My Greatest Achievement

31 Swimmer963 12 September 2011 07:26PM

[warning: this is another gooey self-disclosure in the spirit of Alicorn and lukeprog’s recent posts, except more so.]

According to my submissions summary, my first top-level post dates back to February 18th, 2011. (I don’t know exactly when I started commenting, but I don’t feel like clicking through dozens of pages of old comments to find out.) By then, it had already been a month since I embarked on the most deliberate and probably the most difficult act of self-modification that I’ve ever attempted, and definitely the one I’m proudest of. At this point, I think I can say confidently that I’ve fixed one of the most irrational facets of my behaviour. A few people here know quite a bit about this, namely molybdenumblue.

[Aside: some people might find this article very personal. I’ve never had a strong privacy instinct, and since in this case it’s all my personal information*, and I talk openly about most of it with my friends and family, I have no qualms about publishing it. If it makes you uncomfortable, please feel free to stop reading.]

My New Year’s resolution for 2011, which I clearly remember making in my parents’ kitchen, was to experiment more with relationships. I had been in 2 relationships by my 19th birthday: one at age 14 with a much older recent immigrant to Canada who went to my high school, and one at age 17 with a boy who I worshipped when I was 12. Neither of them led anywhere interesting, in either an emotional or a physical sense. After breaking up with my second boyfriend, I was about ready to give up and start calling myself asexual. But since I had very little data to go on, an experiment seemed like a good idea.

I chose my experimental subject carefully: Billy, a boy I met through competitive lifeguarding, who was my age and seemed to share some of my values; he was in good shape, anyway; and whom I found moderately attractive. (I’ve been attracted to girls in the past, but that seemed like a more complicated experiment to set up.) I found him interesting without being too intimidating.

I had had some success in the past with getting boys’ initial attention, and I felt like I knew what I was doing. I started a conversation one evening when I came to swim at the campus pool and he was the lifeguard on duty, and I made an effort to be my friendliest and chattiest self. The next day I added him on Facebook, and suggested via the chat function that maybe we could hang out after guard team practice…The message must have gone though, because less than a week later, after he made me dinner at his apartment, he walked me home and kissed me outside the shared house where I was living. I went inside, shaking all over and not really sure whether I’d enjoyed it, but triumphant: success!

The only problem was that now that I had my result, I couldn’t end the experiment as easily as I’d started it. Some making out ensued, at my place and at his place. I found all of it vaguely embarrassing and a bit freaky, too; my only previous experience was with my first boyfriend, and at fourteen it had seriously grossed me out. By the end of the week, we ended up back at his apartment after some alcohol consumption, and clothes came off. I tried really hard to be okay with it. After all, it was part of my experiment, and I’d thought it was something I wanted. But irrational fears aren’t turned off that easily. When he told me that I drove him crazy, I wasn’t flattered: I was completely terrified.

I spent the next week or so putting on my game face and pretending everything was awesome, while crying on the phone with my younger sister every other night. (I can honestly say that although she’s five years younger, her social skills are much better than mine.)

I thought over and rejected various solutions because, ultimately, I liked Billy okay and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Open communication hadn’t existed in my previous relationships, so I didn’t know what to do. I was also more and more sleep deprived; my schedule had already been busy before, juggling school with two part-time jobs, and now it was unsustainable. The emotions built up, and I ended up handling it in what was probably the worst possible way: walking home from guard team practice, I started crying when he asked me if I was okay. (Bursting into tears when I don’t want to talk about something or do something and someone pushes me is a bad habit I picked up during my days of swim team performance anxiety.) It took at least an hour to get everything out: that I didn’t know what my feelings were, that it freaked me out when he touched me, and that if I had to sacrifice another night’s sleep to hang out I would probably go insane. And also the part I’d been too embarrassed to tell him earlier: I had a condition called vaginismus, and I wouldn’t be able to have sex even if I wanted to and felt ready. He walked me back to my house, carefully not touching, and I went upstairs to bed, feeling like a terrible person but also relieved. At least that was over.

