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Jan Betley9d30

Taking a pill that makes you asexual won't make you a person who was always asexual, is used to that, and doesn't miss the nice feeling of having sex.

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An argument for asexuality

by filthy_hedonist

27th Mar 2025

1 min read

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Status quo bias is a cognitive bias which makes a person prefer to maintain the current state of affairs simply because other states of affairs would be different. (Henceforth, I will use the abbreviation "SOA" for "state of affairs").

Suppose the costs of changing the current SOA are high enough to offset any advantage a different SOA may have over the current one. Suppose that, for this reason, somebody prefers to keep the current state of affairs. Their preference is, importantly, not an instance of status quo bias. Status quo bias occurs when it would be rational, all things considered, to change the current SOA, and yet a person prefers to keep it, simply because it is the current one.

To overcome status quo bias, it can sometimes be useful to completely ignore the costs of making changes. Once we identify an optimal SOA, we can ask: are the costs of bringing about this SOA really so high as to justify maintaining the status quo?

Now, if there are no costs to making changes, then the answer to

i) Should I bring about SOA1, given the current state of affairs SOA2?

ii) Should I bring about SOA2, given the current state of affairs SOA1?

should be the opposite, and should depend only on whether SOA2 is better than SOA1.

With that in mind, suppose you are asexual. Would you take a pill to make you not asexual? If you are like me, your sexuality is a nuisance (and is sometimes worse than a nuisance). Personally, I would not take this pill. I wouldn't see any compelling reason to induce in myself the desire to have sex. Therefore, being asexual is not worse for me than being not asexual, and is probably better. Therefore, I should become asexual, unless the costs of becoming asexual are high enough to justify remaining heterosexual (that might be true if, for instance, I was in a relationship).

Does this argument work in your case? Amusingly, there are pills that effectively eliminate libido. For men, these are "anti-androgens." The cost of taking these pills seems pretty small. Am I rationally required to take them?

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An argument for asexuality

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[-]Richard_Kennaway9d*145

There is an important asymmetry between the status quo and all alternatives. The status quo exists. You are walking around in it, seeing it close up, experiencing it. Any questions you may have about the reality around you can be answered by investigating it, and that investigation may turn up things you did not know, and did not know you did not know.

Alternatives, however, are imaginary. They're something made up in your head. As such, they do not have the tangibility — literally — of reality. They do not have the inexhaustibility of reality. You cannot discover things about them that you did not put into them. Outside of mathematics, applying reasoning to an imagined scenario is a poor guide to how it would work out if it were actually created. You don't know what you don't know about how it would work, and you have no way of discovering.

Or in brief, Status Quo Bias Fallacy.

I wouldn't see any compelling reason to induce in myself the desire to have sex.

That might only be true up until having the actual experience. Then you would be in a position to say which state of affairs you actually prefer.

ETA: See also.

Am I rationally required to take them?

Nobody is ever "rationally required" to do anything. [Imagine Soyboy vs. Chad meme here.]

[-]filthy_hedonist8d10

Hi, thanks for the thoughtful reply. It seems that you are denying the following assumption:

Setting aside the costs of making changes, if a person should not switch from SOA1 to SOA2, then a person should switch from SOA2 to SOA1.

It may be true that a person should not switch from either to the other, because of uncertainty about the other. That is an important observation. But is there that much uncertainty in this case? I can imagine what it would be like to be asexual. Conversely, if I were asexual, by listening to the experiences of others, I could imagine what it would be like to be sexual (not asexual). Is not knowing exactly how it would feel so important?

If I were blind, and there were a new technology that made me permanently sighted, I would gladly use this technology, despite not knowing what it would be like to see. In particular, I should not make myself go blind. (If it is uncertainty about the technology/drug that is the problem, then I may be inclined to agree, though I consider this part of the cost of switching, and not the SOA itself: my attempt to switch might not lead to the SOA which I intended).

In any case, we can amend the thought experiment by supposing that I wake up tomorrow asexual, and must ask my doctor to restore my sexuality. Would I do it? Here, I have direct experience of both being sexual and asexual, so there is not much uncertainty. I think I would shrug my shoulders and move on, happy to have one fewer desire to satisfy.

