Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Vector]

Perhaps Vector's saying she uses something other than empiricism for her "tending to herself." Science only works on empirical principles, and empirical principles are of course, based on assumptions.

That's not so much "abandoning" as using a different tool for a different job.

This.

Science presupposes objectivity--that is, holding the subject of inquiry at arm's length from the self, separate from feeling, emotion, intuition, instinct.  Holding the self away from the self is senseless.

If one needs psychiatry or psychology, then more power to them.  There's more than one way of being.  However, I found my steps in that direction deeply misguided and, more than that, damaging.

I do not deny that science has its place in bridge-building, in engineering, in thousands of diverse applications that improve life--but do the equations describing the rotation of the earth around the sun tell us more of our experience of sunsets, as humans in the world, than sitting on the porch as gloaming approaches?

[LordBucket]

the point of a "blank canvas" being preferable is on page 1.
I claim that the appeal of that idea come from the fact that a virgin is seen as more pure

That's a different way of phrasing it, but essentially yes. However, I'm approaching it from a Pavlovian sense, rather than a religious one. If a girl's first orgasm is all with a 200lb weight lifter, she's likely to develop a preference for muscular guys. If a guy's first time is in his girlfriend's house watching the door because her parents might come in at any moment, he's likely to develop a preference for risky sex in places he might get caught. And the more consistently one engages in any particular activity while in a highly pleasured state, the more strongly those cues will come to be associated with pleasure in the mind.

The benefit of having a partner who is "pure" in the sense of having not already been conditioned towards a particular set of sexual cues is that she can be more easily conditioned to want exactly what you are and what you want to do. The benefit of being a "pure" partner is that you can be conditioned to want exactly what your partner wants.

Again, like a blank canvas. If you paint on top of somebody else's work, you need to prime it to get a very clear result. But it's difficult to "prime" a human being.

fallacious assumption common on this thread is that everybody wants intimacy.

Oh? Allow me to quote myself from the very first page of this thread:

I'm not advising people which sort of lifestyle they should choose for themselves.

If one wishes to one day have an emotional and sexual relationship with only one single person, for example...marriage, then spending years becoming accustomed to a lifestyle of shallow emotional attachment and casual sex with many partners probably isn't the wisest choice.

I'm not telling people that they "should" choose one way or another. If you want to have lots of sex with lots of people, then it doesn't make sense to intentionally remain a virgin while waiting for one particular person. And if you want to have a lifelong committed relationship with one person, it doesn't make sense to have sex with lots of people.

It's simply a matter of behavioral inertia. If somebody deliberately stays a virgin until they get married at 25 because it's important to them to live their life with only one person, would those 25 years of life be condusive to immediately rushing out and sleeping with a bunch of people after marriage? Probably not. Similarly, if somebody lives a life casually having sex with everyone they can, that kind of lifestyle is not conducive to immediately being sexually exclusive and committed for life to one single person just because you happen to get married to them.

And to all of you who who gritting your teeth getting ready to type out about how "some people are different" and "there are always exceptions" well, that's nice. Yes, some people are different and there may be exceptions. Doesn't change anything I'm saying here. If you want to be in the habit of waking up at 6:00am every day, it makes sense to wake up at 6:00am every day, rather than sleep in until noon. It's easier to wake up at 6:00am if you've been waking up at 6:00am every day for years than if you wake up at noon every day for years. Nobody here would argue with that. It's basic behavioral inertia, and it doesn't magically not apply just because we're talking about sex.

There are benefits to living a life having sex with only one person. Getting to have lots of wild and crazy sex with lots of people is not one of them.

There are benefits to having lots of casual sex. High probability of having a mutually committed lifelong relationship later in life is not one of them.

[Vector]

^ ^

Case in point: Love isn't mathematical.  I don't think it's possible, or proper, to abstract away from what we know and say "Ah, yes, it's all Pavlovian: now here's what you do if you want to find love!  I've run some experiments!"

I don't think it works this way, where you condition your partner, your partner conditions you, etc.  Maybe people should love for the sake of loving, and not with all of these optimization conditions.

[LordBucket]

Love isn't mathematical

Strange. I thought we were talking about sex, not love.

Maybe people should love for the sake of loving,
and not with all of these optimization conditions.

Sure you don't mean "I want to have sex without worrying about the consequences, so I'm going to change the subject and talk about love?"

[Footkerchief]

If a girl's first orgasm is all with a 200lb weight lifter, she's likely to develop a preference for muscular guys. If a guy's first time is in his girlfriend's house watching the door because her parents might come in at any moment, he's likely to develop a preference for risky sex in places he might get caught.

Citation please.

[Vector]

You're talking about love as well, mister--specifically, the relationship between certain amounts of sex and certain amounts of interest in long-term relationships.  Nice to see you deflecting to my "desires," but I'm speaking the truth as I see it.

The reason why "desires" is in quotations is because I've already said here multiple times that I have next to no interest in sex, and what's keeping me from it sure as hell isn't any fear of being able to develop stable long-term relationships.

If a girl's first orgasm is all with a 200lb weight lifter, she's likely to develop a preference for muscular guys. If a guy's first time is in his girlfriend's house watching the door because her parents might come in at any moment, he's likely to develop a preference for risky sex in places he might get caught.

Citation please.

I gotta say, I spent about two years kissing a skinny young programmer to my pleasure, and what came out of it was a very strong disinterest in romancing people who shared the same body type and interests.  If I wanted to be with that guy, I'd be with that guy.  I want to experience new bad points, and also new good points.

[Mindmaker]

I don't think it works this way, where you condition your partner, your partner conditions you, etc.  Maybe people should love for the sake of loving, and not with all of these optimization conditions.

