You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Jabberslythe comments on Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: David_Gerard 01 October 2012 05:54AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (477)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Jabberslythe 06 October 2012 03:34:25AM 2 points [-]

Perhaps they should -- but keep in mind that banning incest bars any one person from a very small subset of potentially desirable sex partners -- much like barring psychiatrists from sexing their patients. On the other hand barring e.g. old people from having sex, or gay people having sex, pretty much precludes them from having pleasurable sex altogether. The cost of such a policy seems higher in such a case.

If incestuous desires are common (certain people think they are at least...), having a harsh prohibition on them might cause a lot of guilt even if those people wouldn't actually go as far as to mate with their relatives. So trying to get rid of the prohibition might still be somewhat valuable.

Incest themes are quite common in porn.

Comment author: Multiheaded 31 October 2012 12:20:55PM 0 points [-]

Incest themes are quite common in porn.

That might be in part because guilt and shame can act as huge turn-ons for nearly everyone.