2026-10-02 13:42:47
This piece was first written in 2017, and first appeared on my website on October 1, 2026
This is my final essay in a series examining sexual harassment and assault.
The first essay can be read here, which also includes more information about the study participants. The second essay can be read here and the third essay can be read here.
I sometimes hear people ask why victims of sexual harassment or assault don’t report what happened to them (or why they sometimes wait years to make a report).
To help clarify the various reasons, I ran an anonymous study of 266 people in the U.S., asking those who have been victims of sexual harassment or assault but who have never reported it to:
“Please explain why you never reported any sexual harassment, sexual assault or unwanted sexual actions that have been directed at you.”
The free form text based responses to this question were then manually categorized based on what (subjectively) seemed to me to be the main theme of each response.
The results are below, as well as the full set of individual responses (after being anonymized to avoid any of the respondents being identifiable).
Warning: this post contains descriptions of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
FEMALE VICTIMS SUMMARY
When women were asked why they didn’t report the sexual harassment or sexual assault they had been the victims of, the most common reasons given (in order from highest to lowest frequency) were:
(1) they didn’t think it was a big enough deal to report
(2) they were embarrassed or felt shame about what happened
(3) they didn’t think people would believe them
(4) they didn’t think reporting would be helpful
(5) they were too young to know what to do or to know what was happening
(6) they were afraid of getting in trouble for reporting it
These results suggest that finding ways to reduce feelings of shame or embarrassment for victims could potentially increase reporting.
They also suggest that female victims who don’t report may not believe reporting will be beneficial to them (because they think they won’t be believed, or that nothing will happen as a result, or even that they might get in trouble from reporting). So finding ways to make reporting less costly to the victim and more likely to lead to justice could potentially also increase reporting.
MALE VICTIMS SUMMARY
Main result: when males were asked why they didn’t report sexual harassment or sexual assault they had been the victims of, they said (in order of most to least frequent responses):
(1) they didn’t think it was a big enough deal to report. [by far the most common response]
(2) they preferred to handle it themselves
(3) they felt it isn’t socially acceptable or understood for a man to be a victim of sexual harassment/assault
(4) they were embarrassed or ashamed to report it
(5) they didn’t want to cause problems with or for others
One thing these results suggest is that some male victims might report their experiences if they felt it was more socially understood that men can be sexual harassment/assault victims.
It’s notable that this pattern of lack of reporting is quite different than the female pattern overall, though a common element is feelings of embarrassment or shame being connected to a lack of reporting.
ALL FEMALE RESPONSES
Here are the details of what the female victims said, organized by category.
Category: Didn’t think it was a big enough deal to report:
* none of the harassment i’ve dealt with has been physical, all verbal and of it in a context where there was no point in reporting – random person on the street or at a job where it wasn’t a ‘big enough deal’ to call the person on it
* I have never had anything that I would consider that bad. I had cat calls when I was younger, but that is just the way it was.
* I guess I didn’t think it was warranted.
* I didn’t think it rose to the level of assault.
* Because I’ve never expressed this to that level of needing to get others involved.
* I never thought it was worthy of reporting.
* because there was not a need to
* It didn’t seem like something worth reporting or something that I could charge someone with
* Because I have never been physically touch or assaulted, I do respond negatively when being harassed verbally.
* The men involved were strangers on the street. There was really no one to report them to, except the police. Since the harassment wasn’t anything illegal– and these incidents took place in a city with a high crime rate– the police wouldn’t have done anything. They also wouldn’t have been able to find the individuals if I did report them.
* because there has never been any of big alarm
* Any instances I have experienced were in no way severe or harmful enough to report.
* Only had a cat calling incident and it doesn’t bother me. I just ignore it
* I never reported a cat-caller, because I didn’t feel it was necessary to do so. The verbal harassment by any strangers in the past was very minimal and did not last long. I would just quickly walk away.
* I didn’t think it was necessary.
* because it was my wife and I was just tired or mad at the time
* I really didn’t feel the need to report it. One of the people that harassed my was a friend.
Category: Embarrassment or shame:
* I didn’t report it to the police because I was embarrassed and didn’t think there was anything they could do about it.
* embarrassment
* This is a super complex question but I think the main reason is that I felt like it was so acceptable to them to do that it would embarrass them and me for me to report it. It would make them seem like an offender and a bad person when I think that they didn’t realize their behavior was bad.
* I felt too ashamed and embarrassed.
* I was embarrassed and thought I would get in trouble.
* I was embarrassed about being labeled as too sensitive and doubted that I would be believed. I would rather just pretend to other people that I was ok than risk bringing further ridicule upon myself.
* Because I was afraid to be ashamed, spreading rumors
* people always find a way to try and blame the victim, it’s embarrassing and shameful, there’s no repercussions for the people committing the acts
* I felt embarrassed
* I was embarrassed at the time
* I am embarrassed that it happened and I don’t want to tell anyone.
* Because I was embarrassed and didn’t want to cause trouble.
