I’m not sure I follow you, but here’s my steelman: Alice and Bob are in a prisoner’s dilemma type of game. If Bob takes Carol as a lover while Alice doesn’t have anyone else, Bob will be better off and Alice will be worse off, because Bob is getting affection from two people while Alice is only getting part of Bob’s affection. If Bob takes Carol as a lover and Alice takes David as a lover, then both of them are worse-off: naively each gets 50% of the affection of each of 2 people, but this amounts to less than 100% of the affection of 1 person because of “transaction cost”. So, monogamy is a norm that enforces cooperation to mutual benefit.
I don’t think that’s really how it works, but at least I see the logic in the argument.
I’m talking about lifeforce generally, not just affection. I guess I’m reacting to your two statements:
>… it’s just a question of jealousy and/or cultural convention.
>The difference between monogamy and polyamory is not how many people you have in your life, it’s are you allowed to kiss / have sex with more than one of them.
These seem to ignore the concern of the jealous partner: that sex involves (causes and is caused by) a kind of social bond that’s stronger than bonds without sex. It’s less “I’m worried because I’m horny and my husband won’t have sex with me” and more “I’m worried because my husband isn’t excited about growing together with me because he’s into his younger girlfriend”.
Part of it could be: people who have sex form a bond aimed at “deep unity / ‘infinite’ trust” (evolved for childrearing).
There’s multiple intersecting things here, and I don’t see them clearly, so I can’t expose my cruxes yet. Some of them might not be concerning, upon more reflection. Some might be revealed to be delusionally zero-sum thinking. “Deep unity” has some zero-sum components; “save your husband from the fire first (instead of other people)”. It also has some non-zero sum components: “deep unity” as a disposition towards growth is nonlinearly good when two people are doing it with each other, so it makes sense to calibrate “investments” to match the actual “co-investments”.
There are two key assumptions here: (i) sex automatically implies an especially deep bond, deeper than even the deepest platonic friendship and (ii) it is nearly always suboptimal to have more than one such deep bond. Assumption (i) is extremely dubious given that one-night stands are fairly common. Assumption (ii) is harder to disprove, but personally I am skeptical about it. Yes, there can be increasing returns from investing in a relationship with one person, but there can also be diminishing returns (for example because different relationships have complementary benefits). So, while this type of argument carries some weight, I doubt it can justify monogamy on purely pragmatic grounds.
Assumption (i) is extremely dubious given that one-night stands are fairly common.
I think it is possible that humans are bimodal about this. For some, sex is a strongly emotional, for others not at all. (Or maybe even for the same person it depends on circumstances.)
And the conservative rules about chastity are partially about pregnancy and diseases, but also partially to prevent people who create deep bonds from choosing partners who cannot reciprocate.
I’m not sure I follow you, but here’s my steelman: Alice and Bob are in a prisoner’s dilemma type of game. If Bob takes Carol as a lover while Alice doesn’t have anyone else, Bob will be better off and Alice will be worse off, because Bob is getting affection from two people while Alice is only getting part of Bob’s affection. If Bob takes Carol as a lover and Alice takes David as a lover, then both of them are worse-off: naively each gets 50% of the affection of each of 2 people, but this amounts to less than 100% of the affection of 1 person because of “transaction cost”. So, monogamy is a norm that enforces cooperation to mutual benefit.
I don’t think that’s really how it works, but at least I see the logic in the argument.
I’m talking about lifeforce generally, not just affection. I guess I’m reacting to your two statements:
>… it’s just a question of jealousy and/or cultural convention.
>The difference between monogamy and polyamory is not how many people you have in your life, it’s are you allowed to kiss / have sex with more than one of them.
These seem to ignore the concern of the jealous partner: that sex involves (causes and is caused by) a kind of social bond that’s stronger than bonds without sex. It’s less “I’m worried because I’m horny and my husband won’t have sex with me” and more “I’m worried because my husband isn’t excited about growing together with me because he’s into his younger girlfriend”.
Part of it could be: people who have sex form a bond aimed at “deep unity / ‘infinite’ trust” (evolved for childrearing).
There’s multiple intersecting things here, and I don’t see them clearly, so I can’t expose my cruxes yet. Some of them might not be concerning, upon more reflection. Some might be revealed to be delusionally zero-sum thinking. “Deep unity” has some zero-sum components; “save your husband from the fire first (instead of other people)”. It also has some non-zero sum components: “deep unity” as a disposition towards growth is nonlinearly good when two people are doing it with each other, so it makes sense to calibrate “investments” to match the actual “co-investments”.
There are two key assumptions here: (i) sex automatically implies an especially deep bond, deeper than even the deepest platonic friendship and (ii) it is nearly always suboptimal to have more than one such deep bond. Assumption (i) is extremely dubious given that one-night stands are fairly common. Assumption (ii) is harder to disprove, but personally I am skeptical about it. Yes, there can be increasing returns from investing in a relationship with one person, but there can also be diminishing returns (for example because different relationships have complementary benefits). So, while this type of argument carries some weight, I doubt it can justify monogamy on purely pragmatic grounds.
I think it is possible that humans are bimodal about this. For some, sex is a strongly emotional, for others not at all. (Or maybe even for the same person it depends on circumstances.)
And the conservative rules about chastity are partially about pregnancy and diseases, but also partially to prevent people who create deep bonds from choosing partners who cannot reciprocate.