All in all, Sailer strikes me as a fair observer of homosexuality. He’s sometimes rude, and willing to accept stereotypes as evidence, but he wouldn’t be in the field he’s in if he weren’t interested in the truth.
he wouldn’t be in the field he’s in if he weren’t interested in the truth.
That’s by far THE most… optimistic view of human psychology I’ve ever seen expressed on LW/OB. Like most of us poor sinful bastards, when he’s talking about “disclosing the truth They want to stay undisclosed”, he’s interested in making himself feel comfortable in his hypocrisy through a self-perpetuating cycle of external and internal signaling. Also, he’s awfully whiny for a Straight Old-School Manly Guy.
From your second link:
Some on the far right believe that people become gay because they were “recruited” by other gay people. If true (and it is not true), this idea would have negative political implications....
...Personally, I am very pro-gay
This doesn’t add up on a very fundamental level. WHY on earth would homosexual “recruitment” would be a bad thing at all, if homosexuality is a legitimate and respectable trait of a person? Because of homophobic prejudices? Is setting up comprehensive re-education measures against instinctive and cultural homophobia Evil Orwellian Social Engineering according to him, so gays should just mind their own business and Keep It In The Bedroom?
Overall, I’m 95% confident that none of his caveats and asides about him being such an ardent defender of fairness and respect to gays would have surfaced if he were to investigate the same class of issues and come upon the same conclusions (for example) in 1950s US. He’d be just a usual old-fashioned inquisitor and Moral Guardian, enlightening the public about the misguided, irresponsible, deceitful perverts undermining Western institutions.
That’s by far THE most… optimistic view of human psychology I’ve ever seen expressed on LW/OB.
I contest both the factual assertion and the implications. The number of times I’ve seen ‘save the world’ sentiments expressed seriously on this site should make any cynic grumpy. As for the implications, I admit I could be giving Sailer too much credit. Do you think you could be giving him too little?
Also, he’s awfully whiny for a Straight Old-School Manly Guy.
...what? Where are you going with this?
From your second link:
Notice that the pro-gay comment is Michael Bailey’s line, not Sailer’s.
WHY on earth would homosexual “recruitment” would be a bad thing at all, if homosexuality is a legitimate and respectable trait of a person?
To me, ‘pro-gay’ implies “I want homosexuals to live fulfilled lives” not “I want there to be more homosexuals,” though ‘anti-gay’ does imply “I want there to be less homosexuals.” Suppose homosexuality is worse then heterosexuality, in a manner similar to how, say, deafness is worse than hearing. If deafness were contagious, there would be strong arguments for quarantining the deaf, whereas if deafness were not contagious, there would be strong arguments for accommodating and including the deaf.
That is, the questions “homosexuals are here, what do we do with them?” and “how many homosexuals should we have?” are very different questions.
Evil Orwellian Social Engineering according to him
Where is this coming from?
if he were to investigate the same class of issues and come upon the same conclusions (for example) in 1950s US. He’d be just a usual old-fashioned inquisitor and Moral Guardian, enlightening the public about the misguided, irresponsible, deceitful perverts undermining Western institutions.
It doesn’t look like that’s the caseforrace, though, so I’m not clear on why you believe this.
As for the implications, I admit I could be giving Sailer too much credit. Do you think you could be giving him too little?
A relevant data point should perhaps be that Steve Sailer actually seems to genuinely not dislike African Americans. This is very impressive for someone who discusses what he does. I don’t think he’s faking it either. Perhaps his fascination with sport statistics lets him pump enough warm fuzzies to maintain a balance.
‘anti-gay’ does imply “I want there to be less homosexuals.”
I suspect that it is difficult to make progress from that point without first clarifying whether what is meant is “I want fewer people to have same-sex sex,” “I want fewer people to want same-sex sex,” “I want fewer people to endorse same-sex sex,” something else, or some combination.
