To be clear, I would currently mildly bet against john having already been a significant danger to others in sexual ways; I currently update in total, considering both +realdanger and -realdanger intuitions, about −0.2 bits vs population prior on him being an actual danger. but he’s setting off a lot of my alarm bells, which is keeping him near the high-risk baseline, despite intuition he might be actually just a kinkster rather than a danger, But kinksters are high variance, so I’ve updated at least dozens of bits towards him being in a very high variance part of possibility-space. I’ve only seen him from a distance, and certainly can’t promise the gals that he’s actually fine or anything, but also don’t know more than someone who’s read all of his posts on whether he’s safe. But his model-building seems flawed in ways that concern me, and his interest in this particular subset of model-building is concerning too. High variance. Could be pretty bad. Could be fine. Usually people who do this much model building in this way, and say these things about it, turn out to be concerning, but sometimes they don’t. Might be trying to appear high variance because he thinks that’s a good idea, for example.
More directly on topic: I’m not ready to agree or disagree with most of the substance of the post. I think John misunderstood some things that make him unnecessarily risky, but without picking through what I think of each claim: I do agree that some specific kinds of risky can be fun! …in very specific ways that I don’t think he has a good enough model of. I worry I’m going to hear about it as a retrospective about the people who got injured near him in three years[1]. I hope he chews on the replies until the differences click and he stops putting off a radioactive vibe.
John, I worry you’re going to take bad models too seriously because you’re systematically unable to see some kind of disconfirming evidence. On the other hand, notice what I haven’t claimed as much as what I have! I think I’m actually a person who would produce evidence you’d misunderstand, if you were attracted to me, though I’m a bit noncentral in some ways due to being highly introspective. And given that, I still think you’ve misunderstood in many important ways that Aella and Steven haven’t.
Like, okay, let’s put it this way—if it were to turn out to have been true the entire time, what other generator could produce this evidence that also would produce evidence incompatible with this model? Or, in what way could “nonconsent” be missing the point about the generator? I’d sure like to see a slightly more ladybrain discussion, if that’s available.
Well, I mean, I don’t actually expect that, because I think we’ll probably all be dead any time now unless someone (eg john) pulls a very particular kind of rabbit out of a hat, but that’s neither here nor there.
Look, I don’t like dealing with the sort of stuff I called “deep nonconsent” in this post. Sure, I’m quite kinky in bed, but in the rest of the mating process? When someone who’s interested won’t send any goddamn signals, or sends negative signals while hoping that I pursue, it’s just incredibly obnoxious. I strongly prefer to deal with women who actually send signals when interested, or better yet just ask me out. I want to date and fuck women who are, like, “on my team”, not trying to make everything pointlessly difficult all the time.
And maybe that will change at some point. It’s the sort of thing which sometimes seems less obnoxious as one understands it better. But man, for now, I sure prefer to just avoid women who do that shit.
Like, okay, let’s put it this way—if it were to turn out to have been true the entire time, what other generator could produce this evidence that also would produce evidence incompatible with this model? Or, in what way could “nonconsent” be missing the point about the generator? I’d sure like to see a slightly more ladybrain discussion, if that’s available.
I totally agree that there are other possible generators which look very similar to “deep nonconsent preference”. Another I played with was e.g. “blame avoidance”, i.e. something-like-ladybrain really wants any dating/sex to happen in a way which is “not her fault”. That seems to mostly generate the same predictions.
So yeah, I am totally ready to believe there’s some other nearby generator, and if you have one which also better explains some additional things then please state it I want to know it. I have not found it on my own, and one of the main points of posting this stuff online is that sometimes people come along and tell me what I’m missing. That’s what I want. If you have clean examples where the model in the post would produce incorrect interpretations of what’s going on, I also want to hear those. What I don’t want is people being like “this is problematic and missing important things” without actually saying a single thing that it’s wrong about or presenting any alternative model.
What I don’t want is people being like “this is problematic and missing important things” without actually saying a single thing that it’s wrong about or presenting any alternative model.
