Monday, June 09, 2014

[iautdipm] Sex opportunity rate

The rate at which people perceive they have an opportunity to have sex can differ by a factor of 100000: Perceiving to be propositioned 30 times a day versus once every 10 years.  This anecdotal factor of 100000 is even after restricting to "normal" people of approximately the same age.

This is an amazingly large range -- 5 orders of magnitude.  What causes such a discrepancy?  This is the fascinating scientific question inspired by Elliot Rodger, a question to which he says he did not know the answer.

Humans are basically biologically identical -- certainly nothing like 5 orders of magnitude different, so it's probably social effects.

Would you like to have sex with a certain person?  Yes, in a heartbeat.  No, not in a million years.  (Though literally interpreting these figures of speech spans 13 orders of magnitude.)

How does this number, the rate at which you perceive you are sexually desirable, affect your psychological well being?  People on either extreme find their lives unhappy.

Is there a communication gulf between people who perceive vastly different rates?  They cannot relate to the other's point of view.  People are mentally pretty bad at large powers of ten.

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