Hi Elijah,

Thanks for that interesting essay. Normally, it's said to be a sign of "modern" people to be open-minded to all kinds of sexuality. Although I am neither a conservative nor an adherent of a specific religion, I have my moral problems with sexuality but they sometimes differ from yours.

Yes. I take it as axiomatic, again, that sexuality is bad independently of happiness and suffering.

Wow! That's really tough! I wouldn't claim that myself because I couldn't prove it but sometimes I feel alike because sexuality causes immoral feelings. Sexual desire means to me to desire someone's body to instrumentalize it for your own pleasure. I have problems to ally sexual desire with love, especially with agape. I find it hard to sexually desire somebody who I do respect.
If I consume pornography, I am not able to regard nude women as something worthy of moral consideration whereas if I am not arroused I never feel that disrespectful about women. I think my moral development would be more progressed if I was an asexual.

In my mind, the least objectionable sexual practices on the second dimension are marriage-bed, missionary-position-type activities, and there is a gradient of abnormality and revulsion that includes masturbation, contraception, pornography, etc. The first dimension includes the consequent misery of sexual activity, encompassing sexual frustration, unrequited love, broken-heartedness, sexually transmitted disease, rape, etc.

I don't understand what problems you have with certain sex-position (non missionars-position-type activities), masturbation (Okay, here I am open to discuss) and contraception. To me as a wicked, faithless, liberal European this sounds like the remains of a typical puritarian upbringing. All I would miss is the sentence: "God hates homosexuals."

In my opinion, the most important problem with sexuality is that of involuntary pregancy (I have a problem with bringing people into being at all, but that's another point). I think involuntary parents take less care of their children what makes them less capable of taking care of others and gives them worse chances in life. I' ve found a document that claims that the liberalisation of abortions has lead to a decline in U.S. crime rates.

D: I disagree with basically everything you said Elijah. Do you know where these moral intuitions may have come from?

From a personal perspective, sex is awesome! And from a utilitarian perspective it is responsible for loads of happiness. Sex causes suffering too but I think abolishing sexuality is definitely the wrong way to fix theses problems

I am convinced that it is inherently wicked. It causes unimaginable, unbelievable, pervasive misery: from mild sexual frustration to rape-murder, it is (except bereavement) possibly the greatest cause of human emotional suffering.

These two lines suggest confusion to me. You follow a sentence about it's instrinsic wickedness with, where one would intuitively expect to see a sentence explaining the one before, one which describes some exstrinsic harms it causes. Then in your ‘why is it instrinsically bad’ elucidation you basically do the same thing again!

It’s a very weird form of utilitarianism that says ‘let’s maximise those sensations that people like and minimise the others. Oh btw, let’s also prevent ARBITRARY THING OF DOOM.’ It’s certainly not a unique approach, but it’s never been a convincing one yet, since it’s so clearly contrary to the principle of parsimony. Why should anyone accept your proscription of sex if we wouldn’t accept someone telling us it’s ‘axiomatic’ that human rights should never be violated/that God should be worshipped/that Feng-Shui should be observed/that every second Tuesday of the month we should lick a tractor?

I wouldn’t normally talk about personal issues online, but if you don’t mind me asking, am I right in guessing it’s not something you’ve experienced? I can certainly remember how when I was 14, going without it was a powerful source of personal anxiety. But that was largely because of the inequality of other people having it and (at that age) constantly boasting of it, plus the social embarassment of any effort, however slight, to go about getting it.

But those pains were largely enabled by our society’s repressive attitude towards it (which has improved, but not all that much). If it was just a pleasure like any other, few people would boast of it or belittle you for not having it, any more than they would if they had a new toy and you didn’t (ie the *really* unpleasant ones still would, but anyone with any sense would ignore them). And because all parents and teachers are terrified – or probably even incapable - of telling kids more reliable and stress free ways of finding someone to sleep with, courting is a) built up as a terrifying rite of passage to overcome and b) done so without giving anyone any idea of how they might overcome it.

And it’s all vicious circley – the more the fissure is built up, the more people believe it, leading to feelings like yours, which contribute to the same social repression.