I can’t really take the credit for this next part; if I hadn’t heard from him again, I think I would have walked away from it, not happily exactly, but determined never to get myself into a mess like that again. But I woke up at 6:30 to a text: Check your email. He had written me a long, fairly incoherent message, full of grammatical mistakes, but probably the sweetest thing that anyone had ever written to me, ever, in my whole life. Ending with: “With all that said, I realize that I am not just about ready to give up on us. [...] For now, I see what we have together is worth fighting for.”

I cried, felt trapped, felt miserable, and finally made myself a cup of tea, sat in my living room, decided that I’d gotten myself into this situation in the first place and I would have to cope with it. I phrased my reply carefully.

“I wanted to be everything you wanted me to be, and as soon as I knew for sure that I couldn't be that, I was terrified that you would find out and you wouldn't want me anymore. [...] I'm scared that as soon as I open myself to you, you'll reject me for being such a freak and then I'll lose you AND be hurt. [...] I kinda wish we could just start over, and go more slowly, and I wouldn't get scared and I'd be able to act maturely and not like a 13-year-old in over her head.” The problem wasn’t that I didn’t like him. I liked him as much as I’d liked any other boy. That was the scary part. 

A few weeks later we went out for his birthday. I baked a cake and he blew out the candles. Later he told me that he had made a wish; that our relationship would work out. It was a lot of pressure, and I tried to hide the fact that it still freaked me out when he said things like that. But part of me found it romantic, and that was the part I tried hard to focus on.

I don’t remember the timeline as clearly for the next few months. We hung out regularly, swam together and worked out together, and spent an entire guard team competition getting in trouble with the coach (“no touching!”). I brought him Tupperwares of food when he worked Saturday afternoon shifts at the pool. We did our homework together (him doing economics math problems, me making a colorful cardboard poster for my nursing placement in a daycare, probably the first time in my life I felt like the non-nerd in the room). We both said, “I love you.”

We fought about a lot of things, too, mainly the fact that he always wanted to see me more and I always wanted more time to read, write, swim, and sleep. But we talked everything through and usually came to some kind of compromise. I started sleeping over at his apartment once or twice a week, which I resented because sharing a single bed meant that I didn’t so much sleep as lie awkwardly awake for almost the whole night. We did our grocery shopping together. Gradually we started touching again, and I habituated to it, although some things still freaked me out. I only felt comfortable making out if the lights were on. I didn’t want to do anything at my place, because I was afraid my roommates would judge me. (They probably did.) In short, those months weren’t exactly the happiest of my life: I was stressed, exhausted, and under pressure all the time.      

At some point during the spring, I can’t remember the month exactly, I had my first orgasm when he was touching me. It was a huge surprise: “my body can do that?” Molybdenumblue and my mother both recommended that I practice, so I started masturbating for the first time in my life. But sex was still the main thing we fought about. Eventually we worked out a routine where I could at least satisfy his needs without too much time or effort. The semester was nearly over by now, and at some point we had decided that we wanted to try living together in the summer. We had been dating for less than four months. All of my roommates and many of my friends thought it was a terrible idea. My mother approved wholeheartedly, though, and I trusted her judgment. We moved into a subletted apartment on campus at the beginning of May.

It could have gone badly, but it went incredibly well. We had a double bed and I was actually able to sleep well nearly every night. I was working a lot, usually more than 45 hours a week, and juggling my mandatory exercise routines, but seeing each other at night was the default, rather than another commitment to slot into my schedule. Sex still wasn’t happening, so I went to see my family doctor and she recommended a physiotherapy routine that I could practice at home, and we were having sex maybe three weeks later. About the only thing I liked was that it was over quickly, but it still felt like an incredible accomplishment. My mother bought me chocolate as a reward for my hard work.

It seemed to be the end of the last snag in our relationship, the last obstacle that would have kept us from staying together long-term. We talk about everything, from the possibility of having kids someday (though definitely not soon, even though kids are uber-cute and I have to work with them every day at the pool and I want one too) to my crush on a girl at work. (When I was planning to go for a swim with her at the campus pool: “Aww, have fun on your lesbian date!”)

Conclusion: Billy left for a four-month exchange in France at the end of September, just before I went back to school for another semester of madly juggling school, work, and exercise, hoping that I would be able to cut back on my workaholic-ism; it’s irrational to think I’ll actually go bankrupt if I only work one shift a week. I was optimistic.