Agreed, but it’s not clear to me progress needs to be made from that point. To my knowledge, no one who is participating in or a topic of the conversation is anti-gay in any of those senses, if we measure wants by expended effort to achieve those wants.
Nowhere much, just pointing out another reason for why his writing is so unappealing to me.
Suppose homosexuality is worse then heterosexuality, in a manner similar to how, say, deafness is worse than hearing.
I can’t visualize that in any way at all, if the “Society will never be tolerant enough” card is dropped.
Where is this coming from?
Well, he can’t write an article without mentioning the authoritarian, utterly clueless feminists who are trying to reshape the poor unwilling America into their image.
It doesn’t look like that’s the case for race, though, so I’m not clear on why you believe this.
Never said or implied or insinuated that he was racist; hell, in practice he might well have less prejudices on the race front that you or me. Don’t you consider that a person’s bigotry might be restricted to one issue, neither propagating outward nor fading away but supported by fairly elaborate rationalization, some examples of which I’m sensing here?
Hey, in the Discussion thread I made Nornagest is, right now, tellingme that I might be exhibiting quasi-intellectual bigotry of a similar sort regarding race, hiding behind a few lofty sentiments—so how unlikely is it that Sailer might have this towards sexuality?
Nowhere much, just pointing out another reason for why his writing is so unappealing to me.
I agree that it’s more pleasant to read the writing of satisfied people than unsatisfied people.
I can’t visualize that in any way at all, if the “Society will never be tolerant enough” card is dropped.
I’m having trouble parsing this. Do you mean “homosexuality cannot be a detriment in a society where homosexuals are respected equally with heterosexuals”? Off the top of my head, I can think of three significant detriments in such a society, and could come up with more if I needed to. If you can’t come up with three, I don’t think you’re thinking about this issue clearly enough.
Well, he can’t write an article without mentioning the authoritarian, utterly clueless feminists who are trying to reshape the poor unwilling America into their image.
Yes, though I regret the loss of an opportunity for Multiheaded (and others) to test their imagination. Try to give this a full five minutes of thought before reading on.
My first three:
Smaller dating pool, by a factor of ~20: presuming the rate of gays is still ~3% of men, your dating pool goes from about 98% of women to about 5% of men. (Lesbians are less common than gay men by about a factor of 2, and so things are worse for them, though I believe bisexual women are more common than bisexual men.)
Inability to naturally conceive children.
Anal sex is much harder on the receiving partner than vaginal sex, particularly when it comes to the spread of blood-borne diseases like AIDS. (Two men can have sex without one of them bottoming, and pegging is a thing for heterosexual men, but it should be obvious that rates of bottoming with a potentially infectious partner are much higher among homosexuals, and while the situation is worsened by prejudice it is fundamentally an engineering issue.)
I’d say that 1 is compensated by the fundamentally different approach to dating between two men and a men and a woman, no matter what you might call their sexuality. I am speaking from personal experience!
Why the hell is 2 a net harm? Two partners who are confident they’re both clean can do anything without birth control and have absolutely no worries of unintended pregnancy.
3… well, I’ll be blunt, it’s only an issue for sexually unimaginative men who don’t stop to think and assume that they must have penetration in this way, otherwise they’re losing out on some amazing satisfaction. Me, I’ve never had it in either role and I’m not planning on it. My BF, if I remember correctly, doesn’t care for trying the passive role either, although he’s done active and found it to be nothing special compared to some other sexual activities.
If both men have a desire to have all their children be biologically related to them, they have to compromise or play around with gametes in a way that I believe is not commercially available.
well, I’ll be blunt, it’s only an issue
Well, I’m glad we agree it’s an issue.
for sexually unimaginative men who don’t stop to think
Ah. I’m glad I took the time to write out neutral qualifications to make clear that while this would not be an issue for every homosexual, it would be an issue for enough to be significant. I had the viewpoint of the receiving partner in mind, as it appears to give significantly better prostate stimulation than the next best option (though is about the same for the penetrating partner).