* It happened a long time ago. I was ashamed of what happened and scared I’d get in trouble because I was just a teen.
Didn’t think people would believe me:
* I was young and drinking under age and I stupidly went with a guy to his bedroom to watch tv. I felt like I wouldn’t be believed.
* I was scared and I wanted it to be over. I was afraid I wouldn’t be believed, or that it would have no impact on my attacker.
* Fear of not being believed and having repercussions at my job, specifically losing my job because my boss was the one doing this.
* I felt like no one would believe me, or they would not do anything about it. I was afraid if they said something the one doing the harassing would get angry and become worse towards me.
* I was afraid I would not be believed and afraid I would be blamed.
* Too much involved and the risk of not being taken seriously.
* No one would have believed me. And in one case, there was no one to be able to report it to.
Category: Didn’t think reporting would be helpful
* I didn’t feel anything would be done except make the person who harassed me angry
* I felt like nothing would be done. I was scared. And embarrassed.
* I would be ignored
* It was mostly strangers that i never saw again
* because i didn’t feel it was necessary to report because i had no case because it was just verbal
* I did not feel like it would be taken care of. I also just felt like I could deal with it.
I was too young to know what to do/realize what it was
* It was when I was younger and didn’t know better. I wasn’t a minor anymore.
* I was only 12 or 13 and didn’t really realize what had happened until much later. It didn’t seem reportable to me at the time.
* The only time it happened I was young enough that I didn’t realize it was sexual harassment until many years later.
* At the time of the sexual assault I was under age. My guardian wanted it kept quiet.
* Because I was young and thought that it was normal.
Category: Afraid of getting in trouble for reporting
* I was young and thought I’d get in trouble.
* I was sexually harassed at work when I was 16, it was by my boss’s friend and I was afraid to say anything. I was molested by my stepfather when I was 9-13, and I was afraid to tell my mother or anyone else at the time.
* The man making the sexual advances was my employer, the company owner. There wasn’t anyone above him to go to.
* I was assaulted twice in my life. The first time it happened, it was one of the fathers of kids from our high school, and I was sure I would be yelled at by my father if I asked for help. The second time it happened, it was in college, and it happened in a fraternity house. I was afraid to be kicked out of the house if I complained (I was a little sister).
* This hasn’t happened really but 2 times. I was young and was more afraid of getting in trouble by my parents.
Category: Preferred to handle it themselves
* I got my own revenge.
* I have not been subjected to any sexual harassment or assault that I could not handle myself. I am very fortunate in that aspect.
* I was able to handle them myself and the person never bothered me again.
* Mainly because I didn’t want to cause any issue or tension between the coworker. I stated my reason and my body language show that it’s unwanted. I think I did a very good job because it never happened again.
Category: Didn’t want to bring attention to it or myself
* I don’t want the issue to catch other people’s attention
* I didn’t want the attention and felt like it was my fault, some way
* I didn’t want to bring attention to myself or get anyone in trouble
Category: Didn’t want to cause problems with others
* Because I didn’t want to cause problems with others that new that person and me and also thought no one would believe me
* Because it was a family member who did it and I did not want to cause trouble
Category: Worried about further harassment if reported
* I didn’t want to call attention to it because I would risk being shamed for it or further harassed.
* Because I don’t want an issue and make it worse.
Category: No one to report it to
* There was no one to report it to.
* None of these things have ever happened to me at school or in a workplace, so there would be nothing to report. All the sexual harassment I’ve experienced has been catcalling and things of that nature, and there’s not exactly a place to report that behavior.
Category: Thinking it was my fault
* I thought it was my fault or it wasn’t really as bad as I thought it was.
Category: Thought the problem would resolve itself on its own
* I never reported the incident because I was in a relationship where most of these actions took place. I thought it would pass with time, so I wanted to forgive and move on instead of leave.
Category: Uncomfortable talking about it
* I was young and felt uncomfortable talking to anyone about it.
Category: Used to it
* I suppose I was used to it. When it came to the most extreme event, I didn’t know the man so I didn’t report and I was young.
Category: Didn’t want to perceived as bad for reporting
* I just accepted it. I didn’t want to seem like a prude or tattle-tell.
Category: Takes responsibility for it happening
* I’m just not into that. When it’s happened, I’ve placed myself in the situations and I’ was responsible for it. Also, what some consider “harassment,” I consider welcome attention and a little big of an ego boost.
Category: Other
* When I was just a child an older boy asked me if he could “kiss my *****.” I said yes before I understood what it meant. When he told me, I ran home and hid. He called the house that night multiple times asking me if he could do it. I became afraid and told my parents what was going on… my father yelled at me that I was a whore because I told the kid I wanted it, and then my father shoved my head into our bathroom mirror and made me brush my hair while he told me to do so, like “the slut” that I was. I went to bed that night realizing that I was very alone in the world, my mother would not stick up for me, and that I was on my own if something horrible happened, because my father would not support me.