...And that was when I realized that I don’t feel like a scared thirteen-year-old girl anymore. I don’t feel like a freak and I don’t feel inadequate. I don’t find the day-to-day of a relationship stressful. I’ve made a ton of compromises, smoothed off some of the stubbornly contrarian aspects of my personality, and I don’t resent it; I feel good about it. My feelings are no longer as unpredictable as the weather, and when something does upset me, I almost always understand why and know how to fix it.

I couldn’t have achieved this on my own. I’ve relied on my mother, my sister, my best friend, and molybdenumblue. Not to mention one of the most incredibly patient, open-minded, and persistent people I’ve met in my life: Billy himself. But it’s a success story for me, even so. I wanted to be stronger, so I tried to change myself, and it was harder than anything I had ever done before, and I could have given up and walked away, but I decided to keep trying. And that's what makes it my greatest achievement.


*Billy has read this and ok'd everything I wrote, too.

The peril of ignoring emotions

14 Swimmer963 03 April 2011 05:15PM

Related to: Luminosity Sequence, Unknown Knowns

Let me introduce you to a hypothetical high school student, Sally. She’s smart and pretty and outgoing, and so are her friends. She considers herself a modern woman, sexually liberated, and this is in line with the lifestyle her friends practice. They think sex is normal and healthy and fun. Sally isn’t just pretending in order to fit in; these really are her friends, this really is her milieu, and according to health class, sex between consenting adults is nothing to be ashamed of. Sally isn't a rigorous rationalist, although she likes to think of herself as rational, and she's no more self-aware than the average high school girl. 

Now Sally meets a boy, Bob, and she things he’s cute, and he thinks she’s cute too. Bob is part of her crowd. Her friends like him; he respects women and treats Sally well and, like any healthy teenage boy, fairly horny. According to her belief system, that shouldn’t set off any alarm bells. She’s been warned about abusive relationships, but Bob is a nice guy. So when they go upstairs together at her friend’s party, she has every reason to be excited and a little nervous, but not uncomfortable. The idea that Mom wouldn’t approve is so obviously irrelevant that she ignores it completely.

...And afterwards, she feels guilty and violated and horrible about herself, even though it was her decision.

I used this example because I expect it’s not unusual. On the surface, Sally’s discomfort seems to come out of nowhere, but modern North American society is chock-full of contradictory beliefs about sex. Sex is normal and healthy. Sex is dirty. Sex is only for when you’re married. If Sally’s mother is Christian, or even just conservative, Sally would have internalized those beliefs when she was a child. It would have been hard not to. They’re her unknown knowns, and she may not have noticed them before, because there’s a wide psychological gap between believing it’s okay for others to behave a particular way, and believing it’s okay for you. The meme ‘don’t pass judgement on other people’ is, I think, pretty widespread in North America and maybe more so in Canada, but so is holding oneself to a high standard...and those are contradictory.

I think that the nagging, seemingly irrational moment of ‘that doesn’t feel right’ is important. It potentially reveals something about the beliefs and attitudes you hold that you don’t even know about. Sally’s response to her nagging doubt could have been the following:

Hmm, that’s interesting, why does it bother me so much that Mom would disapprove? I guess when we used to go to church, they said sex was only for when you’re married. But I don’t believe anything else they said in church. ...Well, I guess I want Mom to be proud of me. I want her to praise me for doing well in school. And I think lying is wrong, so the fact that I either have to lie to her about having had sex, or face her disapproval, maybe that’s why I’m uncomfortable? But I don’t want to say no, it’ll make me look like a prude... Still, what if everyone feels this way at the start? I know Alice went to church too when she was a kid, and her mom would kill her if she knew she was sexually active, I wonder if that bothers Alice? Hmm, I think maybe it’s still the right choice to sleep with Bob, but maybe I’m taking this too lightly? Maybe this should be a big deal and I should feel anxious? After all, he might judge me anyway, he might think I’m too easy, or a slut. Maybe I can just explain to him that I want to think about this longer... After all, why should I assume something is right just because they told us in health class? That’s just like in church, it’s taking someone else’s opinion on faith. I’ve never actually thought about this, I’ve just followed other people. Who’s to say they’re right?

