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Fluttershy 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: bogus 04 April 2016 11:29:30AM *  4 points [-]

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.

Note that selection effects are going to be especially relevant here. People who happen to be interested in becoming bi are probably more sexually fluid than average, and so may find this sort of 'hacking' somewhat useful. Do keep in mind though that plenty of people try to change their sexual orientation in some way and fail, sometimes with detrimental side-effects.

Comment author: Fluttershy 04 April 2016 07:32:18PM 1 point [-]

sometimes with detrimental side-effects

This is a concern that it would be good to explore, and not one that I've thought much about. Do you have a sense for what detrimental side-effects people have experienced after trying to bihack?

It might be difficult to figure out how prevalent these side-effects are, but that could be a good thing for people interested in bihacking to look into, too.

Comment author: bogus 05 April 2016 07:00:29AM *  1 point [-]

Not so much for bihacking, but definitely for trying to affect one's sexual orientation in a more general sense. Mostly this involves gay people trying to become straight, or straight people trying to become gay. (Note that opportunistic same-sex behavior is actually pretty common wherever there is rigid sex segregation, e.g. in fundamentalist Muslim countries, or among prison inmates. But it's not like these folks are happy having gay sex; and indeed, they will go right back to their previous sexual orientation as soon as the rigidly-segregated environment is removed.)