One other wildly speculative comment I’ll make, if you have slept with someone before, is that maybe you’re un(or semi-)consciously gay (or – statistically less likely - asexual), and didn’t enjoy it for that reason. But my above comments still apply – not thinking about being gay is another consequence of sexuality’s stigma, and further stigmatising it as a result is equally as counterproductive.

Can I suggest you try and experience it (in some form you like the sound of) for yourself, and then see if you feel the same? I recommend googling ‘sex positivity’ to see sexuality cast in an altogether more open and friendly light than you’re probably used to, and maybe talking to some sex-positive utilitarians (ie most of us) to get a sense of how you might actually establish a mutual attraction with someone?

I’m not denying you said it’s intrinsically evil. If you hadn’t I wouldn’t be replying about that. I’m pointing out that every time you get close to giving any kind of reason why it is, you move into (selectively) discussing extrinsic harms. That’s not utilitarian reasoning, it’s just applied confirmation bias.

Whether it’s extrinsically harmful is basically moot, since there’s no plausible alternative to living with it. If you genuinely prefer not to have sex, no-one’s forcing you to, but it’s a terrible waste of your time to try and talk the population out of something so natural, and with such low return on effort invested. Like David Benatar’s, your message is self-defeating, since anyone who accepts it will deselect themselves from the gene pool.

Moreover it’s bad memetically – it conceptually links you with crazy fundamentalist puritans, so is likely to turn people away from your other views. And it will make people think – quite reasonably given the sort of people who usually say this kind of thing – that you’re primarily claiming this because of tall poppy syndrome, ie envy, which again will make them more likely to think of your views as self-interested and so ignorable.

I basically do think the latter – to wit that you’re strongly influenced in thinking this by lack of success (because that’s so common a causal factor in puritanical views, especially where religion is involved) – but rather than wanting to discredit your other views I want to (on the assumption that I’m right) persuade you to relax, seek some advice on seduction/courtship (there’s plenty of it on Less Wrong if you want it from empiricists), and test my theory by revisiting your views after you’ve been successful. (Note that sex doesn’t actually have to be a net positive force in the world for this to be a good strategy to make you happier, nor is your doing so a zero sum game. You just have to go about it less aggressively than average)

Just think about yourself statistically for a moment – given how many people going through/emerging from puberty hold similar views to yours on reactionary grounds that they almost certainly drop or at least relax later in life, do you think it’s more likely that you’re in a similar position to them, or that from the force of perception alone you’ve spotted some vital and unique moral fact about the universe that all utilitarians have thus far missed?

Following a more strict utilitarianism, I put zero weight on the intrinsic harm argument. I don't share that intuition. A lot of your argument seems to focus on ickyness, and utilitarianism of all things has gradually moved me away from using my mere personal disgust to judge certain scenarios.

When Haidt, as you alluded to earlier, asks one to imagine that a brother and sister sleep together once where no one else knows, no harm befalls either one, and both feel it brought them closer as siblings, I do have negative emotional reactions but am quite clear to recognize that I see no actual moral problem.

I also don't share your negative utilitarian intuitions, so I wouldn't remove a net positive thing just because it introduces some suffering.

As for the extrinsic harms on a more total utilitarian calculus*, I don't think you cite anything that overwhelms the positive elements. Sure, sex does have some harms, and certainly the way sex is handled by society at large right now is entirely irrational. But you might as well abolish televisions and the internet because mass media right now is terrible and they do introduce some suffering. Or abolish bikes because kids might fall down.

*Note: I slant more preference utilitarianism than the folks here, so it might not be the classical calculus everyone is used to.

You mean most anglophone Abrahamic philosophers, right? Regardless, most pre-Darwinian philosophers believed in the creation story. Times move on, and saying 'as you look back into the past, the more ignorant people were the more likely they were to hold my position' is not a credible argument from authority. In fact, phrased more normally, it's a the precise argument from authority one might reasonably use to *attack* a position.

This is silly. If you're going to go around asserting things are 'evil' no-one will be able to persuade you of anything and vice versa. Ignore the extrinsic harm you assert for a moment, and try and suggest one good reason why a sex act that two consenting adults enjoy, which causes no harm is a bad thing. The prejudices of alien arts grads are not a reason, for what it's worth. Especially alien arts grads who couldn't exist because sexual reproduction is necessary for the evolution of life complex enough to develop intelligence.