Whatever decision Sally makes, she probably won’t feel violated. She listened to her feelings and took them into consideration, even though they seemed irrational. As it turned out, they were a reasonable consequence of a belief-fragment that she hadn’t even known she had. So as a consequence of stopping to think, she knows herself better too. She’ll be better able to predict her behaviour in future situations. She’ll be less likely to ignore her threshold-warning discomfort and make risky choices as a result of peer pressure alone. She’ll be more likely to think.

To conclude: emotions exist. They are real. If you ignore them and plow on ahead, you won’t necessarily thank yourself afterwards. And that nagging feeling is a priceless moment to find out about your unknown knowns...which may not be rational, which may have been laid down in some previous era and never questioned since, but which part of you is going to try to uphold until you consciously deconstruct them. 

Sociosexual Orientation Inventory, or failing to perform basic sanity checks

3 taw 16 September 2009 10:00AM

I just did some reading about "Sociosexual Orientation Inventory", a simple 7-item test designed to measure one's openness to sex without love and long term commitment.

Here are the questions. How long will it take you to spot the huge problem ahead...

  1. With how many different partners have you had sex (sexual intercourse) within the last year.
  2. How many different partners do you foresee yourself having sex with during the next five years? (Please give a specific, realistic estimate)
  3. With how many different partners have you had sex on one and only one occasion?
  4. How often do (did) you fantasize about having sex with someone other than your current (most recent) dating partner? (1 never ... 8 at least once a day)
  5. "Sex without love is OK" (1 strongly disagree ... 9 stronly agree)
  6. "I can imagine myself being comfortable and enjoying `casual' sex with different partners (1 strongly disagree ... 9 stronly agree)
  7. "I would have to be closely attached to someone (both emotionally and psychologially) before I could feel comfortable and fully enjoy having sex with him or her" (1 strongly disagree ... 9 stronly agree)

Score is: 5 x item1 + 1 x item2 (capped at 30) + 5 x item3 + 4 x item4 + 2 x (mean of item5, item6, and reversed item7)

Do you see the problem already?

Quite predictably, researchers report that men have much higher SOI scores than women in all countries. But the first three questions (ignoring non-1:1 gender ratios, differently biased sampling for different genders, different rates of homosexuality between genders, different behaviour of homosexuals of different genders, 30 partners cap on the second item, differently biased forecasts of the second item and other small details that won't affect the score much) - simply have to be identical for men and women, so the entire difference would have to be explained by items 4 to 7, which have relatively low weights!

The differences between men and women can be really extreme for some countries, Ukraine has 50.79±28.92 (mean±sd) for men, and 17.36±8.65 for women, which means that either Ukrainian men, or Ukrainian women, or both, are notoriously lying when asked about past and future sex partners. In most countries the differences are more moderate, with total 48-country sample's scores being 46.67±29.68 for men, and 27.34±19.55 for women. Latvia leads the way with smallest difference, and so most likely greatest honesty, with 49.42±23.61 for men, and 41.68±26.68 for women, what can be plausibly explained by just differences in attitude. (fake lie detector experiments have shown it's almost exclusively women who are lying when answering questions like that)

SOI seems to be considered quite useful by psychologists, it correlates with many nice things, not only other questionnaires, but country SOI averages correlate with various demographic, economic, and health scores in quite systematic way. Still, I cannot read papers about it without asking myself - why didn't they bother to perform this basic sanity check - which would detect huge number of outright lies in answers. And more importantly - what proportion of "serious science" suffers from problems like that?

References: The 48 country SOI study, fake lie detectors shows which gender lies more.

An interesting speed dating study

15 CronoDAS 07 July 2009 07:09AM

I recently found an article in the New York Times that talks about a speed dating study that is going to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science. Given the usual state of science journalism, the fact that the article includes links that let me find a press release about the upcoming paper and a 20-page PDF file containing the paper itself was very helpful.

