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alsomike comments on Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous? - Less Wrong
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Not at all. Are you suggesting I'm attempting to conceal the truth? I don't know how this could be misconstrued, it seems perfectly straight-forward to me. The author suggests that polyamory is a product of a thought process that challenges social norms. I take the opposite view, that rejecting polyamory on the grounds that it is overly conformist to social norms is a genuinely challenging and interesting thesis. I'm at a loss as to why this is considered out of bounds.
Polyamory can be the result of a thought process that challenges social norms. It can also be the result of a thought process that sees a good thing and then wants more of it. The process by which one arrives at polyamory does not invalidate the destination, even if the process is irrational.
It's not that your argument is out of bounds, precisely. It's that you seem to be relying on a definition of polyamory that is the almost exact opposite of the one in common use.
Ethical non-monogamy doesn't align with social norms in any modern, economically well-developed society. A challenging and interesting thesis is useless if it is contradicted by all available evidence.
No, khafra is suggesting that your cognition seems to be motivated by something other than finding the truth. Here's a thought experiment that shows that does not imply that you're attempting to conceal the truth:
Let's suppose that I found out that by believing the world is flat, I could win $5. I might then attempt to perform cognitive operations which will result in my believing that the world is flat, that are ultimately motivated by the desire to win $5. It does not entail that anywhere in this process will I actively attempt to conceal the truth, especially to outside observers.
This statement:
Seems to imply that you engaged in something like bottom-line reasoning, wherein one writes one's conclusion on the bottom line of a proof and then tries to find justifications for the conclusion.
A red light came on at this one. Polyamory is overly conformist to social norms? Do you take it to be less controversial than monogamy? As far as I can see, monogamy is still the default expectation.
Oh, I see. The complete statement is that the claim is that polyamory is good because it offers more choice and flexibility. My response is that far from an advantage, this seems like a good reason to reject polyamory insofar as it is justified in that way. I'm contesting the pre-eminence of the value of flexibility in every area of life because I think they discourage deeper, more costly forms of connection in intimate relationships. In this area, I think inflexibility & limitation are virtues. I even claim that limitation in general plays a prominent, positive role in sexual enjoyment, so the specific limitation of having only one partner doesn't necessarily prevent or inhibit enjoyment. Although I will readily concede here that it might for some.
If it can be shown that the absolute valorization of flexibility doesn't inhibit deep intimacy, that intimacy has no value and there are no costs to inhibiting it, or that polyamory doesn't valorize flexibility and therefore doesn't inhibit intimacy, then I have no objection to it. A more minor issue is whether polyamory falsely posits itself as a nonconformist lifestyle when it is simply novel. Here, I claim that false forms of nonconformity retard social progress by promoting misconceptions about the nature of society, but this objection is about polyamorist discursive practices, not the actual practice of polyamory.
If I attempted to claim that polyamory is good at all in my original post, it was unintentional. In general, I would justify polyamory as good for some people because it makes those people happier than the other options available to them. For people who would be less happy if they were polyamorous, polyamory is a terrible idea.
Choice, then, is not good for its own sake, but rather because it offers opportunities for individuals to become happier. It is an instrumental value, not a terminal one.
I'm quite curious: what do you mean by nonconformity?
This has already been said, but I'd like to make it a little more explicit: Those are not opposites. "Polyamory is a product of a thought process that challenges social norms" and "Polyamory is overly conformist to social norms" would be opposites. But the whether "Polyamory is overly conformist to social norms" is true, is unrelated to whether it is challenging or interesting.
Is this perhaps a miswording? Earlier, you seemed to be making the point that polyamory was purposefully nonconformist. It seems to me that perhaps what you're trying to say is that polyamory depends on the existing social norms, as something to rebel against.
Assuming that's what you were trying to say, I don't see that as a good reason to avoid polyamory: If the theory is correct, then it seems to me that the largest number of people will be made happy by a dynamic equilibrium, where one generation (or group of generations) rebels by being polyamorous and the next rebels by being monogamous and then the cycle repeats. Why would that be objectionable? Or perhaps you're trying to optimize for something other than happiness?
Ah, yes I guess I'm sliding between multiple definitions of nonconformity. When I said that polyamory is consciously nonconformist, I mean that in the sense that they adopt a position that is understood that way by their peers, their parents, etc. Nonconformity here is adopting idiosyncratic practices that may be stigmatized, with the intention of opening up new possibilities for living one's life. When I say the opposite, that polyamory is overly conformist, I mean to challenge that idea - what is usually understood as nonconformity arrives at it's position not by challenging social norms, but by rejecting the inconsistency of social norms. Where the monogamist has multiple conflicting and overlapping values of commitment and choice and freedom, etc., the polygamist arrives at her position by valorizing a single, unambiguous value and rejecting anything that conflicts with it. The most precise term for this is not nonconformity, it's fundamentalism.
