It wouldn’t be rationalism without idly speculating over provocative
subjects that real scholars have already thought about and written about
for years.
They wouldn't be reactionaries without pining for a rematch in the culture war they already lost. I'm just happy if theorizing about the gays distracts them from theorizing about trans people.
In turn, I like to think of themselves as fictions of themselves: Holmes is obviously and explicitly a ridiculous character, so it makes sense for self-credulous people to jump on the wrong stagecoach and miss the point - or the stagecoach
I deliberately avoided that word. A caricature is parodic. A “fiction” is a broader concept which includes self-creation, which was the tone I intended to set.
Wait until he finds out women live past menopause. People should a
priori drop dead at 50 says I.
I think in the fullness of time people who are surprised will be
vindicated.
What? Mate, unlike your other hypotheses this one doesn’t live solely
in your mind palace. You may have to contend with the fact that gay
people, you know, exist.
I think what he means is that eventually the International Committee of Surprises will certify homosexuality as surprising. You need to remember that for a true Bayesian (TM) how surprising a fact is is a measurable quantity like the radius of Earth or the speed of light.
"Reproduction doesn't require attraction."
"It does for men."
Umm... no. No it does not. Men can easily get hard and cum just from stimulation, maybe some fantasy thrown in.
Is Roko sexually attracted to his hand? Is that why it's such an alien concept to him?
I've been able to cut off the urge to wildly speculate about Roko because of this comment by assuming that it's a product of being very sheltered. Not sure if this is reasonable or just a defense mechanism.
Common misconception. If you think really really hard about your priors, then any off-the-cuff seemingly thoughtless comment you make is actually very thoughtful. Because of the priors.
I’m pretty gay and yet it’s actually the spectacular lack of
intelligence that’s most insulting. There’s a huge number of documented
evolutionary processes that haven’t always produced optimal individual
level effects but seem to/must have beneficial population-level
effects.
Hanson:
To me as a youth, I think the theory that many men want to have sex with men looked like a conspiracy theory: implausible, with no direct evidence shown, & the sort of thing people would want to claim even if not true. I now believe, though I've never seen very direct evidence.
Roko:
Homosexuality is a priori unlikely because of evolution; men and women are very clearly designed as complementary parts. It's surprising that it exists and I think in the fullness of time people who are surprised will be vindicated.
I held Roko's exact thought when I was tenth grade. In my case, something about the first-person testimony of literally every single gay person on the earth was enough to sway me. Am I not rational enough? 🥺
I found it a valuable lesson to get burned by my own ability to formulate plausible-ish arguments. How in the hell are these people swallowing bullets so damn big?
My first thought was "how do you misunderstand evolution that badly" followed by "half the point of science is observations override theory, not the other way around" followed "there's no point he wouldn't listen anyway".
Maybe he just has a 6th grade understanding of "reproduction = fitness" and hasn't updated his priors since?
Please don’t say “updated his priors” in front of me, you’ll scare the ghost of my cat.
But it seems it’s obvious that it’s a combination of all of these things.
It’s very rare in my experience for somebody who gains a certain following not to be tempted by sheer hubris to ignore the voice in one’s head that says “oh shut the fuck up you fool”, myself included
This. Like if you are going to replace God with evolution in your moral system, at least try to learn about it beyond high school level, with things like kin selection.
Because they have the analytic skills of a one year old and their thought process is roughly as follows:
Evolution optimizes reproductive capacity -> every organism produced in the process of evolution is optimized for reproduction. In particular no such thing as child mortality, or infertility, or heaven forbid homosexuality.
Evidence be damned of course.
I doubt that’s causally prior, I think they’re just enculturation and ignorant: the rates of “I’m rebelling against my bible-bashing hick parents in Arkansas” are pretty high with this lot
Edit: since this is at the top of a thread of relatively long discussions I’ll concede that a number of replies put me on the back foot as to how I framed my own input especially regarding how I see “bi” as an identity. Certainly I had no intention to undermine bi people as members of LGBTQ communities, and my wording could have been a lot better. My entirely subjective and personal identification with “gay” over “bi” has far more to do with personal history than it does with broader queer politics, and is absolutely not intended to erase people who are more comfortable with bi as a sexual identity.
