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advancedatheist comments on Open Thread, Apr. 13 - Apr. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Gondolinian 13 April 2015 12:19AM

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Comment author: Viliam 15 April 2015 07:57:49AM *  5 points [-]

Multiple reasons for this.

Partially, as Ilya said, it's difficult to explain. Some fathers do not have any good strategy; maybe they just had a lucky set of circumstances once, so their advice is for you to wait and hope that a similar lucky situation happens to you, too. Some fathers do have a good strategy, but are bad at explaining it by words; being a good teacher is a skill that many people simply do not have. Expecting a mother to give a reasonable advice does not make sense; unless she is a lesbian, she has no experience in the area of picking up girls. Her opinions in this area never had to pay rent, so they don't have to reflect reality.

The remaining part is that other people do not care about your utility function as much as they do. Just because you don't get pleasure from sex, it does not make their lives worse. Only your complaining is annoying. The advice "develop yourself and wait" simply means "quit annoying me".

It looks almost as if a tacit understanding exists that adults need to set the sexually unfavored boys aside somehow

It seems to make evolutionary sense to not help other people's sons reproduce.

Comment author: advancedatheist 16 April 2015 12:15:59AM 3 points [-]

Some fathers do not have any good strategy; maybe they just had a lucky set of circumstances once, so their advice is for you to wait and hope that a similar lucky situation happens to you, too.

My father was 31 when he married my mother, aged 19, in 1958. I was born in November of 1959, so I don't think Grandpa Langley had to stand behind Dad with his shotgun at the altar or anything like that. Dad told me very little about his adult life before he married Mom, and I suspect he just had little to tell in terms of experiences with women in his teens and 20's. He might even have been a virgin when he got married.

Yet he had a pharmacy degree and he worked as a pharmacist, so he knew more about biology and medicine than most men in his generation. He must have filled prescriptions for contraceptives as well, so I can't attribute his discomfort with advising me about sex to ignorance. That leaves relative inexperience as an explanation.

I suppose religion played a role in this sex-negativity, but we stopped going to church (a Southern Baptist one) when I was 14 (I never inquired into the reason, and I didn't miss it); and the family just wasn't overtly religious afterwards.