I have never attempted to have sex with anyone, nor do I want to; and I am not a repressed homosexual or asexual.

I didn't say - or mean - repressed. I meant developing. In any case, if your feelings don't change in the next few years, then you *are* asexual (though again this is clearly odds against just from looking at the development of other teenagers), and certainly if you're describing them honestly and accurately now, then at the very least you're asexual in the same way a 3-year-old child might be. Which is fine, but then you should acknowledge that you have a strong aesthetic bias which might be affecting your judgement.

Elijah wrote:Probably they would view it as we view hard drugs: extremely dangerous, a vector of disease, continually unsatiated, producing pervasive frustration and misery, ruining lives through its violent manifestations.

That sounds like an argument for the need of better and safer sexual practices, easier access to contraception, better sexual education, and better sexual norms; not an argument for abolishing sex altogether. (The same also applies to hard drugs -- I think we need better drugs, not no drugs.)

~

Elijah wrote:I can't convince you of the importance of the second gradient. But my essay mostly focuses on the first gradient.

You're right that you probably couldn't convince me of the second gradient. But I worry that this makes the first gradient argument is not your true rejection.
~

Arepo wrote:In any case, if what you say is correct, then you are asexual. Which is fine, but then you should acknowledge that you have a strong aesthetic bias which might be affecting your judgement.

To be fair, then, the flipside must also apply to us -- our sexualities leads us to a strong pro-sex aesthetic bias.

Individual sex acts might be harmless, but not sexuality as a whole.

This has nothing to do with my question. I said ignore the effects of sex, and tell me why it's intrinsically bad. The rest of your post doesn't address that either.

'Sexuality as a whole' is not an emergent thing. If it means anything it's just (in this context) the sum of all sex acts. So for it to be a) instrinsically bad and b) worth describing as such as a category, each and every sex act must be intrinsically bad.

Try to conceptually separate what you're talking about, since they're totally unrelated claims. As a (sex-positive) friend of mine said on being invited to this thread:

He thinks sex is intrinsically bad. That's insane. I have no arguments against insanity. He thinks sex is instrumentally bad. I agree. So I have nothing to say to him

Peter, what are they biasing us into? The idea that sex is aesthetically pleasing? That's not so much a bias as a restatement of our perspective. The idea that it's not intrinsically bad? Sure, but then it's a drop in the ocean compared to the fact that our entire world view excludes the very idea of intrinsic badness and would need to be radically rewritten for us to even understand what the phrase meant.

Yes - I've frequently argued with hardcore speciesists. I advance arguments for my position and often they do too. We then engage with each other's arguments, and very occasionally, they change their mind (as I had to do initially - I wasn't born caring about animal welfare). Even more occasionally, anti-speciesists change their minds back.

What you're doing is nothing like that. You don't have the history of advancing arguments that have been ignored that your analogy suggests. You aren't giving a single consideration that anyone might be persuaded by even if the mere existence of an argument would have been sufficient to persuade them. The bigot here is you.

What's more you're actually advocating harming people, contrary to all your other apparent ethical views, just to stop them from enjoying a pleasure that you admit can be harmless.

Aside from anything else, you haven't even suggested a conversion rate for this intrinsic harm against the rest of your value system. How much harm is it ok to replace it with? Is breaking someone's arm to stop them engaging in consensual sex ok? How about sustained torture? How many times do you need to 'profit' by preventing two people having fun in order that it would be worth the hedonic loss of, say, burning someone alive to enable it? How much do your answers change if the sex in question is still harmless but extremely 'deviant' - say (still consensual) BDSM involving anal tentacle rape fantasies? (these are not rhetorical questions - I want you to answer them carefully)

'Insane' is the wrong word, since it implies you're too far gone to have the capacity to change your mind. I'm sure that's false. If someone approached you with the same argument where any other (pleasureable) activity in existence replaced 'sex' in your claim, you'd recognise them immediately as spouting virulently prejudicial, harmful and counter-utilitarian.