Reading this gave me the same feeling I used to get reading Brent’s stuff: you’re pointing at a real phenomenon but also pushing a bunch of data out of frame so it’s really hard to challenge the model. If you want counterarguments, I think you need to relax that, and especially not insist on a single explanation for every member of a set that was selected for being best explained by your favorite explanation.
Relatedly, like, you’re (OP) drawing a picture from a partial set of facts about a complicated thing—yeah, there has been some growing awareness that nonconsent fetishes are pretty common, but also, like, you’re setting that against the “consent is very important” as understood social context—do you think that context was always there? Who do you think valued that context and made it widespread? It wasn’t nervous men.
Reading this gave me the same feeling I used to get reading Brent’s stuff
FWIW, while I can see this if I try, it feels very different to me that I haven’t seen John do anything like be hostile to out-of-frame data once presented, or play games to dismiss it, or send what I read as signals that he will do so.
When I look at the women I know who actually ask guys out, they are consistently the ones landing especially desirable guys. For women, explicitly asking a guy out buys an absolutely enormous amount of value; it completely dwarfs any other change a typical woman can consider in terms of dating impact
...isn’t the experience of me or women I know. Asking men out leads to boyfriends who are generally passive and offload a bunch of work onto you (even when they’re BSDM tops). But I found myself not wanting to comment with this initially because I couldn’t immediately explain CNC fantasies with it.
Here are some other models that explain part of your data. None of them explain all of it, but they each explain something additional that deep nonconsent preferences don’t. Also as I typed them up I realized they explained more than I thought, but again, your initial strong frame pushed out that knowledge.
women are scared men will get angry if they go from “yes” to “no”, in a way they won’t if the woman goes from “----” to “no”, so women delay being explicit until they have all the information
“I would like to submit a formal request to touch your boob” is the lowest possible skill way to ask for consent. High skill ways are appreciated, in part because the space of boob-touching is large and you will never manage to convey sufficient detail verbally.
A partner who is good at reading you is valuable in lots of ways- perhaps valuable enough to give up a bunch of guys who would have been merely okay.
people are scared of rejection at every stage and women don’t have the same push to get over it
Gen Z men seem to have more fear/less push to get over it and indeed, AIUI aren’t asking women out very much.
this can also explain CNC fantasies- there’s no risk of owning a desire and seeing it rejected
women are disincentivized to express desire
(all models are possibilities and generalities, people are complicated, etc)
I think one thing I didn’t communicate in the post is that I don’t necessarily intend to hypothesize deep nonconsent as a terminal preference. So, for instance,
women are scared men will get angry if they go from “yes” to “no”, in a way they won’t if the woman goes from “----” to “no”, so women delay being explicit until they have all the information
sounds to me like one of many possible generators of deep nonconsent preference—i.e. it’s directly explaining why women would typically have a deep-in-the-sense-of-appearing-in-lots-of-places preference for nonconsent behavior. It therefore sounds not-at-all at odds with the post, or at least what I had in mind when writing the post.
I definitely took the original post to be describing a terminal value rather than manifestation of something deeper, if you meant instrumental that handles a lot of my objections.
But while I’m here, another data point: I’ve heard multiple young women say they won’t make explicit requests in bed because what they mean is “weight this action moderately higher among your list of options” but the dude hears “keep doing this on rote until I give you another instruction”. I haven’t heard this from anyone over 30, hopefully it means someone learned something.
Just one data point: to me your post feel shallow in a good way. I can say: “I can’t help but note how all this annoying behaviour suddenly become endearing to me when I am in love.” but it feels like I am deepening your post, not contradicting it. Am I gesturing at non-terminal property you mentioned? P.S. just noticed I am using “shallow” when there is literally “deep” in headline. Yet this is my impression.
