//------------------------------//
// The Unknown (Twilight Sparkle) 
// Story: Adventures in the Psychology of Sexuality (with Ponies) 
// by Kodiologist 
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One fine day, when Starlight Glimmer was off having a friendship lesson with Trixie in some distant place, and Spike was busy sinking too deep into the Cutie Mark Crusaders' latest zany scheme, Twilight Sparkle decided a little relaxation was in order. And what was more relaxing than reading? She trotted into the Castle of Friendship's library and settled herself at a desk with a stack of new books.

Soon, the day's first patron arrived. "Good morning, Twilight." said Rarity. "I was wondering if you could help me learn about something I was just talking about with an acquaintance. Perhaps you could point me to a book, or—"

"Of course!" said Twilight, her ears perking up. "What do you want to learn about?"

"Well, forgive me for the strange topic, but I was wondering if you had anything about cultural differences in love and sexuality. You know, different practices and mores and so forth."

"Sure, I'd be happy to—"

"Oh, excuse me, I'm so sorry if I'm interrupting something important." said Fluttershy, who had floated into the room so quietly that nopony had noticed. "I just had to speak up when I heard what Rarity was interested in. I wanted to ask you about something like that, Twilight. I was wondering if maybe you had a book about ponies' fears and anxieties about, um, sex."

"Hey!" said Rainbow Dash, flying in and nearly knocking over a bookcase. "You better not give Fluttershy a book I need, Twilight! 'Cause I need a book about sexual performance! Y'know, not being able to get it up and stuff. I mean, I'm totally awesome at sex—I don't have any problems—but I want to know how to help other ponies."

"Fancy meeting you here, Rainbow Dash." said Applejack, trotting into the room. "Hey, Twi, totally unrelated, I was wonderin' if you had a book or two about how ponies make choices about sex. Or how their sex thoughts change their choices. Maybe both. It's a complicated business."

A familiar bouncing sound heralded the arrival of Pinkie. "Hi, Twilight! Hi, everypony! Twilight, where's the glory hole here?"

Everypony stared at Pinkie.

Twilight said carefully "Pinkie, are you looking for the new book about underwater oil drilling called Glory Hole?"

"Yup! My family's expanding the rock farm! It's so exciting!" There was a tangible sense of relief in the room. "Also, do you have any books about taxometrics?"

In the evening, Twilight's five friends met her again at the same desk. "Hello." said Twilight, stifling a yawn. "So, I plumbed the depths of the collections for sex, psychology, and statistics" (she glanced at Pinkie) "and I have some good news and some bad news."

"Is the bad news that we have to read all this?" said Rainbow Dash, waving a hoof at a leaning tower of books.

"Not exactly." said Twilight. "Y'see, when I looked, I found that there are indeed a lot of books about the things you'd asked me about. And that's what's in this pile. But when I looked closely, I found that for the most part they aren't very helpful. For everything that ponies have to say about sexuality, there's not much of a reason to believe it. Either they're citing tradition as if it were truth, or they're arguing on the basis of ostensible divine revelation, or they're just talking about their own feelings or a bunch of other ponies' feelings. There's a lot of opinion but not much solid evidence beneath all of it."

"What are we to do then?" said Rarity.

"Well, I decided to avail myself of all the journals I subscribed the library to once I started drawing the royal allowance. And a photocopying spell I just worked out with Starlight." She put five piles of paper on the desk. Each was thick, but not so intimidating as the tower of books. "You might be surprised how much scientific research there is on sex. Here's a comparison of sexual attitudes in dozens of preindustrial societies for Rarity, and here's a meta-analysis of treatments for erectile impotence for Rainbow Dash."

"This is a lot to process." said Applejack, flipping through her stack and frowning at some boxplots.

"Yep." said Twilight. "And you know what's crazy? It's still not enough. The more you read these articles, the more you realize how much research still needs to be done! The effect of sexual stimuli on aggressive behavior in heterosexual males doesn't sound so complicated at first, but then you realize how many different kinds of sexual stimuli and aggressive behavior you could consider, and then there are other possibly important factors to think about like whether he's in a relationship, not to mention that the measurement of sexual orientation is a literature unto itself."

"Oh, my." said Fluttershy. "Should we still read the papers, then?"

"Definitely." said Twilight. "You'll know more than you did going in. But it's humbling. Maybe one of the most important things you can learn, when you study a subject, is what you don't know. It's easy to think things are simple from the outside. Once you have some expertise, you can appreciate how what seems obvious can easily be wrong. And that's an important epistemic virtue, knowing not to jump to conclusions."

Pinkie nodded. "Never set your priors to 0 or 1."