If you'd just let yourself think about this the way you think about everything else, you'd be perfectly capable of seeing the universe does not single out sexual reproduction for special recognition. It's the same interaction of fundamental forces and particles are everything else.

Arepo wrote:Peter, what are they biasing us into? The idea that sex is aesthetically pleasing? That's not so much a bias as a restatement of our perspective. The idea that it's not intrinsically bad? Sure, but then it's a drop in the ocean

What did you mean when you said Elijah had a strong aesthetic bias that affected his judgment? Our judgment should be just as possibly affected by our positive experiences with sex. Or rather, I don't think any parties here are so biased as to not be capable of evaluating the extrinsic component.

~

Elijah wrote:But to make it absolutely explicit: Yes, every single sex act is intrinsically bad.

I like the questions in Arepo's most recent comment (right before mine). To add, I'd say that I'm not even sure what it would mean for something to be "intrinsically bad". How would you know if something is "instrinsically bad"? And why do you care if something is "intrinsically bad"? My theory is that all cases of intrinsic badness are mere projections of one's personal disgust.

Elijah wrote:I've given several arguments. Reread my initial post: "The first dimension includes the consequent misery of sexual activity, encompassing sexual frustration, unrequited love, broken-heartedness, sexually transmitted disease, rape, etc. In my mind, the position of sexual activity on the first gradient is more important than the position on the second gradient."

This is still not an argument for the intrinsic badness of sex. It's a statement of some actual harms it can cause than a vague statement of priority. Nothing in the quoted text is any kind of argument for intrinsic badness.

We all agree that there are at least some extrinsic harms to sexuality, so can we please stop discussing them? We are talking about intrinsic disvalue here and instrinic disvalue alone.

Wrong. I've said again and again: I don't think people should be prevented by force from engaging in consensual sexual activity (so long as it has a reasonably 'good' position on both gradients.

Except that you also say 'any pornographic material from the private sector is punishable by life imprisonment, death, sterilization, exile, or other drastic measures.' Use of pornographic material is (normally) consensual sexual activity, whether it's just by one person or multiple.

I never accused your position of being consistent, I only said that you advocate harming people. Which you did - both above and then below with your comment about stocks, immediately after denying it!

No, breaking someone's arm or torture is not ok, so long as the intrinsic and extrinsic wickedness is low.

I asked for an exchange rate. If you want this to be at all compatible with a utilitarian worldview, you have to estimate a (dis)value for it. Please do so.

Once you've done that, we'll have an idea of how many times we must prevent happy consensual sexual activity in order for it to be worth burning someone alive.

Intuitively I feel that some relatively harmless but filthy and deviant sexual activities should be punishable by, say, being placed in the stocks with a placard saying 'defiler'. (I'm not kidding.)

If you were an adult, at this stage I’d write you off as deranged and stop bothering to interact with you. As it is, I still suspect that this is mostly coming from either a bad sexual experience you’ve had (or anxiety from deprivation – you’ve made seemingly inconsistent claims about whether you desire sexual experience above), and that hopefully you’ll come to terms with it, figure out what you want and how to get it, and grow up.

If that sounds patronising, then keep in mind that getting away with mere patronisation for advocating the return of torture for consensual activities is vastly more grace than most people would get.

These include S/M clubs

I attend these semi-frequently, for the record. How long would you have me subjected to this? Would you advocate people throwing excrement at me as well, or are you just hoping to reduce my productivity while increasing my risk of hypothermia?

As a metaethical error-theorist

You are not an error theorist if you think ‘N is intrinsically bad’ is ever a correct statement for any nonzero value of N.

peterhurford wrote:What did you mean when you said Elijah had a strong aesthetic bias that affected his judgment? Our judgment should be just as possibly affected by our positive experiences with sex. Or rather, I don't think any parties here are so biased as to not be capable of evaluating the extrinsic component.

I meant his moral judgement (intrinsic disvalue), not his assessment of the harm sexuality causes.