* A.) Because it first happened when I was a CHILD, and I was too young to know to tell anyone yet. B.) The second time, another adult male told me that he knew where my mother was and would kill her if I told anyone. C.) Then, when I was older and I tried to tell an adult friend of the family about yet another man (yes, really), she told me that no man would ever try that with a teen and that I was mistaken. D.) THEN, when a step-sibling was told to get lost repeatedly, and I stayed away as much as possible, but that didn’t stop him, and I told my parents, they thought I was lying. That, despite the fact that he was the horrible black sheep of the family (and everyone knew it), and I was the good kid. E.) Then finally, when it happened when I was in the military, my friends helped to kick the guy out, but we all said aloud that no one would care to believe, would try to blame me, etc., so I/we didn’t. All friends there said they knew that (just like I knew that) from how many times they tried to speak up in life and no one cared or believed them. In fact, the victim is typically blamed. I’ve spent my life covering from head to toe to try to keep males (the bad ones) away, as a result. I don’t flirt. The non-flirting and very conservative dress is due to the people who find any excuse they can to try to blame you for it. But when you’re 3 year’s old, you’re not flirting or dressing wild. When you’re in the military wearing baggy BDU’s (uniform and boots), you’re not dressed wild or provocatively. People blaming and dismissing is a MAJOR part of why people who molest, harass and rape get to continue doing what they do. It’s an epidemic. And it is only this last week that I think SOME people are only somewhat listening. Most people didn’t care when the non-celebs tried to speak up for years. #metoo
—
ALL RESPONSES FOR MEN
Here are the specific responses men gave, by category.
Category: Didn’t think it was a big enough deal to report
* I didn’t take them too serious
* Wasn’t that bad
* It didn’t seem like enough to report or worth dealing with such a process.
* I was a kid, I was in dubious situations, skipping school, drinking, whatever, and when it was passed I’d suffered no real harm so I really didn’t care that much about it.
* Because i was never physically harmed. Plus i felt fine and that i was okay in the situation. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
* I didn’t feel particularly threatened and considered it not worth the hassle
* I don’t see the point. I’m a guy
* It just didn’t seem worth the bother and I can take care of myself, I don’t want to cause anybody else any trouble.
* While I was not interested in the person sexually, I was not particularly offended or annoyed enough to make a big deal about it.
* They were minor, not at work/school and not criminal
* It didn’t seem serious, other party was “joking around.”
* Because there were no illegal actions involved
* It’s just been harmless flirting in my opinion. It never got to an extreme situation where i thought my life was in some type of danger of some sort. I can take care of myself.
* They weren’t that serious in my opinion to take it to that level.
* There really was never much to speak of, and it seemed like the consequences would’ve been pretty bad for what would’ve seemed charming if it was remotely reciprocated.
* It didn’t really matter.
* Because it was never necessary for me to do that.
* It is not worth the trouble. I worked at a company that was 86% female. It happens
* I never felt threatened or in danger.
* They were harmless and none serious have happened to me.
* I didn’t feel it surpassed the level of intensity that would require formal follow up.
* The times I experienced these things were very mild. No need for police involvement.
* Was not severe enough
* It was never called for.
* I just didn’t feel cat calling was a reason to report some one I mean I could of but it seemed so petty.
* The incidents were isolated and alcohol was involved; I did not consider it serious enough, or worth reporting.
* because it was just a girl trying to impress me, or connect with my by trying to get me to touch her etc
* I did not think it was that bad, it was not anything serious enough to report and I did not want the hassle.
* The only time it happened, it wasn’t problematic or significant enough to involve an outside party.
* Not that serious lol.
* it was too minor
* because the harassment that happened for me is just like a joke
* There is no point, not worth the hassle
* None of the harassments seemed that serious, and I could handle them myself. I think it is easier for men than women, although there have been occasions where I lost jobs when it was ‘understood’ that I should cooperate sexually with someone. I was never able to do this, and have only had sexual partners I was physically attracted to.
Category: Preferred to handle it themselves
* Because I am a man and I can handle most women that are too aggressive without getting the law involved.
* I am a guy and i’ve never been harassed to the extent that I couldn’t ‘handle it myself.’
* I figured that I could handle it on my own, and I really wasn’t sure that it was worth going to the trouble of bringing in third parties. I was also pretty young at the time, and may not have even considered that it was something that I could get authorities involved with.
* I would rather take care of things myself.
* I felt I could handle the situation myself.
Isn’t socially acceptable or understood for a man to be a victim of sexual harassment or assault or to report it
* It isn’t socially acceptable for a man to be the victim of sexual assault or harassment.
* Because men reporting women is viewed as strange.
* I am a man and it would have not been taken seriously.
* Males don’t typically do that
* Since, I am man, it just didn’t feel right. As a result, I just ignore it, despite, feeling uncomfortable in the moment.
Category: Embarrassment or shame
* I found it very embarrassing.
* it was a 1 time thing and I didn’t want to be embarrassed
* I felt it was embarrassing and would do nothing.
