Aella: Sex Work, OnlyFans, Porn, Escorting, Dating, and Human Sexuality | Lex Fridman Podcast #358

Aella is a sex researcher, writer, and sex worker. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - House of Macadamias: https://houseofmacadamias.com/lex and use code LEX to get 20% off your first order - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil - Inside

it was really shocking that nobody else was doing anything creative with sex work like for me it was it was like breathing like you’re just doing sex and you’re bored I’m like what do you do I don’t know let’s try something funny like it’s just the natural progression and it felt to me like there was almost no competition like I would just be really creative and like immediately lose the top not safe for post on Reddit I’m like well I didn’t even try that hard the following is a conversation with Ayla a sex researcher who does some of the largest human sexuality survey studies in the world on everything from fetishes to relationships she is fearless in pursuing her Curiosity on these Topics by asking challenging and fascinating questions and looking for answers in a rigorous data-driven way and writing about it on her blog knowinglust. com she’s also a sex worker including only fans and escorting and is an exceptionally prolific creator of thought-provoking Twitter polls Ayla and I disagree on a bunch of things but that just made this conversation even more interesting I like interesting people in the full range of the meaning that the word interesting implies I’m currently reading on the road by Jack Kerouac and uh would be remiss if I didn’t mention one of my favorite quotes from that book that feels relevant here the only people for me are the Mad ones the ones who are mad to Live Matt to talk mad to be saved desirous of everything at the same time the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn burn burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the Stars in the middle you see the blue Center Light Pop and everybody goes this is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here’s Ayla I feel like this conversation can go anywhere is that exciting or terrifying to you I think it’s more exciting the uncertainty exciting too yes in conversations in general or just this one I think conversations in general like is anybody that got a certainty is really exciting maybe if the certainty is something new I mean novelty always comes with uncertainty right almost always I started trying to think of a counter example immediately yeah you’re uncomfortable with generalizations of that kind like always is always a really bold for a tears but if it’s truly novel that means you don’t really understand it’s outside your distribution so therefore it’s going to have a bunch of uncertainty but you don’t think of it as uncertainty you think about his something new but it actually also attracts you because there’s a lot of uncertainty surround it probably like what is this new thing yeah like annihilating the mystery like that drive what about the danger of it it’s like part I was just thinking of on the drive over because I kind of like a little nervous about doing this podcast and then I was like feeling into the unpleasantness of it like the like the fear of what if something goes terribly wrong and then I was also feeling into like how much that feels like part of why it’s exciting like if I knew that it was going to go great I don’t know did you actually imagine all the possible ways you can it can go wrong not like all of them but I was like what if I say something really dumb or like you ask me a question and I answer it in a way that makes me sound like a lot less capable than I am I’m like really afraid of being perceived as stupid or something I was also thinking about this on the way over like I’m kind of risk-averse in some ways like I don’t driving fat like driving fast in cars because I was driving very carefully here because the roads are bad yeah and then I think I’m very like pro-risk in other ways like being really exposed to like a wide variety of people who might hate you and I think like from the outside that might look fine but I think the monkey brain is really sensitive to lots of people yelling at you for whatever problems that you seem to have so that’s the big risk you’re taking is putting yourself out there as an intellectual like through your writing and then a lot of people yelling at you is that is that the worst embarrassment it’s pretty bad yeah I think I think the worst embarrassment is if I put something out there that I failed to like be properly skeptical of in myself and then people are like oh we just caught this thing that you didn’t catch I think that’s the biggest Terror yeah from looking at your reading and listening to your interviews you seem to be very defensive and worried about being good scientists yeah definitely well you’re like methodology yes and funny enough you get attacked on that methodology even though you know I’ve I’m a fan of psychology of like the academic psychology and it’s it’s kind of disappointing often how non-rigorous their work is how small the sample size and so on and how big and ambitious over ambitious the the proclamations about results is especially with the news reports on it now you’re both the researcher the scientist And the reporter right so like that’s what you have with the blog your sample size is often gigantic the methodology is right there the data is right there you provide the data and then you’re like raw and honest with your interpretation of the day like there’s of honesty authenticity to it so I don’t it’s actually really refreshing I don’t know why people criticize it I think this is what peop this is what psychologists are probably terrified about being transparent and transparent in that way is because they’ll get attacked for their methodology so they want to cloak it in a um in a sort of layer of authority like I’m from this institution it was peer reviewed this kind of all these layers and I’m also not going to share the data with you and I’m also going to pretend like most psychology studies are not replicable I’m just going to pretend there’s authority to it I think it works a lot of people like from the outside you’re like ah the scientists with the white lab coats with credentials those are the people who are like doing science and like doing science is you know you have like fancy terms that other people are don’t really understand and to be fair like I I have a lot to learn I’m still like I’m self-teaching I’m like learning through people learning as I go I’m definitely not super knowledgeable about this stuff um but a lot of what those people are doing in science is not that hard um and a lot of people like don’t try to learn it because it seems so like elevated and this is one thing that really bothers me I think like everybody can do science like if you just have this aspect of curiosity and like you just really want to figure something out you can go and start you know asking people questions doing surveys like writing down the answers and the you go learn how to look at that data in a way that gives you more information about the world like it’s very simple and straightforward if you just approach it humbly and earnestly and you’re like please let’s look let’s figure this out together but people like are think self-crippled in this because uh they view this as like relegated to the domain of the experts and you know the fancy scientists and I think that makes me feel really sad you’re almost attracted to the questions you’re not supposed to ask oh yeah also yes we might contribute to the controversy not exclusively probably I don’t know you’re just not limited by like part of your curiosity is asking questions that seem common sense like what is some of the most co