You asked why people who "believe in" avoiding nonmarital sex so frequently engage in and report badly regretting it. Instead of responding within your frame, I'm going to lay out the interpretive framework that seems most natural to me to use for this problem, and then answer in those terms.

We can call things or actions good or bad, right or wrong, with reference to some intention that both the speaker and listener have in mind. For instance, a sturdier and sharper knife is a better one, because our uses for knives tend to converge. We can expect to be understood when we call some knives "good" and leave out "for cutting," and likewise when we call spoiled food bad without reference to a shared interest, because it harms the body of the eater, which harm we generally expect animals to try to avoid.

Moral injunctions such as "it [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
January 2nd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zMkQFuNqMBpBvuYm8/preference-inversion

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.