* Feel embarrassed to admit it.
Category: Didn’t want to cause problems with others
* Didn’t want to make waves
* I didn’t want to cause any trouble.
* because I didn’t want to get the person trouble, I just felt like they are being stupid and didn’t pose a real threat to me, and I thought it would be weird for a guy to report another guy for sexual harassment. Plus I was working in an environment where I was of one race and most of my coworkers (including the offender) were of another race and I didn’t want to strain that relationship with everyone I worked with by complaining about the guy.
Category: Afraid of getting in trouble for reporting
* Most of them were situations that I considered to be innocuous and not worth the trouble, ie, an acquaintance grabbed my butt or a stranger on the street said something to me. The one occasion that I probably should have reported to the police (sexual assault) happened when I was very young and intoxicated, so I never said anything.
* I am a man and I ignored the female sexual remarks for months because I didn’t want to take a chance on having future problems at work because of the company management.
Category: I was too young to know what to do/realize what it was
* I was so young, i was only 11 and I was afraid to tell anyone.
* When I was 12 I was used sexually but not sodomized
Category: Didn’t think reporting would be helpful
* Never thought anything would be done about it
* It was always spur of the moment situations where I couldn’t reach out for help or in some situations couldn’t even pin point the perpetrator such as in a crowded area at a concert or night club.
Category: Didn’t want to continue thinking about it
* It was something I did not want to get further into
Category: Didn’t want others to know about it
* i don’t want to expose it
Category: Didn’t think report would be believed
* As a gender-fluid individual, I’ve had difficulties when I tried to report an incident of sexual assault. I was questioned at length even though I was making the complaint. The officer suggested that I might be a prostitute trying to get back at a pimp or customer. My mental health was questioned and I was openly called a names like sweetie, honey, sweet-check and sissy. I felt like the attempt to report the assault was just more harassment.
2026-08-14 11:17:53
For many years, I’ve thrown social experiments as part of a group I founded, called Ergo. Our rule: we can never repeat the same event format. Once we’ve used one, it’s dead, forcing each event to be experimental. Here are a few of our bizarre/entertaining past events:
1) Novelty party: each attendee brings something interesting (an experience, food, or object) that they believe other attendees will not have experienced before. A winner is crowned based on surveying attendees about how novel and interesting they found each thing.
2) Radical Honesty Gathering: the rules are that you can ask anyone about ANYTHING. It’s on them to state bluntly if they don’t want to talk about that subject. If they DO choose to talk about it, they must be completely honest in all their responses (but no being an asshole).
3) Elevating Conversations: an event focused on advanced conversational techniques – how to go from “having a conversation” to having an amazing conversation. After each such advanced technique was presented, participants split into pairs or groups to try/practice them.
4) Fight Club: we had a long list of fight types participants could engage in, from somewhat dangerous (e.g., wrestling or boxing with body blows, but no head blows) to safe (rap battles, dance-offs). You could fight anyone so long as you could mutually agree on a fight type.
5) Outlast: a “survivor” style event where attendees get voted out of the event by other attendees (then have to watch from the sidelines). It included a series of mini-competitions (team and individual) that altered immunity during the main game.
6) Our Shame: before the event, participants anonymously submit things they are ashamed of. Everyone sees these. Participants can advocate for why others shouldn’t be ashamed of a thing. Specific types of shame (with real examples from the group) were discussed in small groups.
If you’re in the NYC area and want to apply to join Ergo, you can do so here: https://ergoevents.org
This piece was first written on July 26, 2026, and first appeared on my website on August 13, 2026.
2026-07-25 04:11:00
It’s sometimes easy to forget that institutions often arise as solutions to problems.
For example:
• Journalism uncovers and spreads information that matters to people that would otherwise be hard for them to know.
• Education teaches people what they’ll need to know that they won’t easily learn on their own.
• Science increases our understanding of (and control over) reality.
• Civil Courts right wrongs between people.
• Finance (among other things) enables money to move between those with excesses of it (looking to profit) and those with good uses for it.
In the case of persistent needs, when institutions do less of what they were designed to do (especially when they pretend they’re still doing it), it creates societal dysfunction. An important role is no longer fulfilled, while many people may believe that it is still being done, and that niche is already filled – so it’s hard for anything else to fulfill this missing role.
The reality is that some societal institutions have stopped doing what they claim as much as they used to.
Usually this is not because someone has swapped the institution for something else, but because of a combination of:
• Zombie-behavior: continuation of the same *activities* even though they no longer make sense or achieve the goals they once did, for instance due to failing to adapt to a changing world
•Self-perpetuation: doing what allows the institution to expand (or even just survive), even though this comes at the expense of carrying out its purpose
• Gaming: doing the easy thing that looks like the right behaviors instead of the actually valuable behaviors
• Capture: doing what’s good for those that now officially or unofficially control or heavily influence the institution, instead of what’s good for society
Of course, not all institutions are dysfunctional; some still serve their purposes. But there has been substantial fraying.