I don’t really get what you’re saying here about the SneerClub thread. I can see how Roko’s dumb idea about reproductive selection buys into a naive (deliberately naive?) view that *a priori* some “gay gene” would be selected against, and how if you took that view you’d be implying that sexuality is conceptually binary between “straight” and “gay”. Nonetheless scanning the comments here I don’t see the same binary turning up on SneerClub.
That makes sense.
Honestly the thing that makes me sad about the other thread is that, as awful as Hanson is, it makes perfect sense that he’d have that kind of blind spot.Thatcher, Reagan etc.
I’m too young to have suffered those calamities at their worst peak, but I can kind of see how Hanson re: homosexuality is a product of his environment.
“Bisexual” as a term does bother me though. Most but all of my sexual relationships have been with men. “Bisexual” always feels to me like a medicalising term: like calling gay or lesbian people “homosexual” rather than “gay” or “lesbian”. Younger people than me have been adopting “bi” more often (all power to them) but it elides “had a gay experience once” with “actually I like guys” in a way I’m not entirely comfortable with.
I don’t know why I typed all this but I guess I’m just hungover.
Anyway, I’m making stuffed pepper, be jealous.
I actually disagree with you a lot re:bisexual but I see where you are coming from. I can't help but think the entire concept of "sexual orientation" as a major part of one's identity is kind of homophobic, which is not to take it away from people to whom it is important, but in the sense that straight people spend almost no time thinking about being straight it seems strange that that is not the default for the rest of us.
I totally get where you’re coming from, and I wouldn’t even really say that I disagree. For me it’s an emotional thing: I know too many people who lost loved ones in the 80s for example. When I was in high school, lots of people started coming out as “bi” but didn’t so-to-speak “follow through” beyond a dalliance or two, followed by a heterosexual and monogamous marriage.I’m fully on board with those people identifying as bi, but there’s a big difference between my sex life and theirs, even though we all fall under this term “bisexual”.
To me the difference - and why I refer to myself as “gay” in spite of having had sexual relationships with women - is that some people can experiment, as they should, and see where it leads, whereas others like myself are locked into a very dark history of prejudice and, frankly, gruesome deaths.
Mmmm, this bothers me quite a bit. I feel like this roots validity as a member of the LGBT community in suffering in a way I find distasteful. Like, I know you're saying people who don't "follow through" on their bisexuality are still bisexual, but the overall tone of your post still comes across as "those people aren't as queer as I, so of course I can't identify the same as them, even though I fully admit I fall under this label". It honestly reminds me of some Siskindian "I kinda think X, but I don't want to just come out and say it".
I don't know, I read this comment and was immediately struck with the same feeling I get from transmedicalists who say nonbinary or non-medically-transitioning trans people aren't trans and haven't suffered enough to count as members of the community. You're not directly saying bi people in long term "straight" relationships aren't members of the community, but it definitely feels like you're excluding them in a way that I take a bit of offense to.
>Younger people than me have been adopting “bi” more often (all power to them) but it elides “had a gay experience once” with “actually I like guys” in a way I’m not entirely comfortable with
And, to circle back around to this sentence, I'm of course not familiar with whatever queer communities you hang out in and how specifically they use language, but I don't feel it would at all controversial in most bi communities to say "a guy who had a gay experience once but isn't actually attracted to men is straight".
Um, it also feels like there's some tension between this quoted line and your comment to which I'm replying. In the quoted line, you clearly separate attraction from experience, and imply that it's attraction that determines one's sexuality (which I agree with completely), but your most recent comment clearly establishes that even though you experience attraction as a bi person, your sex life is so different from a bi person in a "straight" relationship that you can't be the same as them.
I don't know. This whole comment just kinda skeeved me off, and I hope I'm just misunderstanding something, but I can't read it as anything but dismissive of bi identities, even if you actually said the opposite.
Perhaps my framing was off, because I absolutely don’t want to come across as invalidating anyone the way transmedicalists do in the trans world: I am wholely against that kind of gatekeeping anywhere that it pops up in LGBTQ. I’m only trying to establish how my own personal story led me to certain feelings which I don’t endorse as some kind of universal fact of gay life. Bi people are bi, that’s the end of it, and I have absolutely zero interest in erasing bi people out of queer history, quite the opposite.
One of the most fantastic things to happen in queer politics since the 1980s is the revolution in acceptance of a galaxy of queer identities. I’m completely in favour of that revolution and I’ll happily go toe-to-toe with anyone who isn’t. Nonetheless there is a difference between being someone who in this better world is able to relatively freely explore their sexuality, and someone like me who struggles daily with conflicts about it and chooses the term “gay” over “bi” for *himself* as a result.