According to most studies and in accordance with popular stereotypes, men are normally less selective than women when it comes to evaluating potential romantic partners - in general, it appears that men are more likely to want to date any given woman than women are to want to date any given man. In a typical speed dating experiment, men and women rate potential partners as either a "yes" or a "no" depending on whether or not they want to see that person again. Men almost always rate a larger percentage of women as a "yes" than women do men, and, according to this paper, this is a fairly robust finding that generalizes over many different contexts. The usual explanation of this phenomena is based on evolutionary psychology: a female has a lot more to lose from a bad mate choice than a male does. If there were a biological, genetic basis for this tendency, it should be difficult to come up with an experimental setup in which women are less selective and men are more selective.

However, that's not the case at all. This study demonstrates that a small, seemingly trivial change in the speed dating ritual results in a (partial) reversal of the normal results. You see, in practically every speed dating setup, when it is time to interact with a new partner, men physically leave their seat and move to the table where the next woman is sitting, while the women remain seated and wait for the men to approach them. The authors of this study had the men remain still and had the women change seats, and found that this was all it took to wipe away the usual pattern: when the women were required to physically approach while the men remained still, the women became less selective then the men, reporting greater romantic interest and "yes"ing partners at a higher rate. "Rotaters" also reported greater self-confidence than "sitters", regardless of gender.

I suggest that you go read the paper, or at least the press release, yourself; my summary doesn't really do it justice, and I'm leaving the implications for the evolutionary psychology-based analysis of gender as an exercise for the reader.

EDIT: Having had some more time to look over the study, I think I should point out that it wasn't a complete reversal of the usual gender behavior: female rotators were only moderately less selective than male sitters, while male rotators were significantly less selective than female sitters. (Sitters of both genders were equally selective.)

Mate selection for the men here

13 rhollerith 03 June 2009 11:05PM

The following started as a reply to a request for relationship advice (http://lesswrong.com/lw/zj/open_thread_june_2009/rxy) but is expected to be of enough general interest to justify a top-level post.  Sometimes it is beneficial to have older men in the conversation, and this might be one of those times.  (I am in my late 40s.)

I am pretty sure that most straight men strong in rationality are better off learning how the typical woman thinks than holding out for a long-term relationship with a women as strong in rationality as he is. If you hold out for a strong female rationalist, you drastically shrink the pool of women you have to choose from -- and people with a lot of experience with dating and relationships tend to consider that a bad move.  A useful data point here is the fact (http://lesswrong.com/lw/fk/survey_results/cee) that 95%-97% of Less Wrongers are male.  If on the other hand, women currently (*currently* -- not in some extrapolated future after you've sold your company and bought a big house in Woodside) find you extremely attractive or extremely desirable long-term-relationship material, well, then maybe you should hold out for a strong female rationalist if you are a strong male rationalist.

Here is some personal experience in support of the advice above to help you decide whether to follow the advice above.

My information is incomplete because I have never been in a long-term relationship with a really strong rationalist -- or even a scientist, programmer or engineer -- but I have been with a woman who has years of formal education in science (majored in anthropology, later took chem and bio for a nursing credential) and her knowledge of science did not contribute to the relationship in any way that I could tell.  Moreover, that relationship was not any better than the one I am in now, with a woman with no college-level science classes at all.

The woman I have been with for the last 5 years is not particularly knowledgeable about science and is not particularly skilled in the art of rationality.  Although she is curious about most areas of science, she tends to give up and to stop paying attention if a scientific explanation fails to satisfy her curiosity within 2 or 3 minutes.  If there is a strong emotion driving her inquiry, though, she will focus longer.  E.g., she sat still for at least 15 or 20 minutes on the evolutionary biology of zoonoses during the height of the public concern over swine flu about a month ago -- and was glad she did.  (I know she was glad she did because she thanked me for the explanation, and it is not like her to make an insincere expression of gratitude out of, e.g., politeness.)  (The strong emotion driving her inquiry was her fear of swine flu combined with her suspicion that perhaps the authorities were minimizing the severity of the situation to avoid panicking the public.)

