But the point that immortal superbeings would do something polyish actually does strike me as a clear argument in favor of “poly is More Highly Evolved”
It is? What is the assumption that immortal superbeing would chose to do such a thing based on -seeing as there are no immortal superbeings around-? Talking about biases, this does seem to be one of those case where our personal choices might influence our judgement on a problem which cannot be investigated experimentally nor framed in a suitably formal theoretical model.
While I am not against poly, I am also not persuaded that it could be called “better suited” to superbeings -the same could be said about being bisexual-. Mainly, I think that it could certainly become more accepted -what with society becoming more open-minded-, but only as a choice amongst others, not as a necessarily “superior” choice. Then again, evolution is all about being better suited to one’s environment, not about being “better” in a general term, and immortal beings would likely be freed by such external costraint, so… I guess that it would largely be up to each individual’s personal preference. What I envision is a situation akin of the one we have nowadays, but significantly more tolerant. It’s not that, simply because homosexuality is more widely accepted, “everyone” is becoming homosexual, there is just more freedom of choice, and it doesn’t make sense, to me, to look at those kind of choices as “more” or “less” evolved.
From an evolutionary point of view, polygamy doesn’t seem to be necessarily tied to “more evolved” -this is easily checked by browsing reseach in the field of ethology (through polygyny, being more common among vertebrated, has been studied far more extensively than polyandry)-. Us human being, being what you might call the “peak” of this process, are largely monogamous, unlike, for example, chimpanzees and bonobos.
Furthermore, consider that anchient Greeks were largely bisexuals, and look at the situation nowadays, after Illuminism, and with a singificantly larger life span. Those kind of choices does not seem to be tied to cultural or byological evolution. Tolerance for different life choices is.
What is the assumption that immortal superbeing would chose to do such a thing based on -seeing as there are no immortal superbeings around-?
I imagine the chief benefit of monogamy is that you don’t need to compete for the limited resources of attention, and affection, and reproductive/nurturing capacity from the person you love—a sense of competition which can manifest itself in feelings of sexual jealousy, possessiveness, etc.
Now imagine a hypothetical future scenario in which those resources are effectively unlimited; in the sense that each person is perfectly capable of perceiving the need/desires of their prospective partners, and satisfying them as best as possible, with capacity to spare; in which you don’t need to compete for reproductive capacity or material resources are plentiful.
The benefits of monogamy then seem nullified, the benefits of polyamory seem without a downside to them.
That having been said, something being “evolved” in the sense of “What Would Immortal Superbeings Do” seems rather useless in determining what current-day people should do given their current-day emotional and physical circumstances.
Now imagine a hypothetical future scenario in which those resources are effectively unlimited; in the sense that each person is perfectly capable of perceiving the need/desires of their prospective partners, and satisfying them as best as possible, with capacity to spare; in which you don’t need to compete for reproductive capacity or material resources are plentiful.
I think that would only be possible if the whole human race had the attentional resources to be a group marriage. I’m not sure it makes sense to say that everyone could be that good at modelling everyone one else.
My imagination only extends to raising Dunbar’s number to 300, and I think that even that would produce large but hard to specify social changes.
Can you please use the standard quotation method of adding ‘>’ before the text you’re quoting? Those big letters are annoying. And why did you delete your account?
I wanted a new username. As for the big characters, I am aware that they are annoying, but I didn’t know that using # would have had that effect, and now I don’t know how to reverse it.
Well, if you had not deleted your account, you could just edit your comment and replaced them with ‘>’.
Are you blind (or otherwise visually impaired) by any chance? If not, it seems strange that you didn’t notice the effect after the first comment you made.
No, I am not blind. Through,I wear glassed. No, that’s not the reason I didn’t correct it before. It seems like the # character triggers that affect only if used in a whole new paragraph, otherwise it simply prints #phrase#. Initially, I thought that it was a side-effect of quoting a phrase of the text whose user I was replying to. All things considered, I didn’t think it was that annoying, it’s not as if I wanted to irritate you specifically.
It’s no biggie. You can click the “Help” link at the bottom right corner of the reply form, to see some notes about syntax (many people fail to notice that link).
Editors can edit top level posts but have no access to comments. I could ban them, but they have useful content that doesn’t deserve to be hidden entirely.
I don’t think this is the right place to report this, but I don’t know where the right place is, and this is closest. In the title of the page for comments for the deleted account (eg) the name of the poster has not been redacted.
