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Polyhacking
This is a post about applied luminosity in action: how I hacked myself to become polyamorous over (admittedly weak) natural monogamous inclinations. It is a case history about me and, given the specific topic, my love life, which means gooey self-disclosure ahoy. As with the last time I did that, skip the post if it's not a thing you desire to read about. Named partners of mine have given permission to be named.
1. In Which Motivation is Acquired
When one is monogamous, one can only date monogamous people. When one is poly, one can only date poly people.1 Therefore, if one should find oneself with one's top romantic priority being to secure a relationship with a specific individual, it is only practical to adapt to the style of said individual, presuming that's something one can do. I found myself in such a position when MBlume, then my ex, asked me from three time zones away if I might want to get back together. Since the breakup he had become polyamorous and had a different girlfriend, who herself juggled multiple partners; I'd moved, twice, and on the way dated a handful of people to no satisfactory clicking/sparking/other sound effects associated with successful romances. So the idea was appealing, if only I could get around the annoying fact that I was not, at that time, wired to be poly.
Everything went according to plan: I can now comfortably describe myself and the primary relationship I have with MBlume as poly. <bragging>Since moving back to the Bay Area I've been out with four other people too, one of whom he's also seeing; I've been in my primary's presence while he kissed one girl, and when he asked another for her phone number; I've gossiped with a secondary about other persons of romantic interest and accepted his offer to hint to a guy I like that this is the case; I hit on someone at a party right in front of my primary. I haven't suffered a hiccup of drama or a twinge of jealousy to speak of and all evidence (including verbal confirmation) indicates that I've been managing my primary's feelings satisfactorily too.</bragging> Does this sort of thing appeal to you? Cross your fingers and hope your brain works enough like mine that you can swipe my procedure.
2. In Which I Vivisect a Specimen of Monogamy
It's easier to get several small things out of the way, or route around them, than to defeat one large thing embedded in several places. Time to ask myself what I wanted. A notable virtue of polyamory is that it's extremely customizable. (Monogamy could be too, in theory, but comes with a strong cultural template that makes it uncomfortably non-default to implement and maintain nonstandard parameters.) If I could take apart what I liked about monogamy, there seemed a good chance that I could get some of those desiderata in an open relationship too (by asking my cooperative would-be primary). The remaining items - the ones that were actually standing between me and polyamory, not just my cached stereotype thereof - would be a more manageable hacking target. I determined that I could, post-hack, keep and pursue the following desires:
- I want to be someone's top romantic priority, ideally symmetrically. [This is satisfied by me and MBlume having an explicitly primary relationship instead of each having a bunch of undifferentiated ones.]
- I eventually want to get married. (This one isn't in the works as of this time, but isn't precluded by anything I'm doing now. Open marriages are a thing.) Relatedly, I want to produce spawn within wedlock, and to have reproductive exclusivity (i.e. no generating half-siblings for said spawn on either side of the family). [MBlume was fine with this mattering to me.]
- I want to be able to secure attention on demand - even though I didn't anticipate needing this option routinely. My model of myself indicated that I would feel more comfortable with my primary going off with other girls if I knew that I was entitled to keep him home, for status- and security-related reasons. Actually requiring this of him in practice is rare. [We invented the term "pairbonding" to refer to designated periods of time when we are not to be distracted from one another.]
- I want to be suitably paranoid about STIs. [We worked out acceptable standards for this well in advance.]
These things weren't the sole components of my monogamous inclinations, but what was left was a puny little thing made of ugh fields and aesthetic tastes and the least portions of the above. (For example, the first bullet point, being someone's top romantic priority, is 95% of the whole wanting to be someone's exclusive romantic priority. That last 5% is not that huge.)
The vivisection process also revealed that a lot of my monogamous inclinations were composed of the bare fact that monogamy had always been the specified arrangement. Being presumed by the agreed-upon boundaries of my relationships to be monogamous meant that if either party went off and was non-monogamous, this was Breaking A Rule. My brain does not like it when people (including me) Break Rules2 or try to change them too close to the time of the proposed would-be exception, generally speaking, but doesn't object to rules being different in different contexts. If I entered a relationship where, from the get-go, poly was how it was supposed to work, this entire structure would be silent on the subject of monogamy. Pre-vivisection I would have considered it more closely embedded than that.
3. In Which I Use My Imagination
Humans respond to incentives. We do this even when it comes to major decisions that should be significant enough in themselves to swamp said incentives. Encoding the switch to poly as a grand, dramatic sacrifice I was preparing to make for cinematic reasons (advance the plot, make soulful faces at the camera, establish my character to the rapt audience as some sort of long-suffering altruist giving up a Part Of Who I Am for True Love) was admittedly appealing. But it wasn't appealing to the bits of my brain that were doing the heavy lifting, just to the part that generates fiction and applies the templates to real life whenever possible. Better to find ways to cater to the selfish, practical crowd in my internal committee.
Polyamory has perks.
So I imagined a model of myself with one modification: the debris of my monogamous inclinations that were still left after I'd pared away the non-intrusive parts were not present in this model. Imaginary Model Alicorn was already finished with her hack and comfortable with plugging into a poly network. Contemplating how she went about her life, I noted the following:
- She got to date MBlume. (This one was important.)
- When I considered who else besides MBlume I might want to date if I lived in the relevant area and was poly, I found that I had a list. In several cases, the people on the list were folks I couldn't date if they were going to be 100% of my significant others or if I was going to be 100% of theirs - some had the wrong gametes or other features for hypothetical future spawn-production, some were already thoroughly poly and weren't about to abandon that (or, where applicable, other partner(s)) for me, some were incompletely satisfactory in other ways that I'd find frustrating if they were my sole partner but could overlook if they were supplemented appropriately. Imaginary Model Alicorn could date these people and wouldn't have to rely on hypotheticals to learn what it would be like.
- She acquired a certain level of status (respect for her mind-hacking skills and the approval that comes with having an approved-of "sensible" romantic orientation) within a relevant subculture. She got to write this post to claim said status publicly, and accumulate delicious karma. And she got to make this meta bullet point.
- She had a way to live comfortably in the Bay Area within arm's reach of lots of her friends.
- She had a non-destructive outlet for her appetite for social drama3.
- She had firsthand information about both ways to orchestrate her love life, and even if she wanted to go back to monogamy eventually for some reason, she'd be making an informed decision.
- She had to check fewer impulses and restrain fewer urges to remark on the attributes of people around her, because the consequences for being interpreted incorrectly (or correctly) as expressing romantic or sexual interest in arbitrary people weren't as big a deal.
So I spent some time thinking about Imaginary Model Alicorn. When her life started seeming like a pleasant fantasy, instead of a far-out alternate universe, that was progress; when it sounded like a viable plan for the near future, instead of an implausible flight of fancy, that was progress too.
4. In Which I Put Some Brainbits in Mothballs
At this point my interest in being poly was thoroughly motivated and I already had a comfortably broken-in new self-model to move into - if and when I managed the hack. It wasn't done. I still had to get rid of:
- My aesthetic keening for a perfect, pretty, self-contained monogamous setup4.
- Resentment that I ought to have to self-modify to get some things I wanted, instead of the universe being set up so I could comfortably retain my factory settings.
- The difference between "top priority" and "exclusive priority".
- My impulse to retain the right to claim victim status if certain things went wrong (e.g. if I were faithful in a supposedly monogamous relationship, and then I wound up with an STI because my SO slept with someone else, I would be the wronged party and could tremble my lip at my faithless partner and demand the sympathy of my friends, instead of being a casualty of an accident yielded by allowable behaviors and entitled to nothing but a sigh of regret).
- Anxiety about the possibility that my primary would be stolen away by some more appealing secondary.
- Loss aversion, which wanted to restrain me from giving up the potential to date people who would consider ever having been poly a dealbreaker. (Note: I implemented what I believe to be a reversible hack, so I didn't have to worry about not being able to enter a monogamous relationship if that ever seemed called for).
Respectively, here's what I did to get these brainbits to stop struggling long enough that I could box them up and put them into deep storage (forgive the metaphors in which I appear to make faces at myself. I did not actually need a mirror for any of this; those bits are symbols for the attitudes associated with the mental actions):
- Replacement. Cultivated a new aesthetic according to which polyamory was the "prettier" style. (Each aesthetic has the weakness of working primarily when the people around me are all doing the same thing, and I don't know how to fix that yet; but I was going to move into an area and subculture with lots of poly people anyway.)
- Rolled my eyes at myself and listed prior self-modifications I'd undertaken, then asking if those goals were less important to me than getting the benefits of being poly or if I regretted those prior hacks.
- Raised an eyebrow at myself and asked what, exactly, was the added value of exclusivity. Question dissolved on sufficiently skeptical inspection.
- Pointed out that victim status is not actually particularly valuable. I have acquired a better caliber of friends than I had when this brainbit appears to have crystallized, and could reasonably expect sympathy from most of them whether or not I was technically the victim of someone else's wrongdoing. And I can tremble my lip as much as I want, for all the good that will do.
- Weighed the badness of losing an SO to someone vs. just plain losing one due to dissatisfaction; determined difference to be insignificant, at least without more detailed information about the "someone" which I could not generate ex hypothesi. Noted that I would hardly improve my odds of retaining an SO by demanding a relationship style dispreferred by said SO. And the relevant individual had indicated his preference to be polyamory.
- "Who exactly are these people? Do I know any of them? Not any who I'd want to date in any recognizable scenario. Okay then, the class as a whole is to be counted a less valuable opportunity than the class of poly people (which notably includes MBlume)."
5. In Which Everything Goes According To Plan And I Am Repeatedly Commended For Having Magical Powers
Field-testing has confirmed that I'm doing something right: I'm happy and comfortable. (Also, spontaneously all kinds of popular. If I'd known I could get this many people interested by hacking poly I might have done it sooner.) I would reverse the hack if my primary decided he wanted to be monogamous with me, but otherwise don't see a likely reason to want to.
