Good news! Sex not only feels great, it’s also one of our greatest allies in the struggle against entropy… .

SEXUAL INFORMATION

by Tom W. Bell

Why is sex so great?

Why is sex so great? I take it as a matter of fact that sex is great. Most of you will, I think, agree. If you’re at all like me, you feel that sex is one of the best things about life. Sex is a Good Thing. But sex is also a Mysterious Thing. Considering the power of its attraction, it’s time we came to a better understanding of just why we like sex so much. Such knowledge may help us to get more and better sex - something I think we all favor!

You don’t have to agree that sex is great to take an interest in this investigation, however. If you don’t think sex is so great, the question for you will be, ‘why do other people think sex is so great?’ You may wonder what you’re missing out on. Stick around. Indulge your voyeuristic tendencies. You might learn something.

When we first encounter the question, ‘Why is sex so great?’ it seems too easy. We’re tempted to reply, ‘Sex is so great because it feels so great!’ Like the kind of sex that this attitude fosters, however, this answer leaves us unsatisfied. It’s all over too fast! We want more answers. The question now becomes ‘Why does sex feel so great?’

Again we have an easy answer at hand: ‘Sex feels so great because it gives us orgasms, and orgasms feel great.’ Now we’re getting somewhere, though we still need more answers. First of all, we have to ask why orgasms feel so great. Secondly, we have to account for the fact that sex is great even apart from the orgasms it produces. Why is sex per se so great? We’ll get to that question later. Let’s deal with the first question first, since answering it will help us to answer the second question as well.

Orgasms

Sure, orgasms feel great, but why? I’ll skip the neurophysiological, psychological and philosophical accounts of how we feel pleasures. We’re not seeking the mechanisms that make orgasms feel great; we’re seeking the reason orgasms feel great in the first place.

The theory of evolution gives us just such a reason: orgasms feel great because we’ve been naturally selected to enjoy them. Animals wired up to enjoy sex tend to engage in more sex than animals that find sex unpleasant, and animals that have more sex have more babies. All else being equal, then, evolution leads to orgasms.

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We’re not just naturally selected to enjoy orgasms because they convince us to have more sex, however. Even after the lure of the pleasures of sexual union bring male and female together, orgasms play an important role in helping conception. It’s pretty obvious how important orgasms are to the male’s reproduction; a male ejaculates 200-500 million sperm when he orgasms, each of which carries a full copy of his DNA.$^{1}$ The male’s orgasm marks the successful transmission, if not replication, of his genetic information.

Somewhat overlooked, however, is how a female’s orgasms might help her to reproduce. As a woman nears orgasm, her vagina becomes well lubricated and the muscles in the outer third of her vagina contract, eventually pulsing vigorously as she climaxes.$^{2}$ I hypothesize that these erotic responses help a woman to conceive. Her lubrication helps the transit of the male’s sperm to her uterus and beyond, conveying them to any fertile eggs that might be waiting to be fertilized. (As an indication of the importance of the vaginal environment to the sperm’s survival, note that a woman’s production of cervical mucus peaks as she ovulates. This mucus neutralizes the vagina’s natural acidity, rendering it more hospitable to sperm, and provides the sperm with a liquid ‘highway’ to the uterus.$^{3}$) Furthermore, the contraction and throbbing of the vagina’s outer muscles probably help the woman to retain the male’s sperm, and even pump it inward.

It’s only fair to note, however, that orgasms are neither necessary nor sufficient for reproduction. A lot of sexually repressed women become mothers, and at least a few men have been unpleasantly surprised to find that the preseminal fluid they emit prior to ejaculating carries sperm. (That’s why even well-timed cottus interruptus makes for a poor birth-control technique; it falls about 20-25 percent of the time.$^{4}$) So you can have plenty of babies without having any orgasms. Likewise you can have plenty of orgasms without having any babies, thanks to good luck, birth control, infertility, masturbation, oral sex, homosexuality, or various combinations of the above.$^{5}$ But these exceptions don’t nullify the general rule that orgasms (and sexual pleasure in general) correlates positively with reproduction. Nature tends to work around necessary and sufficient conditions. It’s enough that orgasms tend to encourage reproduction.

