johnswentworth

Karma: 63,924

johnswentworth 2 Jul 2026 0:03 UTC
4 points
5
in reply to: Nico Hillbrand’s comment on: Nico Hillbrand’s Shortform
I dunno, man, one galaxy seems kinda small ;)

johnswentworth 27 Jun 2026 21:17 UTC
7 points
5
on: johnswentworth’s Shortform
If you were sexually attracted to children, would you be able to admit it to yourself? If you would not be able to admit it to yourself, then you don’t actually know whether or not you’re sexually attracted to children; maybe you are, maybe you aren’t.
This is a special case of a general principle: the only way to know that you don’t secretly want X, desire X, or value X, is if you would be able to admit to yourself that you do want/desire/value X, in worlds where you really do. If the possibility feels too painful to face, then you can’t rule the possibility out.
In order to know your own wants, desires, or values, you need to be ready to face the possibility that they’re not the wants, desires, or values you thought you had, wished you had, or were told you were supposed to have.

johnswentworth 26 Jun 2026 18:44 UTC
12 points
−8
on: Surprising facts about the slave trade
I haven’t looked into this very deeply, but I suspect that some of this information is historical propaganda. In particular, when I shallowly looked into the famous slave ship diagram some years ago, it didn’t really add up, and I came away thinking it was likely propaganda from the abolitionists’ side. (… but I investigated only briefly and don’t remember the details, so take this with a lot of salt.) Some of the other things also have a propaganda vibe—e.g. the thing about slavery being bad for the economy, or about the sailors, or Clarkson giving an awfully heroic account of himself.

johnswentworth 16 Jun 2026 0:22 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Caleb Biddulph’s comment on: johnswentworth’s Shortform
To be clear, at the time I wasn’t really thinking about other people escalating the playfulness. That didn’t even occur to me as a thing which might happen, until I was thinking about it after the fact.
I didn’t have a particular community in mind. Wish I knew one. Well, other than an elementary school or some other childrens’ community—that would definitely qualify as supercritically playful, but has a bunch of other downsides.

johnswentworth 15 Jun 2026 22:44 UTC
19 points
10
in reply to: β-redex’s comment on: johnswentworth’s Shortform
My impression is that kids at play generally do not have trouble coming up with ideas. So I think most people at least had that skill at one point, though it might have been forgotten and/or trained out of them.

johnswentworth 15 Jun 2026 18:23 UTC
53 points
27
on: johnswentworth’s Shortform
Playfulness, like many social stances, sometimes undergoes a critical transition.
People hang out, someone does or says something a little playful, someone else responds playfully. Sometimes the response is a little *less* playful, and if that goes back-and-forth, then the playfulness dies out (left to its own devices). Other times the response is a little *more* playful, and if that goes back-and-forth, then silliness escalates until things get big and interesting.
When I think about recent times when I’ve brought some playfulness into my social environment, e.g. at parties, I notice that almost everyone responds in subcritical ways. So if I want to have a fun playful time, I can drive that by pumping in lots of playfulness myself (e.g. sitting on the roof at LessOnline tossing a big ball to passersby), but it feels like I’m pushing against a current. The silliness doesn’t take on a life of its own.
Me at LessOnline
There are exceptions to this. For instance, a few months ago Garrett and I had some supercritical back-and-forth over a fire pit at Lighthaven. We ended up cooking a lasagna noodle and convincing a slightly-drunk Jesse Hoogland to put the noodle in his pocket for five minutes to test whether it turned into a sticky mess. But that sort of thing is the exception to the rule in the Berkeley rationalist/EA community, as far as I can tell.
I think this is one of the major things I want in a community, that I don’t get from this one.
In John’s ideal community, if someone is on a roof tossing a ball to passersby, other people naturally show up and are like “ooh fun” and decide to join in for a while, and then a little crowd grows in the courtyard/on the roof/on the opposite balcony, all hitting this ball around. And then eventually someone might e.g. run off and find a net, hang that up, and like ten or twenty people end up playing two-story volleyball with the blue ball in the courtyard. Or maybe someone shows up with squirt guns and those get added to the game. Or people start trying to keep the ball aloft by throwing things at it. Or [...] That would be supercritical playfulness.