But the point that immortal superbeings would do something polyish actually does strike me as a clear argument in favor of “poly is More Highly Evolved”
It is? What is the assumption that immortal superbeing would chose to do such a thing based on -seeing as there are no immortal superbeings around-? Talking about biases, this does seem to be one of those case where our personal choices might influence our judgement on a problem which cannot be investigated experimentally nor framed in a suitably formal theoretical model.
While I am not against poly, I am also not persuaded that it could be called “better suited” to superbeings -the same could be said about being bisexual-. Mainly, I think that it could certainly become more accepted -what with society becoming more open-minded-, but only as a choice amongst others, not as a necessarily “superior” choice. Then again, evolution is all about being better suited to one’s environment, not about being “better” in a general term, and immortal beings would likely be freed by such external costraint, so… I guess that it would largely be up to each individual’s personal preference. What I envision is a situation akin of the one we have nowadays, but significantly more tolerant. It’s not that, simply because homosexuality is more widely accepted, “everyone” is becoming homosexual, there is just more freedom of choice, and it doesn’t make sense, to me, to look at those kind of choices as “more” or “less” evolved.
From an evolutionary point of view, polygamy doesn’t seem to be necessarily tied to “more evolved” -this is easily checked by browsing reseach in the field of ethology (through polygyny, being more common among vertebrated, has been studied far more extensively than polyandry)-. Us human being, being what you might call the “peak” of this process, are largely monogamous, unlike, for example, chimpanzees and bonobos.
Furthermore, consider that anchient Greeks were largely bisexuals, and look at the situation nowadays, after Illuminism, and with a singificantly larger life span. Those kind of choices does not seem to be tied to cultural or byological evolution. Tolerance for different life choices is.
I imagine the chief benefit of monogamy is that you don’t need to compete for the limited resources of attention, and affection, and reproductive/nurturing capacity from the person you love—a sense of competition which can manifest itself in feelings of sexual jealousy, possessiveness, etc.
Now imagine a hypothetical future scenario in which those resources are effectively unlimited; in the sense that each person is perfectly capable of perceiving the need/desires of their prospective partners, and satisfying them as best as possible, with capacity to spare; in which you don’t need to compete for reproductive capacity or material resources are plentiful.
The benefits of monogamy then seem nullified, the benefits of polyamory seem without a downside to them.
That having been said, something being “evolved” in the sense of “What Would Immortal Superbeings Do” seems rather useless in determining what current-day people should do given their current-day emotional and physical circumstances.
I think that would only be possible if the whole human race had the attentional resources to be a group marriage. I’m not sure it makes sense to say that everyone could be that good at modelling everyone one else.
My imagination only extends to raising Dunbar’s number to 300, and I think that even that would produce large but hard to specify social changes.
Can you please use the standard quotation method of adding ‘>’ before the text you’re quoting? Those big letters are annoying. And why did you delete your account?
I wanted a new username. As for the big characters, I am aware that they are annoying, but I didn’t know that using # would have had that effect, and now I don’t know how to reverse it.
Well, if you had not deleted your account, you could just edit your comment and replaced them with ‘>’.
Are you blind (or otherwise visually impaired) by any chance? If not, it seems strange that you didn’t notice the effect after the first comment you made.
His point wasn’t that he couldn’t see it, it was that he didn’t know how to change it.
It’s probably worth a longer essay, but confusions between what people can perceive and what they can change aren’t exactly rare.
No, I am not blind. Through,I wear glassed. No, that’s not the reason I didn’t correct it before. It seems like the # character triggers that affect only if used in a whole new paragraph, otherwise it simply prints #phrase#. Initially, I thought that it was a side-effect of quoting a phrase of the text whose user I was replying to. All things considered, I didn’t think it was that annoying, it’s not as if I wanted to irritate you specifically.
It’s no biggie. You can click the “Help” link at the bottom right corner of the reply form, to see some notes about syntax (many people fail to notice that link).
For what it’s worth, while I didn’t take it personally, I do find it distracting.
I’m not sure whether it makes more sense for you to correct it or to leave it in place so that the comments about it will make sense.
I changed account, so that’s not really an option. If I could change it, I certainly would.
I think someone has the right to edit other people’s posts, perhaps ask them?
Editors can edit top level posts but have no access to comments. I could ban them, but they have useful content that doesn’t deserve to be hidden entirely.
I don’t think this is the right place to report this, but I don’t know where the right place is, and this is closest. In the title of the page for comments for the deleted account (eg) the name of the poster has not been redacted.
If someone has the ability to fix it, the by all means. I woulnd’t know who to ask, though.