The people I refer to in the parts that make you particularly uncomfortable (sorry about that) who use the term “bi” are as valid as anyone in my line of thinking. I’m not describing a political stance which excludes them from our communities, and having experienced that exclusion myself in gay communities for not being a “gold star” gay I’m well aware of how hurtful and damaging that sort of attitude can be. I suppose the main thing I’m trying to describe is that there’s a word, “bi”, which is a neutral term describing the fact that someone is attracted to people not of the same sex or gender at the same time as being attracted people of the same sex or gender, and there’s a word “gay” which is a less neutral term laden with elegy, and I prefer the latter for myself.
> Nonetheless there is a difference between being someone who in this better world is able to relatively freely explore their sexuality, and someone like me who struggles daily with conflicts about it and chooses the term “gay” over “bi” for himself as a result.
Is it actually true that bi people who main have het-appearing relationships are, as a general rule, able to relatively freely explore their sexuality? I'm quite skeptical.
Maybe some individual bi men who have some sex with men but then enter a monogamous marriage with a woman can fairly said to have been able to freely explore their sexuality. But this isn't universal. To lean into a bit of a stereotype, a man married to a woman who secretly goes to glory holes on the side clearly isn't able to freely explore his sexuality, else he wouldn't need to do so in secret. To step away from this stereotype, places like r/bisexual regularly get posts along the lines of "I've been in a het marriage for *X* years and I'm just now realizing I'm bi what do". Someone who only comes out to themself after being in a committed, monogamous relationship for years hasn't had the opportunity to freely explore their sexuality.
Stepping away from stereotypes and anecdotes, the research establishing that bi people have, on the whole, worse mental health than both straight and gay people, that bi women face more intimate partner violence than lesbians, etc. suggests that things probably aren't so rosy as you paint. (There's even research specifically on "gay-passing" versus "straight-passing" bi people, e.g. [here](https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000063) and [here](https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-020-01712-z), and it shows a mixed-bag; "straight-passing" bi people may do better in some respects, but they do worse in others.)
We know well the psychic harms of being closeted and the limits it puts on one's personal expression and exploration, and we also know that bi people are more likely to be closeted than gay people. So why would we expect that bi people are as a whole more free to explore their sexuality than gay people?
In my experience as a gay-passing bi, a lot of gay people have an inaccurate view of what being bi is like. Consider for instance the common sentiment that bi people have it better because we can pretend to be straight. Setting aside what it means for someone like me—I can pretend to be straight by dumping my partner of over a decade wow what a privilege—if you have to hide your sexuality and pretend to be straight to get by, then you very clearly aren't in a position where you be free about your sexuality. I get why some gay people fall into thinking this sort of thing, but it's bullocks.
Of course, the experiences of bi people are diverse—e.g. I'm in a very different place from the guy married to a woman who gives the occasional blowjob on the side—and we're impacted in different ways by homophobia, etc. based on the specifics of our lives. For example, you're less likely to get gay bashed if you're wrongly assumed to be straight. But the idea that things monotonically get better as you get farther from gay and closer to straight is just not based on reality.
You’re pushing me to think about this, so thanks.
Nonetheless I think you’re working off a misunderstanding about my point you initially quote. When I talk about a better world where bisexuality is more accepted I’m not saying that bi people have it better than gay people. I’m saying that it’s a different experience where *some* people can experiment with their sexuality more openly: that isn’t supposed to imply that in general self-identifying bi people have it easier than either self-identifying straight or gay people, and I don’t intend to claim that bi people have it any easier.
When I talk about the freedom to be sexual in whatever way one wants I’m talking about the broader picture of societies - particularly in the Anglophone world - which have adjusted from wholesale condemnation of any aberration from the “norm” to a grudging acceptance of people who don’t want one wife one husband and two kids. I very much want to emphasise that I’m not saying being bi is an easy choice in general, because I hate that stereotype and I’m well aware of the harms it causes.
My point was much more that I’m glad that people can be openly bi, and that society in general seems to be getting closer to accepting bi people, but that due to some extent generational differences my own self-perception is a bit divorced from a lot of people who identify as bi, which is why I prefer “gay” for myself.
Happy Cake Day noactuallyitspoptart! Cake Days are a new start, a fresh beginning and a time to pursue new endeavors with new goals. Move forward with confidence and courage. You are a very special person. May today and all of your days be amazing!
