Wait, there are other reasons to be angry? I thought these were basically the only reasons to actually ever get angry and not just irritated…
(of course, the trivial partial explanation is that men do often feel powerless thus angry but don’t recognize it and assign it on something else instead, because the culturally dominant narrative of masculinity is a prison and acknowledging that one feels powerless is approximately one of the biggest no-nos for it)
Bernard Weiss, a professor of environmental medicine and pediatrics at the University of Rochester, reviewed the existing literature on sexually dimorphic nonreproductive behaviors as indicators of endocrine disruption. Weiss made a strong evidence-based case that “gender-specific regional differentiation of the brain and, ultimately, its expression in behavior are guided by the gonadal hormones,” and that the process is subject to interference by drugs and environmental contaminants. He points out that sex differences in performance and behavior are not—but should be—a recognized criterion in developmental neurotoxicity testing.
They are seriously implying that something should be banned just because it makes people behave in sufficiently non-stereotypical ways, even if it’s completely harmless.
Robert Cialdini’s Wikipedia page says “He is best known for his book Influence“. Since its publication, he seems to have spent his time directing an institute to spread awareness of techniques for success and persuasion. At the risk of being a little too cynical – a guy knows the secrets of success, so he uses them to…write a book about the secrets of success? If I knew the secrets of success, you could bet I’d be doing much more interesting things with them. All the best people recommend Cialdini, and his research credentials are impeccable, but I can’t help wondering: if he’s so smart, why isn’t he God-Emperor?
Maybe he doesn’t want to? His book about the secrets of success appears to have been wildly successful, maybe he really likes studying that and spreading those ideas and living whatever private life he has.
I often get the impression from rationalists (most obviously Eliezer but Scott is up there too) that not only would they, personally, want to rule the world if only they could, but that anyone would do the same in the right position. As someone who, if appointed god emperor, would abdicate and get back to living his own life, I can’t help but wonder if this is more of a result of them being in somewhat of a social bubble or more of a typical mind fallacy type thing. I also have some concerns about the morality of wanting to be in charge of everyone, and with the political stances and approaches many of the same rationalists take, but I’m mostly just confused as to how someone could be this confused about people’s motivations.
(this is all setting aside the other obvious issue, which is that persuasion is not literal mind control and it’s dubious that the most persuasive person in the world, by virtue of that fact alone, would be guaranteed success of the kind Scott seems to be thinking of here).
That last paragraph x100. I’ve read Influence, it’s a good book, but Cialdini is up-front about the fact that nothing he describes is magic.
I often get the impression from rationalists (most obviously Eliezer but Scott is up there too) that not only would they, personally, want to rule the world if only they could, but that anyone would do the same in the right position.
True. I always get so baffled when someone has power and influence and only buys a yacht and a mansion and at most has wild and expensive sex parties. I literally can’t understand how a person who can get into such a position would only use that position in so boringly savanna ways, other than the system actually being mostly luck-based and rewarding fundamentally incompetent and/or only shallowly ambitious people who endlessly pursue lost causes simply to increase some arbitary high score.
"I get a very strong “has never actually interacted with a working class person of average intelligence for a long period of time” vibe from some rationalist diaspora people, which is really unsettling, though. I guess it’s plausible that that could happen to you if your path through adolescence just goes from one Fancy Institution after another and the closest you get to a community college, public university that’s not Berkeley, or trade school is by driving past one. (Or the non-US equivalents, I don’t know too much about other countries’ educational systems.) There’s a good chance I’m completely wrong about many people on this website–I am not known for my skill at making predictions about others’ lives–but my System 1 says holy guacamole, there are some sheltered birds on here."
Then there are those who have interacted with such people for way longer than would count as not!cruel-and-unusual-punishment for whatever sins they have committed before birth and are desperate to get the hell away from them. I’d be very interested to know how these types manifest differently because my brain can imagine them being seemingly indistinguishable on the outside when being safely sheltered, while the subjective experience might vary from “hey, these are some strange creatures with curious habits” to “help no take them away don’t attract their attention they will tear you apart and feel good about it put them as far away from me as possible please”.
The main thing I’ve learned from watching Masters of Sex has been a better understanding of the fact that allosexuals care waaay more about sex than any reasonable human being should.
I mean, every time Bill Masters talks about how he wants to cure sexual dysfunction to “save marriages”, I’m like “???”. It honestly seems really strange to me that someone would end a relationship because their partner isn’t able to have sex with them. It parses to me like “I’m sorry, honey, but I married you for your singing voice, and this sore throat bullshit has gone on long enough.” Like, sure, you do you - but I’m kinda sorta judgin y’all.
Also, like, people keep cheating on their spouses??? Why??? I can’t imagine promising to only sleep with one person and then breaking that promise, because I can’t imagine wanting sex more than I want to follow through with an “Um, sure, whatever” - much less faithfulness-including marriage vows. (I’m poly because I can’t stop falling in love with people; not because I can’t stop fucking them.)
All in all, Masters of Sex is a fascinating look into a world where people care about how frequently they stick organs in orifices. I recommend to anyone who’s as confused about that as I am.
Optimization thinks strongly-reactive-gray-asexuality-ish-ish-ness is the Objectively Optimal™ type of sexuality (to which The One Which Watches The Watchers responds: “subjectively, you one-example-generalizing fool!”) because it results in really low amounts of time spent on sex-related things (I kind of get where people’s interest in such stuff comes from because pre-HRT I was more allo-ish, but it felt like an unpleasant compulsion which is hijacking my brain to waste time on pointless things instead of the meaning of life or something like that) but allows great quantities of diversity of experience and positive novelty when someone who fits the criteria is like “hey, want to do X?” and I’m able to respond “okay sure” for a wide variety of activities ranging from hugging to things-that-accidentally-break-ribs.
So yes, very definitely confused. Unfortunately Masters of Sex is like 36+ hours and Optimization is screaming “you could use those hours writing your way to world domination instead of trying to comprehend the arcane customs of a weird species” so I’m going to do that thing instead.
