5 ms·

Imprudent Acts and Great Bastards: Sex Advice from 1861

25 points by Hooke 12y ago

bradleyankrom 12y ago
The rare case in which the comments are more entertaining than the article.
- normloman 12y ago
  haha yeah that justin stewart guy is a riot
  - kbenson 12y ago
    I knew a guy with a similar problem. He only liked the women he was pursuing before he slept with them, because he did so much sweet talking and manipulation to get to that point, that he didn't respect them for falling for it afterwards (in his words, in a candid moment). He was aware the problem was him, and not them, but that doesn't always make it immediately easy to change.
Dirlewanger 12y ago
Any modern-ish scientific writings like these (18th century onward) where the English, although awash with fluffy phrases and words that make any writer cringe, is readable enough to where one can grasp the gist are a pleasure to read. People spoke with such authority and a matter-of-factness that nowadays is laughable. The concept of there being unknown unknowns must have never registered for so many of the day.
- hnal943 12y ago
  There's still plenty of matter-of-fact smugness in our own day.
- innguest 12y ago
  > The concept of there being unknown unknowns must have never registered for so many of the day. "I think history is a lot more interesting and makes a lot more sense when you finally realize that people in the past were just as aware and smart as us, as opposed to the bumbling idiots we often assume them to be." -- rthomas6 : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9032743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9032743 I disagree with rthomas6 from the cross post linked above. I think in the past people were intellectually dishonest which led them to write and act like know-it-all pathological liars.
  - TomSawyer 12y ago
    Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore. Our elite are the real deal.
    - kbenson 12y ago
      No, but perhaps the common person has enough education now to see and call out the bullshit that may have been able to pass in ages past. It's not that our elites are better, it's that they aren't viewed as exempt from common mishaps and misbehaviors as they perhaps were in the past.
  - Torgo 12y ago
    People get their shockingly incorrect sex advice from Youtube personalities now.
- kens 12y ago
  You can find this authoritative ignorance of unknowns in more recent writings too. It's interesting to read a pre-1960s geology book - before continental drift was proven - and see how they explain continent formation. They'll often present some totally wrong theory without any trace of doubt. Another example is pre-1960s biology books that talk about DNA and give it a bogus role. To be clear, I'm not criticizing these books for not having the answers, or even for being wrong. It's being confidently, authoritatively wrong that is concerning. It also makes me wonder how much of what we read now is also authoritatively wrong. (I have my suspicious about cosmology.) A counterexample is the book "Molecular Biology of the Cell", which is good about explicitly pointing out what is unknown rather than papering over it.
stdwhat 12y ago
So IT-related
Torgo 12y ago
A similar book from 1904 is "Vivilore": https://archive.org/details/vivilorepathwayt00meleuoft https://archive.org/details/vivilorepathwayt00meleuoft I got a copy of this in a table of junk in an auction. It's an interesting mix of good advice, sexist advice, absolutely terrible advice, and complete junk like phrenology and palm reading.
sheensleeves 12y ago
The article: "This fact is applied to the offspring of great geniuses, who are supposed to be thinking of something else when they beget their children, and hence their descendants are often much below them in intellect." In a blog post, I read that this is called "regression to the mean," and IIRC you are basically the average of your four grandparents in IQ. So he's wrong, but clever.
- SapphireSun 12y ago
  > IIRC you are basically the average of your four grandparents in IQ. So he's wrong, but clever. Assuming that's true, it would be better phrased as "you are on average the average of your four grandparents in IQ" otherwise you'd never have geniuses ;)
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  "you are basically the average of your four grandparents in IQ" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
UhUhUhUh 12y ago
If I were to seek advice from an era and a place that sure wouldn't be America (or England) in the 1800s. Tell me about the France of Rabelais or Villon, the Italy of Machiavelli, even the plague-ridden London of Shakespeare, the China of the Tang. And so forth.

25 points by Hooke 12y ago

bradleyankrom 12y ago

The rare case in which the comments are more entertaining than the article.

normloman 12y ago
haha yeah that justin stewart guy is a riot
- kbenson 12y ago
  I knew a guy with a similar problem. He only liked the women he was pursuing before he slept with them, because he did so much sweet talking and manipulation to get to that point, that he didn't respect them for falling for it afterwards (in his words, in a candid moment). He was aware the problem was him, and not them, but that doesn't always make it immediately easy to change.

Dirlewanger 12y ago

Any modern-ish scientific writings like these (18th century onward) where the English, although awash with fluffy phrases and words that make any writer cringe, is readable enough to where one can grasp the gist are a pleasure to read. People spoke with such authority and a matter-of-factness that nowadays is laughable. The concept of there being unknown unknowns must have never registered for so many of the day.

hnal943 12y ago
There's still plenty of matter-of-fact smugness in our own day.
innguest 12y ago
> The concept of there being unknown unknowns must have never registered for so many of the day. "I think history is a lot more interesting and makes a lot more sense when you finally realize that people in the past were just as aware and smart as us, as opposed to the bumbling idiots we often assume them to be." -- rthomas6 : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9032743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9032743 I disagree with rthomas6 from the cross post linked above. I think in the past people were intellectually dishonest which led them to write and act like know-it-all pathological liars.
- TomSawyer 12y ago
  Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore. Our elite are the real deal.
  - kbenson 12y ago
    No, but perhaps the common person has enough education now to see and call out the bullshit that may have been able to pass in ages past. It's not that our elites are better, it's that they aren't viewed as exempt from common mishaps and misbehaviors as they perhaps were in the past.
- Torgo 12y ago
  People get their shockingly incorrect sex advice from Youtube personalities now.
kens 12y ago
You can find this authoritative ignorance of unknowns in more recent writings too. It's interesting to read a pre-1960s geology book - before continental drift was proven - and see how they explain continent formation. They'll often present some totally wrong theory without any trace of doubt. Another example is pre-1960s biology books that talk about DNA and give it a bogus role. To be clear, I'm not criticizing these books for not having the answers, or even for being wrong. It's being confidently, authoritatively wrong that is concerning. It also makes me wonder how much of what we read now is also authoritatively wrong. (I have my suspicious about cosmology.) A counterexample is the book "Molecular Biology of the Cell", which is good about explicitly pointing out what is unknown rather than papering over it.

stdwhat 12y ago

So IT-related

Torgo 12y ago

A similar book from 1904 is "Vivilore": https://archive.org/details/vivilorepathwayt00meleuoft https://archive.org/details/vivilorepathwayt00meleuoft I got a copy of this in a table of junk in an auction. It's an interesting mix of good advice, sexist advice, absolutely terrible advice, and complete junk like phrenology and palm reading.

sheensleeves 12y ago

The article: "This fact is applied to the offspring of great geniuses, who are supposed to be thinking of something else when they beget their children, and hence their descendants are often much below them in intellect." In a blog post, I read that this is called "regression to the mean," and IIRC you are basically the average of your four grandparents in IQ. So he's wrong, but clever.

SapphireSun 12y ago
> IIRC you are basically the average of your four grandparents in IQ. So he's wrong, but clever. Assuming that's true, it would be better phrased as "you are on average the average of your four grandparents in IQ" otherwise you'd never have geniuses ;)
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
"you are basically the average of your four grandparents in IQ" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

UhUhUhUh 12y ago

If I were to seek advice from an era and a place that sure wouldn't be America (or England) in the 1800s. Tell me about the France of Rabelais or Villon, the Italy of Machiavelli, even the plague-ridden London of Shakespeare, the China of the Tang. And so forth.