I meant “date” expansively, so yes “date or have sex with”. I don’t want to be with someone who has an active desire to have sex with other people. Your guessed answer is off. I don’t deny that either myself or my partner could be smitten by a particularly motivated sexiest person in the world, but then again I don’t know how relevant such an extreme hypothetical could be. But if it did indeed happen, I would have no interest whatsoever in placing any restrictions on my partner after the fact. They expressed their revealed preferences, so it’s best to let them go so they can pursue it. Even if they don’t have a subsequent shot, I would have no interest in staying with them.
Really? You’re comfortable being with your partner, even if you believe her character is such that she has a high probability of yielding to temptation in that scenario… but if it did happen, then that would mean you’d want to break up with her, not because you think it’s likely the scenario would recur, but because of what it revealed about her character? I am surprised.
Is it the difference between “high probability” and “100%”? Is it that the details of the event would likely carry more evidence about her character that you couldn’t ignore? (Conservation of expected evidence, though.) Or perhaps it’s more like, you’re running a cognitive algorithm that says you shouldn’t accept a relationship in which your partner has behaved like that?
Based on the conversation I have read here, it seems like ymeskhout is okay with not being ‘fully rational’ or being Dutch-bookable in certain ways, and I think he’s interpreting some of your hypotheticals as qualitatively in the same class as Pascal’s Wagers, and is making a sensible decision to go with his gut and to simply ignore them when making decisions about his relationships.
I said “my partner could be smitten by a particularly motivated sexiest person in the world” but you translated that as “she has a high probability of yielding to temptation in that scenario”. I also did not say anything about what the scenario would reveal about her character (I’m not even sure what that means) but rather what it would reveal about her preferences. If you have a point I believe you can make it without mischaracterizing my statements.
Well, I asked if 30% vs 90% made a difference, and you didn’t specify a probability, so I figured you meant your argument to be independent of that probability. That was presumptuous of me.
Ok, so, is your position that your partner’s preferences are such that, faced with the scenario, she has a low probability (you have admitted it’s nonzero) of giving in to temptation? And that this is what makes you comfortable with her, monogamy-wise?
If so, my next question would be “Can you imagine more seductive situations in which the probability would be higher, of her giving in to temptation in a way that still counts as ‘cheating’? How high can the probability go?”
Extreme hypotheticals can be useful in exploring the outer fringes of our positions, but they do a very poor job of informing our day to day conduct. I’m not averse to engaging with your “drunk wife meets sexiest person in the world” scenario, but for me to give any semblance of an answer requires me to fill in a multitude of assumptions that are too numerous to fully catalog (ex. how did my non-drinking wife get drunk? is she a materially different person when severely intoxicated? whether I went with her to the house party or not, how did my introverted wife find herself alone with the world’s sexiest stranger? did I abandon her? etc etc.). Unless I’m specifying each and every assumption I’m relying upon, it’s virtually guaranteed that you’ll hold a different assumption, which would necessarily change how you interpret my answer. I don’t understand what you find enlightening about this hypothetical.
It seems far more relevant to me to think about far more common scenarios, but I don’t know if probability is the best way to contemplate this though. I can certainly imagine scenarios where my wife is smitten by a friend/co-worker/barista/whoever and if that happens then we can end our relationship because I wouldn’t want to get in her way. I don’t think about this scenario prospectively because there’s no reason for me to care about it if it hasn’t happened. Whether the risk of this scenario happening is 1% or 99% in the future bears little relevance to what I do in the present; I’ll continue my relationship so long as it is satisfying.
I meant “date” expansively, so yes “date or have sex with”. I don’t want to be with someone who has an active desire to have sex with other people. Your guessed answer is off. I don’t deny that either myself or my partner could be smitten by a particularly motivated sexiest person in the world, but then again I don’t know how relevant such an extreme hypothetical could be. But if it did indeed happen, I would have no interest whatsoever in placing any restrictions on my partner after the fact. They expressed their revealed preferences, so it’s best to let them go so they can pursue it. Even if they don’t have a subsequent shot, I would have no interest in staying with them.
Really? You’re comfortable being with your partner, even if you believe her character is such that she has a high probability of yielding to temptation in that scenario… but if it did happen, then that would mean you’d want to break up with her, not because you think it’s likely the scenario would recur, but because of what it revealed about her character? I am surprised.
Is it the difference between “high probability” and “100%”? Is it that the details of the event would likely carry more evidence about her character that you couldn’t ignore? (Conservation of expected evidence, though.) Or perhaps it’s more like, you’re running a cognitive algorithm that says you shouldn’t accept a relationship in which your partner has behaved like that?
Based on the conversation I have read here, it seems like ymeskhout is okay with not being ‘fully rational’ or being Dutch-bookable in certain ways, and I think he’s interpreting some of your hypotheticals as qualitatively in the same class as Pascal’s Wagers, and is making a sensible decision to go with his gut and to simply ignore them when making decisions about his relationships.
Pascal’s Wager is a good comparison here.
I said “my partner could be smitten by a particularly motivated sexiest person in the world” but you translated that as “she has a high probability of yielding to temptation in that scenario”. I also did not say anything about what the scenario would reveal about her character (I’m not even sure what that means) but rather what it would reveal about her preferences. If you have a point I believe you can make it without mischaracterizing my statements.
Well, I asked if 30% vs 90% made a difference, and you didn’t specify a probability, so I figured you meant your argument to be independent of that probability. That was presumptuous of me.
Ok, so, is your position that your partner’s preferences are such that, faced with the scenario, she has a low probability (you have admitted it’s nonzero) of giving in to temptation? And that this is what makes you comfortable with her, monogamy-wise?
If so, my next question would be “Can you imagine more seductive situations in which the probability would be higher, of her giving in to temptation in a way that still counts as ‘cheating’? How high can the probability go?”
Extreme hypotheticals can be useful in exploring the outer fringes of our positions, but they do a very poor job of informing our day to day conduct. I’m not averse to engaging with your “drunk wife meets sexiest person in the world” scenario, but for me to give any semblance of an answer requires me to fill in a multitude of assumptions that are too numerous to fully catalog (ex. how did my non-drinking wife get drunk? is she a materially different person when severely intoxicated? whether I went with her to the house party or not, how did my introverted wife find herself alone with the world’s sexiest stranger? did I abandon her? etc etc.). Unless I’m specifying each and every assumption I’m relying upon, it’s virtually guaranteed that you’ll hold a different assumption, which would necessarily change how you interpret my answer. I don’t understand what you find enlightening about this hypothetical.
It seems far more relevant to me to think about far more common scenarios, but I don’t know if probability is the best way to contemplate this though. I can certainly imagine scenarios where my wife is smitten by a friend/co-worker/barista/whoever and if that happens then we can end our relationship because I wouldn’t want to get in her way. I don’t think about this scenario prospectively because there’s no reason for me to care about it if it hasn’t happened. Whether the risk of this scenario happening is 1% or 99% in the future bears little relevance to what I do in the present; I’ll continue my relationship so long as it is satisfying.