The latter seems like a pointless question to me, since there's no real counterfactual. We probably couldn't have evolved into intelligent beings without sexual reproduction, and it will be decades at the least before we can do the kind of drastic genetic engineering necessary to eliminate it. And when we can, it will probably be the associated negative feelings and harmful behaviours we'll want to get rid of, rather than the act itself, which is possibly the single most enjoyable thing we've evolved to be capable of doing.

Meanwhile sex-positivists (unsurprisingly) seem to have richer sex lives than puritans, without obviously losing anything of equivalent value, so there's no instrumental reason for us not to agree with them.

Yes, you got it. There's no obvious intrinsic evil.
Greetings,
Humphrey

Exchange rate. Hmm. Let's quantify second-gradient wickedness by the 'perv'. How about 1 util per 2 pervs? This question is absurd. Suggest a punishment or deterrent for a concrete activity, and I will respond.

Of course it’s absurd! But I haven’t added anything to your view that wasn’t already there. All I’ve done is ask you to clarify it. Now you’re asking *me* to clarify it for you. Why would I do that? It’s your absurd view, Kimosabe.

Private-sector-produced pornography does NOT have a reasonably good position on both gradients; nor do S/M clubs.

Then why did you raise them as a defence against the charge that you’re ‘advocating harming people, contrary to all your other apparent ethical views, just to stop them from enjoying a pleasure that you admit can be harmless’? It doesn’t contradict my claim at all to say that you’ll only spare them from if you don’t judge them to be depraved.

I am getting really tired of asking this, but I don't know how to get this across to you other than crass repetition: stop talking about the fucking ‘second gradient’. Read this piece (and for the love of hedons, do actually read it – it’s not long):
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2k/the_least_co ... ble_world/

Now put yourself in that world. Assume that sexuality, at least in the forms I’ve been talking about, is positive or at least net neutral. While you're at it, assume that, draconian repression of sexual behaviour would actually succeed in reducing sexual behaviour.

And please don’t waste more of our time with a response to any of this post until you’re willing to omit consequential considerations from your answer.

Actually, scratch that. Do read that piece. But also read ‘Write Your Hypothetical Apostasy’. Again, I don’t mean ‘oh, read this’ as the synonym for ‘oh, screw you’ people often seem to use it as. I beg of you to actually read it, stop, and think about it. Again, it’s very short. Though in this case I recommend you actually follow the concrete suggestion within, and ideally post your reversed argument here.

I have no argument for intrinsic evil. It's certainly not a 'rational' position ... When I use these terms, though, it is shorthand for 'I do not want X to exist,' 'I am willing to eliminate X', etc.

Right, so you’re aware that you have an irrational dislike for something. We've seen that clarifying the prejudice makes it appear absurd, but that you prefer to deflect the absurdity onto the person criticising your prejudice rather than deal with it head-on. You disclaim a belief in morality other than as an expression of preferences, but it doesn’t stop you demanding special consideration for your irrational dislike - and doing so in the aggressively unpleasant language of traditional bigotry.

Explain to me how we’re supposed to distinguish you in kind from an embarrassing grandparent who angrily spouts their prejudices at the family gathering, when their granddaughter shows up with a black boyfriend. Because that’s exactly how you’re coming across right now.

Ruairi wrote:D: I disagree with basically everything you said Elijah. Do you know where these moral intuitions may have come from?

From a personal perspective, sex is awesome! And from a utilitarian perspective it is responsible for loads of happiness. Sex causes suffering too but I think abolishing sexuality is definitely the wrong way to fix theses problems

Yeah, I think in a utilitarian utopia people would have lots of sex and would be matched with partners who work perfectly for them.

This is a good discussion for the purposes of using it to reflect on your own beliefs. If you have an entirely different belief but justify your belief or feel better about it because your belief is more popular, what other basis do you have to say that your belief has any better basis than this? I would'nt say that sex "bad" but it does lead to overpopulation, which I see as the worst problem that compounds all others, and for many people, it leads to unintended consequences like disease or kids that people cannot afford to have. Of course there are ways to minimize those risks. If I look only at the outcomes that I don't like, I still can't say that the final result is that sex is "bad" or that it is "good"--I would probably prefer to focus on my aversion to the specific outcomes.

