Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life
For Valentine’s Day, I’ve written a post about love and sex:
1. A Trilemma
Bryan Caplan recently posted on his blog a query from an anonymous reader:
TL;DR: The reader has a problem that he just wants to have casual sex with women, but women don’t want to do that. It appears that he therefore has to (a) give up sex, (b) make a long-term commitment to someone he isn’t really interested in other than for sex, or (c) pretend to be interested in a long-term relationship in order to get sex. What to do?
This is part of the broader problem I’ve discussed that men and women have very different desires relating to each other.
The same reader posed the same question to me. In fact, it seemingly was prompted by my remark in a previous post about the wrongness of lying to get sex.
The Ethics of Deception
Let’s start with the ethics of mating-related deception. The anonymous reader mentioned that women also engage in deception. (Aside: He mentioned wearing make-up, which doesn’t count. You see the makeup, it’s common, and few people actually lie about it. Calling this deception is similar to saying that I’m deceiving you about what I smell like by showering before I meet with you. But there are better examples.)
People of both sexes commonly engage in deception to secure dates. E.g., women understate their weight, age, and body count; men overstate their height and income. These are wrong, but not serious wrongs because you don’t yet know the other person and you aren’t securing a large sacrifice from them. It becomes more wrong if you continue to deceive the person after starting a relationship with them.
It is more serious to deceive someone about the character of your relationship or your long-term plans. This includes misleading implications as well as outright lies. It also includes lies of omission, or intentionally failing to mention something that you know is relevant and that would likely affect the other person’s desire to interact with you. Thus, it’s wrong to let someone believe that they’re going to get a long-term commitment from you when you know that is not the case; it’s similarly wrong to let someone think that they’re
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