OK, so now I’m thinking back to the first thing I said, which is that this subject is more difficult to talk about in public (without things going off the rails) than politics—so I think you should expect craziness on this subject.
I mean, laws about sex and relationships are frequently used for political purposes to increase the emotional drama of politics in order to get people worked up enough to vote...
I think my priors for this conversation were messed up but are improving, maybe? Each time I see more of your writing on this subject I’m surprised again, but a bit less so.
In the “poly kicks evolution in the teeth” link I was left scratching my head wondering why “Polyandry is no more egalitarian than polygyny; any relationship in which only one person is permitted to have other partners lies outside polyamory’s accepted definition”. I would have said that in a threesome, logically speaking, there are three dyadic partnerships and each person has two partners, but I think maybe you assumed (1) that no one is non-heterosexual, (2) only sexual partnerships count, and (3) all groups have at least one penis and at least one vagina (so you can’t just have three wives or three husbands in a closed but poly relationship).
I mean, if we’re ignoring all of our assumptions about human nature, why not treat orientation as “bisexual until tested” (reference for those who missed the joke) and therefore assume that unless otherwise specified the problem with a closed relationship with “2 of one gender and 1 of the other” is that the 1 doesn’t get enough variety in their life because they only get to have sex with the opposite gender… instead of always having that “little extra bit of variety in their married life” :-P
For a more “normal” scenario, the traditional explanation for polyandry in Tibet is that inheritance is patrilineal but “fair” (divided between all brothers) which would lead to farm holdings too small to support a family for any one brother (and starvation for all their families). The solution is to have the brothers share the farm, and also share the wife. Their primary loyalty is to each other, based on shared blood, and the single wife limits the number of possible children in a incredibly resource limited environment.
It originally seemed to me like you were coming from the poly community and reaching out to the rationality community (partly because I was hearing recapitulations of what I recognize as “defensive rationalizations of poly relationships” and assumed you’d originated them). Now I think (maybe?) it is the other way around: you’re starting with rationality and trying to bring us along as you explore poly issues?
All I’ve been trying to say is that all sorts of concrete, relevant, and surprising details come up in anthropology, and if you want to say something controversial about human nature, you should come at it with a measure of care, and start the public explanation with the data. I don’t think this is the standard approach taken with the poly community… at all.
So my tentative guess about our exchange here is that (1) “your axe” is simply thinking that it is worthwhile to be open minded about this controversial topic and (2) the defensive and biased elements of the arguments (to the degree that they exist and I’m noticing them) are mostly passed through from the source community that you’re drawing from as you read into the literature and summarize it for LW. I thought the admission of “an axe” was connected to “the defensive arguments” and was wrong about the connection.
Did I miss again, or do you think this is closer to the mark?
In the “poly kicks evolution in the teeth” link I was left scratching my head wondering why “Polyandry is no more egalitarian than polygyny; any relationship in which only one person is permitted to have other partners lies outside polyamory’s accepted definition”. I would have said that in a threesome, logically speaking, there are three dyadic partnerships and each person has two partners, but I think maybe you assumed (1) that no one is non-heterosexual, (2) only sexual partnerships count, and (3) all groups have at least one penis and at least one vagina (so you can’t just have three wives or three husbands in a closed but poly relationship).
A triad in which all three people are involved with each other, regardless of gender, absolutely counts as polyamory. As typically practiced, I believe, polygyny and polyandry don’t, because the man or the woman, respectively, is the only one allowed to have multiple partners. (For the record, I’m bisexual, so I was definitely not assuming (1).)
It originally seemed to me like you were coming from the poly community and reaching out to the rationality community (partly because I was hearing recapitulations of what I recognize as “defensive rationalizations of poly relationships” and assumed you’d originated them). Now I think (maybe?) it is the other way around: you’re starting with rationality and trying to bring us along as you explore poly issues?
I’ve been poly for ~4 years, which substantially predates my discovery of any sort of rationalist community, though I would have happily identified myself as a rationalist from about age six onward. Polyamory is unquestionably the right approach for me; while I doubt that that is universally true for all people, I believe it is worth careful consideration, and that many would find it advantageous to adopt.
So my tentative guess about our exchange here is that (1) “your axe” is simply thinking that it is worthwhile to be open minded about this controversial topic and (2) the defensive and biased elements of the arguments (to the degree that they exist and I’m noticing them) are mostly passed through from the source community that you’re drawing from as you read into the literature and summarize it for LW. I thought the admission of “an axe” was connected to “the defensive arguments” and was wrong about the connection.
