Sam Harris has a lovely little essay titled The Fireplace Delusion, in which he fairly compellingly lays out an argument that approximately everyone is wrong about something, knowing in advance that approximately everyone will flinch or squirm or lash out in various predictable ways as they encounter the argument.
Thank you for the post, I recognize quite a bit from it even though it's not a 1-on-1 match. I definitely remember being disgusted with how my body and my mind were changing during puberty, and that feeling of disgust lasted for a long time after. I am happy that afaict it didn't change any of my fundamental values I had when I was 10, and that those only became deeper and more explicit over time.
BTW, I know it's kind of bad form to id other people but it sounds like you are transage (https://transage.info/), would you agree?
It's interesting to see your perspective. To me, it's another example of the unexpected diversity of minds. Puberty isn't so disruptive (either mentally or physically) for everyone, but now I know that it could be for some.
I really appreciate seeing your perspective on this spelled out so thoroughly. This is coming from someone who is pretty far to the other extreme on the question of meta-feelings about sex (i.e. in my ideal perfect utopia, I would probably spend between 90 and 99 percent of my time doing sex-related things, and, if someone wanted to edit my mind so that I no longer found sex fulfilling, I would fight very hard to prevent that), but nonetheless I see how much it would suck to have one's sexuality be so in conflict with one's existing pre-puberty values.
I read The Fireplace Delusion and I was like I totally agree with all of this already. Then I read this piece and I was like wow, I definitely don't agree with this right now but it is SUPER interesting and filled with excellent points. I'll be pondering this for a while.
I recently read the novel The Signature of All Things (which is a very fun read), and after reading it I was thinking a lot about what the central metaphor of that book is, which I believe is right there in the title. The Signature of All Things, or the Doctrine of Signatures, is this Christian idea that God loves us and so He made things in nature look like what they're useful for, e.g. walnuts look like little brains because if you eat them they heal your brain. This version of it is obviously stupid (walnuts are the shape they are because of something related to walnut tree evolution, and maybe animals that eat or spread walnut seeds, but not at all to make them visually resemble brains). But the other main theme of the book is sexual reproduction and how it relates to divine love.
If God (or Goddess or Mother Nature or whatever) created us with sensitive parts that feel kinda good if we touch them ourselves, but feel really REALLY good if we touch them to our loved one's parts in just the right way, what message would that convey to us in a Doctrine of Signatures sense? I believe the answer is that genitals are organs of connection. In the vast majority of people, erotic energy is focused on other people... it would be an extreme minority who has no interest in sex, and just masturbates, and that masturbation isn't even with *thoughts* or *direction* towards another person.
There's this thing I've heard about how Hell is like a big table full of delicious food, but everyone there has a fork that's too long to feed themselves, and they don't cooperate so they all go hungry. And Heaven is very similar but the only difference is they cooperate and feed each other. It's a Prisoner's dilemma type of scenario where defecting is not being willing to put in the relatively small effort to feed someone else, and cooperating means feeding them and just hoping they'll feed you in turn (tho you have no direct control over that).
So if I were a deity creating a world of individual conscious beings, and THE MAIN thing I wanted them all to learn was how to cooperate and trust each other, and avoid mutual defection (or just have some kind of ineffable spiritual connection to one another, or transcend selfish individualism), creating them with sex organs that only fully activate in pleasure when combined with those of another person would be a pretty clear way to help them.
Obviously not all sex acts that happen in the real world lead to more trust and connection at all... but there's a huge potential there if you do it right.
Also I do want to question your description of "gooey pushups" as a sub-optimal way for two people to connect in physical intimacy. If you want to focus all your attention and awareness on another person and form a really low-latency and high-bandwidth connection (approaching a Vulcan mind meld, or "Making a Circuit" as my beloved calls it), how would you do it? Well, you put as much of your skin in contact with theirs as you can (as in a full-body embrace) and in particular you put the parts most packed with nerve endings in contact with each other (penetrative intercourse, and also open-mouth kissing... or I guess 69 also works). You also go in a quiet environment where you can hear each other very clearly, and gaze into each other's eyes, and smell and taste each other, so the bandwidth of all the senses is as filled up with real-time information from your partner as possible.
Anyway those are just my unpolished spur-of-the-moment thoughts. I am in awe and reverence of the utopia we could have if orgasms instead happened for reasons like you listed. My eyes widened at that part.
> Obviously not all sex acts that happen in the real world lead to more trust and connection at all... but there's a huge potential there if you do it right.
This is a big part of my pragmatic enthusiasm, given the world that we live in—I wish there were different levers but *these* levers do, in fact, work!
Definitely correct to tag me to read this. I pretty much always appreciate more insight into you.
I’ve been in a very different place from you on this since I had to compensate for the sexual desire at such an early age.
But man does this hit home as a personal experience now that my biology has decided it wants *feelings* wrapped up in the goo, with only moderately reduced desire. So now it is taking way more of my time searching for that combo. And the stopgap measure of solo is more underwhelming than ever.