A great future for humanity will require either finding better ways to repair vital institutions that have declined, or replacing them with something even better at fulfilling their roles.
This piece was first written on July 24, 2026 and first appeared on my website on September 14, 2026.
2026-07-02 12:21:19
This piece was first written in 2017, and first appeared on my website on July 1, 2026
This is an attempt to find out.
This essay is the third in a series examining sexual harassment and assault.
The first essay can be read here, which also includes more information about the study participants. The second essay can be read here.
The results shown below are from a study I ran about sexual harassment and sexual assault on a sample of people in the U.S. (574 people recruited on our study recruitment platform, Positly.com, answer questions about their experience as victims and/or as those who carried out self-described forms of harassment or assault, and 266 of these people were also asked to give free-form written responses for some questions).
In this post, you’ll see sexual harassers and assaulters attempt to give explanations for their own behavior, with the hope that seeing these responses will help us understand the forces underlying this big problem a little better.
Warning: this post contains extensive discussion about (and numerous accounts of) sexual harassment and sexual assault. Also, note that it is extremely likely that there was underreporting of harassment- and assault related behaviors in this survey (e.g., due to unwillingness to admit to it even on an anonymous survey). The purpose here is to better understand the forces underlying harassment and assault, rather than to get accurate estimates of rates of people doing these actions. Responses were anonymized and typos corrected. Responses were deleted when they were not substantive (e.g., “I don’t know”) or when they misunderstood the question.
Also note that not all examples given by participants are actually of sexual harassment or assault, and while some examples are immoral, not all examples given are immoral (e.g., ones that involve truly consensual exchanges) – it’s best to think of these as the examples people give when asked if they have engaged in behavior that’s potentially related to harassment or assault.
I attempted to group responses by the main motivation mentioned by the responders (i.e., putting together similar responses under a header). So the header above each grouping of responses is mine, but the responses below the headers were each written by different study participants.
—
Topic 1: Cat-calling – what did people say about why they have done it?
Questions asked: (1) What were the most recent circumstances in which you cat-called a person that you don’t know (by making a sexual whistle, shout, or comment of a sexual nature)? — (2) What do you think the *true reason* was that you cat-called a person that you don’t know (by making a sexual whistle, shout or comment of a sexual nature)?
MALE CAT-CALLERS:
Overview: male cat-callers mainly said they did it because they were hoping it would lead to sex, or to show off in front of friends, or to get noticed by (or attention from) the other person, or to signal to the other person that they found that person attractive. 18% of males reported having cat-called before.
Hoping for sex from the person
To impress friends or show off
To get noticed by the person / get their attention
To let the person know you find them attractive
To see how the person reacts
For self-entertainment
To meet the person
As an immediate reaction to attractiveness
Unclear
FEMALE CAT-CALLERS:
Takeaway: female cat-callers mainly said they did it as a joke, or for fun, or to get the person’s attention. 9% of females reported having cat-called before.
Joking/to get laughs
I leaned out the window and told a boy “NICE BUTT!” I was with my friends and we were having fun at an event. The funny thing is that had I seen him later, I would have been too embarrassed to talk to him. — He really had a nice butt. We were out. I was with my friends. We were excited and having a good time. I think I did it because it would make my friends laugh. Oh God, I am as bad as men who do this, aren’t I?Fun
To get the person’s attention
To feel a certain way
Other
—
Topic 2: Making unwanted requests for sexual favors – what did people say about why they have done it?
Questions asked: (1) What were the most recent circumstances in which you made unwanted *requests for sexual favors* that you continued to make even though you believed the requests were unwanted? — (2) What do you think the *true reason* was that you made unwanted *requests for sexual favors* that you continued to make even though you believed the requests were unwanted?
FEMALES MAKING UNWANTED REQUESTS:
Overview: 4% of females reported having made unwanted persistent requests for sexual favors.
MALES MAKING UNWANTED REQUESTS:
Overview: males who made unwanted requests for sexual favors said they did it mainly because they desired sex, or because they hoped the other person would change their mind about not wanting to give those sexual favors. 6% of males reported having made unwanted persistent requests for sexual favors.
For sex
Hoped they would eventually change their mind
To see what would happen
Feeling that the other person should change their mind
Perceived mixed signals
—
Topic 3: Verbal sexual harassment – what did people say about why they have done it?
Questions asked: (1) What were the most recent circumstances in which you *verbally* harassed another person in a manner that was *sexual in nature*? — (2) What do you think the *true reason* was that you *verbally* harassed another person in a manner that was *sexual in nature*?
FEMALES DOING WHAT THEY DESCRIBE AS VERBAL SEXUAL HARASSMENT:
Overview: 5% of females reported having verbally sexually harassed others
Joking
To hurt the person
MALES DOING WHAT THEY DESCRIBE AS VERBAL SEXUAL HARASSMENT:
Overview: males who said they had verbally sexually harassed someone most commonly said they did it in order to hurt the other person, but also mentioned a mix of idiosyncratic motivations. 9% of the male sample reported having verbally sexually harassed others.