″...isn’t the experience of me or women I know. Asking men out leads to boyfriends who are generally passive and offload a bunch of work onto you (even when they’re BSDM tops). ”
This is very interesting and a perspective I haven’t considered. Now that I think about it, the women I know who are asking man out have a mixture of outcomes, and while tend to move towards high quality partners long term (especially if they are polyamorous), they indeed complain about having had very passive exes. I suspect asking out removes the filter for proactivity and they are falling back to the base rate with higher chance of getting passive partners due to prevalence in the population. Actually even worse if we assume proactive males are sorting themselves out from the available population. (There may be some additional factor potentially contributing to passivity, but haven’t thought it through yet).
Another observation I have is that they tend to be tops or switches with top preference. Assuming John is correct about nonconsent preference being the prevalent attribute in the general population, I would say they are the inverse, with that being the minority here.
So yeah, I am totally ready to believe there’s some other nearby generator, and if you have one which also better explains some additional things then please state it I want to know it.
My top hypothesis is that women experience much more intense negative reinforcement for rejection, both romantic and sexual, than men. This has been flagged to me by several of the most introspective women I’ve known. You can tell a reasonable evo-psych story, or a social norms one, or a practice/experience one, but the overall picture is going to be: being rejected as a man is going to happen a lot and is therefore not that much of a signal of your self-model should update towards things are bad, but being directly rejected as a woman is relatively rare and a stronger sign of being worthless in a way which feels more brutal.
Hence many women prefer to be advanced on without giving explicit signals of interest, because giving more of a signal of interest than the man then them turning you down just hurts a lot. It’s not about consent, women generally do strongly prefer consent to be involved (other than a subpoulation with some specific kinks who you might have had an unusual sample of, given recent posts), it’s about avoiding escalating in ways which might stick their neck out.
Look, I don’t like dealing with the sort of stuff I called “deep nonconsent” in this post. Sure, I’m quite kinky in bed, but in the rest of the mating process?
I believe you, but I also find the conjunction of [your kinks] and [choosing the ‘nonconsent’ frame/terminology] interesting, and would guess that it’s not a coincidence. In particular, I believe I’ve observed across people that [things like the former] are associated with [biases and blind-spots-biasing toward things like the latter].
(And I feel like ‘nonconsent’ as frame/terminology is strained at best, and… bad, muddled in a worrying way, in a way that rhymes with what t.g.t.a. is saying.)
Another I played with was e.g. “blame avoidance”, i.e. something-like-ladybrain really wants any dating/sex to happen in a way which is “not her fault”. That seems to mostly generate the same predictions.
Do you think it has some disadvantage, such that you didn’t choose to mention it at all in the OP?
So yeah, I am totally ready to believe there’s some other nearby generator, and if you have one which also better explains some additional things then please state it I want to know it.
A very nearby guess: women tending to prefer a ‘patient’ role in dating/mating, and/or tending to prefer men who take and are good at an ‘agent’ role — this has broader explanatory power for common male/female roles and attraction patterns.
(But also all the things you’re talking about, while anecdotally real, seem at least less broadly/strongly true to me than they do to you; women sending inexplicit-and-deniable-but-strong signals of interest seems more common and not a turnoff; flirting seems more symmetrical (not predicted by either of these models); etc.)
“Another I played with was e.g. “blame avoidance”, i.e. something-like-ladybrain really wants any dating/sex to happen in a way which is “not her fault”. That seems to mostly generate the same predictions.”
Do you think it has some disadvantage, such that you didn’t choose to mention it at all in the OP?
“Blame avoidance” seems like a candidate generator of deep nonconsent preference: if one never consents to anything that’s going on, then one is not to blame for any of it (or so goes the story). There are other generators one could imagine as well—e.g. Elizabeth hypothesized elsethread ‘women are scared men will get angry if they go from “yes” to “no”, in a way they won’t if the woman goes from “----” to “no”, so women delay being explicit until they have all the information’. That’s another hypothesis for what might generate deep nonconsent preference.