Despite her having so much less knowledge of science and the art of rationality than I have, I consider my current relationship a resounding success: it is no exaggeration to say that I am more likely than not vastly better off than I would have been if I had chosen 5 years ago not to pursue this woman to hold out for someone more rational.  She is rational enough to take care of herself and to be the most caring and the most helpful girlfriend I have ever had.  (Moreover, nothing in my ordinary conversations and interactions with her draw my attention to her relative lack of scientific knowledge or her relative lack of advanced rationalist skills in a way that evokes any regret or sadness in me.  Of course, if I had experienced a long-term relationship with a very strong female rationalist in the past, maybe I *would* experience episodes of regret or sadness towards the woman I am with now.)

Here are two more tips on mate selection for the straight men around here.

I have found that it is a very good sign if the woman either (1) assigns high social status to scientific ability or scientific achievement or finds scientific ability appealing in a man or (2) sees science as a positive force in the world.  The woman I am with now clearly and decisively meets criterion (1) but does not meet criterion (2).  Moreover, one of my most successful relationships was with a woman who finds science fiction very inspiring.  (I do not BTW.)  The salient thing about that was that she never revealed it to me, nor the fact that she definitely sees science as a positive force in the world.  (I pieced those two facts together after we broke up.)  The probable reason she never revealed them to me is that she thought they would clue me in to the fact that she found scientific ability appealing in a man, which in turn would have increased the probability that I would try to snow her by pretending to be better at science or more interested in science than I really was.  (She'd probably been snowed that way by a man before she met me: male snowing of prospective female sexual partners is common.)

By posting on a topic of such direct consequence to normal straight adult male self-esteem, I am making myself more vulnerable than I would be if I were posting on, e.g., regulatory policy.  Awareness of my vulnerability might cause someone to refrain from publicly contradicting what I just wrote.  Do not refrain from publicly contradicting what I just wrote!  The successful application of rationality and scientific knowledge to this domain has high expected global utility, and after considering the emotional and reputational risks to myself of having posted on this topic, I have concluded that I do not require any special consideration over and above what I would get if I had posted on regulatory policy.

And of course if you have advice to give about mate selection for the straight men around here, here is your chance.

(EDITED to avoid implying that all men are heterosexual.)

Masochism vs. Self-defeat

-1 Psychohistorian 20 April 2009 09:20PM

Follow up to: Is masochism necessary?Stuck in the middle with Bruce

Masochism has two very different meanings: enjoyment of pain, and pursuit (not enjoyment) of suffering.

As a rather blunt example of this distinction, consider a sexual masochist. If his girlfriend ties him up and beats him, he'll experience pain, but he certainly won't suffer; he'll probably enjoy himself immensely. Put someone with vanilla sexual tastes in his place, and he would experience both pain and suffering.

Bruce-like behaviour is best understood as pursuit of suffering. People undermine themselves or set themselves up to lose. They may do it so that they have a comfortable excuse, or because they are used to failing and afraid of being happy, or for many other reasons. Most of us do this to some degree, however slight, and it's something we want to avoid.1 Pursuit of suffering, quite simply, gets in the way of winning, and, much like akratic behaviour, it is something that we should try desperately to find and destroy, because we should be happier without it.

This is very, very different from enjoyment of pain. If you like getting beaten up, or spicy foods, or running marathons, this has no effect on whether you win; these become a kind of winning. The fact that these activities cause suffering in some people is wholly irrelevant. For those who enjoy them, they create happiness, and obtaining them is, in a sense, a form of winning. Because of this, there's no reason to try to catch ourselves engaging in them or to worry about engaging in them less. It does not seem like people would be happier if they lost these prefereces.2

Indeed, given that they require some level of initial exposure, and (in the sexual case) have strong social taboos against them, it seems quite likely that masochistic behaviour isn't engaged in enough, though I admit I may be going too far.

Edit: As a point of clarification, "Bruce-like" behaviour may be overbroad. Some people set themselves up to lose because, for whatever reason, they genuinely like losing. That isn't pursuit of suffering, because there's no suffering. However, we do sometimes undermine ourselves when we want to win. The precise cause of this is, for my purposes, immaterial. This is what I'm referring to by "pursuit of suffering," and my entire point is that it is quite distinct from enjoyment or pursuit of pain, and that this difference is worth noticing.

A proof of the utilitarian benefit of sadism is left to the reader, or as the topic for a follow-up post if people like this one.

