I don’t currently have a strongly endorsed position here, but one of my background thoughts is that I think most people/society put sex into a weird taboo bucket for reasons that don’t make sense, and I don’t know that I want LW to play into.
If I’m sending an impressionable kid here, I’m much more worried about them reading frank discussions about maybe the world will end, than a discussion of sex, and the former is much more common on LW at the moment. (And while some parents might be more freaked out about sex, I actually expect a fair number of parents to also be worried about the world-ending stuff. MY parents were fairly worried about me getting into LW back in the day)
I think there are times LW has to make tradeoffs between “just talking about things sensibly” and “caving to broader societal demands”. But I think the default expectation should be “just talk about things sensibly”, and if there’s something particularly wrong with one particular topic (sex, or politics, or whatnot), it’s the job of the people arguing we shouldn’t have a discussion (or should hide it), that it’s concretely important to hide.
I have heard several people mention that the recent sex post was offputting to them, and I think it’s worth tracking that cost. But right now there’s been… maybe two posts about sex in 5 years? The previous one I can recall offhand was actually making some important epistemic points.
It’s expensive to build new features so I don’t think it makes sense to prioritize this that much until it’s become a more common phenomenon.
I’ll note that I had no issue with the post you linked, or this one, both of which use an example which is just sex-flavored and therefore (in my opinion) absolutely harmless. The opposition to those 2 posts actually confused me quite a bit and showed me a lot of people are modeling vulgarity differently than I am!
Again, I totally agree that there shouldn’t be anything harmful with any of these posts, but I do think there is some kind of line to draw between “we said the word ‘dildo’ to make a point” and “the post is literally just data about someone’s sex life”, and I think this is kind of the easiest time to draw that line, instead of later. However, I get what you’re going for.
I don’t think it’s super productive to do much more arguing my case here other than making sure I reword it once so it’s clear, so I’ll do that and then leave it alone unless someone else cares.
I think it’s an error to say “society has an issue with being overly sensitive, and besides, we have stuff that’s way more harmful”, both because 1, we actually still can be affected by society, or succeed in our goals worse by not conforming in areas that are well established, and 2, because that’s just an argument the end-of-the-world stuff also being behind an opt-in (which would probably actually make a ton of people happy?). (I’m gesturing at something similar to “proving too much” here)
I don’t currently have a strongly endorsed position here, but one of my background thoughts is that I think most people/society put sex into a weird taboo bucket for reasons that don’t make sense, and I don’t know that I want LW to play into.
If I’m sending an impressionable kid here, I’m much more worried about them reading frank discussions about maybe the world will end, than a discussion of sex, and the former is much more common on LW at the moment. (And while some parents might be more freaked out about sex, I actually expect a fair number of parents to also be worried about the world-ending stuff. MY parents were fairly worried about me getting into LW back in the day)
I think there are times LW has to make tradeoffs between “just talking about things sensibly” and “caving to broader societal demands”. But I think the default expectation should be “just talk about things sensibly”, and if there’s something particularly wrong with one particular topic (sex, or politics, or whatnot), it’s the job of the people arguing we shouldn’t have a discussion (or should hide it), that it’s concretely important to hide.
I have heard several people mention that the recent sex post was offputting to them, and I think it’s worth tracking that cost. But right now there’s been… maybe two posts about sex in 5 years? The previous one I can recall offhand was actually making some important epistemic points.
It’s expensive to build new features so I don’t think it makes sense to prioritize this that much until it’s become a more common phenomenon.
I’ll note that I had no issue with the post you linked, or this one, both of which use an example which is just sex-flavored and therefore (in my opinion) absolutely harmless. The opposition to those 2 posts actually confused me quite a bit and showed me a lot of people are modeling vulgarity differently than I am!
Again, I totally agree that there shouldn’t be anything harmful with any of these posts, but I do think there is some kind of line to draw between “we said the word ‘dildo’ to make a point” and “the post is literally just data about someone’s sex life”, and I think this is kind of the easiest time to draw that line, instead of later. However, I get what you’re going for.
I don’t think it’s super productive to do much more arguing my case here other than making sure I reword it once so it’s clear, so I’ll do that and then leave it alone unless someone else cares. I think it’s an error to say “society has an issue with being overly sensitive, and besides, we have stuff that’s way more harmful”, both because 1, we actually still can be affected by society, or succeed in our goals worse by not conforming in areas that are well established, and 2, because that’s just an argument the end-of-the-world stuff also being behind an opt-in (which would probably actually make a ton of people happy?). (I’m gesturing at something similar to “proving too much” here)