Would you at this point of adapting wish for both complete cessation of desire and ability to have satisfying orgasms, or only wish for the cessation of desire/compulsion? Or some secret, third option?
Interestingly (I oversimplified a little bit for the sake of brevity) I *did* have sexual desire previous to puberty, but it was, like ... gentle? Extra credit? Non-yanking and non-compulsory. It didn't *punish* me for ignoring or not-indulging it.
I think I'd wish for it to turn back from a need or near-need into something light and optional.
This is a really interesting read from the perspective who was already somewhat opposed to puberty and sexual attraction, but for different reasons. That is, I have a sense that anybody wanting *anything* as badly as people want sex has a serious cost to it. Let's go back to your sphere-licking example: If the doctor had grafted a sphere-licking desire onto me, but instead of having an all-consuming intensity resembling sexual desire, it held a gentler pull— let's say, comparable in pleasure to a warm shower, or to a particularly tasty sandwich— I wouldn't be angry at the doctor, but grateful. I would have gained this whole new dimension of positive experience, but without losing several hours a day to its mere contemplation.
In addition, of course, there's also the consideration of cooperation. I shouldn't have to point out that, while rape and sexual assault aren't uncommon, there are laughably few instances of people enthusiastically hurting one another in the pursuit of awesomeness, or any of these more mundane goals. We also see this fixation causing antisocial behavior in addicts. It doesn't seem to farfetched to me that, in general, wanting things too intensely is bad for people, on both a first and a second-order level, regardless of whether the desires were imposed or not.
Yeah, this is a big part of it for me, as well; I didn't have room to spell out this aspect of it but I strongly agree with you.
(Reducing the *strength* of the pull of sexuality is a big part of why I'm trying to pre-satisfy the hunger and sort of mollify the monster in advance.)
How much does getting a child have a similar effect? My co-founder just got a child a few days ago. I do wish him all the best, but at the same time I worry a bit if this will change him so much that it would lead to problems. So far I have been very lucky that my two co-founders and I are very much aligned regarding core values.
Both my spouse and I were worried about this, because it does seem like a lot of people go crazy when they have kids, and their values and reasoning abilities get mega twisted.
But so far, neither of us has experienced any twisting, and our friends on the outside looking in do not report us seeming different (other than that we seem real tired, of course).
I think that there's probably a self-selection thing, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, here? I think if you're the type of person who goes into parenting worried about that sort of value shift, and hoping not to experience it, your odds of dodging it are actually pretty good.
Thank you for the post, I recognize quite a bit from it even though it's not a 1-on-1 match. I definitely remember being disgusted with how my body and my mind were changing during puberty, and that feeling of disgust lasted for a long time after. I am happy that afaict it didn't change any of my fundamental values I had when I was 10, and that those only became deeper and more explicit over time.
BTW, I know it's kind of bad form to id other people but it sounds like you are transage (https://transage.info/), would you agree?
yyyyyyyyup
It's interesting to see your perspective. To me, it's another example of the unexpected diversity of minds. Puberty isn't so disruptive (either mentally or physically) for everyone, but now I know that it could be for some.
I really appreciate seeing your perspective on this spelled out so thoroughly. This is coming from someone who is pretty far to the other extreme on the question of meta-feelings about sex (i.e. in my ideal perfect utopia, I would probably spend between 90 and 99 percent of my time doing sex-related things, and, if someone wanted to edit my mind so that I no longer found sex fulfilling, I would fight very hard to prevent that), but nonetheless I see how much it would suck to have one's sexuality be so in conflict with one's existing pre-puberty values.
I read The Fireplace Delusion and I was like I totally agree with all of this already. Then I read this piece and I was like wow, I definitely don't agree with this right now but it is SUPER interesting and filled with excellent points. I'll be pondering this for a while.
I recently read the novel The Signature of All Things (which is a very fun read), and after reading it I was thinking a lot about what the central metaphor of that book is, which I believe is right there in the title. The Signature of All Things, or the Doctrine of Signatures, is this Christian idea that God loves us and so He made things in nature look like what they're useful for, e.g. walnuts look like little brains because if you eat them they heal your brain. This version of it is obviously stupid (walnuts are the shape they are because of something related to walnut tree evolution, and maybe animals that eat or spread walnut seeds, but not at all to make them visually resemble brains). But the other main theme of the book is sexual reproduction and how it relates to divine love.
If God (or Goddess or Mother Nature or whatever) created us with sensitive parts that feel kinda good if we touch them ourselves, but feel really REALLY good if we touch them to our loved one's parts in just the right way, what message would that convey to us in a Doctrine of Signatures sense? I believe the answer is that genitals are organs of connection. In the vast majority of people, erotic energy is focused on other people... it would be an extreme minority who has no interest in sex, and just masturbates, and that masturbation isn't even with *thoughts* or *direction* towards another person.