I settled on the term “deep nonconsent preference” because that seemed like the most direct description of the behavior-cluster, while assuming the least about what generates that behavior. I did not think (and still don’t think) I had enough information to nail down a primary generator of the behavior.
“Usually people who do this much model building in this way, and say these things about it, turn out to be concerning, but sometimes they don’t.”
By this do you mean that:
John asserting that nonconsent is the baseline cis female preference in dating resembles to what is stated in openly misogynistic areas of the internet (redpilled/incel/altright), hence you feel he might be in the same category?
“John, I worry you’re going to take bad models too seriously because you’re systematically unable to see some kind of disconfirming evidence.”
Would you be able give some more specific examples about the kind of disconfirming evidence you reckon John is missing? I think that would be the quickest way to show the weakness of his model.
To be clear, I would currently mildly bet against john having already been a significant danger to others in sexual ways; I currently update in total, considering both +realdanger and -realdanger intuitions, about −0.2 bits vs population prior on him being an actual danger. but he’s setting off a lot of my alarm bells, which is keeping him near the high-risk baseline, despite intuition he might be actually just a kinkster rather than a danger, But kinksters are high variance, so I’ve updated at least dozens of bits towards him being in a very high variance part of possibility-space. I’ve only seen him from a distance, and certainly can’t promise the gals that he’s actually fine or anything, but also don’t know more than someone who’s read all of his posts on whether he’s safe. But his model-building seems flawed in ways that concern me, and his interest in this particular subset of model-building is concerning too. High variance. Could be pretty bad. Could be fine. Usually people who do this much model building in this way, and say these things about it, turn out to be concerning, but sometimes they don’t. Might be trying to appear high variance because he thinks that’s a good idea, for example.
More directly on topic: I’m not ready to agree or disagree with most of the substance of the post. I think John misunderstood some things that make him unnecessarily risky, but without picking through what I think of each claim: I do agree that some specific kinds of risky can be fun! …in very specific ways that I don’t think he has a good enough model of. I worry I’m going to hear about it as a retrospective about the people who got injured near him in three years[1]. I hope he chews on the replies until the differences click and he stops putting off a radioactive vibe.
John, I worry you’re going to take bad models too seriously because you’re systematically unable to see some kind of disconfirming evidence. On the other hand, notice what I haven’t claimed as much as what I have! I think I’m actually a person who would produce evidence you’d misunderstand, if you were attracted to me, though I’m a bit noncentral in some ways due to being highly introspective. And given that, I still think you’ve misunderstood in many important ways that Aella and Steven haven’t.
Like, okay, let’s put it this way—if it were to turn out to have been true the entire time, what other generator could produce this evidence that also would produce evidence incompatible with this model? Or, in what way could “nonconsent” be missing the point about the generator? I’d sure like to see a slightly more ladybrain discussion, if that’s available.
Well, I mean, I don’t actually expect that, because I think we’ll probably all be dead any time now unless someone (eg john) pulls a very particular kind of rabbit out of a hat, but that’s neither here nor there.
Look, I don’t like dealing with the sort of stuff I called “deep nonconsent” in this post. Sure, I’m quite kinky in bed, but in the rest of the mating process? When someone who’s interested won’t send any goddamn signals, or sends negative signals while hoping that I pursue, it’s just incredibly obnoxious. I strongly prefer to deal with women who actually send signals when interested, or better yet just ask me out. I want to date and fuck women who are, like, “on my team”, not trying to make everything pointlessly difficult all the time.
And maybe that will change at some point. It’s the sort of thing which sometimes seems less obnoxious as one understands it better. But man, for now, I sure prefer to just avoid women who do that shit.
I totally agree that there are other possible generators which look very similar to “deep nonconsent preference”. Another I played with was e.g. “blame avoidance”, i.e. something-like-ladybrain really wants any dating/sex to happen in a way which is “not her fault”. That seems to mostly generate the same predictions.