1I'm counting willingness that one's sole partner have other partners (e.g. being an arm of a V) to be a low-key flavor of being poly oneself, not a variety of tolerant monogamy. I think this is the more reasonable way to divide things up given a two-way division, but if you feel that I mischaracterize the highly simplified taxonomy, do tell.
2The details of what my brain considers to be Rules and how it protests when they are broken or self-servingly altered are mildly interesting but irrelevant to this post.
3I don't think I'd describe myself as enjoying drama, but it's interesting and I'm drawn to it, and if I don't keep track of this carefully enough I go around starting it without realizing what I'm doing until too late. Generating actual drama is a good way to hurt people, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the same appetite appears to be indulged by working out the intricacies of relationship parameters, and keeping track of the structure of a polycule in which I am an atom, even if no drama per se exists.
4If the comments I linked when I first mentioned this aesthetic don't adequately explain it to you, perhaps listen to the song "Somewhere That's Green" from Little Shop of Horrors. The exact details in the lyrics thereof are not what I ever had in mind (it's designed to highlight and poke fun at the singing character's extremely modest ambitions) but the emotional context - minus the backstory where the character currently has an abusive boyfriend - is just right.
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Comments (603)
I can think of another disadvantage to becoming polyamorous: you lose the ability to deflect would-be suitors by telling them "I already have a boyfriend/girlfriend".
"Poly" <> "available".
It would be technically accurate for me to turn down someone I had no interest in by saying "My boyfriend wouldn't like that." Since of course he would not prefer me to date people in whom I am uninterested. I could also just, in fact, say, "I have a boyfriend" - for the same reason I can say "I don't own a telephone". (I have a phone number, but people won't work hard enough to avoid needing it if they know it exists right off the bat.)
But perhaps you meant among people who know me - in which case yeah, I do have to utter words to the effect of "no thanks". And then they ask "why?" and I say "do you want the nicest sufficient reason or an exhaustive list of relevant factors?".
The answer I would make to "why?" (but have never had to, as women tend to be much less clueless than men about dating) would be something like: "Because it seemed as though you were the sort of person who would feel entitled to ask me why, instead of merely accepting my answer."
It's none of someone's business why unless you choose to volunteer that information, and needing to know why you've just been turned down is a massive low-self-perceived-status signal.
The only exception to that rule would be someone that you already have a deep and long standing relationship (just not sexual or romantic) with. Such a person might be justified in starting a "Why" conversation as your friend. But even that is dicey, and the sort of conversation that could destroy the friendship, as it can so easily ride the knife edge of trying to make you defend your answer, or guilt you into changing it if you can't convince them that is both reasonable and not a negative judgement of them.
If asked in an honest (rather than a begging) tone it is a massive signal that they are a person seeking self-improvement.
Yes, this means that they have accepted that they have flaws, and therefore that their status isn't as high as it could be. But I don't see how that would be a problem?
Is it, in your eyes, better that someone accept that they are flawed, and seek to change that (by learning of their flaws, and fixing them) or that they believe themselves flawless?
At that point it's kind of too late to matter. The rejectee has already been liberated from the necessity to signal high status to that particular recipient. They are free to do whatever the hell they want and play whatever status they feel like in the moment.
Which is quite possibly a benefit, depending on the circumstances. Although there are less awkward, pointless and painful ways to go about it than 'why?' questions.
Contrast this with the institution of the bug report in software. In programming, everyone expects that there are going to be some errors. Everyone learns from them, programmers, current users, prospective users... I consider the social institution of nonjudgmental bug reports to be, in and of itself, a substantial benefit from computer science to society at large.
"Could Not Reproduce"
Okay, seriously? This kind of "No you can't know what you did wrong, asking means you're even lower-status" dynamic to sexuality has probably been responsible for a number of geek/Aspie suicides over the last century. The existence and popularity of PUA isn't so much a response to men who feel deprived of sex, it's targeted at men who feel deprived of sex and romance and any idea of what they're doing wrong and any known strategy for even getting started on fixing things. A major reason why people hurt is that there's no known gentle slope into sex, and not getting any feedback is part of that.
I've informed a number of male college students that they have large, clearly detectable body odors. In every single case so far, they say nobody has ever told them that before. (And my girlfriend has confirmed a number of these, so it's not just a unique nose.)
If you don't need to ask yourself, that's fine. If someone else does need to ask, try to be more sympathetic. And if someone asks you, TELL THEM.
I trained myself to not give unrequested feedback anymore after some bad experiences. I find it a sad situaton but am not inclined to be the one telling others things they don.t really want to hear.
Gratulation!
Oh, interesting. That's the first explanation/justification for PUA that hasn't seemed creepy to me.
There is a significant difference though between wanting an explanation and feeling entitled to one. Anything that suggests a sense of entitlement, particularly when that crosses a privilege asymmetry, risks seeming threatening. "I've already said no and they have not unconditionally accepted that" is not that far a step from "they are giving vibes that suggest they think my right to a no can be overridden by their desires".
I don't think it's actually that hard to signal "unconditional acceptance and a harmless desire for more information if you're feeling generous", but if we're talking about a population with insufficient people/social skills, that will not be easy for them.
I agree it's a virtue to donate information in such cases, but I don't agree they're entitled to it.
Um... very often the real reason is unflattering.
"You are morbidly obese." "You are so tiny I feel like I'm crushing you." "You act like I'm your last hope of ever meeting a girl." "Your religion forbids premarital sex and that won't work for me." "Your conversation is just really boring."
Are you actually saying that people want to be told these things?
I'm sure you can find slightly nicer ways of saying atleast some of of the above. e.g. "I prefer people who are more physically fit" rather than "you are morbidly obese".
All but one of those are things that people can change. The most difficult one to change (being tiny) is something which people can adjust in part by bulking up and also carrying themselves better. Frankly, speaking as a really tiny male homo sapiens (slightly under 5'2) , if I were to ask someone out and to find out that that was the primary issue I'd be a bit relieved that it wasn't something else. On the other hand when I was told explicitly that people were not interested in me due to my height it has sometimes felt really awful. But it did cause me to focus more on people who were of below average height or not too tall and that seems to have lead to some success. So even that has been a general positive.
If they're asking, they deserve to be told.
If they don't want to know, they shouldn't ask. Lying to someone "for their own good" is, to me, one of the most disgusting concepts in existence.
I've been lied to "for my own good" several times. And every single time, all it really did was allow the person lying to me to feel good about themselves, while simultaneously screwing me over.
To illustrate, I'll go through some likely results of telling someone each of these things Vs. not telling them.
They are now aware that their weight is a major reason for lack of success. This is an extra incentive to lose weight. In addition, it's possible they weren't even conscious of how overweight they were previously. So, they gain health benefits.
They now know to be on the look out for either smaller partners, or partners who show signs of a crushing fetish, as opposed to continuing to ask large people who will turn them down.
You may need to give more explanation on this one; because it's likely that there's some specific part of their behaviour that's a problem. However, at least they are now aware that they are giving off vibes of desperation, and can try and change that (giving them more self-confidence, because they now know that the problem isn't something innate)
They get to feel morally superior to you.
Provided you are willing to explain why you find their conversation boring, this is helpful. Seriously, I'm friends with a lot of aspergics*, and every time I explain to one of them "you're being boring, the problem is that you are doing X" they have henceforth put effort into avoiding doing X, which has increased their success in socialising.
*(I suspect this is because I'm a borderline case myself, and therefore often end up acting as a "translator" between them and NTs)
They don't know why they were rejected; and likely find themselves wondering whether they'll ever be able to be successful, making them feel increasingly desperate and despondent about their chances with each rejection.
While the first few rejecters may successfully prevent this by using "it's not you it's me" type lines, it will soon become clear to the rejectee that these are, in fact, often lies.
From experience: this can lead to resonant doubt/panic attacks. It kinda sucks.
Good point. It can result in a kill-or-cure situation, either they take it as "I can solve this" and gain confidence, or that they can't, and lose even more.
Some do.
Some are stupid and will shoot the messenger even though they're emotionally better off knowing for certain than just wandering in an unhappy fog, wondering over and over what they're doing wrong.
If they ask directly, I'd say, tell them honestly.
Well this place is pretty infested with truth/information fetishists, so it might not be a good place to ask.
I agree with everything you said, and with everything michaelsullivan said. They're not in conflict. Barring a Friendly Singularity and CEV people with poorer social skills are going to have worse lives, and worse, improving your own social skills or improving other people's social skills is not going to change the fact that there is a bottom 10%, and life is going to suck harder for them.
Life is a bitch and it is quite abnormal to act on any sympathy one may have with the creepy/awkward/annoying person near you.
For any young geek reading this, here are a few ways of improving your social skills/ decreasing mild to moderate social anxiety
succeedsocially.com has a lot of reasonably useful advice too, and if you're a romantically deprived male there's plenty of instrumentally useful advice in the PUA subculture but the lowest hanging fruit is * Shower daily and use anti-perspirant. That's not negotiable. You needn't use deodorant but honestly you probably should. * Smile more, greet people i.e. say "Hi" a lot. * The more people you talk to the more likely you are to make friends; the more girls you talk to, and know, the more likely you are to find someone you're interested who is interested in you </end heteronormative> * If you can get into an exercise regimen, most people can make relatively large gains pretty fast for not much time or work. This will make you hotter and more confident. Some people are fucked genetically but they're a small minority. Try to get fitter * Learn how to tell if clothes fit and never buy anthing that doesn't fit again. There's much more to fashion but that is the single biggest gain you can make and it will take well under two hours. There's a guide here and plenty more good stuff here particularly in the sidebar.
Also, Everything gets better after you leave High School, and it can continue to get better for a looong time.
Awesome post, thanks for it.