> I’m saying that it’s a different experience where some people can experiment with their sexuality more openly:
And I'm saying that this difference between who can experiment openly versus not doesn't cut along sexuality lines. Certainly, younger generations are in a freer environment here than older generations, but that's both bi & gay youngsters versus both bi & gay oldsters. So I don't think it makes sense to point to this difference as being between gay versus bi people. Like, I'm not gonna tell you how to identify, but your explanation came across as "I identify as gay cuz I've been harmed the ways gay people are and bi people aren't".
To connect to a point Waytfm made, we're (possibly?) in the middle of is a transition from sexuality being a site of major oppression to it not being that. (But this is simultaneous to a wave of transphobia in the anglosphere, so I don't want to be too optimistic about what this means.) If this transition does occur, it by necessity must occur alongside a breaking away from the idea that being queer—or, more specifically, gay—is rooted in suffering. Homophobia is still real, but a 13 year old coming out as gay is in a much better place in 2021 than 2001. The 2021 gay teen is gonna have a very different, more positive experience from the 2001 gay teen, but they're still both gay.
I feel like I might also have been able to word my first comment somewhat differently too and maybe frame the conversation differently, because while I was slightly uncomfortable with your framing I felt confident that you didn't mean it in a disrespectful way. A big part of what I was motivated by there but didn't really get across was that I am a bi person with a similar slight discomfort with the term "gay" and it was interesting to see someone with a similar opinion from the "opposite side", for lack of a better term.
It sounds to me like you are saying that you prefer the term the term "gay" to "bisexual" for yourself because you associate the former more with your own lifestyle, which is valid but it doesn't seem to match well with how other people use it. Which is fine with me actually, because as I alluded to I think our conversation around sexuality needs to move beyond the idea of sexual orientation that frequently takes primacy.
What you're saying does seem at times though to conflate the lifestyle associated with MSM, the queer subculture, and the psychosocial experience of who one is attracted to. Bisexual people are of course a part of all three, but a lot of the stuff you appear to associate with the former are as much associated with the latter two. In my mind the queer subculture doesn't and shouldn't exclude cishet people either (though I've never loved the term "allies") so a lot of the stuff around the AIDS crisis seems like it should apply to them as well.
I agree completely, [as I say in a reply to](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/msdcnw/roko_oneups_hansons_speculation_about_gay_men/gv56k4e/?context=3) /u/Waytfm, my framing must have been off.
The existence of homosexuality is the prime example for why to be skeptical of even the most intuitive sounding evolutionary psychology arguments.
A priori is a Latin term meaning “I want this to be true, therefore it is.”
It wouldn’t be rationalism without idly speculating over provocative subjects that real scholars have already thought about and written about for years.
lol
Do these people say these things because they actually believe them or because they just want to rile people up?
Broke: “Being gay is unnatural because two people of the same sex can’t have a baby, and because God says marriage is between a man and a woman”
Woke: “Homosexuality is a priori unlikely because of evolution; men and women are very clearly designed as complementary parts”
Wait until he finds out women live past menopause. People should a priori drop dead at 50 says I.
What? Mate, unlike your other hypotheses this one doesn’t live solely in your mind palace. You may have to contend with the fact that gay people, you know, exist.
Wow all of teh gays must be paid pretty well to keep this lie going. Including the gay animals.
[deleted]
I’m pretty gay and yet it’s actually the spectacular lack of intelligence that’s most insulting. There’s a huge number of documented evolutionary processes that haven’t always produced optimal individual level effects but seem to/must have beneficial population-level effects.
how hard must you misunderstand literally everything about reality and humanity writ large to write this crap
Someone quote it in full, yo
The last time I heard someone make this argument, it was homophobic young earth creationists in a Potholer54 debunking video. From over a decade ago.
That’s some deep cut shit.
Some of the takes in this thread are almost as poorly thought through as the Roko take linked.
The important thing is that Roko said something stupid, the unimportant thing is imputing the motivations for that stupidity.
The interesting question is why a priori a person would consider homosexuality to be unlikely as a product of evolution.
The priors that this reveals are quite rational
I was actually pretty sympathetic to Hanson, but Roko always delivers on sneerworthiness.
What’s up with people—both in that twitter thread and this sneerclub thread—not getting that bisexuality is a thing?