JenniferRM comments on Against the standard narrative of human sexual evolution - Less Wrong

7 Post author: WrongBot 23 July 2010 05:28AM

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Comment author: JenniferRM 27 July 2010 09:18:17PM *  2 points [-]

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 :-)

Comment author: WrongBot 27 July 2010 09:55:24PM 2 points [-]

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?

Comment author: JenniferRM 31 July 2010 12:41:11AM *  1 point [-]

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::

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