Comments on: Cuddle Culture

By: Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 21:11:15 +0000

Request more content/evidence or less generality next time or you will be banned.

By: Cauê

Cauê — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 05:20:38 +0000

@Susebron:

Oh yes, certainly. I suppose that’s why this would be an useful thing to even bother evolving a “sense” for.

But people will want incompatible things, and even if you could get people to do thing X that you want, you won’t succeed if someone higher in the hierarchy wants them to do something else (but you would succeed against the wishes of someone below you).

Maybe there’s not much of a practical difference in thinking of this as an ordinal thing, but people having different status positions in different groups does seem to point to that, rather than being an absolute thing that you have in lesser or greater amount than others.

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By: Diego

Diego — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 01:38:29 +0000

A)Increasing their number of uninterested friends and B) Giving them a more challenging environment in which to try being social or sexual.

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By: Said Achmiz

Said Achmiz — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 01:30:49 +0000

And they creep me out by rationally analyzing my jests as if they were serious…

I, too, have been annoyed by this a time or few, but I want to point out that such literal-mindedness is a fairly common autistic trait, and autism spectrum disorders are strongly overrepresented in rationalist communities. I say this only as a precaution against the development of any meme to the effect that “rationalists are weird and creepy, ew”.

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By: Ialdabaoth

Ialdabaoth — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 01:19:58 +0000

sorry, s/bright lights/bright flashing lights

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By: Susebron

Susebron — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:59:47 +0000

@Caue

I’ve been thinking about this, and as far as I can tell, I agree with you. “Pecking order” seems a bit vague, though. My definition of “status” would be “perceived ability to get other people to do what you want” or something similar. Does that seem like it would work?

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By: Matthew

Matthew — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:54:22 +0000

For allnew people you interact with and touchyou arbitrarily pre commit not to have sex, no matter what, with some of them.

If this system actually sounds practical to you, then your libido probably isn’t as high as you think it is.

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By: Diego

Diego — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 22:13:43 +0000

As an adamant defender, practitioner and advocate of a more touchy and cuddly culture, I feel obliged to mention that even for people withhigh libido there’s a simple asolution to the problem of inter gender attractive people escalation, which I call arbitrary pruning. For allnew people you interact with and touchyou arbitrarily pre commit not to have sex, no matter what, with some of them. So there will always be nodes in your cuddle network which won’t escalate, no matter how tractive the individuals. For me this has basically solved the problem of system two preferring friendships and system one preferring sex entirely. Furthermore it benefits all attractive people by &) increasing their number of uninterested friends and b) giving them a

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By: Luke Edwards

Luke Edwards — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 20:38:10 +0000

A man can cuckold you, a woman cannot.

Over millions of years of evolution, there are some in-born emotions built up around this. But it makes rational sense too.

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By: Luke Edwards

Luke Edwards — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 18:35:29 +0000

The fringe of non-rationalists or heterodox rationalists at rationalist parties host some of the best conversations I’ve ever had. The rationalists are pretty boring though – you’ve already heard their arguments if you’ve been hanging out around these parts of the internet. And they creep me out by rationally analyzing my jests as if they were serious…

Similarly, the best bloggers are some ex-LW contributors.

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