So yeah, I am totally ready to believe there’s some other nearby generator, and if you have one which also better explains some additional things then please state it I want to know it. I have not found it on my own, and one of the main points of posting this stuff online is that sometimes people come along and tell me what I’m missing. That’s what I want. If you have clean examples where the model in the post would produce incorrect interpretations of what’s going on, I also want to hear those. What I don’t want is people being like “this is problematic and missing important things” without actually saying a single thing that it’s wrong about or presenting any alternative model.
Reading this gave me the same feeling I used to get reading Brent’s stuff: you’re pointing at a real phenomenon but also pushing a bunch of data out of frame so it’s really hard to challenge the model. If you want counterarguments, I think you need to relax that, and especially not insist on a single explanation for every member of a set that was selected for being best explained by your favorite explanation.
Relatedly, like, you’re (OP) drawing a picture from a partial set of facts about a complicated thing—yeah, there has been some growing awareness that nonconsent fetishes are pretty common, but also, like, you’re setting that against the “consent is very important” as understood social context—do you think that context was always there? Who do you think valued that context and made it widespread? It wasn’t nervous men.
FWIW, while I can see this if I try, it feels very different to me that I haven’t seen John do anything like be hostile to out-of-frame data once presented, or play games to dismiss it, or send what I read as signals that he will do so.
Can you gesture at what kind of data would be helpful to bring in-frame?
A big one would be that…
...isn’t the experience of me or women I know. Asking men out leads to boyfriends who are generally passive and offload a bunch of work onto you (even when they’re BSDM tops). But I found myself not wanting to comment with this initially because I couldn’t immediately explain CNC fantasies with it.
Here are some other models that explain part of your data. None of them explain all of it, but they each explain something additional that deep nonconsent preferences don’t. Also as I typed them up I realized they explained more than I thought, but again, your initial strong frame pushed out that knowledge.
women are scared men will get angry if they go from “yes” to “no”, in a way they won’t if the woman goes from “----” to “no”, so women delay being explicit until they have all the information
“I would like to submit a formal request to touch your boob” is the lowest possible skill way to ask for consent. High skill ways are appreciated, in part because the space of boob-touching is large and you will never manage to convey sufficient detail verbally.
A partner who is good at reading you is valuable in lots of ways- perhaps valuable enough to give up a bunch of guys who would have been merely okay.
people are scared of rejection at every stage and women don’t have the same push to get over it
Gen Z men seem to have more fear/less push to get over it and indeed, AIUI aren’t asking women out very much.
this can also explain CNC fantasies- there’s no risk of owning a desire and seeing it rejected
women are disincentivized to express desire
(all models are possibilities and generalities, people are complicated, etc)
I think one thing I didn’t communicate in the post is that I don’t necessarily intend to hypothesize deep nonconsent as a terminal preference. So, for instance,
sounds to me like one of many possible generators of deep nonconsent preference—i.e. it’s directly explaining why women would typically have a deep-in-the-sense-of-appearing-in-lots-of-places preference for nonconsent behavior. It therefore sounds not-at-all at odds with the post, or at least what I had in mind when writing the post.
I think you should have chosen a different word than deep (“Inner, underlying, true; relating to one’s inner or private being rather than what is visible on the surface.”).
“Pervasive”, “recurrent”, “systematic” …?
I definitely took the original post to be describing a terminal value rather than manifestation of something deeper, if you meant instrumental that handles a lot of my objections.
But while I’m here, another data point: I’ve heard multiple young women say they won’t make explicit requests in bed because what they mean is “weight this action moderately higher among your list of options” but the dude hears “keep doing this on rote until I give you another instruction”. I haven’t heard this from anyone over 30, hopefully it means someone learned something.
Just one data point: to me your post feel shallow in a good way. I can say: “I can’t help but note how all this annoying behaviour suddenly become endearing to me when I am in love.” but it feels like I am deepening your post, not contradicting it. Am I gesturing at non-terminal property you mentioned?
P.S. just noticed I am using “shallow” when there is literally “deep” in headline. Yet this is my impression.