My point is that I never opted in to sexuality. It is well-known that you can make people do something, like save for retirement, simply by making it the default to "opt in"; they often won't bother to opt out. But these people are irrational: it is rational not to opt out only if you would have opted in. I would not have opted in to sexuality, and therefore, I should opt out.

[-]Richard_Kennaway8d20

You're still comparing a real situation with an imagined one. For such a large aspect of one's life, I do not think it possible to have such assurance that one can imagine the hypothetical situation well enough. Whatever you decide, you're taking a leap in the dark. This is not to say that you shouldn't take that leap, just to say that that is what you would be doing. You won't know what the other side is really (literally! really) like until you're there, and then there's no going back. (As I understand it, and my understanding may be out of date, the sort of drugs you are considering have permanent effects from the outset. Even a small step down that road cannot be taken back.)

Even in the case of blindness, I have read of a case where sight was restored to someone blind from birth, who ended up very dissatisfied. Because if you've never seen, it takes a long time to make any sense of the restored sense. Not to the point of putting his eyes out again, I think, but there was no "happily ever after".

But then, there never is.

[-]datawitch9d83

I like being ace but I would never advise anyone to go on antiandrogens in the hope of becoming ace. They have numerous side effects and... asexuality isn't the same as libido, antiandrogens might cut your libido down but they won't fully fix the underlying attraction.

[-]Rafael Harth9d30

I agree with various comments that the post doesn't represent all the tradeoffs, but I strong-upvoted this because I think the question is legit interesting. It may be that the answer is no for almost everyone, but it's not obvious.

[-]Jan Betley9d30

Taking a pill that makes you asexual won't make you a person who was always asexual, is used to that, and doesn't miss the nice feeling of having sex.

[-]Richard_Kennaway9d30

There is a typo/thinko where you say the answers to (i) and (ii) "should be the same". They should be opposites, one "yes" and one "no".

[-]filthy_hedonist9d10

Yes, thanks for pointing that out.

[-]Dagon9d20

Once we identify an optimal SOA

This is quite difficult, even without switching costs or fear of change. Definition of optimal is elusive, and most SOA have so many measurable and unmeasurable, correlated and uncorrelated factors to them that comparison is not directly possible.

Add to this the common moral beliefs (incorrect IMO, but still very common) of "inaction is less blameworthy than wrong action, and only slightly blameworthy compared to correct action", and there needs to be a pretty significant expected gain from switching in order to undertake it.

With that in mind, suppose you are asexual. Would you take a pill to make you not asexual?

I'm not asexual, but sex is less important to me than for most humans, as far as I can tell. I know of no pills to shift in either direction that are actually effective and side-effect-free, and it's not meta-important to me enough to seek out change in either direction. This does NOT mean that I judge it optimal, just that I think the risk and cost of adjusting myself to be higher than the value.

In fact, I suspect such pills would be very popular if they existed, and I would likely try them out if common, to find out if it's actually better in either direction.

You could make this argument about a LOT of things - for any trait or metric about yourself, why is this exact value the best one? Wouldn't you like to raise or lower it? In fact, most people DO attempt to change things about themselves. It's just not actually as easy as taking a pill, so the cost of actually working toward a change is nonzero, and can't be handwaved away.

[-]AnthonyC9d20

This, to me, gestures at a set of questions with potentially different answers.

If I've been living as a sexual person of any kind, should I choose to make myself ace, given the choice?
If I've been living as an asexual person, should I choose to change that, given the option? If so, to what sexuality?
If I am in something like Rawls' original position and can choose my sexuality for my upcoming life, what should I pick?
If I am in something like Rawls' original position and can choose everyone's sexualities for their upcoming lives, what should I pick?

(1) and (2) are individual choices where I can't think of any universally compelling reason to say yes or no for anyone else. Some choices will be more or less convenient in different societal contexts, and more or less appealing in different personal contexts.

For (3), I could see arguments to be made for either ace or bi or pan, moreso than straight or gay or anything else.

For (4) choosing ace or gay is likely to result in very low fertility rates, unless you are able to get very fine grained as to what kind of asexuality people end up with or get to tweak other drives as well. This probably leads to population collapse unless the technology level is substantially beyond ours. Straight, bi, or pan, all potentially lead to worlds that I can imagine going well.

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