Sophronius

This essay was requested by the highly qualified rationalist and extremely-sex-positive Paul Crowley, who (like me) is frustrated by the absolute refusal of certain political groups to explain their actual ideas rather than shout at each other. The shouty people in this case are sex-negative conservatives and second-wave feminists, and the thing they’re shouting about is that our society has become too hedonistic. Do they have a point? Well, the strongest argument in favor of social conservatism is common sense – in this case, the idea that society is the way it is for a reason, and that any large scale change is therefore liable to have severe negative societal consequences. Society might feel like a construct, but it’s actually evolved in much the same way as us. As such, trying to ‘fix’ society is like modifying human RNA to vaccinate against a disease – a completely insane notion that obviously demands extreme caution but something which can apparently be done if you put your best and smartest people on the job. The problem is that when it comes to modifying society, not only are the smartest people not in charge, nobody is in charge, there is no quality testing whatsoever and nobody even seems aware of how absolutely insane that is. Liberal commentators dismiss this concern in the name of utilitarian consequentialism: the idea that even if a proposed change seems scary, you should just shut up and do the math and then implement it anyway if the numbers work out. And from the perspective of progressives, the math is firmly on their side. Conservatives warned that society would collapse if interracial marriage was legalized, and yet here we are. They said the same thing about gay marriage, and women’s rights, and literally every other time there was a proposal to make society even slightly more open and tolerant. And now they are singing the same tune about Trans people (No, unisex bathrooms and women’s sports are not their real primary objections – they’ve jus