I wouldn't suppose that "being open to polyamory" per se indicates rationality. But I would consider someone rational who, having thought about the matter, and concluded on the basis of sound reasoning that there is no valid reason to condemn polyamory, decided to adopt that lifestyle even in the face of some cultural opposition.
And I would consider someone irrational who, having no sound reasoning behind that position, would act in such a way as to deny others the enjoyment of a non-straight-monogamous lifestyle.
Controversies involving third parties are a valid matter of debate, for instance, I'd concede that there is some grounds to ask whether gay couples should adopt. But to assert, without argument, an interest in what consenting adults do behind closed doors, and that doesn't cause anyone lasting harm, just because it concerns sex - that does strike me as irrational.
This all presupposes a consequentialist and libertarian ethic: that morality is about harm.
Not necessarily - I don't think of myself as a consequentialist but as a contractarian. Although I'm less than firm in my metaethical convictions.
Still, I have the clear intuition that someone who would assert a claim against me, based on who I chose to spend time in bed with, isn't all right in the head. They wouldn't deny me the right to have dinner with whomever I choose, and (within some reasonable bounds on consent, privacy, and promises made to other people) I see no sound basis to distinguish sex from another sensual experience like dinner.
At the moment I am straight, monogamous, and in fact legally married (for fiscal reasons mostly), but I see no reason to elevate my personal choices and inclinations to the status of universal moral law.
There really do exist those who consider who you're having dinner with, and what you're eating to be valid regulatory targets.
Consuming human meat is generally disapproved of...
Hey, good idea. New question for getting evidence of rationality: "How do you feel about cannibalism? Not killing people, just the act of eating human meat. Imagine that the meat was vat-grown, or you're a starving survivor of a plane crash, or something."
If you uploaded, would you be willing to let someone else eat your body if they were, y'know, into that sort of thing?
I'm not the first to point this out, but by that reasoning, rape is no worse than forcing someone to eat broccoli.
I'd appreciate if you would read my parenthetical qualifications before making misleading comments about my "reasoning".
I disapprove of coercion in general, but it seems clear that people in general experience sex as a much more significant experience than eating, to the extent that rape can make for life-threatening emotional trauma. Given these (possibly local) facts of human nature, we would clearly not agree to a social contract that provided no protection from rape.
What about forcing 3^^^3 people to eat broccoli?
I don't see any reason to either. The problem is I'm not sure I see a reason not to. Rationality governs our degrees of belief and how we incorporate new evidence into our degrees of belief. I don't see how rationality can govern our terminal values. You're right that there is no sound basis to distinguish sex from dinner, but there is also no sound basis to distinguish sex from murder. To say otherwise requires a pretty untenable kind of moral naturalism. Moral acts and immoral acts aren't natural kinds. PhilGoetz's original point is fully generalizable to all claims about terminal values. Policy positions are indicative of irrationality only when they are inconsistent with the subscriber's own values.
Thus, in my comment elsewhere on this post, I hedged when it came using support for immigration as an indicator of rationality among conservatives because opposition to immigration may well be the right position to hold if you don't value the welfare of immigrants or value cultural homogeneity.
There clearly is, at least on my contractarian view. You would not consent to a social contract that left you vulnerable to murder, if it could be avoided.
I'm not sure this works (Why would a strict social conservative consent to a contract that allowed me to have sex with multiple partners at the same time?). But no matter: If the distinction is only non-arbitrary given your normative ethics then you need to give non-arbitrary reasons why we should all be contractarians. Otherwise you've just pushed the conversation back a step.
I suspect that there are good game-theoretical/TDT reasons for the rule that one shouldn't break promises, so if Alice has promised to Bob that she won't have sex to anybody else, I'd say it'd be wrong for Alice to have sex with Charlie even if both Alice and Charlie are consenting. (But the idea that people should never have sex unless they promise each other to not have sex with anyone else I do find silly.)
I for one would like you to mention them.
It's just as dysfunctional as non-vaginal straight sex is.
Your position may be valid; but in the context of the current distribution of opinions on sexuality, it does not in itself signal rationality to me. And that's what we're discussing.