To hurt the person
To express anger
To impress friends
Thought the person would like it
Feeling of power
To show the person you find them attractive
Drunkenness
—
Topic 4: Making persistent unwanted sexual advances – what did people say about why they have done it?
What were the most recent circumstances in which you made unwanted *sexual advances* towards a person that you continued to make even though you believed the sexual advances were unwanted? — What do you think the *true reason* was that you made unwanted *sexual advances* towards a person that you continued to make even though you believed the sexual advances were unwanted?
FEMALES MAKING PERSISTENT UNWANTED SEXUAL ADVANCES:
Overview: 4% of females reported having made persistent unwanted sexual advances
MALES MAKING PERSISTENT UNWANTED SEXUAL ADVANCES:
Overview: males who said they had made unwanted sexual advances mainly said they did it hoping for sex, but a couple of males mentioned doing it out of anger and some mentioned other idiosyncratic motivations. 9% of males reported having made unwanted sexual advances.
Hoping for sex
Anger
Hoping for reciprocation of feelings
Thought the person was playing hard to get
Fun
Hoping to take sexual activity further
Unclear
—
Topic 5: Physical sexual harassment – what did people say about why they have done it?
Questions asked: (1) What were the most recent circumstances in which you *physically* harassed another person in a manner that was *sexual in nature*? — (2) What do you think the *true reason* was that you *physically* harassed another person in a manner that was *sexual in nature*?
FEMALES DOING WHAT THEY DESCRIBE AS PHYSICAL SEXUAL HARASSMENT:
Overview: about 4% of the female sample said they had done this, though only one person among those wrote about what they did.
MALE DOING WHAT THEY DESCRIBE AS PHYSICAL SEXUAL HARASSMENT:
Overview: the responses that males gave to why they physically sexually harassed someone were idiosyncratic, all in different categories. Overall, few men reported having physically sexually harassed someone (about 4% of the male sample), which is likely in part due to an unwillingness to admit physical sexual harassment (even in an anonymous survey).
Anger
Defending someone else
Drunkenness
Impulsive desire to touch the person
Thought the person was coming onto them
Hoping to take sexual activity further
—
Topic 6: Carrying out unwanted sexual activity – what did people say about why they have done it?
Questions asked: (1) What were the most recent circumstances in which you had sexual activity with a person when you had reason to doubt whether the person actually wanted to engage in that sexual activity, but you continued anyway? — (2) What do you think the *true reason* was that you had sexual activity with a person when you had reason to doubt whether the person actually wanted to engage in that sexual activity, but you continued anyway?
FEMALES SAYING THAT THEY CARRIED OUT UNWANTED SEXUAL ACTIVITY:
Overview: few women reported having continued unwanted sexual activity (when they had reason to doubt the other person wanted to engage in it), only about 4% of the female sample. Only one wrote an explanation:
MALES SAYING THAT THEY CARRIED OUT UNWANTED SEXUAL ACTIVITY:
Overview: about 8% of the male sample reported having continued unwanted sexual activity (when they had reason to doubt the other person wanted to engage in it). The most common explanation given for this behavior was having sexual desire to engage in the sex act (or complete the act if already started), coupled with the other person not explicitly stopping them.
Having sexual desire without the other person stopping them from acting
For sex
Wanting to finish the sexual activity
Other
What do we conclude from this? What most surprised me was the wide variety of motivations for sexual harassment and sexual assault, including:
Sexual harassment and assault appear to derive from a wide variety of motivations, which are worth grappling with when we consider how to reduce sexual harassment and sexual assault in society.
2026-07-01 03:18:30
We often talk as though we are in direct contact with reality – as though our eyes show us the world, and our minds read off the facts. But between whatever reality fundamentally is and the experience you’re having right now, there are a surprising number of layers. At each layer, two types of error happen: information gets left out, and bias creeps in. By the time experience reaches you, there’s the potential for a great deal of both to have accumulated.
Put another way, rather than perceiving reality, we perceive the output of a long chain of noisy translations.
Let’s walk up this chain layer by layer, starting from the bottom (fundamental physics) and ending at the stories we tell.
Layer 1: We only make measurements
On one common reading of quantum mechanics (part of the deepest description of reality that physicists have a reasonably high degree of confidence in), a fundamental object is the wave function.
We don’t observe the wave function directly. We make measurements, and those represent properties, such as the position or “spin” of a particle. We can think of this as observing just one realization (or taking one branch) of the deeper thing. The wave function, in a sense, captures all of the realizations we might have observed but didn’t.
That means that at the most basic level, before biology or psychology even enter the picture, there’s already a chasm between us and the fundamental nature of things.
Rather than reading reality, we sample a thin projection of it. We’re stuck accessing reality only through measurements. But that’s just the first layer of translation.