Overall, I must say, I’m disappointed. Policy debates should not appear one-sided.
Sometimes you just feel cornered (please take my incidents of pathologically low self-confidence into account); I don’t wish to come to believe that my or my significant other’s sexuality is a net harm even if the arguments in favor of that look convincing on the surface, because I have no idea of how to handle something like that in my life. Relinquishment is all fun and games until someone loses a body part.
Sometimes you just feel cornered; I don’t wish to come to believe that my or my significant other’s sexuality is a net harm even if the arguments in favor of that look convincing on the surface, because I have no idea of how to handle something like that in my life. Relinquishment is all fun and games until someone loses a body part.
Eh. Like I said, the question of what to do with existing people is very different from the question of what people we want to exist. We’re already gay, and that’s not going to change.
I am willing and able to separate the question of the best life for me-as-I-am from the question of the best life for a hypothetical me-as-I-am-not. I’m not sure I can offer emotional guidance on how to be able to make that separation, though, as I find it natural, and that’s likely to be the sticking point.
In 20 years having biological children would be much less of a problem for the average middle-class 1st world homosexual, and it’s already far from impossible if a huge investment (a quick Google search suggests that the total expenses for the surrogate motherhood option begin at around the 100 grand figure in America), -
-but today the process filters for commitment, at least, to the idea of having children and enforces some time to think about the decision. And there’s an incentive to adopt kids, too!
I understand there’s some research looking into that. I don’t have any links handy (and searching for them on my workstation seems like a bad idea), but if I recall correctly, inducing egg/egg fertilization has near-term potential. Sperm/sperm fertilization is a little further off, since sperm are essentially expendable delivery systems for genetic material; it’s the egg that has all the cellular machinery needed to bootstrap replication. By Multiheaded’s twenty years from now I wouldn’t be surprised to see either.
Seconded! Seconded! Also, I’m talking about bisexuality here as well, which he might simply be rolling into his concept of modern American homosexuality due to how underreported it is and how there’s no strong incentive to always put bisexuals into their own proper category.
(Note: I’m not downvoting you.)
I agree that it’s more pleasant to read the writing of satisfied people than unsatisfied people
Eliezer Yudkowsky is probably among the most unsatisfied humans alive right now; I think that the beauty and persuasiveness of his writing would suffer if he repressed his dissatisfaction with the current state of us more in his articles and such.
I can’t visualize that in any way at all, if the “Society will never be tolerant enough” card is dropped.
Heterosexuality as a norm (In the sense of being the majority preference) may in the long term be the only thing keeping the sexes from splitting off into different species and civilizations with diverging values. Note that as with encountering an alien civilization there is no guarantee whatsoever that peaceful coexistence would be viable in the long term. Bisexuality could also work, depends on how different the extrapolated desires of the genders really are.
Before you say “I don’t think gender will remain a viable concept in transhuman space”, consider the starting point. In the first approximation each half of mankind have been wired for millions of years in a systematically slightly different fashion. So what if civilization A happens to have 10% of “in pre-singularity times self-identified as female” people on the census, instead of 0%, this dosen’t change the fact that most former male or female brains might eventually find a future tailored more to their tastes than to those of the other group (if civilization A or B wins).
Some of the psychological differences between males and females do have roots that go back millions of years.
Generally actually I would. Honestly as much as I love sexual and romantic entanglement with women, I can’t help but feel giddy about the awesomeness (according to my values) of an all male civilization on Mars. And I’ve already spoken about how I would probably take a pill that would make me asexual. Sexbots or homosexuality inducing pills seem an inferior solution but not that much. As long as the pill that would make me homosexual would change just my sexual preference and nothing else (I suspect the typical male homosexual brains actually differ in other subtle systematic ways from typical heterosexual male brains).
The problem comes here:
Note that as with encountering an alien civilization there is no guarantee whatsoever that peaceful coexistence would be viable in the long term.
