The logic of consumerism is to weigh all your choices and find out what you really enjoy.

What exactly are you proposing as an alternative to that process? Your whole post seems to be based on equating "explore all options and maximize" with "the logic of consumerism", but while the former may well be necessary for the latter, it's not even close to sufficient! To a large extent, that's simply the logic of decision-making.

The main difference is that polyamorists want to do this in the open, rather than in secret, which is to say that the difference is primarily that polyamorists want to be nonconformists.

So, the desire to be honest can't have anything to do with it?

Or are you convinced that the world is so fundamentally dishonest that honesty is innately equal to non-conformism?

I thought the major argument for polyamory was that some people are happier living that way.

Your first argument suggests that you find such arguments repulsive, but I can't see why.

The major argument for polyamory isn't that it's subversive, though I'm sure some people get a kick out of that.

However, I don't think polyamory is at all mainstream, even though it's closer than it was in past decades. Note that none of those accused in political sex scandals have said that they had an non-monogamous agreement with their spouse, >2 marriages are used as a slippery slope argument against homosexual marriage, and afaik, the only popular fiction about polyamory presents it as very unusual.

If you're looking for a one-size-fits-all set of rules, then polygamy - and, in fact, most forms of social interaction, including monogamy, if you're interested in doing it well - is probably not for you.

The freedom that's noted as a trait of polygamy isn't the freedom from complexity (it's complexity that leads to the "rules"), it's the freedom to choose the kind of complexity you want to deal with, and how you're going to deal with it.

So we're promised freedom, and we end up with an almost Kafka-esque nightmare of never-ending series of rules that we can never be sure we truly following correctly since every situation is different. In contrast, the traditional model of infidelity has historically had one very simple rule: be discreet. Aside from that, anything goes, including sexual acts that have been considered illegal: interracial sex, prostitution, homosexuality, etc.. To be absolutely clear, I'm not at all advocating this, I'm simply pointing out that the claim that polyamory is about freedom while monogamy is about constraints falls apart immediately on serious inspection. If anything, the opposite is true.

I was initially going to respond "Constraints that you participated in the writing of and explicitly agreed to don't go against the notion of freedom at all, certainly not compared to ones you have no say in and little choice to decline," but it seems you're coming at this from a rather different angle. You are considering the constraint of monogamy not as "be monogamous (details elsewhere)", but rather as "be discreet about polygamy". This has several problems, SFAICT.

We can apply this sort of level-jumping operation to any rule - "Do X" becomes "Be discreet about violations of X" - but these aren't the same thing, and it is far from obvious that the latter is so. A real instance of the latter might be, for instance, how Spartan boys were taught to steal food - they were beaten if caught, because they were supposed to avoid getting caught. But, the general reaction to learning about violations of monogamy seems to generally be, "They did that?" rather than "They let themselves get caught?" or "They told people", which suggests that most people have the simpler rule in mind. Or, even if they don't, they certainly want to appear as if they did. Which either means they think most people have the simpler rule in mind, or the whole thing is one large mass hypocrisy in which everyone knows the actual rule is "be discreet", but admitting this would be itself a violation of the rules. I suppose the latter isn't too implausible, seeing that a number of things do seem to follow that pattern... but there will always be people, the "nerds" in Eliezer's terminology, who actually believe what they're told, and who won't be in on it, and who actually will be using the basic rule. So even in the latter case I'm not sure you can claim that's the actual rule. (In addition, in the latter case, the acknowledgement of the "be discreet" rule is unconscious, which doesn't sound like what you're describing above.) Though maybe I've missed a few cases?

OK. That's problem number one. Problem number two is, once you're acting within the bounds of "be discreet"... what are you actually going to do? You need more than one person for sex, and that (I should hope) means some sort of agreement about what's actually going to go on. In short, we're right back to square one - the freedom of "be discreet" is no different from the freedom of, well, open freedom, except that the former is hidden and the latter is not. Give people freedom to interact with each other, and they'll want some sort of assurance of what other people will do, and will start making promises and contracts.

Problem number three is that it's hard to see this as a solution when it's fundamentally dishonest, but I guess that's obvious.

Problem number four is that it's arbitrary. You said the freedom is to "be discreet". Be discreet about what? About violations of some rule. What rule? Does it matter? You're talking about violations of monogamy, but your entire argument, if valid, would go through if that were replaced by polygny or any other rule. Your argument doesn't support monogamy - it supports secrecy, and that's all.

