I’ve heard loads of… stories about DT. In my opinion, it is both an unhealthy environment for many types of people, as well as not being representative of the general concept of a group house.
As someone who has lived in a quasi-rationalist bay area group house for nearly 10 years, and seen it through both good and bad sets of housemates, this post reads like someone writing, “Polyamory Could Be Toxic For Some People!” which is true, but nonetheless, a bit offensive, and not very informative.
I agree that Decision Tree was non-representative by design (in ways I’m not sure are public), in ways that will make it perform worse on average. I think that should have been noted more explicitly. I also think deluks is being really brave in naming something that made them a worse person, and I’m grateful they provided that data point.
Yeah, I think DT is very unrepresentative. I also think COVID really sucked for everyone, and increased the variance of everything by a lot. I am definitely extremely glad I wasn’t living alone during COVID and had friends in my house that allowed me to maintain basic social functions during the harshest parts of quarantine, but it also definitely created conflict and was stressful for many.
I admit that I am surprised. I would have expected less stress in a group house than in any cohabitation with fewer people. Or maybe that is because it was stressful—but even more so in smaller groups? I really miss the polls on LW 2.0, otherwise, I would instantly create one now.
I wonder whether that is why early close communities like monasteries did have and needed to have such strict rules about all aspects of life. For example the Rule of St. Benedict.
So group houses did have enough socializing. More than they wanted. This suggests that there is a sweet spot between lonely singles and group houses. Thinking about it, I’m lucky and pretty close to such a sweet spot. My four kids and I live in one house and they also live in the household of their mother and step-father across the street, That means seven people in two houses who can meet each other but also have enough private space.
A decent number of people get into polyamory due to the rationalist community. If someone got involved with polyamory thanks to the community and it went badly, I think it would be reasonable to write such a post. Especially if they would have done the opposite if things had gone well. I should note I myself am poly. There are definitely houses that have gone even worse than DT.
Also the most obvious to me example of ’good standing outside the bay → ‘got into a huge amount of trouble in the bay’ also had no connection to DT.
I think I probably agree with the object level advice here (i.e. “be careful”, “make sure you have a good culture fit”, “make sure you have an exit plan if you can afford one”), but it’s framed a weirdly.
I agree with Tilia that DT, from the outside at least, looked like a pretty extreme outlier in terms of how bad group houses can get and not a good place to draw general conclusions from.
I think there was also a ton on coronavirus-related-drama in lots of houses, and that this is more of a feature of “the pandemic is legitimately stressful, and I think it makes everything much harder for everyone, especially when multiple people have to suddenly renegotiate norms.”
I’ve also heard a lot of negative accounts of DT (possibly the same accounts others in this thread have heard, so plausibly don’t treat this as a separate data point). The conclusion I drew from the accounts is ‘DT has unusually unhealthy norms for a group house, and the particular ways it’s bad are pretty unusual for rationalist group houses’.
I’ve heard loads of… stories about DT. In my opinion, it is both an unhealthy environment for many types of people, as well as not being representative of the general concept of a group house.
As someone who has lived in a quasi-rationalist bay area group house for nearly 10 years, and seen it through both good and bad sets of housemates, this post reads like someone writing, “Polyamory Could Be Toxic For Some People!” which is true, but nonetheless, a bit offensive, and not very informative.
I agree that Decision Tree was non-representative by design (in ways I’m not sure are public), in ways that will make it perform worse on average. I think that should have been noted more explicitly. I also think deluks is being really brave in naming something that made them a worse person, and I’m grateful they provided that data point.
Yeah, I think DT is very unrepresentative. I also think COVID really sucked for everyone, and increased the variance of everything by a lot. I am definitely extremely glad I wasn’t living alone during COVID and had friends in my house that allowed me to maintain basic social functions during the harshest parts of quarantine, but it also definitely created conflict and was stressful for many.
Strong +1 to this—the pandemic sharply increased both some of the costs and some of the benefits of group housing.
I admit that I am surprised. I would have expected less stress in a group house than in any cohabitation with fewer people. Or maybe that is because it was stressful—but even more so in smaller groups? I really miss the polls on LW 2.0, otherwise, I would instantly create one now.
The short answer is: more people = more individual preferences to deal with
I wonder whether that is why early close communities like monasteries did have and needed to have such strict rules about all aspects of life. For example the Rule of St. Benedict.
That is a super interesting point.
So group houses did have enough socializing. More than they wanted. This suggests that there is a sweet spot between lonely singles and group houses. Thinking about it, I’m lucky and pretty close to such a sweet spot. My four kids and I live in one house and they also live in the household of their mother and step-father across the street, That means seven people in two houses who can meet each other but also have enough private space.
What do you think the sweet spot is?
A decent number of people get into polyamory due to the rationalist community. If someone got involved with polyamory thanks to the community and it went badly, I think it would be reasonable to write such a post. Especially if they would have done the opposite if things had gone well. I should note I myself am poly. There are definitely houses that have gone even worse than DT.
Also the most obvious to me example of ’good standing outside the bay → ‘got into a huge amount of trouble in the bay’ also had no connection to DT.
This is roughly my take.
I think I probably agree with the object level advice here (i.e. “be careful”, “make sure you have a good culture fit”, “make sure you have an exit plan if you can afford one”), but it’s framed a weirdly.
I agree with Tilia that DT, from the outside at least, looked like a pretty extreme outlier in terms of how bad group houses can get and not a good place to draw general conclusions from.
I think there was also a ton on coronavirus-related-drama in lots of houses, and that this is more of a feature of “the pandemic is legitimately stressful, and I think it makes everything much harder for everyone, especially when multiple people have to suddenly renegotiate norms.”
I’ve also heard a lot of negative accounts of DT (possibly the same accounts others in this thread have heard, so plausibly don’t treat this as a separate data point). The conclusion I drew from the accounts is ‘DT has unusually unhealthy norms for a group house, and the particular ways it’s bad are pretty unusual for rationalist group houses’.