let sexual ethics team = preference for (and argument for the moral necessity of, lol) norms about sexual ethics optimized for solving the problems of that team
my team is “hot people who are bad at saying no”, so i like things like nobody who can’t notice non-verbal signals of discomfort expressing interest in me in a way which expects reciprocation. i wrote a post about that a while ago. it’s intentionally uncharitable and i don’t literally fully endorse it, but it’s a thing
the general lw team is low-status men who get called creepy and whatever for daring to exist around high-status women while low-status. i think this really solidified after the scott aaronson thing, but it was a thing before too
this is a team which, of course, has many legitimate problems, which i sympathize with etc
the fascinating part is that, as far as ive seen, most of the people who care about being on this team a lot are, in fact, lw-affiliated high-status women and enbies, usually neurodivergent ones, who perhaps would have been called neckbeards if they were male but are personally in no danger of being called creeps, not being able to find sexual partners, etc.
this by itself was pretty interesting, but then i saw a post which seemed to imply that the poster considered themselves a low-status man talking about being on the team of high-status women (like stuff about how being creepy is in fact bad and this does mean that unattractive people can do less things than attractive people and that’s fine)
EVERYTHING IS BACKWARDS
i guess one hypothesis here would be that rationalists don’t personally really encounter problems with sexual ethics norms bc of lw diaspora norms actually working well for the entire lw diaspora (which generally thinks in a specific way, has a certain culture, is high-iq and mildly neurodivergent in a certain way, etc, so it’s plausible), so they assume that the other groups’ problems must be the ones that suck
(note here: i *have* seen self-identified low-status women and high-status men be on their own teams, so it might be just norms that are good at pairing off attractive women with less attractive men who write cool things or something)
another hypothesis is just that rationalists are really into charity and are defending the positions that are the opposite of what one would expect just because they like being charitable so much
idgi/don’t have a hypothesis im particularly sure about but it s u r e i s a t h i n g
I like this post because it made me go “what team am I?” (nerdy straight mono girls with social anxiety who like delayed gratification in case you were wondering) and then realized 100% of my views on sexual ethics can be explained by my team
I don’t think this is true for other political issues necessarily? But “what social norms surrounding relationships/sex will lead to the best utilitarian outcome” is kind of an impossible question so I just end up supporting the social norms that are best for me personally
(I’m not team low-status men, but I’m closely allied with them because guys like Scott Aaronson are the guys I want to date. And since my strategy for hitting on guys is “listen to Enchanted and Hey Stephen on a loop while hiding in my room avoiding them because if I talk to them I might say something stupid,” if they’re too scared to hit on me it’s kind of a problem. And I don’t mind being hit on by guys I’m not into, I just mumble something awkwardly and then run away)