I hope you don't mind if I make some observations and suggestions about the form of communication you're using, since there appears to be a little bit of culture clash at work right now. (I acknowledge up-front that a discussion of form isn't a critique of content, and at any rate, I'm neither a practitioner nor an evangelist of polyamory myself.)

In a threaded conversation, brevity is the soul of communication: a few clearly stated points are much easier to reply to than a long essay. (Your first comment communicated much more clearly than the subsequent ones; it's no coincidence that it was upvoted.) I completely understand the desire to expand more and more on a point in order to be more persuasive and less misunderstood, but in this format it's usually much more effective to keep it short at first, then reply to specific questions and objections. (Here on the Internet, there's much more of a tendency for people to gloss over long sections of text. You can mitigate this to some extent by bolding or italicizing the key points; clicking the "Help" link below the comment box tells you how to do this here.)

Second, the repeated "What If" questions stand out from the usual form of discourse. There's a norm on Less Wrong (not universal, but common) of stating the actual reasons that cause you personally to hold a position, rather than tossing things out to see if anything sticks. (People do regularly play Devil's Advocate, but even in this case they're listing the reasons that would be most persuasive to them if not for their objections). I'd find it more helpful and interesting if you told us which of these considerations actually lead you to rule out polyamory as an option for you.

Again, this isn't an indictment of your reasoning, just a note on what differences in mode of expression might be making this discussion less effective than it could be. (Reciprocally, please tell us if any specific aspects of Less Wrong writing style strike you as unnecessarily smug, uncritical, etc; that sort of input is extremely helpful to a community like ours, and we need to listen to newer voices to hear it.)

...the nonconformist polyamorist who gets an erotic thrill from freaking out the squares and is obsessed with what they think and how they are scandalized...

While I suppose that there must be people who actually think like this, I myself have never met one.

this post, which smugly & uncritically assumes that it stands outside of social norms.

Is it smug and uncritical to point out the existence of a social norm? All I've done is to observe that the norm exists, (very briefly) describe alternatives, and ask "Why do you believe what you believe?" This doesn't seem to be a question you're interested in. While the paradox of choice is well-documented, it is not a linear function. Too much choice can be paralyzing, but we are happier when we can make important choices for ourselves.

It's certainly possible to have non-consumerist justifications for polyamory - Mormon justifications, Muslim justifications, etc.

First, religion is a poor justification for anything. Second, the fact that polyamory is a choice does not mean that a preference for more choice justifies it; the question to be answered is still, "why choose polyamory?" One excellent reason is utilitarian: if polyamory is anticipated to make you and your loved ones happier than any alternative you've considered, why, you should choose it.

Choice is only helpful when it is possible to evaluate one's options by some pre-existing metric. If I were to offer you three closed, unlabeled boxes, allowing you to choose which one to take does not improve your expected outcome.

I will try to sum up your position: you're saying that

(1) limitation is inherently important to sex and romance;

(2) explicit prohibitions are often implicitly allowed to be violated;

(3) your problem is not with polyamoury per se, but with the fact that its proponents want explicit approval rather than mere legal toleration, which would

(4) provide too much choice (less choice is a relief for many monogamous couples) and undermine the sexiness-inducing nature of the prohibitions against it.

Is this fair?

I disagree with the first sentence. Since my disagreement hinges on the difference between partial and total derivatives I hope it is broadly interesting.

When Milton Friedman titled one of his books Free To Chose his underlying model was that happyness was a function both of the number of choices and the quality of the choices: . His theory is that q is a dependent variable: . When choices, c, are few, then producers offer consumers poor choices, on a take-it or leave-it basis. When choices are many, producers compete and consumers are offered good choices. is positive and large. is positive and large. What of ? Presumably it is negative, all that comparison shopping is a chore, but in this analysis it is seen as small. Choice is good,meaning .

I see the consumerist position, that choice is good, meaning , as a crude vulgarisation of the argument above.

Trying to apply this to a 30 year old American contemplating polyamory, my assumption is that he has experience of how the inner dynamics of the modern American monogamous romance play out. Unhappy experience. Now he is wondering about the dynamics implicit in polyamory. He wants to know whether changing the rules produces a better game, and he knows that he cannot find out via the simple equation: more choice = better. He must consider how the players respond to the changed incentives produced by the new rules.