″...isn’t the experience of me or women I know. Asking men out leads to boyfriends who are generally passive and offload a bunch of work onto you (even when they’re BSDM tops). ”
This is very interesting and a perspective I haven’t considered. Now that I think about it, the women I know who are asking man out have a mixture of outcomes, and while tend to move towards high quality partners long term (especially if they are polyamorous), they indeed complain about having had very passive exes. I suspect asking out removes the filter for proactivity and they are falling back to the base rate with higher chance of getting passive partners due to prevalence in the population. Actually even worse if we assume proactive males are sorting themselves out from the available population. (There may be some additional factor potentially contributing to passivity, but haven’t thought it through yet).
Another observation I have is that they tend to be tops or switches with top preference. Assuming John is correct about nonconsent preference being the prevalent attribute in the general population, I would say they are the inverse, with that being the minority here.
My sample size is single digit though, so YMMV.
My top hypothesis is that women experience much more intense negative reinforcement for rejection, both romantic and sexual, than men. This has been flagged to me by several of the most introspective women I’ve known. You can tell a reasonable evo-psych story, or a social norms one, or a practice/experience one, but the overall picture is going to be: being rejected as a man is going to happen a lot and is therefore not that much of a signal of your self-model should update towards things are bad, but being directly rejected as a woman is relatively rare and a stronger sign of being worthless in a way which feels more brutal.
Hence many women prefer to be advanced on without giving explicit signals of interest, because giving more of a signal of interest than the man then them turning you down just hurts a lot. It’s not about consent, women generally do strongly prefer consent to be involved (other than a subpoulation with some specific kinks who you might have had an unusual sample of, given recent posts), it’s about avoiding escalating in ways which might stick their neck out.
I believe you, but I also find the conjunction of [your kinks] and [choosing the ‘nonconsent’ frame/terminology] interesting, and would guess that it’s not a coincidence. In particular, I believe I’ve observed across people that [things like the former] are associated with [biases and blind-spots-biasing toward things like the latter].
(And I feel like ‘nonconsent’ as frame/terminology is strained at best, and… bad, muddled in a worrying way, in a way that rhymes with what t.g.t.a. is saying.)
Do you think it has some disadvantage, such that you didn’t choose to mention it at all in the OP?
A very nearby guess: women tending to prefer a ‘patient’ role in dating/mating, and/or tending to prefer men who take and are good at an ‘agent’ role — this has broader explanatory power for common male/female roles and attraction patterns.
(But also all the things you’re talking about, while anecdotally real, seem at least less broadly/strongly true to me than they do to you; women sending inexplicit-and-deniable-but-strong signals of interest seems more common and not a turnoff; flirting seems more symmetrical (not predicted by either of these models); etc.)
“Blame avoidance” seems like a candidate generator of deep nonconsent preference: if one never consents to anything that’s going on, then one is not to blame for any of it (or so goes the story). There are other generators one could imagine as well—e.g. Elizabeth hypothesized elsethread ‘women are scared men will get angry if they go from “yes” to “no”, in a way they won’t if the woman goes from “----” to “no”, so women delay being explicit until they have all the information’. That’s another hypothesis for what might generate deep nonconsent preference.
I settled on the term “deep nonconsent preference” because that seemed like the most direct description of the behavior-cluster, while assuming the least about what generates that behavior. I did not think (and still don’t think) I had enough information to nail down a primary generator of the behavior.
“Usually people who do this much model building in this way, and say these things about it, turn out to be concerning, but sometimes they don’t.”
By this do you mean that:
John asserting that nonconsent is the baseline cis female preference in dating resembles to what is stated in openly misogynistic areas of the internet (redpilled/incel/altright), hence you feel he might be in the same category?
“John, I worry you’re going to take bad models too seriously because you’re systematically unable to see some kind of disconfirming evidence.”
Would you be able give some more specific examples about the kind of disconfirming evidence you reckon John is missing? I think that would be the quickest way to show the weakness of his model.