Probably atypical counter-example: I'm pretty sure I had significant opportunities to get laid my last year in HS (which, being an idiot, I did nothing about), more so than I have since.
Although I largely agree with what you've said here for the socially inept, I think the prevalence of the sentiment of that final statement may well lead to a great many people being disappointed when they arrive at university and find themselves more isolated than ever.
Well, I suppose it's really a disadvantage to being known to be polyamorous...
Thank you very much for writing this up. I did something similar to myself earlier, and I'm glad to see you helping other people achieve happiness in new, unfamiliar circumstances.
Upvoted for your insightful description of your thoughts on polyamory and monogamy during this process. I think it's rare to find someone able to detail their approach to changing themselves with such exacting precision. Personally, given that I currently have no interest in being either polyamorous or monogamous, the specifics are not pertinent to my situation, but I think your approach to documenting them could be useful for many other types of changes.
Also, congratulations on increasing your utility!
The analogies between transhumanism and late-19th century socialism are unmistakeable. http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/07/unintended-consequences-19th-century-socialism-and-21st-century-transhumanism/
They called it "free love."
I have no idea if that means anything, but it is interesting to see how many similarities there are.
That article draws too much conclusion from a very weak analogy.
Congratulations and things! Thank you for posting this; I am sure I will refer friends to it in the future.
This article had a big impact on me! I had never even considered the idea that mono vs. poly was a setting you could change, and I discovered that I didn't have nearly as much of an attachment to monogamy as I had thought.
One problem I'm having is getting started with polyamory in practice. I'm worried that adding another constraint on top of other requirements (i.e. women interested in men, around my age, in Tucson, looking for a romantic relationship, who are rational) will make it hard or impossible to find someone. Any tips?
Assuming you haven't gone and made irreversible deep hacks in your brain, you could add it as an option instead of a constraint. Find someone you like without paying attention to whether she's poly or mono; then, find that out, and be whichever she is and carry on from there. Or, if you strongly wish to be poly, look for polyamory groups in your area or something. (I don't actually know if Tucson has any. But it might.)
No.
But I do expect that if humans become immortal superbeings, then given enough time, most people currently in fairytale monogamous relationships will switch to poly. (Though when people are immortal superbeings, I also expect it to become common that they'll spend a very long time if necessary searching for an instance of fairytale monogamy to be their first relationship.)
I guess my philosophy is that fairytale monogamy is optimal for the young (say under 200 years or so), while poly and other non-traditional arrangements are the choice of the adult.
And yet, the vast majority of poly people are well under 200 years old... I doubt they would agree with you on what is optimal for them.
I suppose you could counter that the vast majority of people under 200 years old are monogamous, but that seems more due to monogamy's enormous head-start in modern western culture than due to what is optimal for the young.
I note that this treads close to a well-established poly fail: the notion that poly is More Highly Evolved.
It's not? I mean, there's some people, though probably considerably less than half of the population, who are genuinely and naturally well-suited to monogamous closed relationships. But the point that immortal superbeings would do something polyish actually does strike me as a clear argument in favor of "poly is More Highly Evolved". I mean, you're then that much closer to doing things the way immortal superbeings would do it. This is why I've always felt vaguely guilty about not being bisexual, since immortal superbeings clearly would be.
If you're using "monogamous closed" here to mean "no cheating behaviour" then many studies widely report this is well under half of the coupled (presumably Western, first world) population. I'm not aware of any studies on genuinely monogamous inclination.
I must be missing something here; I read this as a circular argument.
If you have more words here I would read with great interest. Again, I must be missing something, because it seems to me a similar argument could be made for immortal superbeings also enjoying every food and music type because that would similarly maximise the likelihood of obtaining food- and music-derived utility.
Um, that no more follows than that a hypothetical sapient mayfly can be "more highly evolved" by learning how to knit winter clothing. The problem does not apply, so the solution is not especially useful.
I don' see from where you conclude that " immortal superbeings would do something polyish" . Why it is not as likely that they will evolve to have a series of monogamous relationships? The science of falling and staying in love is even now quite well understood . All it takes is few hormones. (see http://www.youramazingbrain.org.uk/lovesex/sciencelove.htm and the references therein). By using them only when with your partner you can make a love relationship monogamous relatively easy.
That said, do you have references for " though probably considerably less than half of the population, who are genuinely and naturally well-suited to monogamous closed relationships" ? If the monogamous love is determined by hormones, which have been in humans for millions of years doesn't it make it more likely that nowadays and few millions years future humans are more likely to be monogamous. A possible explanation for the "polypartners" people could be that because of the abundance of choice they are likely to make wrong decisions (see Human motivation :(http://lesswrong.com/lw/71x/a_crash_course_in_the_neuroscience_of_human/) I would expect future humans to be busy with more interesting and challenging things then finding the next sexual partner.
By the way you can experiment to hack yourself bisexual by trying to fall in love with a man with the three simple steps described in the end of the reference.
But the point that immortal superbeings would do something polyish actually does strike me as a clear argument in favor of "poly is More Highly Evolved"
It is? What is the assumption that immortal superbeing would chose to do such a thing based on -seeing as there are no immortal superbeings around-? Talking about biases, this does seem to be one of those case where our personal choices might influence our judgement on a problem which cannot be investigated experimentally nor framed in a suitably formal theoretical model.
While I am not against poly, I am also not persuaded that it could be called "better suited" to superbeings -the same could be said about being bisexual-. Mainly, I think that it could certainly become more accepted -what with society becoming more open-minded-, but only as a choice amongst others, not as a necessarily "superior" choice. Then again, evolution is all about being better suited to one's environment, not about being "better" in a general term, and immortal beings would likely be freed by such external costraint, so... I guess that it would largely be up to each individual's personal preference. What I envision is a situation akin of the one we have nowadays, but significantly more tolerant. It's not that, simply because homosexuality is more widely accepted, "everyone" is becoming homosexual, there is just more freedom of choice, and it doesn't make sense, to me, to look at those kind of choices as "more" or "less" evolved.
From an evolutionary point of view, polygamy doesn't seem to be necessarily tied to "more evolved" -this is easily checked by browsing reseach in the field of ethology (through polygyny, being more common among vertebrated, has been studied far more extensively than polyandry)-. Us human being, being what you might call the "peak" of this process, are largely monogamous, unlike, for example, chimpanzees and bonobos.
Furthermore, consider that anchient Greeks were largely bisexuals, and look at the situation nowadays, after Illuminism, and with a singificantly larger life span. Those kind of choices does not seem to be tied to cultural or byological evolution. Tolerance for different life choices is.
I find it plausible that immortal superbeings would be poly, but highly unlikely that they would be bisexual. My reasoning is that immortal superbeings would be unlikely to stick with the concept of gender as we understand it, thus making the labels heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual etc. obsolete at that point.
Somebody needs to produce bumper-stickers that read "What Would A Bisexual Immortal Superbeing Do?"
I would assume that eventually the pleasurable feeling one gets from sex and love if completely separated from reproduction would slowly disappear or modified to fill something like is required in the scenario described here. Sure one can say that beings in that situation might be considered "bisexual" but is that really a useful word? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the sexes as we know them basically disappear in a world where anyone can make a descendant by themselves if they have the resources for it? Being "bisexual" dosen't really make sense in such a context since anything like what we currently understand as biological sex is gone and is replaced by several competing reproductive strategies that only loosely fit the current distribution of reproductive strategies of the sexes.
I would probably self-modify to be asexual if it wasn't for current societal norms and modes of reproduction. I could get much more out of my limited lifespan if I didn't waste so much time with matters related to it. I'd rather do some math, or read more books or do some research or just explore and have fun in a virtual world.
My revealed preferences seem to match this partially as well. Mostly unrelated story: In the past I've actually been so disappointed when I ask people what's the funnest thing they can imagine and I get the answer "sex". Once I couldn't stop myself from saying back "Come on you can do better!". I got a blank stare and clear confusion. What is extra funny is that looking back I realize that in that particular context her answer of "sex" was clearly just one of the more obvious flirting signals that I had completely missed for over two weeks. Where in the fraking ancestral environment did I get maladaptive genes like that? Heh.
Speaking as the asexual reading/mathing/coding type, might I suggest that after the first several years, or at least if your sexuality finally started picking up again, you'd go back to relationships & realize why they're all the rage? (It's also more an orientation than a lifestyle.)
I'm surprised to see Eliezer being so liberal with throwing about "More Highly Evolved". This is a more misleading usage than what he condemns vigorously in (for example) No Evolutions for Corporations or Nanodevices. That is, if it is not-ok to overload the 'evolve' word to include corporations and nano then it is definitely not-ok to stretch it to evolving to immortal superbeings either (it's less like evolution in practice but far more like it in how the word is used).
"Immortal superbeings" aren't more highly evolved. Evolution kind of doesn't work very well as individuals approach immortality. More importantly even if evolution can be said to be evolving in a direction ('higher') it certainly wouldn't be in the direction of immortal superbeings. Or in the direction of sexual behaviours optimised for fun. Immortal superbeings are things we as present day humans think it would be cool to be.
Poly is "something we imagine our idealized fantasy people doing". This is some evidence about what our preferences are, along the lines of visualizing a eutopia. Particularly because it seems these immortal folks are nothing more than a target for projection. I mean, out of the set of all possible immortal superbeings how exactly was the 'are bisexual' trait identified? It's certainly not an objective feature of the class, or one that all humans would attribute to them.
JoeW introduced the term, not Eliezer. It seems a bit unfair to me to criticize Eliezer for trying to continue the flow of the conversation instead of explicitly correcting JoeW in what I would consider a fairly annoying manner.
I should have added more context - the expression "more highly evolved" seems to pop up dismayingly often when talking about poly (and often bisexuality, too). I have long thought it seems to rely on notions of tribal Othering and the Geek Social Fallacies when used by poly people, but curiously it can also used by mono people being dismissive of poly.