It's certainly possible that a given social problem is caused by an inadequate commitment to a single value, but I want to clarify that this is the claim being made, and that I don't agree, in two ways. First, I contest the idea that having a single unambiguous value to govern human social life is achievable or even desirable, and second, that intimate relationships are improved by introducing more flexibility and choice. I think we are very sensitive to the problems that are created by a lack of choice in relationships, and remarkably blind to the problems that are caused by too much choice. The post attempts to exploit this blindness by asking us rationally justify monogamy, a task that can only be accomplished by appealing to a set of values that are waning. In my view, the fact that we can't do this convincingly is an apt illustration of the malaise that afflicts society.
Do you have evidence for this? It seems like a product of generalizing from one example, or some similar bias (correspondence bias, perhaps?), to me. I don't see any reason why someone couldn't consider multiple conflicting values and determine that polygamy was the best way to satisfy most of them. (I will admit that a higher-than-usual chance that there's a reason that I'm not aware of, since I'm rather unusual when it comes to how I think about relationships, but as the person making a claim, it's still your responsibility to provide evidence for that claim.)
Hm.
I think this is the relevant quote:
I don't know if WrongBot has read enough here to know this - if e hasn't, you may be right about eir intentions - but in the context of what 'preferable' is used to mean here, that quote is not necessarily asking for a rational justification. Preferences are also strongly dependent on values - which are arational, not irrational - so it would be perfectly valid for someone to answer that question with something like "I value the security that I get from monogamous relationships" or "I value my status within my social group, which disapproves of polygamy", with no further explanation necessary. "I value my time, and thus prefer not to spend it thinking about things like this", which seems to be your objection, is also valid (though it would be a good idea to clearly specify what 'like this' means) - but, not everyone shares that value!
I'm male and I've read most of the sequences here, to clear up a couple pieces of uncertainty.
I was asking people to justify their preferences in terms of their values, so, yes, "I value the security that I get from monogamous relationships" is a perfectly valid justification, and there's nothing irrational about it. Though I might ask for a clarification of what kind of security the person means (Social? Fear of abandonment?), and whether they've considered the ways that other kinds of relationships might provide or fail to provide that security. Why do you believe what you believe? That's the ultimate question I'm asking.
In principle, this is true, but I take the polyamory movement as having been heavily influenced by the 60s counterculture movement and the sexual revolution, influenced philosophically by Romantic poets and Rousseau. One of the major countercultural critiques of mainstream society is hypocritical, inconsistent and contradictory values.
Empirically, this has been demonstrated by Jonathan Haidt. Maybe you are already familiar with his work. He proposes 5 moral foundations -- Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Respect, Purity/Sacredness -- these are different ways of approaching moral questions. He shows that self-described liberals tend to value the first 2 far more than the last 3, where conservatives value them more equally. It's fairly easy to identify the countercultural critique of society through these categories, by observing that they largely reject notions like respect for authority, religious justifications rooted in purity & sacredness, and loyalty to nation & family, taking these values to be vices rather than virtues and seeing all the evil in the world as a result of them.
Aside from that, the institution of marriage and monogamy is governed by the norms of permanent commitment and connection, admittedly less so than in previous eras. It's difficult to see how an activist who rejects the culture's major symbols and practices embodying commitment could not be intending to reject it wholesale, especially when the alternate values of flexibility are emphasized so heavily instead.
You seem to be making the argument that polyamory reminds you of a 60's political movement and that therefore polyamorous people probably have the same intellectual values as leading thinkers in that movement. I find this nonsensical. I'm polyamorous, and I certainly wish that society in general would view polyamory as an acceptable alternative, but I'm not polyamorous in order to rebel against society, nor do I want to oppose the institution of marriage in any way. Nor do I have anything against commitment: quite to the contrary, I feel rather strongly that I need committed relationships in order to be happy.
Ah-ha. You seem to be conflating polygamy-as-a-lifestyle with polygamy-as-a-political-movement. I know next to nothing about polygamy-as-a-political-movement, and don't much care to - one can easily adopt polygamy-as-a-lifestyle without it, if that seems to be in one's best interests.
Regarding the five values, polygamy-as-a-lifestyle seems to me to have the potential to be compatible with all of them, and in some ways it may do a better job of fulfilling one or more of them - including the latter three - depending on how you define the terms.
I'm polyromantic and asexual, and consider my current situation (two major partners and a handful of currently-important other relationships) to be very good in terms of all five, and better at care, respect, and purity/sacredness than most marriages that I'm aware of. (My concept of purity/sacredness is probably nonstandard, though.)
You're conflating monogamy, marriage, and commitment - and probably conflating sex with those, as well. This is somewhat understandable, since in this culture they're strongly correlated, but it's not very accurate in practice. Most kinds of poly relationships that I'm aware of - including mine - involve some kind of commitment; the fact that that commitment doesn't necessarily take the form of a promise never to have sex with anyone else or an official document doesn't make the commitment any less real.