"Another idea is that smarter people are more risk averse, and delaying these activities is a byproduct of enhanced concerns about unwanted pregnancy and disease. While not avoiding sexual behaviors, per se, they are just less likely to seek it out or consent to it for fear of the potential consequences.
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Another idea, consistent with popular media portrayals of geeks and nerds (males at least), is that intelligent people actually want to have sex, but are simply less likely or unable to obtain willing partners because they are disproportionately viewed as unattractive or undesirable as partners."
edit: this comment is not meant to support your claims, only to suggest your claims are redundant to HNers who read the article.
In my parents' day, "finding a husband/wife" wasn't something most people had to make an active effort in order to do. It happened fairly naturally. So smart people paired off at a similar rate to everyone else.
In the post-"Game" world, wherein breaking through womens' defenses and attracting them requires learning a bag of cheap sales tricks, the big losers are the people who don't learn them. These are the dumb, who are unable, and the smart nerds, who can't be bothered because they find childish social games uninteresting.
The entire industry of pick up technology is based on the premise that there may be a technique that can successfully attract a woman. Wheras, in real life, there is no magic technique - it's all about confidence and putting youself out there, taking a risk/taking the lead.
What the pickup artists are really marketing is protecting the guy's ego - e.g. I wasn't rejected - it was the approach/technique. Which, as we all know, is false marketing.
As far as I understood, the real point was not there is some magic bullet that can attract any particular woman a man desires.
Instead it was about finding some subset of female population upon which some of these tricks do work.
It's kind of refined Feynman's strategy - keep trying whatever shtick you have on different women till you find some on which it works.
That is why these people can report some successes - if just you want to attract some woman, it's much easier than wanting to attract that woman.
It's not that simple, just as there isn't one "magic trick" that can close a sale. It's a complex set of skills that has to be learned over years.
On the other hand, some guys are able to feast because they've mastered a bag of cheap tricks, and there are a lot more men dying to be like them.
Yes, in my unscientific survey of reading about men posting about their experiences on various pickup forums - the fraction of those who really became good at "pick up" - basically became good not because of the technique but because they went out there with their icebreaker "I need a female opinion" and went from there and gained confidence and experience, to the point that eventually they were so desensitized of rejection (yet, aware) of interacting with women that really no women made them nervous (Bill Clinton was legendary for his ease around all women) - and this is what made them attractive. Snowball effect.
I am all for the right of gays to marry, legalized abortion, and 95 percent of the feminist platform. The problem is that we now have a generation of women who feel "empowered" to "try out" a few of the scumbag men that, in previous generations, they wouldn't have dared be seen with. That hurts almost everyone.
On the other hand, it's a better world when people behave sexually in a manner that is consistent with their public morality. That means that they don't sleep with people they wouldn't be proud to be seen with by their parents, family, and friends and to call a boyfriend or girlfriend.
> On the other hand, it's a better world when people behave sexually in a manner that is consistent with their public morality.
This sentence here, it assumes people's public morality is their real feelings on the matter, instead of doing what needs to be done to get by without ostracism.
I think most people have at least a little different public and private moralities - there's what you believe, and there's what you'd be comfortable representing you believe in your community.
Assuming that the public morality is the real or sensible morality seems to miss that a lot of people aren't happy with the roles they're generally expected to take. Some very outstanding people openly show their countercultural preferences, but many people just quietly dissent, and that's not altogether too crazy if their dissent leads them to the best possible life for themself.
Now, people being unable to make good judgment calls on what furthers their real goals - that's a big problem. But giving a nod to public morality, much of which is imposed on people, seems to be a little off. I think the issue is more of good judgment and long term thinking than it is with public/private morality.
I think this metaphor may be your problem.
It's easy to look at the average and say that a fifteen year old shouldn't be having sex. The average fifteen year old one would encounter is not necessarily emotionally prepared for sex, but I wouldn't say that's indicative of their being a problem with sex. I'd say that has more to do with the pressures of society. The idea that sex is a bad thing that should be suppressed is the problem. We're surrounded by sexual images and ideas as kids and young adults, but we're also told that we should wait until we're married. Fortunately, I had a mother who was open with me about sex, who told me that sex was a beautiful, natural thing and while she would prefer I wait until I was married, she realized that was unrealistic. So, I came out of my teenage years without any unwanted pregnancies, STD's, or emotional baggage in regards to sex.
Why do you think they shouldn't?
Empirically, people who lose their virginity early (< 18) tend to be hypersexual as adults.
Seriously though, any "emotional and psychological complications", etc. are only because of our societies ridiculous, puritanical, anti-sex attitudes. It's really way past time for society to move past these dark ages attitudes about sex. Sex is natural, and even better, it's FUN! :-)
I don't have any problem with an isolated casual sexual encounter. As far as I'm concerned, that's none of my business. However, I absolutely hate living in a culture that glorifies it, to the detriment of loving relationships. I also hate living in a world where the vast majority of available women have such awful attitudes as to be unmarriageable.
Those "puritannical attitudes" exist for a reason. Some people take them way too far, and their application is very unjust (e.g. gendered double standards); but they shouldn't be cast aside as relics of "the dark ages". There are many great things about loving, long-term, monogamous relationships and family formation.
Men probably have just as many shitty attitudes, but I don't encounter them directly in my dating life (only indirectly, because most women I know have been with some awful men).
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The other half is that a person with a large number of prior sexual partners is more likely to cheat in a long-term relationship, less likely to be sexually satisifiable by one person, and less able to form the intense bonds of trust and love that a relationship requires.
Thus, the "puritannical" stance on casual sex is as relevant and useful today as it ever was. In fact, it's more useful now than it was 1000 years ago; although STDs are much more curable, raising children is considered to be a 20+ year, shared process, making the intact family desirable.
What's disgusting is the double standard-- the stud/slut dichotomy-- that allows men to behave badly with few consequences. My opinion is that women have the power to end the double standard; if women stop being attracted to promiscuous men, for a man to be slutty will be seen as being as foolish and self-damaging as it is for a woman, and the double standard will disappear.
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If it'd been voluntary, you'd have been fine. You'd be surprised by what people can do without.