It is so common a poly fail that if there were TV Tropes for poly, "More Highly Evolved" would be heavily referenced.
i.e. quite apart from it being arguably improper use of the term, it's objectionable for other reasons.
Does the "highly" in "highly evolved" ever make sense to use? It seems like an archaic term leftover from a teleological interpretation of evolution where Homo Sapiens were the ultimate product.
I find it odd that no one is discussing the wider societal implications of a greater adoption of polyamory in the sight of a much more important instinct than jealousy. Naturally I speak of female hypergamy and its effect on the distribution of losers and winners on the sexual marketplace among men.
I think a PUA would say: 5 minutes of alpha is worth more than 5 years of beta.
Which is, at best, true only in terms of inclusive fitness.
In fact... not even then, because you need that beta to help care for your offspring.
Yet it described human behaviour accurately. People take significant risk of loosing decades of beta to get 5 minutes of alpha.
Remember there is no need for the beta taking care of the child to be the sperm donor. Also in tropical agricultural societies (like say West Africa) and in modern social democracies (like say Norway), women don't need the help of their sexual partners to care for their offspring.
I hope you're not assuming that all human behavior is rational...
Seems pretty obvious that hypergamy is what poor women do in societies that only let them gain control of resources through marriage. It's a rational adjustment to a sexist, unequal society, not some sort of instinct.
Polyamory, especially the "open mesh" kind, dissolves the question of whether there exists a better match, or (most of) the fear of losing a partner to someone better. It's no longer necessary to consider whether this match outranks alternatives you haven't yet encountered, for both of you. It's sufficient to consider whether it works in itself.
I'm not necessarily talking about marriage or women seeking material comfort here. I'm referring to the mechanisms of female and male sexual desire and how they on average differ in more than just the parameters of the physical attributes the sexes seek in mates.
For most women their sexual attraction is in itself partially dependant on how desirable she thinks other women find the male in question. It also depends heavily on his status. And status as we know is basically zero sum.
I know what you're talking about and I think it's a mistake. Specifically I think it's an exemplar of a larger category of cases where a marginalized group's adaptation to unfavorable circumstances is mistaken by culture (and by evo psych, which has an alarming tendency to make excuses such things) as being a fundamental facet of their nature.
Historically male chances of successfully reproducing have been significantly smaller than female chances, at least this is what the difference in genetic legacy shows.
Also male variation is greater than female variation on practically any trait.
This together with our (perhaps culturally maintained) intuitions about unexceptional men being worth less than unexceptional women point to men being disposable.
Status is zero sum? I highly doubt it. I am certain that it's not something you can simply wave at with an "as we know".
My impression is that men are also influenced by how attractive other men think a woman is.
Having seen a number of previous LW discussions about sex, gender, and related matters, I have given up attempts to participate in any future ones. I suspect most other people who would have been likely to open such discussions in the past have reached similar conclusions. Whatever the exact reasons might be, this is one cluster of topics where this forum just doesn't seem capable of approaching reality closer than what one reads in mainstream venues, or of rational discussion that won't be smothered by ideological preconceptions, moralizing, and internet drama.
On occasions, when I see some particularly egregious nonsensical claims about these topics that go unchallenged (and perhaps even get strongly upvoted), I am strongly tempted to respond, but given the past record, I try hard to resist the temptation.
Well, for one thing, its a piece on polyhacking and luminosity -- trying to understand the degree to which one can successfully change one's preferences, and to the extent to which this is individually worthwhile. It's not an advocacy piece on polyamory.
That said, polyamory (and queerness in general) really does offer opportunities for people to step outside many kinds of sexual status competitions. If there is a standard relationship 'package' that most people will have with exactly one person, and if there is social pressure to conform to and excel at that kind of relationship, then I can make an intelligent guess about your status by seeing how well your partner fits the stereotypes. E.g., if your boyfriend has two left feet and works at Blockbuster, you must not be very good at attracting the rich, suave type that 'everybody' wants, and so I'm probably doing 'better' than you are.
By contrast, if there are several different acceptable types of relationships, and any given person will usually have multiple such relationships, then the math gets too fuzzy -- it may not even be obvious to me exactly who you're dating, let alone what you're doing with them or how much fun you're having or how much support you're getting. The fact that you're seen in public with the Blockbuster guy who can't dance doesn't really say anything about your status. You obviously find something about him vaguely attractive, but you're not 'settling' for dating only him, so the fact that you're dating him doesn't imply that you can't or won't attract a conventionally successful dude. Thus, by making interpersonal status comparisons difficult or impossible, polyamory has a tendency to reduce the stupider kinds of status competitions.
Finally, even assuming that there are lots of women out there who are 'marginal hypergamists,' i.e., who would sleep with only the 'best' men if they were allowed to do so, but who would have sex (almost) exclusively with one low-status man if they were shamed into doing that, it's not clear that women prefer exclusive commitments to permanent commitments. In other words, a low-status man who credibly pledged to be permanently available to a woman for very large amounts of romance, sex, financial support, and child-rearing, while giving both parties the option of having occasional flings, would probably be at least as attractive as a low-status man who pledged (somewhat less credibly) to permanently and exclusively devote all of his romantic, sexual, financial, and parenting energy to his wife while requiring the wife not to engage in affairs.
I believe this answers Robin Hanson's concern that polyamory will just leave ordinary women free to sleep with even more high-status men. High-status men can't credibly commit to devote most of their energy to more than one woman; only one partner can receive 'most' of your attention. But if 'most' of your attention, delivered on a permanent basis, is valuable even if you are low- or medium-status, then you'll have something to offer in the romantic marketplace.
I'm skeptical because of the huge differences in male and female dominant strategies for mating*. I think poly can work, but that a lot of people who consider themselves poly just haven't run into a highly frictional situation yet or have put their fingers in their ear and are shouting "lalalala".
*I should note that I'm also extremely skeptical of monogamy. The situation that makes men and women happiest seems to involve some (sometimes a lot) of unhappiness in their partners.
blushes furiously
Awwwwwwwww.
/old shouting half deaf man/: Stop cluttering the comment section useless content! When I was young people didn't have emotions, and the ones that did didn't show them.
Still, if we ever need a counter example to the idea of rationalists as emotionless robots we can wheel them out.
[Edit, Clarification: meant that affectionately/positively, but seem to have got downvotes so that may not have come across, sorry.]
I have the feeling that this may not be the best post to show people who are predisposed to dislike rationality.
What if you're wired in such a way that, when you strike up a romance with someone, the New Relationship Energy wipes out your romantic feelings for everyone else, and only when the NRE has run its course do romantic feelings for other people return? Is that something you can self-modify out of, or otherwise deal with in a polyamorous context?
I like The Ferrett's take on it:
Also, his clarification in the comments:
This post is magnificent. So much candid introspection on an area most people are very private about, and so much clear analysis instead of just going with emotions/aesthetics/cultural preferences. Wow.
On this -
I could weigh in on this. It's worth looking at the word normative -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative
"Normative standards" basically mean whatever is the baseline for comparison. So the taxonomy you set up is "21st century Western-style monogamy" vs. "not 21st century Western-style monogamy" - and by 21st century Western-style monogamy, I mean a single partner, choosing relationships individually through social exploration, choosing long term partners on the basis primarily of emotion rather than purely pragmatic concerns (the pragmatic concerns become more of a baseline filter, as opposed to the whole consideration) - etc, etc.
There's other things that move outside the taxonomy you set up. 18th century American monogamy, for instance, was highly pragmatic and about specialization of labor. George and Martha Washington often advised younger friends, colleagues, young army officers, and the daughters of their friends to marry purely "checklist style" - good character, good family person, solid income or housekeeping skills, good family, etc. Love/lust/affection came last on the checklist, if at all.
I mention that, because it's kind of subtly buried in the post the assumption that 21st century Western-style monogamy is the normative standard. Maybe not. Maybe 18th century American monogamy would be recognizable in the taxonomy as "monogamy" - but there are things outside of it.
Going a little further, "polyamory" - from my limited understanding - conveys "-amory" - love, emotion, etc. - not, say, a purely pragmatic arrangement of having multiple partners to the end of some objective. Tokugawa Ieyasu unified Japan and his family ruled the island 250 years. He had 19 wives and concubines. The historical record isn't completely accurate, but one gets the impression that he had serious genuine affectionate with 3-4 of his wives in his life, and the rest were political arrangements or for having children and paternity.
You could say Tokugawa 19 wives/concubines (who almost certainly would have been exclusive to him under serious penalty if caught doing otherwise) were "a low-key flavor of being poly oneself, not a variety of tolerant monogamy" - but I think that looks at the 21st century Western-style monogamy as the normative standard, notes that Tokugawa's wives don't fall into the cateogry, and puts them in the poly category. But that doesn't seem quite right...
I agree that there's "monogamy" and "everything else" in Western culture right now, but it hasn't always been the case, might not always be the case, and I don't think polyamory is the only alternative to monogamy. One dichotomy worth looking at is whether partners are picked more coldly and dispassionately, or with warmth and affection and emotion. Both polyamory and 21st C Western-style monogamy both tend to assume the emotional connection there, which I get the impression actually still isn't the case everywhere in the world, like Africa or the Middle East, and times might be changing elsewhere in the world. In fact, I'd strongly suspect that there will be a trend towards more Tokugawa-style dispassionate choosing of non-monogamous partners for political, economic, and hereditary reasons going forwards. It still will be a small minority of the population, but probably a larger small minority than now. And it probably doesn't make sense to add that in with any "-amory" grouping, being that those arrangements are chosen not for the warmth and connection, but for other reasons.
Congratulations on the hack. I would have expressed doubt that this could work, and am correspondingly updating my priors.
