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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   34793 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I mean, we can look at the data and see that they are attracted. Can we say why? Can we say that it's inherent? Probably not.

We can't say that it's likely inherent if it's a consistent pattern among divergent cultures, including even isolated tribes that couldn't be affected by any social contagion? How far does this rabbit hole go? Can we not say that people are inherently generally attracted to other humans instead of trees (which some people are) then?

Look, when I was taking neuroscience in grad school (aligned with my actual work, unlike the queer theory (which I didn't even take for credit, just sat in on)), I learned about pair bonding and infidelity. There, we have an animal model (different species of voles) and a genetic correlate. Relative to the evidence we have for other human sexual preferences or attraction to symmetrical faces, it was pretty dynamite evidence. Now, was that even remotely enough evidence to actually say that infidelity is entirely (or even "mostly", or even "greater than X%, with X being like, I don't know, >20") biologically inherent? Not at all. Not even close. I don't think you have any clue just how far off we are.

Almost every culture in human history, including highly divergent ones before they interacted to any significant degree, has had some manner of infidelity taboo. That's enough for me, because there's no other good causative mechanism to explain so much convergence without communication.

Interestingly, the social use of sugar (and flooding the market with cheap sugar) has had quite harmful effects on plenty of folks.

Okay, then they'd be zero carb sweetener pills. Point is, they'd be inert and harmless even if you could convince people to pop 5,000 of them a day (which you probably couldn't no matter how much purely media-based influence was applied because they're inert and thus pointless, which is my point).

Actually, it doesn't. My points don't require it. I have dug deep down the rabbit hole of sexual ethics in the past. I've even made arguments on reddit along those lines that other people have labeled 'pro-child sex'.

Then what grand harms are you even worried about arising from the greater apprehension of minor sexual appeal?

We have arrived all the way back to the very first comment I made in this thread: it's extremely common to fail to think on the margin.

Does the margin matter? There was a meme going around a while back, mostly a right-wing troll but still a victim of Poe's law, that White leftists should kill themselves to make reparations for their contributions to system racism, White privilege, etc. As far as I know there is not a single confirmed case of anyone biting. If it had been promoted more, say by the mainstream media, I bet you'd still get less than 500 people (probably far less) going for it and we'd almost certainly be better off without them anyway. Of course as mentioned above you need to define what concrete harm you're worried about before you start worrying about the margin of it.

We can't say that it's likely inherent if it's a consistent pattern among divergent cultures, including even isolated tribes that couldn't be affected by any social contagion?

That is a factor in favor of some parts of the nature/nurture spectrum, but is not solely determinate. I've also seen arguments for things like a "gay germ", which is not conclusive by an means in its own domain, but which at least continues to broaden the spectrum of possibilities and ushers caution in believing that such simple metrics are completely determinate.

Almost every culture in human history, including highly divergent ones before they interacted to any significant degree, has had some manner of infidelity taboo.

I wasn't talking about the taboo. I was talking about the behavior.

Does the margin matter?

For the purposes of the question at hand, absolutely. If you'd like to concede the question at hand and then move the goalposts to a new question, please do so explicitly.

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