Comment on Forager Anthropology

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:56:37 GMT

Is it really so ego-deflating to be told that some of the readers here consider your contributions below the standard for the place that has by far the highest standard for discussion on subjects like human sexuality of any place on the web?

It's not that someone thought my contributions were below LW's standards (though if they are, people voting on posts should really take that into account), it's that someone identified me as a primary force responsible making the site worse without any prompting. It's not that I'm part of a bad trend, according to your friend, it's that I am the trend. If I'm making the site seem worse all by myself, I figure that must mean I'm pretty bad.

In fact, my first impression of you was that you were imposing a heavy cost on the community (namely, lowering the signal-to-noise ratio, writing mainly on one of the topics most likely to overwhelm participants capacity for rationality) so that the community could help you with one of your personal problems or so that the community could help you in your attempt to change your society's sexual mores for deeply-felt personal reasons.

Well, this definitely isn't a personal problem, as I think I've mentioned elsewhere a couple times. And it's not that I want the community to help change sexual mores for personal reasons, either, at least in the sense I think you mean. I just think that many people could have significantly better lives than they otherwise would, if they made more rational and informed decisions on the subject. So I guess, yes, technically that's a deeply-felt personal reason insomuch as I'm some kind of utilitarian. But I'm not privileging polyamory over other topics with more (perceived) instrumental value, I don't think.

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