It rather shouldn't work this way. Sadly it does happen a lot.
But as long as it's only minor things (getting your partner to be a more orderly person, to unlearn a habit that freaks your partner out etc.) I'd say it's ok.

I mean there isn't a 'perfect' match and I'm more than ready to adapt a bit as long as it doesn't threaten my core self.

[Phmcw]

Lordbucket yeah Pavlov is great but... it's not the only mechanism influencing the human psyche, and from experience this approach will bring you more trouble in your relationship and increase the temptation of breaking or cheating than anything else.

Science presupposes objectivity--that is, holding the subject of inquiry at arm's length from the self, separate from feeling, emotion, intuition, instinct. 

Here is your mistake.
Objectivity is not that at all. I mean if I must find word do describe the relations of researchers I know with their jobs it would be passionate, dedicated, and certainly emotional.
Science is the result of a thought process where verifiable = true.

but do the equations describing the rotation of the earth around the sun tell us more of our experience of sunsets, as humans in the world, than sitting on the porch as gloaming approaches?

Isn't the night-sky more beautify when you know what a star is. Isn't a blank wall fascinating when you try to visualise the Billions of atoms composing it, and try to link the quantics behaviour you've just learned about to the pressure you feel?
Isn't your computer one million time more interesting when you've learned about the functioning of your processor?
Isn't the light more poetic since Einstein.
Yeah you need a bit of imagination to be an happy materialist.
I hate pseudo materialist a la Ayn Rand who simplify the world to make it fit their narrow views. To me everything is a treasure of complexity. Is kindness less enjoyable because you know it's a phenomenon that probably come from evolutionary mechanism. Is life less important because it's all that you'll ever have. Do you love less because we're all only matter?

[LordBucket]

Citation please.

Classical conditioning

Unconscious Classical Conditioning of Sexual Arousal: Evidence for the Conditioning of Female Genital Arousal to Subliminally Presented Sexual Stimuli

Neuro associative conditioning

[Leafsnail]

So uh... a wikipedia article on something irrelevant, a very small scale study that doesn't remotely cover what you're describing and a branch of pseudoscience are your 3 pieces of evidence?

[Vector]

Ah, but syntactically, it still separates the object as something acted on, and separate from the subject.  What is it to be an object, anyway?

Trust me, I do like science.  I love engineering, and woodshop, and chemistry.  I'm nuts about building stuff, and fixing stuff, and repairing.  I'm emotional about it--the key thing about emotions is that they aren't allowed to affect, or effect, your results (sorry for misspeaking).  But verifiable thinking really doesn't do much for me in terms of finding out who and how I am.


A computer's a lot more interesting when you know how it works--sure.  Complexity is wonderful, too.  But all these things that we know, just by being in the world, just by enjoying experiences as they make themselves known to us... all of that is worthwhile.  I don't know more about a chair from its specs online than I do from sitting in it, nor do I know more about a dish from the recipe than I do by tasting it.  And similarly, a world where the wind is not only a force, but also a feeling, a sound, the movement of a goddess moving through the trees (as presupposed in Ancient Greece) is more open to understanding it as it is.

Life is not less important to me because it is all I will ever have, and I do not love less because we are only matter.

But to say "you love them because of genetics, classical conditioning, and all of those things--you're a product of everyone else's choices!  You have no free will!  You're just a slave to your wants and desires :3  Nothing we do really matters at all, hoho" is brutal and empty, and cannot speak to the experience of what it is to love.  Not from the inside--only from without.

And Freud thinks that fetishes develop because they're closely associated to things kids experience right before they see the genitalia of the opposite sex for the first time.

So what?  What does that have to do for my proclivity for Eastern European mathematicians of middle age and weight?  If I somehow ... experienced... an old man with chalk stains in his hair right before I saw my dad naked for the first time, yeah, that would be weird--but it doesn't really matter.

So what if your first orgasm was with a weight lifter?  If you end up having sex with weight lifters, who really cares?  There's loads of them!  More than enough to go around.  It's not like we've got a shortage or something.

Oh, and another thing:

No, you are not going to get a tabula rasa girlfriend.  She's always going to have preferences, desires and so on, and there's always going to be clashes so that you can't train and condition her to love you like a slavish robot (this is one of the reasons why we tend to condemn pedophilia--kids take a while to figure out who they are and what they want for themselves).  Pretending otherwise is ridiculous.

Besides, why would you want to screw a blank slate, anyway?

[Willfor]

Besides, why would you want to screw a blank slate, anyway?

As far as I know, the process of attaching a slate to the wall is the same whether it has chalk markings on it or not.

[Vector]

Besides, why would you want to screw a blank slate, anyway?

As far as I know, the process of attaching a slate to the wall is the same whether it has chalk markings on it or not.

Yeah, pretty much.  I guess you're right.

[Phmcw]

But to say "you love them because of genetics, classical conditioning, and all of those things--you're a product of everyone else's choices!  You have no free will!  You're just a slave to your wants and desires :3  Nothing we do really matters at all, hoho" is brutal and empty, and cannot speak to the experience of what it is to love.

Exactly what I'm speaking about. Why would free will matter? Who is the omniscient being who could predict us?
Nothing we do matter? but if life is all we have, what we do and what we are is all that matter!
A slave to your wants and desire? When you've pushed yourself so much to achieve what you really want?

That version of materialism is stupid : it negate whole parts of the worlds while pretending superiority over philosophies that invent some. Applying my mind to purely rational though process without negating the aspects of the world that are wonderful or that I don't understand is my objective.

[Vester]

If a girl's first orgasm is all with a 200lb weight lifter, she's likely to develop a preference for muscular guys.

Not really. Cart before the horse, etcetera etecetera.