Layer 2: Measurements turn into signals
Measurements are not something you can directly experience. Your sense organs make the measurements. When light hits your eye, first a chemical reaction occurs, then this chemical reaction kicks off electrical signals – representations of the light (not light itself).
Your brain processes those electrical signals, and out of that, an experience is produced in your mind. Put another way, your brain creates a simulation, and that’s what you experience. For instance, in your brain’s simulation, you experience the vivid sensation of red. But there’s no such thing as red out there in the world – red exists ONLY in the simulations produced by our minds.
Out there in the world, light of certain frequency bands is hitting our eyes. Inside our minds, the experience of red is happening.
The same is true of sound, smell, warmth, and every other quality of experience: they are our brain’s rendering of the measurements made by our sense organs. They are not the measurements themselves, and certainly not the underlying reality.
Three distinct sorts of failures can occur at this layer.
First, the signal itself can be distorted, such as might happen if the optic nerve is damaged or if cataracts tint the light entering our eyes.
Second, the simulation that your brain creates can be unfaithful to reality, misrepresenting what’s there. We see this most clearly with optical illusions.
The reason we find them interesting is that they lay bare ways our brain’s rendering of reality comes apart from reality itself.
We can only tell this is happening because we can check our internal rendering against something indisputable to prove a mismatch (e.g., by using a ruler or checking the color of different pixels).
The unsettling implication is that the renderings we can’t easily check are sometimes misleading, too. But we lack the awareness or the right ruler to catch them.
The third distortion at this layer is that our simulations of reality always leave out information. For example, our eyes can’t see ultraviolet or infrared light, so those wavelengths simply never make it into our experience, no matter how carefully we look. Intriguingly, we don’t perceive a gap in the color spectrum. Presumably, that wouldn’t have been useful for our ancient ancestors, so evolution didn’t bother with it. We aren’t even naturally aware that other “colors” (well, really, frequencies) of light are possible. We feel as though we’re seeing the full spectrum (while bees and butterflies enjoy ultraviolet patterns on flowers that are hidden to us).
Every sense is like this. Each provides us with a window of information, which we use to simulate aspects of reality. A lot of information is silently dropped because it lies beyond the window frame. We remain convinced that these narrow portals into reality show the whole thing.
Layer 3: We bucket the simulation
A raw field of colors and sounds may be a partial approximation to how an infant sees the world, as its brain learns furiously how to structure things. But that isn’t yet a world you can act in. To use your experience effectively, your mind has to carve up experience. It has to decide that this region is a table, that one a person, and that other one, the floor.
This chunking happens automatically and below conscious awareness. It’s enormously useful. But it’s another layer of interpretation laid on top of an already-imperfect simulation, and it can distort things in its own ways.
For one thing, the boundaries we draw can simply be mistaken – we can mistake a coat on a chair for a person the moment we enter a room. Or, if you’re me, you can briefly think you see cats in the dark when on vacation because you see cats in the dark when you’re at home.
Our categories take genuinely complex things and force them into a bucket. You may, when walking in a park, stumble on a rare bird – the last of its species, on the brink of extinction. Your brain just says “bird”.
Moreover, we sometimes get our chunks wrong. You walk by a fresh-faced man with long hair and incorrectly think “woman”. Or, in my case, you see a symbol tattooed on a classmate’s arm and think Swastika. It turned out to be the manji – a sacred Buddhist symbol representing good fortune.
Tremendous variation can hide inside even simple-seeming categories, let alone complex categories like “tree”, consisting of tens of thousands of species.
Buckets produce compression, and compression is what makes the world manageable, but sometimes a lot is lost in the process.
Importantly, the more you pay attention to a type of thing and the more you understand about it, the more refined and subtle your buckets are likely to become. That’s not just a tree. It’s a Sycamore tree. And it’s not just a Sycamore tree; it’s Platanus wrightii – an Arizona Sycamore.
Layer 4: We ignore almost everything
Even with the compression achieved by this chunking up of reality, there’s far too much information for us to process, so our brain uses another heuristic: if something doesn’t draw our attention, it’s ignored.
When we’re told to carefully count how many times people pass a basketball, we can, with remarkable ease, miss the person in a gorilla suit that’s walking between them.
Or, if you’re having a conversation with me, and you ask me to close my eyes, then you ask me to recall what you were wearing, I’ll be clueless, despite having been looking at you moments ago. Heck, with my eyes closed, I may not even be able to tell you what I’M wearing.
On the other hand, if you try the same thing with a person who works in fashion, they’ll not only be able to describe what you are wearing, but also make a guess about the brand.
We notice what we find interesting, important, or surprising, as well as what we’ve trained ourselves or been trained to notice. And we are unaware of most of the rest. This (in part) explains why eyewitness testimony has proven to be much more fallible than a lot of people assume.
You didn’t know that person was about to rob the store you’re in, so even though they walked right in front of you, you have no recollection of what they look like.
Even when you realized that they were robbing the store, your attention was drawn to the knife in their hand or the exit door, rather than the contour of their brow, lips, and nose.