If the "sex is bad" belief catches on, the most direct effects would probably be something that I like (an end to the madness of population growth), but I'm not sure if there would be any increase or decrease in the net irrationality of people who adopt such a belief in the objective "goodness" or "badness" of things without an objective basis.

I'm with Ruairi. I think that sexuality is a very good thing.

I also don't agree with Humphrey that viewing pornography makes me less able to view the women in the pornography as deserving of moral consideration.

Elijah wrote:These people agree with me (and I think they are serious): http://antisex.info/en/go.htm

I do think you raised an important topic, and you may be correct. I haven't made up my mind.

This is depressing Sex is awesome.

I hope you lose this particular axiom Elijah

Elijah wrote:These people agree with me (and I think they are serious): http://antisex.info/en/go.htm

These people don't, and actually reference their sources: solomonsrefuge.com/

Don't think the site's been updated for quite a while, but there's tonnes of research along the same lines.

Discussing it objectively is easy. It's the extra stuff you want to do that's hard.

What exactly is the axiom, Elijah? That sexuality is inherently wicked?

How would you go about convincing me of that? What objective grounds can you offer for thinking so?

Are you a moral realist?

I did. You said you were an error theorist. As Arepo correctly pointed out, that basically means you're contradicting yourself. You can't simultaneously claim "All positive atomic ascriptions of objective value are false" and "Sexuality is intrinsically wicked".

But then you said what you *really* mean is that you personally are strongly disposed to want there to be as little sexual behaviour as possible, independently of the goodness or badness of the outcomes thereby produced as measured by utilitarian standards. Okay, fine. But as Arepo correctly observed, you have given absolutely no arguments at all to attempt to convince me to feel the same way, and you yourself said that you thought that the attempt to convince someone else would probably be a futile task. So the question then arises: why exactly should anyone be interested in this personal prejudice of yours? You want to make efforts to try to reduce the incidence of sexual behaviour; okay, fine, go for it. If it gets to the point of your actually advocating coercive measures against consenting adults who are doing no harm, then I'll try to stop you. But otherwise I'll leave you to your own devices. What more is to be said? What's the point of talking about it?

Perhaps I did not quite phrase myself as I best could have: I said "independently" of the goodness or badness of the outcome, perhaps I should really have said "as an independent and additional consideration to that of the goodness or badness of the outcome". Sorry for not expressing myself very well.

I guess you could always say you're just trying to get me to share the goal of trying to eliminate sexuality on purely utilitarian grounds. I don't find your attempts to argue for that especially convincing. I basically agree with Ruairi that sex is awesome. Negative side-effects are not unheard of but the positive effects clearly outweigh the negative ones, imo. And your attempt to make a "negative utilitarian" argument, as you yourself say, could be re-formulated to apply to just about anything.

Are there any reasons you have that lead to to your moral sentiments about sexuality being intrinsically bad? Or do you just have to check your moral sentiments (or disgust) to find if something is bad this way?

Once we buy into utilitarianism, it gives us a standard that we can all talk and reason about in independently of our moral sentiments. Which seems like it huge practical benefit.

Some examples of how your Augustinism might go have this problem, is alien sex bad? Is it less bad? What about insect sex or plant sex? You are unlikely to be able to give a naturalistic definition of what you find bad.

Oh my god that's horrific!! D: !!!!!!!!!!!! I wish you weren't anti-sex It's awful :'(

D: Please change your mind

Elijah wrote:I only want to stop human sex.

Work on Saturdays and during your holidays. Earn money. Pay hookers to play Tetris instead of having sex. Epic win!

Elijah wrote:You want to stop factory farms? Just bribe the illegal aliens who work for Tyson! You could do it cheaply - 250 bucks per person per month; that's about as much as you get on welfare in San Francisco.

Sure. Or, if you are wealthy enough, you could cooperate with cafeterias to subsidize vegetarian/vegan meals. You could probably shift more total consumption that way. I know of no equivalent action for human sex.

By "only want to stop human sex", I mean "only human sex: not animal sex" as opposed to "focus only on human sex and ignore other evils". I acknowledge that there are other evils in the world (most of them far worse).

I know. Your mistake is to think it's an evil at all.