johnswentworth 1 Jun 2026 4:07 UTC
8 points
0
in reply to: kbear’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
Alright. Sorry for being grumpy at you, and thank you for the model.

johnswentworth 31 May 2026 19:19 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
That is useful info, thanks.

johnswentworth 31 May 2026 5:23 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: kbear’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
I don’t conceptualize them that way. I fucked someone; that does not mean I conquered them in any sense beyond the fucking itself. Perhaps you are bringing in a frame where fucking someone implies bringing them low in some way that extends beyond the sex. But I never said anything like that, do not think anything like that, and do not generally live in that frame. This is your associations talking, not mine, and frankly it does not sound like a healthy way to relate to fucking.

johnswentworth 31 May 2026 4:13 UTC
4 points
6
in reply to: kbear’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
Yup, conquest is also part of the kind of sex denoted by “fuck”.
You mostly seem to be proving my point that the reason the word is jolting is because the kind of sex it denotes makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I claim the majority of people want to fuck and/or like to fuck. (Certainly the overwhelming majority I’ve fucked love it!) So why are you so uncomfortable with people talking about fucking, outside of their own bedrooms? Seems pretty sus to be grossed out by the topic, if you actually do not have any hangups about that kind of sex!
As for what the word choice offers: more information and accuracy, just like I said upthread. Why use less precise and descriptive words, when more precise and descriptive words are readily available and don’t even take extra space? This would just be common sense in any other everyday domain. And indeed, I am talking about fucking in much the same way I would talk about any other everyday domain. Why wouldn’t I?

johnswentworth 30 May 2026 13:49 UTC
15 points
1
in reply to: Cole Wyeth’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
I disagree, in this very particular case. I was trying to say something similar a day ago and really struggled to come up with a better word.
The point is that the argument is supposed to be about the object-level thing, about whether the object-level claim is true or the object-level advice will have the effects it is claimed to have. The argument is not supposed to be things like “saying this will offend some people” or “you’re a bad person for saying this”. I struggle to come up with a better word or short phrase for that than “rational”; the standard connotations seem basically correct.

johnswentworth 30 May 2026 13:41 UTC
31 points
2
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
“Being disruptive and disconcerting and jolting” is not how I would describe the purpose of curse words. I mean, they can be used that way, but I don’t think it’s the central purpose, I think it’s a side effect of a more useful purpose.
In the case of “fuck”… I’ll quote from Chapter 10 of Passionate Marriage (nominally a book by a therapist on keeping sex alive in long marriages):
“Good sex” and “a good fuck” aren’t quite the same. [...]
Lexicographer Hugh Rawson notes that the English language lacks another transitive verb expressing the basic idea with any degree of vividness. Having sex reinforces sex as behavior rather than as part of our nature. Sleeping with is self-contradictory. Making love and meaningful relationship don’t always live up to their label. Fucking and “making love” differ subjectively and behaviorally. Rawson observes that the taboo we place on this term, combined with our lack of suitable synonyms, results in a fair amount of hypocrisy. Our euphemisms denote how we avoid eroticism. [...]
The trouble is, the kind of sex it is acceptable to be wild about is “making love”. People—women, in particular—are not supposed to fuck. I use the word fuck here because:
- It’s the label millions of people use for this subjective experience.
- In many people’s minds, it represents one polarity on the continuum of “making love”.
- It keeps issues of sexual intent and aggression center-stage.
I claim: the word “fuck” denotes a particular kind of sex. It’s supposed to be very erotic, aggressive, objectifying, primal. The reason the word is jolting is because the kind of sex it denotes makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Our mainstream society is not comfortable with fucking. That’s not a feature of the word, it’s a feature of the real phenomenon the word refers to.

johnswentworth 29 May 2026 15:31 UTC
2 points
1
in reply to: localdeity’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
There are adjacent things besides just truth which apply in that case—e.q. arguments that something will not lead to any intellectual progress in any domain, or (in the case of advice posts) arguments that the advice is harmful.