Our limited attention acts as yet another filter on what makes it into our experience. But one layer remains.
Layer 5: We turn noticed chunks into meaningful ones
Even once you’ve chunked the world into objects and categories, and we’re actually paying attention to some of them, the process of perceiving isn’t complete. Your brain still has to decide what it all means.
A Sycamore tree to Bob has no special significance, whereas to Sally it’s where she had her first kiss, and to Elio, it’s what his grandfather died under. To me, it was a phrase served to me in an ad when I was looking for a type of tree to use in this example.
Once we’ve chunked a scene, it gets woven into a story. Our reflective minds run on such stories.
The stories tell us what’s important, what’s threatening, and what’s good. But this final layer of interpretation is steered heavily by things that have nothing to do with the scene itself: our identities, our motivations, our worldviews, our past experiences, our anticipations, and our social groups.
This is why two people can look at an identical event – even identical data represented in a chart – and walk away with opposite understandings. They are running the same visual input through different meaning-making machinery constructed within different lives.
Of course, that’s not how this all feels. The meaning we make feels like it’s obviously the way things are – the one true story – or, not even a story – just reality itself.
We, of course, don’t think of the wave function that we collapsed (or took a branch of) with our measurements. Or the electrical signals that flow through the retina. Or even the bucketing we did to compress the information. We don’t, of course, pay attention to what we failed to pay attention to. And we rarely consider alternative stories our brains could have told us (but didn’t) about what we did pay attention to.
This may sound grim, but it’s not a complete epistemic disaster. Despite all this, we know a lot about how to get reality to do things for us. Science often works to discover new truths. Bridges rarely fall. Some stories are accurate, even if they aren’t complete.
The practical upshot of it all is epistemic humility.
It helps to remember, from time to time, that what we’re experiencing is a model, a series of translations removed from whatever is actually out there. And to aim to make our estimates and opinions at least somewhat more uncertain as a result.
Doing so has a happy effect: it makes it easier to consider alternative perspectives that contradict our own. That’s useful societally, where there’s an overabundance of perspectives that are rigidly held. But it’s also helpful in relationships, friendships, and our work.
We can’t see reality directly – it’s not actually the sort of thing that’s capable of being seen. But we can, at least, stop mistaking the top of the stack for the bottom.
This piece was first written on June 30, 2026, and first appeared on my website on July 23, 2026.
2026-04-14 00:49:45
I was disheartened to discover how many people either never learned the basic mental models or learned garbled versions of them. As a public service, here’s a concise refresher. Which of these did you not already know?
• Badhart’s Law: if a large organization doesn’t measure anything, it’s unlikely to achieve anything
• The Zareto Principle: roughly 20% of effects come from just 0.001% of causes
• The Dunning–Kruger-Kruger-Dunning Effect: people with little knowledge about the Dunning-Kruger effect will confidently claim that it’s about how people with little skill believe they are more skilled than experts
• White Swan Theory: most real-world impact comes from the most commonly occurring instances, since they’re so numerous (e.g., most people’s perspective on whether swans are dickheads comes from their interactions with white swans, not black ones)
• Zuckerberg’s Number: technology enables us to break free from evolutionary constraints by barely having a social relationship with 5000 people
• Barkinson’s Law: regardless of how much time is allocated for a project, many people will start working on it at the last possible moment
• Schloccam’s Razor: Among competing explanations that all fit the facts, use the one that is most useful
• The Savile Effect: Attempts by powerful people to suppress information often succeed – it’s just that you only hear about the ones that fail
• The Autism Effect: when a trait’s apparent prevalence skyrockets due to broadening definitions and improved screening, somebody will inevitably blame its rise on really stupid shit like Tylenol or vaccines
• Stalin’s Razor: don’t attribute to stupidity what could be adequately explained by the person in charge being a dangerous, power-obsessed psycho
• Musk’s Law: those with tremendous success early in life become convinced that they are geniuses in other domains where they very much aren’t
• Daze’s Rule: people will be more impressed if you use fancy math to make a point than if you just say the same thing
• Dunderham’s Law: the fastest way to summon wrong answers online is to post the right one.
• Godberg’s Law: As people get increasingly angry at something happening in society, the probability that someone eventually tries to blame the Jews for it approaches one
• Dumbar’s Principle: famous number about humans inevitably have very stupid origin stories (e.g., ~150 stable social ties, 10000 steps for health, 8 glasses of water per day, a >2.9013 positive-to-negative ratio needed to flourish)
• The COVID Principle: people will often risk their lives before they risk standing apart from their tribe
• Diner Equilibrium: when nobody is actually happy with the outcome of a negotiation, but everyone is satisfied enough not to complain
• Multipolar party: when, despite nobody being in charge, humans miraculously self-assemble and cooperate to solve challenges, as often occurs at Burning Man
Just in case you didn’t catch on: these are parodies of “real” mental models 
This piece was first written on April 13, 2026, and first appeared on my website on April 30, 2026.