It happens that I agree with you on this, in fact I think tolerance of another's multiple entanglements is more important component of poly than the desire to oneself have multiple entanglements. In the poly circles I am aware of, there is no broad agreement on either of these points though. I thought I should mention that there are a non-trivial proportion of couples who self-ID as "one of us is poly and the other is not" where the poly one is involved with other people.
This is similar to the labeling disputes that occur when (say) two bisexual women are said to be in a "lesbian relationship". They might reasonably object that people will hear "lesbian relationship" and assume they are lesbians - "only lesbians can be in a lesbian relationship" is something I've heard some bi women say; but then again I can think of as many counter-examples where two bi women deliberately identify as being in a lesbian relationship.
So perhaps there is a similar scope issue with "poly person" vs. "poly relationship"; I was certainly startled to see you assert a poly person can only be involved with a poly person. I know many poly people currently involved in monogamous relationships with monogamous people, so perhaps this should be "one can only have a poly relationship with a poly person"?
Mono-poly pairs strike me as a recipe for bad drama.
I agree that the examples I'm aware of go awry more often than not, but not by any overwhelming margin. It is an additional challenge, and possibly a formidable one, but it is not fatal to a relationship.
Never mind tolerance, to me it feels better for its own sake to not be my girlfriends' only boyfriend. It was a surprisingly large weight off my mind to know that if I can't take her to Yosemite, or escort her to BENT SF, then she has other paramours who can do so. I know that I'm not personally responsible for matching every one of her sexual facets, just some of them, and that she won't be forever sexually unsatisfied if there's something I happen not to enjoy. If you asked me "Is it more important to your happiness that that your girlfriend be able to have more than one boyfriend or that you be able to have more than one girlfriend?" I might well reply "The former."
Valuable post. Self-revelation is hard! I commend your account in this kind of forum. There are many considerations here, first and foremost of which is that emotional makeup a) differs greatly between people and b) is more set than we care to admit; i.e. not subject to hacking. If Alicorn's is to this degree, more power to her. Before the rest of my comment (as a mono): this is most emphatically NOT a moral judgment about polyamory. Consenting adults, will defend to the death your right, etc.
Other considerations (for someone like me, which maybe you are or are not):
I'm often on the defensive when polys talk to me, because there is a good bit of evangelism and insistence that monos are morally inferior, emotionally immature, etc. I didn't get that at all from Alicorn's post but it's out there, perhaps as a counteroffensive to monos who do express moral judgment. (Smart polys, police this so we can all have a real discussion!)
In my personal experience, many of the people who think they're capable of polyamory are not honest with themselves, and once a partner starts seeing someone else, they experience bad jealousy which they're uncomfortable admitting, because after all they're not supposed to; they're poly! Polyamory is going to TEND to favor a) people who become less attached emotionally in relationships; b) people who are very outgoing and popular (i.e. attractive people); c) women at younger ages (mid 20s) and men at later ages (30s onward). Sure, if you're Brad Pitt, be poly! Why not! Think of the population dynamics if everyone was polyamorous. Captains of football teams and cheerleaders as the primaries. The rest of us, gazing adoringly upon them while we wait for our turn on Tuesday night. Then back to the romantic ghetto. That's a bit extreme, but it's a serious thought-experiment about an all-poly-world.
Marriage is in large part an economic institution focused on child-rearing. Polyamory is a better arrangement for young non child-producing couples than for people who want kids. Are primary poly relationships, even like Alicorn and MBlume, as stable over time as mono? As good for raising kids, if that choice is made? As happy? (I don't think we know. Data?) And the whole idea of wanting someone as the primary means that, given enough time, you WILL meet a more amazing person years down the road, and one of the primaries will lose when you're overcome by the temptation to upgrade. Because of the way human brains relate attractiveness to fertility differently for different genders, this is going to give men an advantage over time as in c. above. One of MBlume's secondaries is going to knock his socks off and 12 years from now Alicorn might get demoted or fired. Or vice versa, but happens less often that way - again, personal experience, and we need data, but it was Alicorn who changed her lifestyle to be with MBlume, so it seems MBlume is the one with the upper hand, and this will increase over time. (Note: this is the main long-term reason I'm not interested in polyamory, at least for even half-serious relationships.)
Explicit symmetrical polyamory has never emerged stably in history so far. It's worth asking why. Maybe this is coincidence; maybe something has changed now that will be more conducive, but I think it's worth pointing out. For example, a higher prevalence of non-child-producing adults. More questions for actual studies.
So far I've been discussing polyamory as a hetero practice. I don't know any gay polys but it would certainly be informative to see what's different if anything about gay polys.
If you can do away with your emotional need for monogamy, why not do away with the need for mates and reproduction completely? I would frankly love to become asexual so I can think about other things for more than 2 minutes at a time! Not in the cards. (If you know a pill I can take or a meditative technique please hook me up. Then I can be nihilamorous.)
Finally, a lot of polys seem to be doing so partly because they get a buzz from being part of an alternative lifestyle community (affective death spiral, anyone?) While that was a bit of a low blow, I do think it's worth examining this in ourselves, especially with regard to whether choices we're presumably making for the rest of our lives are really sustainable. Kind of like diets, but even more important.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_castration
Not sure if it's available voluntarily, but you could ask your doctor.
I would expect a lot of people to realize they don't want to stay with the football player or cheerleader for very long. But in any case, you have to compare the result to what we have now:
More likely they would end up a LOT of peolple's secondaries. Possibly with a mostly political 'primary' alliance with each other.
As far as I know, explicit symmetrical anything hasn't existed for very long...
There's been a lot of discussion about how the reproductive function of sex might have shaped institutions of love and relationships. But I think an equally salient thing is that people age deteriorate and die. That one is pretty symmetric.
Telling members of a social minority you're not part of what every member of that minority must do to be worthy of your time and consderation as a member of the social majority, is neither reasonable, rational or realistic. Just FYI. It's like asking "smart" queers to police the tendency of certain (stereotyped) gay men you have in mind to flame it up, or come to that, asking atheists not to be so militant...
Yes, many poly folks do think they're more evolved. Yes, this is just embarrassing at best, and sanctimonious and preachy at worst. No, the rest of us are not accountable to shut them down so you don't feel squicked by the whole thing.
This is a perspective some poly types share, that jealousy and polyamory are not compatible. I've never quite understood it; I experience jealousy sometimes (and I'm in five serious relationships; each of the people involved is seeing two of the others in some capacity), yet it never quite occurred to me that experiencing jealousy meant that the situation had to change...unless that jealousy was functioning as sort of an early-warning threat detection (I've been in situations I was clearly not going to be happy or functional in, with specific arrangements of other people given their own needs, wants and behaviors -- my interests were not being looked after by anyone else, and after interrogating my own emotions and their cause for long enough I realized that I wasn't comfortable with that).
Suffice it to say there is a diversity of actual opinions about this within polyamory and nonmonogamists generally -- some people experience jealousy, some don't; some experience compersion, some don't; some think these feelings should be primary drivers of their actions and communication, and some don't.
Given the divorce rate, should we care about this in a statistical sense? I mean, unless we're talking about your own children, the odds for or against a given family's long-term stability are not your business...
(I will note that what little research has been done suggests that polyamorous relationships are less stable, but should that really be surprising? They are more complicated arrangements of complex parts; as the number of people goes up, the number of failure modes AND success modes will increase, and the failures will probably outnumber the successes. My question is, why does this matter? You seem to be arguing against polyamory in general with it, and I can see no sense in that.)
As to the question of children's welfare, there's very little data because it's difficult to get funding for it -- what researchers are interested in asking the questions are finding it very difficult to secure the backing needed to perform studies. Speaking anecdotally, I've known plenty of people who were monogamous parents, openly-polyamorous parents, and closeted-polyamorous parents (meaning their kids aren't told). The welfare of the children seemed to have much more to do with their parents' social and economic standing than their relationships.
I think your theoretical understanding of human sexuality has left you ill-prepared for making predictions about real-world cases like this.
Having lots of experience with both hetero and queer poly dating and living: the differences seem to be much more down to the cultural influences on the people involved, and their individual personalities, than anything else.
Tell that to the people of Laguna Pueblo, prior to Christian missionaries. They'd be vastly amused to find out they never existed.
I think you're seeing what you want to see, there. Do people choose an "alternative lifestyle" because they get a buzz from being altie? Or do they get a buzz from finding someplace they suddenly feel like they fit? Having spent most of my life socially-isolated and largely unable to fit into mainstream society, I was much more stoked about finding a social "fit", which I stumbled onto just while going about my life.
I'll call people on the offensive tropes not because I feel responsible on behalf of the Poly Conspiracy to do so, but because they are offensive tropes.
We're almost playing Poly Trope Bingo now! (Although they don't actually seem to have the "poly = no jealousy" meme there, oh well.)
I have said that poly doesn't mean no jealousy; poly means additional tools in the repertoire with which to deal with jealousy. Perhaps I can draw a long bow and say just as some bi people might describe themselves as gender-oblivious while others might self-ID as gender-aware-and-interested-in-more-than-one gender, my experience has been that some poly people self-ID as "did not install the jealousy patch" while others can be jealous but don't regard that as fatal to poly. I cannot find any research on this.
Custody has been (successfully) awarded and children removed from parents in some (USA) areas simply by referencing open poly or revealing closeted poly. There are a lot of cultural and privilege challenges in poly for families with children.
I do too, when I encounter them in my social sphere (it's not merely offensive in my view, it's just a painfully stupid idea). What I dislike is the implied obligation to police a group of people with whom my only assured point of commonality is our nonmonogamy for their painfully stupid and/or offensive ideas so that a monogamous person feels better about poly people as a whole. How they feel about us is not my responsibility, and I'm already acting to counteract the stupid ideas bothering them for my own reasons.
That seems like an accurate summary.
As to the comments re: child custody, yeah, I'm aware of how grim it is for poly parents involved in a custody battle. :\ Several friends of mine have suffered for it, and a few remain on guard against the possibility.
