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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

I barely have a clue about the attitudes and behaviours of the people around me - and yet you think you know not only Pepys' but also his contemporaries' attitudes and behaviours, so much so that you feel comfortable making a generalised comment about people who lived 3-400 years ago. Remarkable! Perhaps you are a historian.

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You could still confidently say that casual sex is normal in America currently, even without a perfect window into the soul of every American.

Can I? Is it really?

Yes, and yes. Why not quit being obtuse for the sake of disagreeing for disagreement's sake?

I'm simply considering my personal experience. It's not aligned with these general comments.

Do you live inside an amish community perhaps? Nobody who at all interacts with the vast majority of American society can say with a straight face that casual sex isn't common and normal. I'm not saying that as a moral judgement, I have no problems with casual sex, but as a basic widespread tendency of said modern, generally liberal society.

Define 'casual sex'. (Perhaps define the opposite too.) And then, think across the breadth of the American people you know and all those other people you don't - across different ages, places, religions, circumstances, etc. And then say that tell me you know that 'casual sex' is the general behaviour and attitude of everyone.

And then, go back to the original point for a bonus, and consider what you know about the general behaviour and attitudes are of the people in England 400 years ago.

OK, Jordan Peterson.

> And then say that tell me you know that 'casual sex' is the general behaviour and attitude of everyone.

I said it's normal.

> what you know about the general behaviour and attitudes are of the people in England 400 years ago.

Plenty. Pepys wasn't that weird.

Perhaps you should reconsider your assumption that everyone is as ignorant of history and psychology as you appear to be.

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