$^{1}$ Lloyd Saxton, The Individual, Marriage, and the Family (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1980), 124.

$^{2}$ Ibid., 135.

$^{3}$ Ibid., 424.

$^{4}$ Ibid., 423.

$^{5}$ One might well wonder why, on the average, human females orgasm relatively infrequently relative to males of the species. Perhaps it’s because it’s much more difficult for the male to reproduce without orgasming. But why have we been naturally selected that way? Due to their generally greater strength, males have tended to initiate and control sexual encounters. Perhaps this has made the incentives of orgasm pay off more for males’ genes; because males could force sex on females, it is primarily the former that have been selected to enjoy sex. The fact that females have an equal to greater capacity to enjoy sex shows that the picture is more complex than this, however.

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It seems likely, then, that we can thank evolution for having made orgasms feel so great. Orgasms both tempted our ancestors into mating and made their sexual intercourse more likely to result in conception. Their orgasms led them to reproduce more rapidly than those denied the wiring for such pleasures, and helped them to transmit the ‘orgasm-gene’ to us, their descendants. And that’s why we think that orgasms feel so great.

But what is reproduction but the transmission and continued preservation of genetic information? Were it not for sexual reproduction, the forces of entropy would have obliterated our delicate and complex structures long, long ago. For ages orgasms have served as beacons, guiding human development through the shadows of fear, weakness, and stupidity. Now we stand at the end of our species’ difficult pilgrimage, nearly ready to free ourselves from the physical vessels that our ancestor’s orgasms have delivered to us.

Whatever physical forms our mastery of genetics, uploading, and robotics allow us to adopt, however, I’m convinced that we will always enjoy something akin to the pleasures of orgasm. For one thing, they feel too good to give up! But more importantly, I think that our enjoyment of orgasms depends on something deeper than our possession of the ‘orgasm gene’. It’s rooted in our software, and that’s something we’ll never give up. Orgasms feel great because they chronicle the transmission, preservation, and augmentation of information. Orgasms express perfectly our joy with overcoming the dark forces of entropy. Orgasms celebrate extropy.6

Sex per se

Sex offers more than just orgasms, however. After all, auto-eroticism delivers more intense orgasms than shared sex. But who would give up sex for masturbation? Any connoisseur of the intimate arts will tell you the same thing: Sex is great per se.

Why? Well, we’ve already seen why orgasms are so great; it’s because they correlate with the exchange of genetic information. As it turns out, we like sex (with or without orgasms) for much the same reason. Sex is so great because it allows us to communicate so much information.

Consider what a rich exchange of information sex permits. For one thing, sex is multi-channel; it uses all of our senses. We see bare flesh, hear gentle breathing, smell the subtle perfumes of warm skin, taste sweet, wet lips, and feel … well, we feel fantastic! Compare this cornucopia of stimuli with the relative poverty of watching TV (sight and sound), or enjoying a fine meal (taste and smell, with a bit of sight and touch).

Sex is not only multi-channel, it’s interactive as well. Unlike relatively passive activities like watching a movie or listening to a lecture, sex requires you to take part, to both sense and respond. Sex is a form of communication — you don’t just receive input, you give a lot of output, too.

6 In his Philosophical Explanations, Robert Nozick draws a parallel between mental and physical pleasures, and asks, ‘What is the mind’s excitement and sensuality? What its orgasm?’ (p. 24) It is just this question that I’ve tried to answer.

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The rate of information exchange in sexual activity climbs still higher when lovers focus on particularly sensitive areas of the body. Erogenous zones such as the lips, breast, and genitals have the body’s highest ratios of nerve endings to skin area. Their stimulation allows for an especially high level of information flow. Interestingly, lovers tend to stimulate these same areas with more speed and vigor as orgasm approaches, upping input to a maximum at climax. Note, too, that sex tends to involve organs with interesting textures and shapes, making stimulating them fun for both parties.