So, yes, I’d agree with (1) here. As for (2), well, this post is the first in a sequence that is describing/summarizing arguments from a book, but the authors are not (to my knowledge) polyamorous, nor does the book make a strong conclusion in favor of polyamory.
If I have been biased or defensive on this topic elsewhere, that is my failing alone.
I thought about this for a while, and I think I just wanted to say that I appreciate your reasoned, revealing, and responsible tone. Also...
I’ve been poly for ~4 years, which substantially predates my discovery of any sort of rationalist community, though I would have happily identified myself as a rationalist from about age six onward. Polyamory is unquestionably the right approach for me; while I doubt that that is universally true for all people, I believe it is worth careful consideration, and that many would find it advantageous to adopt.
This would make a fantastic opener for a post. It offers a basis for your expertise on the subject and then a wonderfully clean thesis whose well-argued justification would probably be very educational. By setting the bar at “unquestionably for you” and “high value of information for nearly everyone” the justification would probably involve evidence and reasoning that was quite striking :-)
Why, thank you. I’m hoping that, between my Unknown Known post and this sequence, I’ll be able to do a pretty decent job of demonstrating the high value of information claim. As for why it’s so awesome for me, that really has more to do with quirks of my own psychology than anything else. Just off the top of my head:
It makes me miserable to have to think about relationships in terms of opportunity costs.
I prefer to do most of my socializing with well-known and well-trusted friends.
I attach relatively little emotional weight to sex.
I’m generally very good at managing my emotions, so I’m not much bothered by jealousy.
There are many traits I find attractive that couldn’t coexist in the same person. (Being bisexual is the extreme case.)
And, oh, probably lots more. But poly being a slam-dunk for me doesn’t say much about whether other people should adopt it (except for the tiny subset who share most of those traits), so I’ve been avoiding talking about my own experiences too much. Do you think that’s the wrong move?
I paused to think again :-) My instantaneous response idea was to generate a small laundry list of good and bad effects from talking about personal experiences, then pair it down to examples of categories, then use this to say “its really complicated, I don’t know”.
When an interaction is in full-on “adversarial debate mode” I think revealing personal stuff can be a bad thing to do if you accurately predict that the other person is just going to leap on your revelations as evidence for the bias they have been trying to accuse you of having in the course of an ad hominum and/or ad logicam. (And unfortunately, the difference between “that’s a bias and therefore I win” versus “that’s a bias and let’s try to overcome it” is small and depends critically on tone.)
In this case, for me, I think it was the right move because I ended up seeing it as a “lowering of defenses” (a sort of interpersonal CBM) after I’d implicitly requested that you do so. It would have been horrible of me to use something against you that you had revealed about yourself after I raised the possibility of defensiveness.
OK, so now I’m thinking back to the first thing I said, which is that this subject is more difficult to talk about in public (without things going off the rails) than politics—so I think you should expect craziness on this subject.
I mean, laws about sex and relationships are frequently used for political purposes to increase the emotional drama of politics in order to get people worked up enough to vote...
I think my priors for this conversation were messed up but are improving, maybe? Each time I see more of your writing on this subject I’m surprised again, but a bit less so.
In the “poly kicks evolution in the teeth” link I was left scratching my head wondering why “Polyandry is no more egalitarian than polygyny; any relationship in which only one person is permitted to have other partners lies outside polyamory’s accepted definition”. I would have said that in a threesome, logically speaking, there are three dyadic partnerships and each person has two partners, but I think maybe you assumed (1) that no one is non-heterosexual, (2) only sexual partnerships count, and (3) all groups have at least one penis and at least one vagina (so you can’t just have three wives or three husbands in a closed but poly relationship).
I mean, if we’re ignoring all of our assumptions about human nature, why not treat orientation as “bisexual until tested” (reference for those who missed the joke) and therefore assume that unless otherwise specified the problem with a closed relationship with “2 of one gender and 1 of the other” is that the 1 doesn’t get enough variety in their life because they only get to have sex with the opposite gender… instead of always having that “little extra bit of variety in their married life” :-P
For a more “normal” scenario, the traditional explanation for polyandry in Tibet is that inheritance is patrilineal but “fair” (divided between all brothers) which would lead to farm holdings too small to support a family for any one brother (and starvation for all their families). The solution is to have the brothers share the farm, and also share the wife. Their primary loyalty is to each other, based on shared blood, and the single wife limits the number of possible children in a incredibly resource limited environment.