Most LessWrongers have given very little though to the idea that human values might differ significantly enough to be incompatible. Even fewer have thought of finding a way to have them coexist rather than just making sure their own value set gobbles up as much matter.
A FAI is more likley to actually be a FAI if people don’t engage in a last desperate war for ownership of all the universe for eternity at the time of its construction.
The current proposed solution to avoid such negative sum arms race (where aggressive action and recklessness reduce the likelihood of a friendly AI for nearly all other human value sets, but increases the likelihood of one for your particular value set) has been to hope that our values aren’t really different, we’re just (for now) too dumb to see this.
See Sailer’s discussion of homosexual stereotypes, and his interview with a researcher of homosexuality.
All in all, Sailer strikes me as a fair observer of homosexuality. He’s sometimes rude, and willing to accept stereotypes as evidence, but he wouldn’t be in the field he’s in if he weren’t interested in the truth.
That’s by far THE most… optimistic view of human psychology I’ve ever seen expressed on LW/OB. Like most of us poor sinful bastards, when he’s talking about “disclosing the truth They want to stay undisclosed”, he’s interested in making himself feel comfortable in his hypocrisy through a self-perpetuating cycle of external and internal signaling. Also, he’s awfully whiny for a Straight Old-School Manly Guy.
From your second link:
This doesn’t add up on a very fundamental level. WHY on earth would homosexual “recruitment” would be a bad thing at all, if homosexuality is a legitimate and respectable trait of a person? Because of homophobic prejudices? Is setting up comprehensive re-education measures against instinctive and cultural homophobia Evil Orwellian Social Engineering according to him, so gays should just mind their own business and Keep It In The Bedroom?
Overall, I’m 95% confident that none of his caveats and asides about him being such an ardent defender of fairness and respect to gays would have surfaced if he were to investigate the same class of issues and come upon the same conclusions (for example) in 1950s US. He’d be just a usual old-fashioned inquisitor and Moral Guardian, enlightening the public about the misguided, irresponsible, deceitful perverts undermining Western institutions.
I contest both the factual assertion and the implications. The number of times I’ve seen ‘save the world’ sentiments expressed seriously on this site should make any cynic grumpy. As for the implications, I admit I could be giving Sailer too much credit. Do you think you could be giving him too little?
...what? Where are you going with this?
Notice that the pro-gay comment is Michael Bailey’s line, not Sailer’s.
To me, ‘pro-gay’ implies “I want homosexuals to live fulfilled lives” not “I want there to be more homosexuals,” though ‘anti-gay’ does imply “I want there to be less homosexuals.” Suppose homosexuality is worse then heterosexuality, in a manner similar to how, say, deafness is worse than hearing. If deafness were contagious, there would be strong arguments for quarantining the deaf, whereas if deafness were not contagious, there would be strong arguments for accommodating and including the deaf.
That is, the questions “homosexuals are here, what do we do with them?” and “how many homosexuals should we have?” are very different questions.
Where is this coming from?
It doesn’t look like that’s the case for race, though, so I’m not clear on why you believe this.
A relevant data point should perhaps be that Steve Sailer actually seems to genuinely not dislike African Americans. This is very impressive for someone who discusses what he does. I don’t think he’s faking it either. Perhaps his fascination with sport statistics lets him pump enough warm fuzzies to maintain a balance.
Indeed. (I linked to a number of articles pointing towards that in my last line, but thanks for the independent summary.)
I suspect that it is difficult to make progress from that point without first clarifying whether what is meant is “I want fewer people to have same-sex sex,” “I want fewer people to want same-sex sex,” “I want fewer people to endorse same-sex sex,” something else, or some combination.
Agreed, but it’s not clear to me progress needs to be made from that point. To my knowledge, no one who is participating in or a topic of the conversation is anti-gay in any of those senses, if we measure wants by expended effort to achieve those wants.
Nowhere much, just pointing out another reason for why his writing is so unappealing to me.