Primates (including humans) raised in stable, supportive environments are more friendly, trusting, willing to take risks. Those who grew up desperately alone, or with only a few allies-of-convenience who might run off as soon as costs outweighed benefits or better prospects appeared elsewhere, are less friendly, trusting, and willing to take risks. This mechanism evolved because using either strategy in the opposite environment means being isolated from the support of your peers and/or murdered at a young age, which is strongly selected against. Polyamory requires a large population of friendly, trusting-and-trustworthy potential partners; modern economic and political developments have produced an environment (in some parts of the world, anyway) sufficiently stable and prosperous that such a population can emerge and thrive.
This is true. Poly requires excellent communication skills to pull off successfully, even more so than ordinary relationships. I keep emphasizing that poly is not for everyone: not only because you need to be emotionally suited for it, but also because it often takes much more work than a mono relationship. For most people, poly is hard.
I've heard this claim before, but I can't help feeling that it's still thinking in a mono pattern even while trying to think about a poly world. The whole point of poly is that X dating Y doesn't necessarily make either X or Y unavailable to others. If the captain of a football team has five women, that means that he only has one-fifth as much time for each of them, meaning that they're likely to be available to others as well. And perhaphs, since they're getting their desire for high-status übermasculinity satisfied from him, they'll also be more open to relationships with less masculine and lower-status men.
There are plenty of imbalances in dating-related gender ratios. A large fraction of men prefer women younger than themselves, so a straight man in his twenties faces competition from not only men his age, but men in their thirties as well. Add to this the fact that there are more men born than women, and we find that in a mono world a lot of young men will necessarily be left without the kind of a mate they'd prefer. In old age, the pattern reverses, so that it is the old women who have a hard time of finding a suitable partner. All of this is inevitable in a mono world, but in a poly world, there's at least the possibility that everyone will manage to date the kind of a person they want to be dating.
I'm not entirely sure about that one. Raising kids takes a lot of time and effort, often leaving the parents exhausted. It might be better for everyone involved if the kids have (say) three parents instead of just two.
At first sight it seems that those women are 4/5 available for other men in the group. But this assumes that men and women have the same sex drive on average. If we assume that men have stronger sex drive, or that their sex drive increases significantly when many women are sexually available to them (I am not a biologist, but I think both of this is true), then there is less than 4/5 availability of these women for the rest of group.
In other words, to make all members of a poly society equally sexually satisfied, this society must have more women than men. With the same number of women than men, less successful men will be frustrated, even if all women are satisfied. (Of course, if you are a woman, or if you are the most attractive man in your poly group, this is not your problem.)
EDIT: In essence, "one fifth of time" does not equal "one fifth of sex". A woman may spend one fifth of her time having hot sex with the captain, and the remaining time in just-friends mode, or 90% just-friends mode, with the remaining men.
Or perhaps, their demands will increase, and the remaining men will seem even more pathetic.
It seems to me that for most men monogamy is better. For women, two topics to think about: children and age above 40.
When the children are born, do you want to test paternity or not? (But even if you won't, some man will think that he is a father, and the others will think they are not. Or maybe, everyone will think that someone else was the father.) It seems like most men do not want to invest much resources into child that is not biologically theirs. Even if the man has one child with one woman, and three children with other woman, he may invest little into the first child.
If you are a young woman, it is important to note that the balance in "sex market" depends on the age. On average, younger women have higher sexual value than younger men, but older women have lower sexual value than older women. Thus we have so many young boys unable to find a girlfriend, and so many old women unable to find a partner (this imbalance is even worse because women on average live longer). Don't assume that your "sex market" value will stay constant.
Both monogamy and polygamy have their benefits and risks. The risks of monogamy are well known, therefore I wrote about the risks of polygamy. (Risks of monogamy: choosing the wrong partner and not having enough data to realize it; also if your partner dies or leaves you, you start from zero.)
I have come across a report of empirical observations that directly contradicts this assumption:
In his book "Polyamory: Roadmaps For The Clueless And Hopeful", Anthony D. Ravenscroft states the observation that women have the stronger sex drive - It takes 3 men per women to get the women fully satisfied.
I have no qualms declaring that claim to be blatant bullshit.
I have yet to meet a woman who required sex more than three times daily (on an ongoing daily basis) in order to be satisfied and I would assert that women with that degree of insatiability or more would be rare outliers. Yet even that kind of pace is not hard to keep up (so to speak). While for most males the overwhelming biological imperative to seek sex is satisfied by less sex than that it takes only a modicum of accommodation or a hint of male pride to maintain a higher rate of sexual output.
I'm not here denying that women may have a higher sex drive. I would not even deny the possibility that some people may require being successfully pursued by three different partners (by count of number of mates not the potential sexual output thereof). I am saying that Ravenscroft massively undermines his own credibility when he tries to claim that it takes three males per woman in a given sexual system for the women to be fully satisfied. I deny that he has data that supports that and if he did produce such data I would defy it - with the expectation that it would be overwhelmed by other contradictory findings.
Wait, no, I take all that back. Women have ridiculously more powerful sex drives and can't help but throw themselves at guys at every opportunity. <My personal experience as an extraordinarily attractive potential mate has provided such a significant selection effect that it has completely biased my view of the world.> Not only that but when in relationships women need massive volumes of sex to be satisfied. <Such is my prowess at eliciting attraction.>
Unfortunately, after writing a long reply I accidentally discovered that accidentally pressing Ctrl + W closes Firefox without asking. So I will repeat the essence:
When monogamy is a society's official norm, polyamory is self-selected minority. Maybe the selection process now causes something that would disappear if more people become poly. For example, maybe for women with higher sex drive polyamory is more attractive. Also maybe for sexually passive men who enjoy the idea of their love having sex with another male (while emotionally staying in love with them) polyamory is attractive. This could explain how one woman could satisfy three men... if two of them are only watching.
Maybe women have the same sex drive as men, but still they are more picky. Even if a women would be able to fully sexually satisfy three top-quality men, I don't assume that an average woman would do the same thing for three average men. Maybe she would rather wait in line for her "five minutes with alpha". Most men would like the opportunity of having sex with many average women; women don't dream about having sex with many average men.
But this is all just a speculation. I would like to see a polyamorous society that survives 10 years.
I will note that, from my own reading, I am under the impression that (among animals in general) males will invest resources in any child that might be theirs, while ignoring/killing only those children that are definitely not.
As such I would be moderately surprised to discover that humans differed from this pattern, and cared only for children of known paternity.
The words "invest resources" mean something different for animals and humans. For animal male it simply means: allow the child walk on your territory; protect the child from predator attack; give the child some food. I would expect similar instincts from a human male.
The difference is, we expect much more from human males, which has no base in instincts. We expect human male to find a better-paying job (with longer working hours or less pleasant work), and use the money to support child's various needs, such as e.g. education.
If you have a piece of bread in your hand, and there is a hungry 3 years old child (possibly biologically yours) near you, the instinct tells you to give the bread to the child. But the same instinct does not tell you to change your job so you can pay your 18 years old child better college. We give our children far more than what our instincts say, and we also care about them much longer.
Another, seperate point on biology:
The 5 women that are spending so much time with this alpha male will find their menstrual cycles becoming synchronised (assuming, of course, that they allow natural menstrual cycling). This will therefore mean that they are all at their most sexually active simultaneously.
Assuming that the peak sex drive of a woman is more than 1/5 of the constant male sex drive, this means that at least one of those 5 women will be unsatisfied during her days of peak sex-drive.
Which is an important fact in the context.
Or you could just adjust the bisexuality / homosexuality rates... I dare say an all-men all-homosexual polyamorous group would have to be entirely stable, at least so long as we're playing entirely to gender stereotypes.
(Is there any actual research about women being less interested in sex, by the way? I've heard that dismissed as a myth a few times, born primarily of cultural conditioning, but never with any actual research either way)
I find that my (female) sex drive is incredibly mutable; I've been perfectly happy going a year with no sex, and at other times, in other circumstances (and with different available partners), been motivated to have sex daily. I suspect that the female sex drive is much more situational and partner-dependent than the male, and to model women as like men, but less horny, is a mistake.
Now I will do the Subjective Speculation Dance of Shame.
(electric slide) I like to shake my butt, I like to make stuff up (electric slide) Is there published data? Maybe! Doesn't matta! I'll pull it out of my butt! (butt shake!)
This is my new favorite comment. Thank you! ^_^
This is awesome :D
Alicorn is describing here a specific type of polyamorous relationship (classified on wikipedia as having Sub-relationships) . There are other types polyamory for example - "Group relationships, ... in which all consider themselves associated to one another, popularized to some extent by Robert A. Heinlein (in novels such as Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love, Friday" -Triad :Three people romantically involved. (Commonly initiated by an established couple jointly dating a third person; however, there are many possible configurations.) -Quads : Relationships between a couple and another couple
Interesting. Very vivid insight into how the hacking was accomplished. A question I have from the outside looking in is about motivation, what makes people want to be poly in the first place?
Alicorn, you said that your primary motivation was MBlume. (Or generalized, 'a specific person.') MBlume, what was your primary motivation?
Other poly people please feel free to reply also.
I'm not poly., but I'd like to be—it seems by far the most functional outlook on relationships. It takes many potential problems with monogamous relationships and completely eliminates them without introducing new problems in their place.
It just seems better. I hardly have any relationships as a monogamous person, though, so . . . there's not a lot there for me to be poly, LOL
Posting years after your comment, but as somebody who is relatively new to poly myself, I want to mention: that thing at the end of Alicorn's post, with the "all kinds of popular"? It didn't hit me quite that hard, but it did hit. I get more interest and don't have to turn people down when they say "by the way, I'm married, is that a problem?" (actually asked, in sentiment if not verbatim, a couple of relationships ago). I'm a guy, ~90% straight (though I've thought about hacking that, and a few years ago I'd have said 95% or more), very nerdy but with an atypical life story, and had a hell of a time finding relationships up until about three years ago.
