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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5635 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 12, 2023

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So, in the CWR thread there was an exchange where @2rafa got a bit piled on for claiming that most men don't have lots of casual sex not because they can't, but because they don't particularly want to compared to competing activities. I'm not interested in relitigating the conversation, but the following bit struck me (conversation massively snipped for the relevant parts):

From @2rafa:

Because most men do, in fact, show a revealed preference for long term relationships. [...] I think most men who don't pursue sleeping with huge numbers of women don't do so because they don't want to, not because they can't.

And from @Amadan:

[Y]our rather touchingly naive view that down deep we're all just looking for our waifu is not really true. [...] But most men who don't do it [have sex with large numbers of women], unless they have strong religious or other reasons not to, absolutely would do it if they had the ability.

Now admittedly I am one of the people with "strong religious ... reasons not to", but this strikes me as off somehow? I mean, sure, most men have some level of desire to have lots of sex with different women, but people have lots of desires, and just because they have a desire doesn't mean they'd preferentially fulfill it, especially if it competes with other ones.

Which leads to my question. What fraction of men (say, in their twenties) are better described as (a) "looking for [their] waifu" - i.e. want to find a good wife (and then, presumably, also have lots of sex with her), with little serious interest in casual sex, or (b) "absolutely would [have lots of casual sex] if they had the ability"?

For (heterosexual) men, which is/was more true of you? For anyone, what fraction of men do you think are are "team find a wife" vs "team casual sex"?

Let me flesh that out a bit. I don't actually think "wants to find a wife" is mutually exclusive with "wants lots of casual sex."

I think most men, given the opportunity to have lots of casual sex, would take advantage of it. The exceptions would be those who consider it immoral; either for religious reasons or because they are already in committed relationships.

Now of course some men who want lots of casual sex, and would happily sleep with a different woman every night, also want to find a permanent life partner. Such men, upon finding someone suitable, are likely (hopefully) to shift into the category of "Won't do it because it's immoral."

I would rephrase your question: given a choice between "Go with little or no sex until you find your wife" or "Sleep with lots of women until you find your wife," which do you think most men would choose?

That's fair. I have the impression/intuition that getting casual sex would, to an extent, trade off against finding a wife; so my thought was that there might be a substantial number of men who would prioritize the "find a wife" side of the tradeoff to the extent that they are (relatively) uninterested in casual sex, even if they didn't find it particularly immoral. But maybe this is not the case. I fully admit that I am an unusual case here (I'm in the increasingly tiny minority that didn't have sex at all until getting married) and don't have a good sense of these things.

have the impression/intuition that getting casual sex would, to an extent, trade off against finding a wife; so my thought was that there might be a substantial number of men who would prioritize the "find a wife" side of the tradeoff to the extent that they are (relatively) uninterested in casual sex, even if they didn't find it particularly immoral.

My intuition is that this tradeoff exists in various contexts, but the landscape is quite a bit more complicated. There's the fact that having features and skills that are optimized for having lots of casual sex also are helpful for finding a wife, and so there's a lot of synergy. It's only when looking at the subset of men who are high in such features that the tradeoff exists. But in the general population, optimizing for one also optimizes for the other. And I think over the past half century or so, that factor has become more dominant, and the men for whom such a tradeoff exists have gotten less populous.

I think we have empirical evidence that men at the top of the top (professional athletes, monarchs) have both a wife who they deeply care for, and who's children he raises as his heirs, and also lots and lots of hookups. This is the clear utility maximum.

Let's also not overlook testosterone. Athletes are both young and flooded with the stuff by dint of lifestyle, even on the occasions when they don't happen to be juicing.

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