A billion wicked thoughts

No cover — Ogi Ogas: A billion wicked thoughts (2011, Dutton)

394 pages

English language

Published 2011 by Dutton.

ISBN:: 978-0-525-95209-1
OCLC Number:: 666239887

(1 review)

Two maverick neuroscientists use the world's largest psychology experiment--the Internet--to study the private activities of millions of men and women around the world, unveiling a revolutionary and shocking new vision of human desire that overturns conventional thinking. For his groundbreaking sexual research, Alfred Kinsey and his team interviewed 18,000 people, relying on them to honestly report their most intimate experiences. Using the Internet, the neuroscientists Ogas and Gaddam quietly observed the raw sexual behaviors of half a billion people. By combining their observations with neuroscience and animal research, these two young neuroscientists finally answer the long-disputed question: what do people really like? Ogas and Gaddam's findings are transforming the way scientists and therapists think about sexual desire. Their fascinating and occasionally disturbing findings will rock our modern understanding of sexuality, just as Kinsey's reports did sixty years ago.--From publisher description.

1 edition

Will Sargent reviewed A billion wicked thoughts by Ogi Ogas

Review of 'A billion wicked thoughts' on 'Storygraph'

1 star

I'm mildly disgusted that these guys get to pass off what they did as science. They took a bunch of data from places that had positive bias in a dozen different places, then used that to support the dominant sexual paradigms without considering the first mover advantage and lock-in effect. (Sadly, this does a disservice to the OKCupid statisticians, who are rigorous about what they can and can't say about their data.) And then they added cartoon stereotypes on top of that -- Elmer Fudd is the man, tirelessly hunting for pussy, and Miss Marple the female detective, endlessly searching for the perfect mate.

I'll give you an example about just one of the experiments -- the one that says "men will say yes to a woman who walks up to them on the street and asks to have sex with them, and women will say no." Thereby proving that …

I'm mildly disgusted that these guys get to pass off what they did as science. They took a bunch of data from places that had positive bias in a dozen different places, then used that to support the dominant sexual paradigms without considering the first mover advantage and lock-in effect. (Sadly, this does a disservice to the OKCupid statisticians, who are rigorous about what they can and can't say about their data.) And then they added cartoon stereotypes on top of that -- Elmer Fudd is the man, tirelessly hunting for pussy, and Miss Marple the female detective, endlessly searching for the perfect mate.

I'll give you an example about just one of the experiments -- the one that says "men will say yes to a woman who walks up to them on the street and asks to have sex with them, and women will say no." Thereby proving that women have measurably different brains than men and are not interested in meaningless sex.

The problem is that, once you get into various different settings and various different scenarios, it turns out that most of the women didn't want to have sex with a random guy on campus because the last time they did it, it was terrible. [1] They weren't against meaningless sex at all -- they were against BAD sex. The men had never been propositioned by women, so didn't know that it probably wasn't going to be good.

In summary, this is one of those crap evolutionary psychology books that look suspiciously like "just so" stories that just happen to reflect the author's anecdotal prejudices. Avoid.

[1] yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/gender-differences-and-casual-sex-the-new-research/

Subjects

Sex (Psychology)
Desire
Men
Sexual behavior
Women