It originally seemed to me like you were coming from the poly community and reaching out to the rationality community (partly because I was hearing recapitulations of what I recognize as “defensive rationalizations of poly relationships” and assumed you’d originated them). Now I think (maybe?) it is the other way around: you’re starting with rationality and trying to bring us along as you explore poly issues?
All I’ve been trying to say is that all sorts of concrete, relevant, and surprising details come up in anthropology, and if you want to say something controversial about human nature, you should come at it with a measure of care, and start the public explanation with the data. I don’t think this is the standard approach taken with the poly community… at all.
So my tentative guess about our exchange here is that (1) “your axe” is simply thinking that it is worthwhile to be open minded about this controversial topic and (2) the defensive and biased elements of the arguments (to the degree that they exist and I’m noticing them) are mostly passed through from the source community that you’re drawing from as you read into the literature and summarize it for LW. I thought the admission of “an axe” was connected to “the defensive arguments” and was wrong about the connection.
Did I miss again, or do you think this is closer to the mark?
A triad in which all three people are involved with each other, regardless of gender, absolutely counts as polyamory. As typically practiced, I believe, polygyny and polyandry don’t, because the man or the woman, respectively, is the only one allowed to have multiple partners. (For the record, I’m bisexual, so I was definitely not assuming (1).)
I’ve been poly for ~4 years, which substantially predates my discovery of any sort of rationalist community, though I would have happily identified myself as a rationalist from about age six onward. Polyamory is unquestionably the right approach for me; while I doubt that that is universally true for all people, I believe it is worth careful consideration, and that many would find it advantageous to adopt.
So, yes, I’d agree with (1) here. As for (2), well, this post is the first in a sequence that is describing/summarizing arguments from a book, but the authors are not (to my knowledge) polyamorous, nor does the book make a strong conclusion in favor of polyamory.
If I have been biased or defensive on this topic elsewhere, that is my failing alone.
I thought about this for a while, and I think I just wanted to say that I appreciate your reasoned, revealing, and responsible tone. Also...
This would make a fantastic opener for a post. It offers a basis for your expertise on the subject and then a wonderfully clean thesis whose well-argued justification would probably be very educational. By setting the bar at “unquestionably for you” and “high value of information for nearly everyone” the justification would probably involve evidence and reasoning that was quite striking :-)
Why, thank you. I’m hoping that, between my Unknown Known post and this sequence, I’ll be able to do a pretty decent job of demonstrating the high value of information claim. As for why it’s so awesome for me, that really has more to do with quirks of my own psychology than anything else. Just off the top of my head:
It makes me miserable to have to think about relationships in terms of opportunity costs.
I prefer to do most of my socializing with well-known and well-trusted friends.
I attach relatively little emotional weight to sex.
I’m generally very good at managing my emotions, so I’m not much bothered by jealousy.
There are many traits I find attractive that couldn’t coexist in the same person. (Being bisexual is the extreme case.)
And, oh, probably lots more. But poly being a slam-dunk for me doesn’t say much about whether other people should adopt it (except for the tiny subset who share most of those traits), so I’ve been avoiding talking about my own experiences too much. Do you think that’s the wrong move?
I paused to think again :-) My instantaneous response idea was to generate a small laundry list of good and bad effects from talking about personal experiences, then pair it down to examples of categories, then use this to say “its really complicated, I don’t know”.
When an interaction is in full-on “adversarial debate mode” I think revealing personal stuff can be a bad thing to do if you accurately predict that the other person is just going to leap on your revelations as evidence for the bias they have been trying to accuse you of having in the course of an ad hominum and/or ad logicam. (And unfortunately, the difference between “that’s a bias and therefore I win” versus “that’s a bias and let’s try to overcome it” is small and depends critically on tone.)
In this case, for me, I think it was the right move because I ended up seeing it as a “lowering of defenses” (a sort of interpersonal CBM) after I’d implicitly requested that you do so. It would have been horrible of me to use something against you that you had revealed about yourself after I raised the possibility of defensiveness.
So um… I think, maybe, yay for us? :-P
::internet high five::