DaFranker comments on Rationality Quotes November 2012 - Less Wrong

6 [deleted] 06 November 2012 10:38PM

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Comment author: DaFranker 14 November 2012 08:44:28PM 0 points [-]

Short answer: conditioning.

I stand by this answer.

I used to find gay man-man kissing (or any form of intimate touching between males, really) very gross despite a very strong conscious understanding and notion that it was just as "right" for them as between a man and a woman.

Then, as I noticed and saw more of it, it got normal.

Now I don't find any of it the least bit gross or off-putting anymore, except in rare cases that evoke specific memories.

The just-so hindsight explanation that makes the most sense is that I believed-by-default everything I was told as a child about such things being "bad", "gross" and "disgusting" or even outright "evil" by my peers. However, that's only the slightly-more-likely out of many possible explanations, and I don't have real data.