Many people are aware of Alicorn’s post on polyhacking. 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.
First, there are a couple sources which suggest that people can have “epiphanies”, after which they become bisexual, or perhaps just recognize their latent bisexuality. This may be due to the fact that they are able to tell themselves different stories about their feelings towards others after having an epiphany. Here are two relevant links:
This discussion also supports the idea that the stories people tell themselves about their feelings are more important than their feelings are in determining attraction.
Secondly, some people have had mild successes with working towards bisexuality by slowly starting to explore new experiences:
Both of the above two links focused on bihacking with online material. However, it may be easier to bihack via establishing a comfortable level of intimacy with your dispreferred gender of people (e.g. via cuddling a whole bunch of people), than it is to bihack via material.
I’m not sure how that thread is related to polyhacking? It’s related to polyamory, but doesn’t seem to be particularly focused on it, and polyhacking is another step removed.
Polyamory is the whole motivation for polyhacking, I guess, so that “another step” is actually very small.
And polyamory is usually advertised here as an opportunity to have more sexual freedom and be a part of the happy rationalist family. So it seems relevant to note that it may also come with a price, and that even the happy rationalist family is not perfect in avoiding the price.
(My personal opinion is that if you are 20 and you are not planning to have kids during the nearest decade, go poly. There is almost nothing to lose, because the probability of staying with the same partner ten years later is low, so you might as well share them now and get something nice in return. But I predict that as soon as children start getting born, most poly relationships will fall apart.)
I don’t know whether it’s a real issue, but if you are 20, not planning to have kids in the next 10 years, but think it possible that after that you might want to settle down monogamously and have children, then going poly now could make that second stage harder when the time comes.
(This is an empirical question. I don’t have the data to know what the answer is. Perhaps others here do.)
I feel like, if someone’s interested in polyhacking, they’ve probably already looked at evidence about whether or not to go poly. It feels somehow off to classify “polyamory, pro or con” as being about polyhacking. For one thing it’s easy to find the former, but hard to find the latter, and presenting the former as the latter makes it even harder.
It also comes across as pushing an agenda, though I don’t think that was your intent.
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.
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.
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.)
I fear a time will come when people who don’t want to try polyhacking bihacking will be labeled as homophobic. And that will just further dilute the term.
When you write “polyhacking”, do you actually mean “bihacking”? If not, what you say you fear seems to me a very odd thing to fear.
Actually, I would be quite surprised if (within, let’s say, the next 40 years, and assuming no huge technological changes that would affect this) heterosexuality + unwillingness to try to become bi were enough to get anyone widely labelled as homophobic. (I’m sure there are already people who would apply that label, but not enough to have much impact.)
[EDITED to add:] Just to clarify, the point of the second paragraph is that I find Val’s fear not-terribly-plausible even if “bihacking” is what s/he meant.
My concern was based on the observation how the word phobia (especially in cases of homophobia and xenophobia) is increasingly applied to cases of mild dislike, or even to cases of failing to show open support.
I agree that -phobia gets applied much more broadly than my etymological sensitivities would prefer, and I expect that (unfortunately) to continue. But what I find unlikely isn’t anything to do with word usage; I just don’t expect that any time in the near future it will be widely held that you mistreat any group by not going out of your way to make yourself want to have sex with them.
I could be wrong, of course. And, as I already said, I’m sure there are some people who hold that kind of position even now. But it doesn’t seem to me like the kind of silliness that would ever attract a lot of support.
Many people are aware of Alicorn’s post on polyhacking. 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.
First, there are a couple sources which suggest that people can have “epiphanies”, after which they become bisexual, or perhaps just recognize their latent bisexuality. This may be due to the fact that they are able to tell themselves different stories about their feelings towards others after having an epiphany. Here are two relevant links:
Ozy’s Notes on the Success of Bihacking is the first post I’d recommend to anyone interested in bihacking.
This discussion also supports the idea that the stories people tell themselves about their feelings are more important than their feelings are in determining attraction.
Secondly, some people have had mild successes with working towards bisexuality by slowly starting to explore new experiences:
This highly upvoted comment strongly encourages this strategy.
This comment does too.
Both of the above two links focused on bihacking with online material. However, it may be easier to bihack via establishing a comfortable level of intimacy with your dispreferred gender of people (e.g. via cuddling a whole bunch of people), than it is to bihack via material.
To avoid only reading filtered evidence, people interested in polyhacking might also look at this SSC thread.
And this one.
I’m not sure how that’s related to polyhacking either.
I’m not sure how that thread is related to polyhacking? It’s related to polyamory, but doesn’t seem to be particularly focused on it, and polyhacking is another step removed.
Polyamory is the whole motivation for polyhacking, I guess, so that “another step” is actually very small.
And polyamory is usually advertised here as an opportunity to have more sexual freedom and be a part of the happy rationalist family. So it seems relevant to note that it may also come with a price, and that even the happy rationalist family is not perfect in avoiding the price.
(My personal opinion is that if you are 20 and you are not planning to have kids during the nearest decade, go poly. There is almost nothing to lose, because the probability of staying with the same partner ten years later is low, so you might as well share them now and get something nice in return. But I predict that as soon as children start getting born, most poly relationships will fall apart.)
I don’t know whether it’s a real issue, but if you are 20, not planning to have kids in the next 10 years, but think it possible that after that you might want to settle down monogamously and have children, then going poly now could make that second stage harder when the time comes.
(This is an empirical question. I don’t have the data to know what the answer is. Perhaps others here do.)
I feel like, if someone’s interested in polyhacking, they’ve probably already looked at evidence about whether or not to go poly. It feels somehow off to classify “polyamory, pro or con” as being about polyhacking. For one thing it’s easy to find the former, but hard to find the latter, and presenting the former as the latter makes it even harder.
It also comes across as pushing an agenda, though I don’t think that was your intent.
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.
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.
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.)
I fear a time will come when people who don’t want to try polyhacking bihacking will be labeled as homophobic. And that will just further dilute the term.
When you write “polyhacking”, do you actually mean “bihacking”? If not, what you say you fear seems to me a very odd thing to fear.
Actually, I would be quite surprised if (within, let’s say, the next 40 years, and assuming no huge technological changes that would affect this) heterosexuality + unwillingness to try to become bi were enough to get anyone widely labelled as homophobic. (I’m sure there are already people who would apply that label, but not enough to have much impact.)
[EDITED to add:] Just to clarify, the point of the second paragraph is that I find Val’s fear not-terribly-plausible even if “bihacking” is what s/he meant.
You are right, I meant bihacking, my mistake.
My concern was based on the observation how the word phobia (especially in cases of homophobia and xenophobia) is increasingly applied to cases of mild dislike, or even to cases of failing to show open support.
I agree that -phobia gets applied much more broadly than my etymological sensitivities would prefer, and I expect that (unfortunately) to continue. But what I find unlikely isn’t anything to do with word usage; I just don’t expect that any time in the near future it will be widely held that you mistreat any group by not going out of your way to make yourself want to have sex with them.
I could be wrong, of course. And, as I already said, I’m sure there are some people who hold that kind of position even now. But it doesn’t seem to me like the kind of silliness that would ever attract a lot of support.