I can’t visualize that in any way at all, if the “Society will never be tolerant enough” card is dropped.
Well, he can’t write an article without mentioning the authoritarian, utterly clueless feminists who are trying to reshape the poor unwilling America into their image.
Never said or implied or insinuated that he was racist; hell, in practice he might well have less prejudices on the race front that you or me. Don’t you consider that a person’s bigotry might be restricted to one issue, neither propagating outward nor fading away but supported by fairly elaborate rationalization, some examples of which I’m sensing here?
Hey, in the Discussion thread I made Nornagest is, right now, telling me that I might be exhibiting quasi-intellectual bigotry of a similar sort regarding race, hiding behind a few lofty sentiments—so how unlikely is it that Sailer might have this towards sexuality?
I agree that it’s more pleasant to read the writing of satisfied people than unsatisfied people.
I’m having trouble parsing this. Do you mean “homosexuality cannot be a detriment in a society where homosexuals are respected equally with heterosexuals”? Off the top of my head, I can think of three significant detriments in such a society, and could come up with more if I needed to. If you can’t come up with three, I don’t think you’re thinking about this issue clearly enough.
But… he can and does?
Can you elaborate please?
Yes, though I regret the loss of an opportunity for Multiheaded (and others) to test their imagination. Try to give this a full five minutes of thought before reading on.
My first three:
Smaller dating pool, by a factor of ~20: presuming the rate of gays is still ~3% of men, your dating pool goes from about 98% of women to about 5% of men. (Lesbians are less common than gay men by about a factor of 2, and so things are worse for them, though I believe bisexual women are more common than bisexual men.)
Inability to naturally conceive children.
Anal sex is much harder on the receiving partner than vaginal sex, particularly when it comes to the spread of blood-borne diseases like AIDS. (Two men can have sex without one of them bottoming, and pegging is a thing for heterosexual men, but it should be obvious that rates of bottoming with a potentially infectious partner are much higher among homosexuals, and while the situation is worsened by prejudice it is fundamentally an engineering issue.)
I’d say that 1 is compensated by the fundamentally different approach to dating between two men and a men and a woman, no matter what you might call their sexuality. I am speaking from personal experience!
Why the hell is 2 a net harm? Two partners who are confident they’re both clean can do anything without birth control and have absolutely no worries of unintended pregnancy.
3… well, I’ll be blunt, it’s only an issue for sexually unimaginative men who don’t stop to think and assume that they must have penetration in this way, otherwise they’re losing out on some amazing satisfaction. Me, I’ve never had it in either role and I’m not planning on it. My BF, if I remember correctly, doesn’t care for trying the passive role either, although he’s done active and found it to be nothing special compared to some other sexual activities.
As am I.
If both men have a desire to have all their children be biologically related to them, they have to compromise or play around with gametes in a way that I believe is not commercially available.
Well, I’m glad we agree it’s an issue.
Ah. I’m glad I took the time to write out neutral qualifications to make clear that while this would not be an issue for every homosexual, it would be an issue for enough to be significant. I had the viewpoint of the receiving partner in mind, as it appears to give significantly better prostate stimulation than the next best option (though is about the same for the penetrating partner).
Overall, I must say, I’m disappointed. Policy debates should not appear one-sided.
Sometimes you just feel cornered (please take my incidents of pathologically low self-confidence into account); I don’t wish to come to believe that my or my significant other’s sexuality is a net harm even if the arguments in favor of that look convincing on the surface, because I have no idea of how to handle something like that in my life. Relinquishment is all fun and games until someone loses a body part.
Eh. Like I said, the question of what to do with existing people is very different from the question of what people we want to exist. We’re already gay, and that’s not going to change.
I am willing and able to separate the question of the best life for me-as-I-am from the question of the best life for a hypothetical me-as-I-am-not. I’m not sure I can offer emotional guidance on how to be able to make that separation, though, as I find it natural, and that’s likely to be the sticking point.