I'd also be curious, if you happen to see this, what your thoughts on poly are now. Did you ever try to hack it? If so, why, and did it work? Are you happy with your current poly-or-not status? What would you have estimated your probability of being where you are now to be, 3.5 years ago? Where do you expect to be in a few more years?
Hi. I apologize: this is a pretty long reply—but thanks very much for your comment. :) I really appreciate the opportunity to follow up like this on something I said a few years ago.
My thoughts on being poly. haven't changed. I still think it's the most functional romantic outlook. Although, after re-reading my comment: "without introducing new problems in their place" is somewhat of a loaded statement. If someone has a difficult time being polyamorous, then it introduces a lot of problems. Not to dwell on this too much, but that part of the comment was a bit circular: If a person is already poly., then, of course having a poly. relationship solves problems. Perhaps it would have been best to say "Since the society in which we're raised is largely monogamous, being poly. solves a lot of problems at the cost of having to exert more emotional effort against that norm."
... or something to that extent.
Three and a half years ago, I thought the likelihood of my entering a relationship in the first place to be very low. I didn't want to be in a relationship at all. This thought persisted up until the beginning of my relationship a little over a year ago (which was just a friendship at first, but ended up functionally being the same thing as a relationship—so we just went with it).
I wouldn't call our relationship polyamorous, but it's open. Pretty early on, we had a discussion that essentially came down to "You do what you want and I do what I want." That is, if I sleep with someone else, then it's ok—and if she sleeps with someone else, then it's ok. This is pretty limited to physical activity. I don't think either of us would be comfortable with "I have another girlfriend/boyfriend."
This actually did not take any hacking; it came very naturally to the both of us, and I am happy with it. In fact, I really like this relationship. When I talk about it, I feel like a grandfather showing off pictures of his grandchildren—in a "Look at this, look at this!" sense. I have to consciously stop myself from talking too much, haha. (Thinking about it a bit further, too, actively having multiple girlfriends might be more effort than I'd want to exert.)
We both expect this to be a long-term relationship, and think it most definitely has the potential to last a long time.
I've actually been poly for most of my adult life. I only ever had two monogamous relationships growing up, one of them an LDR that evaporated when it became clear we weren't going to be able to relocate to be with each other. At this stage in my life I had already heard of polyamory and had grown up vaguely wondering why nobody ever seemed to do it, and suspicious of the general refrain from adults I asked that it was impossible or unethical.
It seems to be an instinctive matter of orientation for me -- I love deeply and intensely, but I don't seem to stop forming such connections once I'm in a relationship, and once I started dating other poly people, I never really went back. I find it difficult to conceive of being in a monogamous relationship now; I'm sure there are at least somewhat realistic scenarios where pragmatic factors could cause me to not pursue other relationships, if I were living in such a situation with a single primary partner who wanted monogamy -- but that's not where I find myself today, and I have absolutely no desire to trade my current life for it. I'm also quite sure I wouldn't be as happy, in such a situation, as I am in my current relationship network, and would regret the sense of lost opportunity.
I sort of stumbled into poly when I was 17, but I was motivated to continue with it because I frequently found myself dating one person while also being attracted to others. Why deny myself people I want when I could be dating them? If I had to be dishonest or hurt people's feelings or otherwise act unethically to do so, I wouldn't; this is why I'm generally opposed to cheating. Being poly lets me have the relationships I want to have, and it lets the people I love have the relationships they want to have, too.
I and my partner sat down as very earnest 16 year olds (23.5 years ago and yes we're still together) because we both agreed we were annoyed by unexamined defaults inherited from society and upbringing. We said we were fine with being monogamous if after careful consideration we decided we wanted it, but we didn't want to just drift into it.
Thus we sat down and spent quite some time cataloging what we thought monogamy would provide us, and how much we valued those things. Week after week we seemed to keep coming back to the conclusion that we didn't actually think we needed or even greatly wanted those things, and so we started considering whether that meant we wanted explicitly to not be monogamous. It remained an ongoing (low-key, non-fatiguing) discussion for a few months, and then we said, ok, non-monogamous. (This was really before "poly" had gained much traction as a term.)
It remained a theoretical construct for maybe another six months until there was a convergence of opportunity and interest for one of us, and we took some first steps. In hindsight we made a lot of rookie mistakes that I think people would avoid more easily today given there are now many poly resources and communities online and in realspace. (For example I helped vote for the creation of the alt.polyamory newsgroup which I think was very important in its day for developing poly discourse.)
I guess I've answered the "how" but not the "why". Our motivation was actually not what it gained for ourselves but how we felt about the other. No doubt this will sound hopelessly idealistic but a quick summary is that we wanted someone to have more opportunities in their live due to us loving them, rather than fewer. I had trouble reconciling what it meant to me to love someone with actively preventing other good relationships in their lives.
(This by the way is why "being untroubled by one's partner(s) being with others" is more critical to my concept of poly than "being involved with more than one person". Consider that monogamous cheating satisfies the latter.)
The following is a public service announcement to all women who naturally like at least some shy nerds.
If you are (1) polyamorous and (2) able to directly ask men you find attractive to sleep with you (instead of doing the sheep dance where you freeze motionless and wait for them to approach) - or if you can hack yourself to be like that without too much effort - it is vastly easier than you imagine to acquire an entire harem of high-status and/or handsome nerds.
(For some but not all nerds, this may require that you be reasonably attractive. Most nerd girls I know are reasonably attractive and think they are not. So if you think that you're overweight and hideous and yet oddly enough nerds spend a lot of time talking to you at nerd parties, this means you are pretty.)
This concludes the public service announcement.
The "sheep dance " is likely a result of a huge amount of "happy" (Adrenaline, dopamine, Serotonin) hormones being released in the brain(or even "limerence" (see for example Physical effects section from the "limerence" article on Wikipedia)). It is a very enjoyable state which I would even try to prolongate as long as possible (meaning over the course of several encounters). Isn't it better to advice the male nerds to follow some of the courses on the bootcamps on how to dress or how to behave more masculine or to learn something from experts like lukeprog (for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvcuZhDWLgg or some of his other (earlier) posts on LW)
If my husband had done that I likely wouldn't have been as interested in him.
Well, sure -- but other people would likely have found him more interesting. Congratulations on things having worked out for you, of course, but there are a lot of other good people who each of you could have married.
Finding good romantic partners is very probabilistic. Does increased masculinity increase a man's expected attractiveness to a random person? I think that, for men who aren't already very masculine, it definitely does.
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Actually, what's happening is they're giving the nerdy male 3-4 obvious body language signals telling him to approach. The nerdy male just misses them.
Fellow males, please learn to read body language so that all these hot nerdy girls stop feeling like they're ugly because nerdy men don't respond to their flirting.
It's hardly flirting if it's body language from across the room and neither party has said a word to each other. At that point, you're not even sure they know you exist - and how could they be sure that you are aware of their existence? No, you have to talk to them - at least be in the same conversation as them! - to begin flirting with body language.
How would one go about doing this? It would be useful, but I don't know where to start.
This is the best free, online resource I know of. But there are tons of books, even courses out there.
Are you saying that nerd males do not talk to non-pretty nerd females for other reasons (i.e. they are smart and funny or whatever), or simply that they don't do it a lot?
That's a good question. I am hard pressed to think of any nerd females I've known well enough to observe them in any detail, who I would actually consider non-pretty. So to rephrase the test: If you go to nerd parties and male nerds who don't already know you seem to gravitate in your direction and then continue to be there despite not having an obvious personal stake in the ongoing conversation, this is because you are pretty.
Also, short of actually having half your face burned off a la Two-Face in the Batman series, being visibly smart and funny will boost your apparent prettiness by quite a lot.
While "acquire" and "harem" are words quite conflicting with the spirit of polyamory (and I know you were kidding), it's a good point.
Though, as a flirty poly nerdy guy, I have no personal interest in this message getting out. :-)
This this this. I've spent quite some time watching with amused detachment as several of my female friends bluster around this type of interaction without ever really understanding. My advice that "hey, acquiring sexual partners is really not hard if that's what you want" generally goes unheeded, but those who do "get it" end up being shocked as how easy things really are.
Worthwhile clarification: It is not necessary to ask them to sleep with you right off the bat. You could ask to snuggle.
Sure, and I also didn't mean to imply that this should happen on a first meeting, only at the point where you find yourself thinking, "Hm, I think I would prefer having sex with this person to not having sex with them," regardless of whether that takes a long or a short time.
This remains true for gay male geeks, by the way.
Is there a trick to identifying gay male geeks? I find that sometimes I can go to four or five nerd parties and still have no idea about the sex lives of half the people there -- the shy male nerds I know tend not to talk about dating unless they're forced to. Maybe I'm going to the wrong parties.
Back when I was in the market, I found that asking male geeks whose sexual preference I didn't know on dates worked pretty well. Not, admittedly, the most efficient possible mechanism... and not entirely reliable, as it landed me a few dates with self-identified straight male geeks, which puzzled me... but still, it worked pretty well.
Of course, I only tried this for male geeks I was interested in dating, which may have introduced relevant selection biases.
Isn't that just bizarre?! The same thing has happened to me.
I know, right? As a straight male, I keep doing this.
Past behaviour is an excellent predictor of future behaviour as Roissy/CR would love to point out and I would agree. If one prefers monogamy it is not that irrational to seek people who lean towards it. Though in practice most people won't bother so I think your thinking is solid on this point.
Thank you for writing this. I've been wanting to discuss rationality and relationships for some time now, but my first attempt had several problems with it you seem to have avoided or solved. For example, your intro paragraph disarms (for many people, hopefully) a few objections that my own post did not, for example "I don't like gooey personal details" and "You sound self-righteous, as though everyone should try to be like you."
