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Viliam comments on Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Elo 04 April 2016 04:56AM

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Comment author: Fluttershy 04 April 2016 07:48:10AM 1 point [-]

Many people are aware of Alicorn's post on polyhacking. There are a few things which have been written on bihacking, though I haven't seen bihacking discussed within the rationalist community as widely as polyhacking has been. Bihacking is the process of actively trying to become bisexual.

First, there are a couple sources which suggest that people can have "epiphanies", after which they become bisexual, or perhaps just recognize their latent bisexuality. This may be due to the fact that they are able to tell themselves different stories about their feelings towards others after having an epiphany. Here are two relevant links:

  • Ozy's Notes on the Success of Bihacking is the first post I'd recommend to anyone interested in bihacking.
  • This discussion also supports the idea that the stories people tell themselves about their feelings are more important than their feelings are in determining attraction.

Secondly, some people have had mild successes with working towards bisexuality by slowly starting to explore new experiences:

  • This highly upvoted comment strongly encourages this strategy.
  • This comment does too.
  • Both of the above two links focused on bihacking with online material. However, it may be easier to bihack via establishing a comfortable level of intimacy with your dispreferred gender of people (e.g. via cuddling a whole bunch of people), than it is to bihack via material.
Comment author: Viliam 04 April 2016 08:44:22AM 8 points [-]

To avoid only reading filtered evidence, people interested in polyhacking might also look at this SSC thread.

Comment author: James_Miller 04 April 2016 07:28:43PM 3 points [-]
Comment author: philh 05 April 2016 01:29:03PM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure how that's related to polyhacking either.

Comment author: philh 04 April 2016 03:41:13PM 1 point [-]

I'm not sure how that thread is related to polyhacking? It's related to polyamory, but doesn't seem to be particularly focused on it, and polyhacking is another step removed.

Comment author: Viliam 06 April 2016 08:27:50AM *  3 points [-]

Polyamory is the whole motivation for polyhacking, I guess, so that "another step" is actually very small.

And polyamory is usually advertised here as an opportunity to have more sexual freedom and be a part of the happy rationalist family. So it seems relevant to note that it may also come with a price, and that even the happy rationalist family is not perfect in avoiding the price.

(My personal opinion is that if you are 20 and you are not planning to have kids during the nearest decade, go poly. There is almost nothing to lose, because the probability of staying with the same partner ten years later is low, so you might as well share them now and get something nice in return. But I predict that as soon as children start getting born, most poly relationships will fall apart.)

Comment author: gjm 06 April 2016 09:03:21AM 2 points [-]

I don't know whether it's a real issue, but if you are 20, not planning to have kids in the next 10 years, but think it possible that after that you might want to settle down monogamously and have children, then going poly now could make that second stage harder when the time comes.

(This is an empirical question. I don't have the data to know what the answer is. Perhaps others here do.)

Comment author: philh 06 April 2016 12:33:24PM -1 points [-]

I feel like, if someone's interested in polyhacking, they've probably already looked at evidence about whether or not to go poly. It feels somehow off to classify "polyamory, pro or con" as being about polyhacking. For one thing it's easy to find the former, but hard to find the latter, and presenting the former as the latter makes it even harder.

It also comes across as pushing an agenda, though I don't think that was your intent.