While not everyone wants to have children of their own, it’s better to have a choice in the matter than not.
In 20 years having biological children would be much less of a problem for the average middle-class 1st world homosexual, and it’s already far from impossible if a huge investment (a quick Google search suggests that the total expenses for the surrogate motherhood option begin at around the 100 grand figure in America), -
-but today the process filters for commitment, at least, to the idea of having children and enforces some time to think about the decision. And there’s an incentive to adopt kids, too!
Also homosexual couples, because they are already using technology to reproduce, are much more likley to practice eugenics.
I’m surprised to realize that I probably have to say that, yes this would be a good thing.
It’s not impossible for one partner. What if both want to be the biological parent?
I understand there’s some research looking into that. I don’t have any links handy (and searching for them on my workstation seems like a bad idea), but if I recall correctly, inducing egg/egg fertilization has near-term potential. Sperm/sperm fertilization is a little further off, since sperm are essentially expendable delivery systems for genetic material; it’s the egg that has all the cellular machinery needed to bootstrap replication. By Multiheaded’s twenty years from now I wouldn’t be surprised to see either.
They scrounge up double the money and have two kids?
Allow me to rephrase. What if they want to make a child together?
Seconded! Seconded! Also, I’m talking about bisexuality here as well, which he might simply be rolling into his concept of modern American homosexuality due to how underreported it is and how there’s no strong incentive to always put bisexuals into their own proper category.
(Note: I’m not downvoting you.)
Eliezer Yudkowsky is probably among the most unsatisfied humans alive right now; I think that the beauty and persuasiveness of his writing would suffer if he repressed his dissatisfaction with the current state of us more in his articles and such.
Heterosexuality as a norm (In the sense of being the majority preference) may in the long term be the only thing keeping the sexes from splitting off into different species and civilizations with diverging values. Note that as with encountering an alien civilization there is no guarantee whatsoever that peaceful coexistence would be viable in the long term. Bisexuality could also work, depends on how different the extrapolated desires of the genders really are.
Before you say “I don’t think gender will remain a viable concept in transhuman space”, consider the starting point. In the first approximation each half of mankind have been wired for millions of years in a systematically slightly different fashion. So what if civilization A happens to have 10% of “in pre-singularity times self-identified as female” people on the census, instead of 0%, this dosen’t change the fact that most former male or female brains might eventually find a future tailored more to their tastes than to those of the other group (if civilization A or B wins).
Some of the psychological differences between males and females do have roots that go back millions of years.
Well, don’t you think something this would be more or less a clear win for both sexes?
Generally actually I would. Honestly as much as I love sexual and romantic entanglement with women, I can’t help but feel giddy about the awesomeness (according to my values) of an all male civilization on Mars. And I’ve already spoken about how I would probably take a pill that would make me asexual. Sexbots or homosexuality inducing pills seem an inferior solution but not that much. As long as the pill that would make me homosexual would change just my sexual preference and nothing else (I suspect the typical male homosexual brains actually differ in other subtle systematic ways from typical heterosexual male brains).
The problem comes here:
Most LessWrongers have given very little though to the idea that human values might differ significantly enough to be incompatible. Even fewer have thought of finding a way to have them coexist rather than just making sure their own value set gobbles up as much matter.
That’s because it seems more likely that there’s only one FAI to rule them all, and whatever values it has will dominate the light-cone.
A FAI is more likley to actually be a FAI if people don’t engage in a last desperate war for ownership of all the universe for eternity at the time of its construction.
The current proposed solution to avoid such negative sum arms race (where aggressive action and recklessness reduce the likelihood of a friendly AI for nearly all other human value sets, but increases the likelihood of one for your particular value set) has been to hope that our values aren’t really different, we’re just (for now) too dumb to see this.
It’s a bit worse than that. The “hope” seems to be more along the lines of:
Nevermind how a nascent valueless AI is supposed to convince itself to go back into the box.