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Mark_Friedenbach comments on Open Thread, Feb. 2 - Feb 8, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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That seems like bad advice. Your preferences are what they are. "Giving advice on how to become bisexual, or polyamorous" seems just as bad as "giving advice on how to become heterosexual, or monogamous."
This does seem like an issue that needs discussion however. I took the hard route myself, but maybe my story is interested. Perhaps later when I have time I can be proded to give an overview of how I transformed my preferences over the last 15 years.
What's wrong with "giving advice on how to become heterosexual, or monogamous" to someone who wants to become heterosexual or monogamous?
Nothing if the advice worked, but it doesn't.
Or rather anyone who claims it does is branded an "evil homophobe" thus no one would dare publish a stady claiming it does.
People have been trying to "cure" homosexuality since times when attitudes to homosexuality were very different from what they are now. If it's curable then there should (at least) be credible studies from earlier years saying so. Are there?
(Robert Spitzer published a study as recently as 2001 claiming to find evidence that some homosexual people can become heterosexual, so evidently it was possible to dare to do that then. He has since publicly changed his mind, which of course can be interpreted in different ways.)
It may not always work, or even usually, but it worked for someone I know.
Eh, it's not that it has a 100% failure rate, the main issue is that it very frequently has utterly catastrophic mental health consequences. Trying to change your sexuality is dangerous. As in "has a significant chance of killing you".
There are reasons the lbgt community is so down on attempts at curing the gay - "suicides and mental breakdowns".
I'm not aware of any statistics on the results of people trying to become gay, but a: I would be surprised if enough people have tried this to make a valid sample. and b: I do not recommend the experiment for obvious reasons of safety.
There are safe..ish. ways to turn sexuality off entirely, but just being gay is not generally enough for people to want to volunteer for those.
I've met enough people who reported their sexuality changing over time that I wouldn't be shocked if tommorow a pharma announced an novel sideeffect / off-label use for the latest anti-depressant of resetting your sexuality to "Healthy adult humans" but the history of attempts at deliberate intervention in this field is horrifying.
As opposed to, you know, ordinary tribal feelings against defection. There are elements in the deaf community that oppose attempts to cure deafness as well.
Those too, but the negative impact and severe paucity of efficiency are quite real enough. About the only people still trying this today are religiously motivated quacks, with predictably depressing results, but even the historical attempts by people honestly trying to help as opposed to following the mandates of their imaginary friends in the sky had very bad results. Sometimes sexuality shifts over time. We have nothing even resembling a clue why, or how to do that deliberately.
If you tell me you know people conversion therapy worked for, I will not doubt you. People given chalk tablets for treatment routinely get better from very fatal diseases in double blind studies Not often, but it happens.
This does not mean chalk tablets are a panacea. Or, you know, medicine at all.
Details? What exactly did they do, and how large was the change? How long ago was it?
Preferences change: sexual development is an obvious example. Preferences can be changed: "cultivating a taste" is a thing. Although in line with my original question, the only stock phrase I can think of that comes close to the opposite of "cultivating a taste" is "overcoming temptation". A taste, once acquired, is seen as something that can only be suppressed by a continuing effort, never removed.
An alternative approach might be described as "enlightening one's self-interest": learning to perceive the harm of something clearly enough that one is no longer inclined to indulge it.
Why? That might make sense if a preference is part of a terminal value. But if it isn't this may not be that different than advice on say how to enjoy eating healthy foods (in my own case the answer for spinach was eat it frequently with tasty cheese). For that matter, there might well be circumstances where it would make sense to try to adjust one's preferences to becoming closer to monogamous (say one is dating someone who is strongly monogamous).
Preferences can be quite complex.
Most people do like the idea of having sex with multiple people but might dislike the idea that there partner has sex with multiple people at the start. Being polyarmous needs specific skills such as dealing with jealousy that aren't needed to the same extend by people who aren't poly.
Some people are in love with a person who"s poly a person might want to become poly themselves to be in that relationship.