There's this thing I've heard about how Hell is like a big table full of delicious food, but everyone there has a fork that's too long to feed themselves, and they don't cooperate so they all go hungry. And Heaven is very similar but the only difference is they cooperate and feed each other. It's a Prisoner's dilemma type of scenario where defecting is not being willing to put in the relatively small effort to feed someone else, and cooperating means feeding them and just hoping they'll feed you in turn (tho you have no direct control over that).
So if I were a deity creating a world of individual conscious beings, and THE MAIN thing I wanted them all to learn was how to cooperate and trust each other, and avoid mutual defection (or just have some kind of ineffable spiritual connection to one another, or transcend selfish individualism), creating them with sex organs that only fully activate in pleasure when combined with those of another person would be a pretty clear way to help them.
Obviously not all sex acts that happen in the real world lead to more trust and connection at all... but there's a huge potential there if you do it right.
Also I do want to question your description of "gooey pushups" as a sub-optimal way for two people to connect in physical intimacy. If you want to focus all your attention and awareness on another person and form a really low-latency and high-bandwidth connection (approaching a Vulcan mind meld, or "Making a Circuit" as my beloved calls it), how would you do it? Well, you put as much of your skin in contact with theirs as you can (as in a full-body embrace) and in particular you put the parts most packed with nerve endings in contact with each other (penetrative intercourse, and also open-mouth kissing... or I guess 69 also works). You also go in a quiet environment where you can hear each other very clearly, and gaze into each other's eyes, and smell and taste each other, so the bandwidth of all the senses is as filled up with real-time information from your partner as possible.
Anyway those are just my unpolished spur-of-the-moment thoughts. I am in awe and reverence of the utopia we could have if orgasms instead happened for reasons like you listed. My eyes widened at that part.
> Obviously not all sex acts that happen in the real world lead to more trust and connection at all... but there's a huge potential there if you do it right.
This is a big part of my pragmatic enthusiasm, given the world that we live in—I wish there were different levers but *these* levers do, in fact, work!
For what it's worth, while my experience of puberty was very different, I think all of this makes sense and you didn't lose me at any point.
Definitely correct to tag me to read this. I pretty much always appreciate more insight into you.
I’ve been in a very different place from you on this since I had to compensate for the sexual desire at such an early age.
But man does this hit home as a personal experience now that my biology has decided it wants *feelings* wrapped up in the goo, with only moderately reduced desire. So now it is taking way more of my time searching for that combo. And the stopgap measure of solo is more underwhelming than ever.
Would you at this point of adapting wish for both complete cessation of desire and ability to have satisfying orgasms, or only wish for the cessation of desire/compulsion? Or some secret, third option?
Interestingly (I oversimplified a little bit for the sake of brevity) I *did* have sexual desire previous to puberty, but it was, like ... gentle? Extra credit? Non-yanking and non-compulsory. It didn't *punish* me for ignoring or not-indulging it.
I think I'd wish for it to turn back from a need or near-need into something light and optional.
This is a really interesting read from the perspective who was already somewhat opposed to puberty and sexual attraction, but for different reasons. That is, I have a sense that anybody wanting *anything* as badly as people want sex has a serious cost to it. Let's go back to your sphere-licking example: If the doctor had grafted a sphere-licking desire onto me, but instead of having an all-consuming intensity resembling sexual desire, it held a gentler pull— let's say, comparable in pleasure to a warm shower, or to a particularly tasty sandwich— I wouldn't be angry at the doctor, but grateful. I would have gained this whole new dimension of positive experience, but without losing several hours a day to its mere contemplation.
In addition, of course, there's also the consideration of cooperation. I shouldn't have to point out that, while rape and sexual assault aren't uncommon, there are laughably few instances of people enthusiastically hurting one another in the pursuit of awesomeness, or any of these more mundane goals. We also see this fixation causing antisocial behavior in addicts. It doesn't seem to farfetched to me that, in general, wanting things too intensely is bad for people, on both a first and a second-order level, regardless of whether the desires were imposed or not.
Yeah, this is a big part of it for me, as well; I didn't have room to spell out this aspect of it but I strongly agree with you.
(Reducing the *strength* of the pull of sexuality is a big part of why I'm trying to pre-satisfy the hunger and sort of mollify the monster in advance.)
How much does getting a child have a similar effect? My co-founder just got a child a few days ago. I do wish him all the best, but at the same time I worry a bit if this will change him so much that it would lead to problems. So far I have been very lucky that my two co-founders and I are very much aligned regarding core values.
Both my spouse and I were worried about this, because it does seem like a lot of people go crazy when they have kids, and their values and reasoning abilities get mega twisted.
But so far, neither of us has experienced any twisting, and our friends on the outside looking in do not report us seeming different (other than that we seem real tired, of course).
I think that there's probably a self-selection thing, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, here? I think if you're the type of person who goes into parenting worried about that sort of value shift, and hoping not to experience it, your odds of dodging it are actually pretty good.