1 - If we actually enjoy failure, such that presented with the simple choice of win/lose, we repeatedly chose lose, that's a separate subject and would fall under another description, like "enjoyment of failure." This is something that one might be happier without, but that's really another issue for another post.

2- This is not to say that some people shouldn't engage in them less. There are people who engage in self-destructive behaviour. Some use sex as a means of escape. Some anorexics exercise compulsively. But the fact that these can be unhealthy in specific circumstances is of no relevance to the greater population that enjoys them responsibly.

Of Gender and Rationality

41 Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 April 2009 12:56AM

Among all self-identified "rationalist" communities that I know of, and Less Wrong in particular, there is an obvious gender imbalance—a male/female ratio tilted strongly toward males.

Yet surely epistemic and instrumental rationality have no gender signature.  There is no such thing as masculine probability theory or feminine decision theory.

There could be some entirely innocuous explanation for this imbalance.  Perhaps, by sheer historical contingency, aspiring rationalists are recruited primarily from the atheist/libertarian/technophile cluster, which has a gender imbalance for its own reasons—having nothing to do with rationality or rationalists; and this is the entire explanation.

Uh huh.  Sure.

And then there are the less innocuous explanations—those that point an accusing finger at the rationalist community, or at womankind.

continue reading »

Is masochism necessary?

8 PhilGoetz 10 April 2009 11:48PM

Followup to Stuck in the middle with Bruce:

Bruce is a description of masochistic personality disorder.  Bruce's dysfunctional behavior may or may not be related to sexual masochism [safe for work], which is demonized by most people in America.  Yet there are ordinary, socially-accepted behaviors that seem partly masochistic to me:

  • Eating spicy food
  • Listening to the music of Anton Webern or Alban Berg (not trying to be funny; this is very serious)
  • Listening to music turned up so loud that it hurts
  • Fiction
  • Movies, especially horror movies
  • Roller coasters
  • Saunas
  • Enjoying exercise
  • Being Bruce

Question 1: Can you list more?

Question 2: Doubtless some of the behaviors I listed have completely different explanations, some of which might not involve masochism at all.  Which do you think involve enjoying pain?  Can you cluster them by causal mechanism?

Question 3: When we find ourselves acting masochistically, should we try to "correct" it?  Or is it part of a healthy human's nature?  If so, what's the evolutionary-psych explanation?  (I was surprised not to find any evo-psych explanations for masochism on the web; or even any general theory of masochism that tried to unite two different behaviors.  All I found were the ideas that sexual masochism is caused by bad childhood models of love, and that masochistic personality is caused by other, unspecified bad experiences.  No suggestion that masochism is part of our normal pleasure mechanism.)

Some hypotheses:

  1. Evolution implemented "need to explore" (in the "exploration/exploitation" sense) as pleasure in new experiences, and adaptation to any particular often-repeated stimulus.  This could result in seeking ever-higher levels of stimulation, even above the pain threshold.  (This could affect a culture as well as an organism, giving the progression Vivaldi -> Bach -> Mozart -> Beethoven -> Wagner -> Stravinsky -> Berg -> screw it, let's invent rock and roll and start over.  My original belief was that this progression was caused by people trying to signal sophistication, rather than by honest enjoyment of music.  But maybe some people <DELETION of "jaded"> honestly enjoy Berg.)
  2. We have a "pain thermostat" to get us to explore / prevent us from being too cowardly, and modern life leaves us below our set point.  (Is masochism more prevalent now than in the bad old days?)
    1. An objection to this is that sometimes, when people are in emotional pain, they work through it by throwing themselves into further emotional pain (e.g., by listening to Pink Floyd).
      1. An objection to this objection is that primal scream therapy seems not actually to work except in the short term.
  3. Pain triggers endorphins in order to help us fight or flee, and it feels good.
  4. We enjoy fighting and athletic competition, and pain is associated with these things we enjoy.

My guess is that, if it's a side-effect (e.g., 3) or a non-causal association (4), it's okay to eliminate masochism.  Otherwise, that could be risky.

These all lead up to Question 4, which is a fun-theory question:  Would purging ourselves of masochism make life less fun?

ADDED: Question 5: Can we train ourselves not to be Bruce without damaging our enjoyment of these other things?

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