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Mirzhan_Irkegulov comments on Rational approach to finding life partners - Less Wrong Discussion
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I wasn't dangerous at 16, nor do I don't think advancedatheist is, not for women, not for anyone else. I don't even think advancedatheist is a bad person or deserve our hatred or anything else. I don't even believe it's appropriate to think there exist bad people or there is someone who “deserves” anything bad. I think it contradicts with consequentialism, and I agree with Yudkowsky, when he said that “Hitler doesn't deserve a stubbed toe” (but it still might've been a very good idea to kill him early, because again consequentialism).
I just find it very sad that there are so many men, young and old, who have low self-esteem, bitterness, depression, anxiety, sense of loneliness and many other mental issues and destructive behavior patterns, simply because they have irrational beliefs about women, relationship and sex.
For the record, I don't want to diagnose advancedatheist with any mental issues, it's just he repeats the same trope about women not giving to men what they owe, from comment to comment, and I believe he happens to be wrong.
I am no men-hating feminist lickspittle and I don't want to win brownie points from feminists by saying stuff they want to hear. I view this strictly from male perspective: believing certain things about women, relationship and sex makes you unhappy, bitter, unproductive and sometimes harmful for women. That's stupid and gotta go.
Scott Alexander in his blogpost Untitled called a feminist Amanda Marcotte a “Vogon spy in a skin suit” for lacking any empathy for male nerds who had problems with relationship. I'm not like that, I have empathy, because I was just like that at some point. Maybe, most men, who are happy to describe themselves as feminists, were just like that at some point.
I have empathy for women too. Many of them get crap on a daily basis from some subset of these bitter, insecure men, and I'm not even talking about rape. These beliefs that sex is a need for men, that you can't be happy and self-confident without sex, that women must satisfy men sexually, that men have a say in women sexual behavior, are destructive for both men and women. And even if in some parallel reality, where all women suddenly decided to “altruistically” satisfy all men's sexual desires, I don't believe it would solve any problems.
This actually isn't a gendered issue. "Fat acceptance" and "Nerd acceptance" are two sides of the same coin, but both sides insist it is gendered.
Sexual deprivation has real psychological effects. Shit, we should -expect- it to have real psychological effects; you're failing to function as the wind-up toy evolution designed you as. Why do people deny the psychological effects? Why do -you- deny the psychological effects, and insist they can just be overcome?
Because, by the standard morality of our society, problems must be solved. Admitting that it's a genuine issue for these people implies some obligation to do something about it, which implies some obligation by some people to have sex with other people, and that's just wrong.
Personally? I think it's fine to say that it's sad that some people lack what is probably the most fundamental kind of affirmation. And I think it's fine to say that it's sad, and I think it's fine to say that, y'know, the situation sucks for them, and they shouldn't just pretend otherwise. And I can think it's sad, and the situation sucks, without thinking that implies some kind of sexual obligation.
When you can't say there is a problem without also believing the problem can, and should, be solved, the problem to be solved often becomes the problem itself. And either the problem to be solved is that these individuals don't get sex - but the solution to that is both immediately obvious and immediately unacceptable - or the problem is the way these individuals -feel-, as a result of not getting sex. And because they can't acknowledge a problem without believing it can and should be solved, they choose the problem whose solution is acceptable to them: The problem is with the people who are suffering, rather than the suffering itself.
Ok, the idea, that the existing problem doesn't imply the existence of an immediate solution, is very insightful. Thank you for writing all this.
Too bad I don't know much modern cognitive and social psychology to confidently state why I believe that sexual deprivation might not have real psychological effects (under certain conditions) or that these effects may be overcome. So let's have this conversation again in a year or two. :)
What I base my current beliefs about “sex is not a need” is mostly CBT. CBT's core idea is the “cognitive model”, the statement that many of our moods and behaviors are influenced by the beliefs we have. For example, you believe that you're a horrible person, a loser, therefore you feel depressed and unmotivated. You believe that you were responsible for some bad event, therefore you feel guilty and ashamed. You believe that somebody or the world itself was unfair to you, therefore you feel angry and betrayed.
Moreover, the beliefs that cause destructive feelings and behaviors happen to be irrational in one way or another. They may be positivistically meaningless, overgeneralizing, vague, emotionally loaded, arbitrarily judgemental, black-and-white, not supported by evidence and so on. So what CBT researchers found out is that most of the time when people are depressed, anxious, insecure, compulsive and so on, they have corresponding irrational beliefs. But when they are productive and have healthy joy, sadness or remorse, their beliefs happen to be rather rational and grounded in reality.
And CBT works, it treats depression, anxiety, marital problems, drug addiction and many other things. Yes, it doesn't treat them well enough, otherwise we would make people superhuman on a daily basis. And I don't know why it doesn't work fanstastically yet, although I have some hypotheses. But it works somewhat well for some people.
What I hate is that we still treat human psyche as a black box, as magic. Why lack of sex causes psychological problems? Nobody knows, but people treat it as a simple one-step causation: less sex -> more problems. But “lack of sex causes psychological problems” becomes a sort of mysterious answer to mysterious question. Therefore instead of trying to reduce human psyche into smaller blocks and finding the root cause of psychological problem, we just conclude that people must have more sex.
CBT is an attempt at reducing human moods and behaviors. It lays out a causal network. It explains which beliefs cause which moods and actions, what is wrong with these beliefs, how to change them. And suddenly it works, to some extent, in some people.
Allen Carr's quitting smoking method is a good example: it's pure CBT and it demonstrably effective. When you read academic literature on smoking, there's lots of mysterious answers, high-level observations with no causality. Stuff like “when people quit smoking, they experience anxiety, agitation, heartbeat, digestive problems, nausea, etc”. Yes, they do, I don't argue with that. But the same people, who quit smoking using Carr's method, don't experience this. Not all, but many. So there are more factors at work that previously weren't understood. People do feel certain way under certain conditions, but don't under others.
So let me make myself clear. I don't necessarily know the perfect way to make a sexually deprived person fully psychologically healthy, nor do I think that if this way exist it's easy. Except, I can point to a CBT book and promise a significant probability of it helping.
But due to CBT I strongly believe that for people, who hold certain beliefs about women or sex, the best step is to rationally combat their beliefs, not to have more sex. It has much better chance of working, because it already has precedents.
How is this relevant to sexual deprivation? Because CBT works for it too. It worked for me, some people I know, and its underlying mechanism makes sense. It's convincing. Can I point to an authoritative peer-reviewed study that confirms my point? Not yet. Can I at least provide a more complex causal explanation, as to convince you as I am convinced? Probably not until I understand CBT and psychology in general better. So yeah, we can all just agree that we can admit it's all sad without implying any sexual obligation. And hope that science would solve this problem one day.
But yeah, sexual obligation is just wrong, and this idea should be explicit.