These same erogenous areas also boast the densest collections of sebum glands. Sebum plays an important role in sex and love; indeed, it seems to be good for little else! Researchers have discovered that lovers become addicted to each others’ sebum, and go through depressive withdrawal when denied a ‘fix.’ We see, then, that besides the immediate stimulation of the sensory organs, sex involves complex exchanges of chemical information as well.7

Ever wonder why the hours spent with your lover are hours lost to the world? It must be because the rich exchange of information afforded by sexual activity requires total concentration. Sex demands a lot, but in return it offers a complete experience: absorbing and expressive, powerful and subtle. Sex allows for limitless variations and boundless pleasures. We like sex not just because it’s so great, but because it’s great in so many, many ways.

SEXTROPY!

So sex involves a great deal of information transfer, both input and output. How does this account for our liking sex so much? We humans happen to like exchanging information. This ought to be obvious to anyone who has taken the time to reflect on the pervasive nature of human curiosity, or to anyone who has noted what a garrulous species we are. Let me offer some more concrete evidence, however (think of it as an enjoyable exchange of information).

While short periods of sensory deprivation may prove to be relaxing, humans react to the prolonged loss of sensory input with discomfort and stress. Those subject to sensory deprivation become so starved for information that they avidly welcome stimuli that they would normally find boring, like stock reports or children’s stories. If deprived of sensory input long enough, our minds will even generate their own sensory input: hallucinations.8

The fact that other species also seek out sensory stimulation shows

7 In fact, it’s not inconceivable that we have an inborn interest in our lovers’ various orifices - their tastes and odors give us information about our lovers’ inner health, information that served one well when choosing mates in the days before advanced medicine.

8 W. Heron, ‘Cognitive and physiological effects of perceptual isolation,’ Sensory Deprivation (Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

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that our love of information isn’t just a cultural artifact. Many studies have shown that rats and monkeys seek out novelty, change, and stimulus complexity. Monkeys confined to a box will persistently push open a heavy spring door just to see what’s going on outside.$^{9}$ They will spend hour after hour working mechanical puzzles, even in the absence of any tangible rewards.$^{10}$ Given our comparatively greater capacities for information input and output, it’s not surprising that humans exhibit larger appetites for information exchange than these simpler animals.

Why should we enjoy information so much? Just as we’ve been naturally selected to enjoy the exchange of genetic information, so too have we been naturally selected to enjoy the exchange of information in general. The more we learn about the world around us, and the more we share what we learn with those we live with, the more likely we are to survive.$^{11}$ Our desire for sexual information manifests a more universal trait: the desire to exchange information of all sorts. Sex is special, of course — it offers us especially rich inputs and outputs. That’s exactly why sex is so great.$^{12}$

Even if freed from the influences of evolution, however, I think that we’d still lust for information. We are who we are not because of our bodies, nor even because of our brains. It’s the information in the brains in our bodies that counts. Essentially, we are particular patterns of information. Entropy would destroy us, as it would all information, if we did not fight it off by memorizing what we’ve learnt and expanding our knowledge. That’s why we cannot help but depend on the flow of information; we need it just to maintain our identities in the face of change.

Thanks to the great channels of information exchange that it opens to us, sex can serve as one of our most powerful tools in the struggle against entropy. It persuades us to preserve our genetic selves by offering us the pleasures of orgasm; it allows us to grow mentally by sharing ourselves with our lovers through bonds of intimate communion; and it gives us good reason to want to defeat entropy’s murderous force by making life so much fucking fun.

$^{9}$ R. A. Butler, ‘Curiosity in monkeys,’ Scientific American, 1954, 190, 70-75.

$^{10}$ Harrison F. Harlow, ‘Learning and satiation of response in intrinsically motivated complex puzzle performance by monkeys,’ Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 1950, 43, 289-294.

$^{11}$ Steve Harris makes much the same point in his letter to the editors, this issue.

$^{12}$ I began this essay with the claim that a better understanding of sex might help us to enjoy more and better sex. Well, now we know how to improve our sexual lives: increase the data flow! How? Communicate your desires and preferences, and vocalize your pleasures. Introduce a variety stimuli to your lovemaking — the odors of incense and perfume, the sights and textures of risqué clothing, the tastes of food, and the rhythms of music. What about getting more sex? Ha! Figure that one out and you’ll make a million (not to mention have a great time)! I’ll venture, though, that communicating your desires and preferences makes all the difference here, too.

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