johnswentworth 29 May 2026 12:46 UTC
22 points
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
Sure, my standard safeword script runs roughly as follows:
Hold out your arm. <She holds out her arm, and I hold it by the wrist with one hand>
Your safewords are red and yellow. Yellow means caution, red means stop. If you can’t speak, tapping <at this point I tap her arm to demonstrate> also substitutes for “red”. Understand? <Usually she nods>
Now I’m going to cause you some pain, increasing over time. I want you to say “yellow” and then “red” when it feels appropriate.
<Still holding her wrist, I put my thumb on a pressure point near the bicep, and start to squeeze, slowly increasing pressure. Usually that one alone isn’t enough pain for a safeword, so I’ll eventually switch to the hip flexor. Eventually, she says “yellow”, and I ease off a little, then continue the ramp-up a little slower until she says “red”. This whole time, I mostly watch her face, to make sure I can actually tell when she’s feeling bad levels of pain; from my end this is about calibration of pain tolerance and reactions at least as much as safewords.>
<Eventually, she says “red”, and I immediately stop.> Good girl.
(This is assuming someone subby and masochistic, obviously it runs a little different otherwise, but the high level generally stays the same.)

johnswentworth 29 May 2026 12:32 UTC
13 points
−4
in reply to: Davis_Kingsley’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
This is LessWrong. If you want something gone, argue that it’s false, or link to previous arguments that it’s false, don’t just come kvetching about how you don’t personally like it.
I am more than happy to update in response to evidence, that’s what I want. I write about dating because I want people to tell me what I’m missing. Complaining that this is all vaguely bad somehow is not that.

johnswentworth 28 May 2026 20:54 UTC
10 points
−6
in reply to: Q Home’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
<3 that’s the spirit.

johnswentworth 28 May 2026 20:29 UTC
0 points
−31
in reply to: Q Home’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
First, I have a principled opposition to the entire concept that obscenity is bad. All the hallway monitors of the world can go shove their pointless purity instincts up their collective prudish asses.
Second, the word “fuck” has importantly different connotations from e.g. “make love” or “sex”, and those connotations are generally more correct here; the obscenity makes the statement more accurate.

johnswentworth 28 May 2026 19:11 UTC
−1 points
0
on: Some Dating Stories
Since this post started with the “median 30 minutes” thing, I also want to mention one other stat: my retention rate, i.e. what fraction of the women I sleep with want to do it again.
Depends on how we count things, but:
- Fraction of women I’ve fucked who have in fact come back for more: about 80%
- Fraction of women I’ve fucked who are probably interested in more: 100%
(The remaining roughly 20% are cases where we haven’t fucked again yet but probably will at some point—e.g. Chesed and I will very likely fuck again at some point, but she recently had a baby so there hasn’t been a good time and probably won’t be for a little while.)
Retention rate is the one stat about my sex life which I consider a point of pride.

johnswentworth 28 May 2026 5:33 UTC
19 points
1
in reply to: jimmy’s comment on: Contra Wentworth on Physical Attractiveness for Men
You know, I used to take an interest in people by default, at least to a much greater extent than I do now.
Five years of living in the Bay Area EA/rat community beat that out of me. In hindsight, years later, taking an interest in the people around me by default cost huge amounts of time, it never did pay off overall, and it probably never will. Experience mostly taught me that marginal time just doing my own work is more valuable than marginal time at conferences, marginal time talking to other researchers, marginal time at house parties, etc.
I didn’t end up here by failing to try the “inherent interest in people” thing. I tried it, for years. It did not actually pay off, on a long timescale. Turns out reality is under no obligation to make people worthwhile to interact with.

johnswentworth 27 May 2026 22:15 UTC
6 points
1
in reply to: yams’s comment on: Why Physical Attractiveness Matters for Men’s Dating Prospects
I’m not quite sure what you’re seeing here. Is the idea that people with regular experience of oxytocin usually want to form some oxytocin-bond before sex? … Even if that is the idea I’m still entirely not sure what’s off about the post.
… also despite me not getting it yet this is probably helpful feedback, so thank you!