Open Thread, May 1-15, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Yesterday I was lying in bed thinking about the LW community and had a little epiphany, guessing the reason as to why discussions on gender relations and the traditional and new practices of inter-gender choice and manipulation (or "seduction", more narrowly) around here consistently "fail" as people say - that is, produce genuine disquiet and anger on all sides of the discussion.

The reason is that both opponents and proponents of controversial things in this sphere - be it a techincal approach to romantic relations ("PUA") or "traditional"/conservative gender relations or polyamory or other such examples - are inevitably almost completely correct in pointing out the most blatant and harmful effects of the opposing view's practices. Put simply, all known solutions in the area of sexuality and gender relations, however they compare to each other, are quite awful on an absolute scale (by the vast majority of moral outlooks). Because of the fundamentally broken and irrational nature of how our psychology interacts with the non-ansectral environment, all of our imperfect arrangements will inevitably produce much psychological and/or social suffering and "dysfunction". I use that word in quotes because, according to the view above, our society is inevitably and innately dysfunctional whatever you do with it.

Yet people, while seeing with some clarity the evils of the opposing view, are in denial about those of their own suggestions - just like most non-transhumanist atheists are in denial about many awful realities of the human condition, chiefly death. They simply refuse to allow themselves the thought that something so bad might be going on with no decent solution in sight. Thus, disquiet and misdirected anger.

Now, transhumanists are better off in this regard [1] because they know that humans can eventually be enhanced, and the vast disperancies between how we live and what evolution prepared us for, fixed. So I suggest that we don't approach this topic without keeping in mind the possibilities of transhumanism, so as to eliminate the cognitive dissonance in observing problems that can't be overcome at the level they arise on.

My idea could well be mistaken, generated by sudden intuition instead of methodical inquiry as it was; so would you please discuss it and consider it in more detail - but on a meta level at first, without getting into the usual failure mode?

[1] They might have their own issues, sure, but here's a clear advantage for them.

Well, I certainly agree that the controversial topics you list have the property you describe -- that is, no popular position on them is unflawed.

I don't believe this significantly explains the low light:heat ratio of discussions about those topics, though. There are lots of topics where no popular position on them is unflawed that nevertheless get discussed without the level of emotional investment we see when gender relations or tribal affiliations (or, to a lesser extent, morality) get involved.

That said, it's not especially mysterious that gender relations and tribal affiliations reliably elicit more emotional involvement than, say, decision theory.

6[anonymous]14y

Before I comment a nitpick: [...] While I do agree we are worse off in this regard because of the strangeness of the modern world, there is no reason to think nature wouldn't produce some or perhaps quite a bit of social and psychological suffering even with us being perfectly well adapted to our environment. I mean we don't expect it to do so with physical pain.

1Mitchell_Porter14y

You're saying that technology - tinkering with human biology and human psychology - can supply a technical fix for problems with sex and death. But the imperfection and dysfunction of social and cultural solutions will also extend to technological solutions. Some methods of life extension will be lethal. Some hopes will be deluded. Some scientific analyses of psychology will be wrong, but they will supply the basis of a subculture or a technological intervention anyway. Rather than discuss it on a meta level first - whatever that means - it would be better if you supplied one or two concrete examples of what you have in mind.