Those who haven't tried polyamory may be curious to hear my own polyhacking story, told using a structure similar to the one Alicorn used. (Like Alicorn, I'm considering "willingness that one's sole partner have other partners" to be a "low-key flavor" of polyamory.)
Motivation
I grew up a sexually repressed evangelical Christian, and therefore didn't date until fairly late (19, I think). My first relationship was traditional and monogamous and a rollercoaster ride of drama. I felt attracted to other potential mates but fought to remain faithful, we both experienced sexual jealousy, I started to feel trapped… you know, the usual.
When the relationship ended I realized that that kind of relationship didn't suit me. I didn't like sexual jealousy, I didn't like being solely responsible for somebody else's needs, and I didn't like having a kind of ownership over somebody else's sex life.
Self-Examination
What did I want that I had originally thought I could only get from monogamy? Pretty much everything: intimate connection, sex, cuddling, protection from STIs, the social status of that comes with not being single, etc. All these, I rather quickly realized, could be had with polyamory. I didn't want marriage or children, so those weren't issues. Nor did I care much whether I was somebody's primary romantic interest or whether I could get attention on demand.
Perks
For me, some perks of polyamory are:
Modifcation
Really, the only thing I had to modify was my evolutionarily-programmed sexual jealousy. This turned out to be easier than I expected.
When somebody I was attracted to slept with someone else or kissed them in front of me or whatever, I tried to feel happy for them. This was easy to do, but it didn't actually remove my feeling of sexual jealousy.
What turned out to be most effective for me was a different technique: I trained myself to think of Sexually Jealous Guy as being Not In Agreement With My Values and Not As Admirably Progressive As My Ideal Self and Not Exhibiting As Much Self Control As My Ideal Self. I developed a kind of moral indignation around the idea that I could be sexually jealous. And, as I recall, it only took a couple weeks for my sexual jealousy to fade.
Success
My sexual jealousy is so thoroughly extinguished that I am forgetting what it is like to feel it.
I've seen my current primary partner kiss another partner of hers in front of me many times, and I haven't felt a twinge of jealousy. My primary's two other current major partners are good friends of mine; the four of us have traveled together, slept in a hotel room together, and eaten dinner together. I've kissed my primary goodnight so she can sleep with someone else for the night, and I'm friends with a few others with whom she has chosen to intimately connect. My primary has some preferences I don't share, so she has explored those things with others. And at no time during all this have I felt any sexual jealousy. It feels great to be able to fully support my primary in whichever connections and experiences she wants to have.
Meanwhile, I haven't contracted any STIs, I pursue other women at my leisure, I don't feel trapped, I don't need to fulfill all my primary's needs, and that relationship is highly customized to my (and her) preferences.
Oh, and like Eliezer I feel "vaguely guilty about not being bisexual, since immortal superbeings clearly would be." I tried to hack that once, it didn't work, it's not a priority, it has much higher costs than polyhacking, and I'm not pursuing it.
I find this very interesting. Polyamory is something that I've toyed with intellectually for a while, but I have several ugh fields around it. Namely, and this one has been borne out by this very post, that "going polyamorous" seems like the kind of thing monogamous females do in order to acquire polyamorous males. Perhaps if one was a sufficiently status-y female, one would be able to convert the polyamorous male to being monogamous. Of course, this comes with all sorts of issues (namely, making the polyamorous partner unhappy). I just haven't been sufficiently convinced that being polyamorous would make me happy for any reasons other than using that polyamory to attract a high-status mate that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to attract. I, like you Alicorn, have been too long seduced by the monogamy aesthetic.
Now, I will try to imagine the conditions sufficient in order for me to hack myself into being polyamorous. I imagine that they would be thus:
As it stands, I haven't been in a monogamous relationship wherein I desired within that relationship that it was open so that I could date others. I also haven't yet desired someone who was (to my knowledge) polyamorous. I have already decided that I do not want the latter condition to be the catalyst for changing my worldview, so right now, I consider myself open to the possibility in the future, should I find myself in a situation where I wanted to date multiple partners. So thanks Alicorn, I am now significantly more luminous!
Seconded. Seems like Alicorn's reasons for going poly are not good -- being head over heels for MBlume and him not being willing to go monogamous in return... meh.
Alicorn, other poly folks, a question: I don't get poly (aside from the simple "some folks are just different from me" unhelpfulness). Don't poly folks want to feel special to their partners? Because seeing my partner being emotionally or physically intimate with someone else (or knowing they were, even without seeing it) = immediate non-specialness. How could you be special if you're so easily replaceable by others in the harem? Enlightenment me, please, for I am confused.
That said, if you're really happy, I'm happy for you, and I apologize for rocking the boat, if I have.
Yes, and I do feel special to my partners; there's been one in particular with whom that's not fulfilled and often a source of tension, but that has more to do with the realities of our relationship and the differences in our neurology. The majority of the people I'm seeing could scarcely do more to make it clear to me how important, special and loved I am in their eyes.
You appear to be conflating non-monogamy with emotionally-shallow, superficial relationships undertaken primarily for sex.
I wouldn't describe it as being "head over heels", at the time the decision was made. We'd dated before and I was very happy during that time, and I wanted it back. The universe is allowed to be set up so I have to make some changes to get things. It turned out to be set up that way. I wanted the gotten thing more than I wanted what I had to give up, and I had the power to make the trade.
I will be better able to answer the question if you unpack the words "special" and "replaceable".
I'll try. Not sure I'll succeed, though, as it screams obviousness to my brain, so it's hard to understand the outside perspective wherein it is not clear.
A partner stating he or she would rather not be with me than be with just me indicates that I am not particularly significant. Not special to him or her. Replaceable, pretty easily, considering how doable it is to not live like a swinger (the other side of poly, emotional & intellectual connection = good friends, no line-crossing necessary).
I enjoy feeling like I am more important to my partner than anyone/anything else. I am under the impression that this is normal in humans, and that it feeds the default human tendency toward monogamy. Do you not enjoy this / prefer this to being one-of-many?
From a different angle: If MBlume (or whoever your primary is at a given time) would be with you either way, monogamous or poly, which would you choose, given all the non-drama/non-jealousy & other apparent 'awesomeness' of your poly adjustment? Would you prefer to stay this way, or would you prefer an MBlume who was happy to give up all other men/women to be with just you forever?
What??! Oh my, how differently this works for me. I am attracted to many, many people, and they are ALL irreplaceable, nevermind relationships, my very attraction to them is irreplaceable! People are fascinating and unique, and in every case there is a mixture of common, less common, and unique features that contribute to the attraction, as well as memories of experiences I shared with them. The idea that by pursuing an attraction to someone else in anyway means that any given attraction is not special is an insult to my feelings! In many cases, I love these people more than I can even express and would, were it not for limitations of time and persuasion, do more things than there are names for with them, and indeed whole different sets of such things with each one, and that's if I couldn't persuade anyone to do them in larger groups. I am unspeakably sad that I almost never get to do any of things, and unspeakably grateful that get to do even the more mundane things I ordinarily do with my friends, and indeed to have met them and interacted with them at all.
I am not a very successful poly in real life, mostly I think because I have literally never met another poly and have therefore been operating on the basis of trying to convert monos, but when I occasionally have periods of success I am so elated that I barely know what to do with myself--alas, I fear in many cases I am not even able to communicate this to my partners. So please, please, if I love you, no matter whatever else I do, think anything but that you are not special to me!
To clarify: would you say that romantic love only differs from friendship in that you have sex with the one you love?
Because to me, there is a massive difference between the two. Friends with benefits doesn't become romantic love instantly, and romantic love without sex is entirely possible.
It's possible our brains are different, or possible you mean something else; or indeed, it's possible that you're wrong about yourself.
To narrow it down, I'll give you a hypothetical: Imagine your hypothetical partner agreed to give up the sexual side of poly, and only have sex with you (perhaps you're the best sexual partner they've ever had, and have just the right sex drive for them, so they're perfectly happy with that situation). However, they keep going out on dates with other partners, spending romantic nights in with other partners, etc. Would you feel comfortable with that situation?
I just looked over my shoulder and asked. Turns out your question is a practical one - MBlume says he would go monogamous for me if I wanted. If he'd said this before I hacked poly, I wouldn't have hacked poly. (He wouldn't have said it then - he needed the information of how our relationship has gone for the past month.) Given that I'm now poly, and that we both have other partners/prospects who we'd be somewhat distressed to give up, I'm not planning to reverse the hack. It's a matter of hassle and loss aversion mostly. But I do find it meaningful that he would monogamize himself if I were not sufficiently superpowered to have rendered it unnecessary.
Sounds like a pretty definitive answer to the "You just went poly for the guy!" objection.
...I did just go poly for the guy. I just think that's okay.
I find this oddly cheerful. Go for it, then!
People move city to be with people; is this necessarily any different? Especially when you know lots of people living in that city going "move here, we love it here!"
From what I understand the default human tendency is is medium term monogamy (with cheating) combined with extreme promiscuity, particularly by the highest status males. Some polygamy thrown in too.
Monogamous (for how long?) is probably a very important question in discussions of to what extent monogamy is natural for humans.
Is there a convenient term for raising that sort of question and/or filling in that sort of blank?
I've been making my way through this whole thread & haven't seen a few of the responses I would have made, so I'll just leave them here for posterity.
Also, I haven't tried the quote syntax yet, so we'll see if this works cleanly...
There are a few things I would say here.
First, how does this really differ from monogamous relationships, other than in frequency? People get broken up with, neglected, and otherwise treated in bad ways in both kinds of relationships, not just the polyamorous ones.
If anything, I'd think that being dumped & seeing your ex with another partner would be far worse alone than with other people who still care. Or on the more trivial side, if my partner prefers to do something without me one night, I can't call another partner to do something if I'm monogamous, because I don't have one! (Which isn't to say that I'm not cheating, the possibility of which seems like a huge mark against monogamy, at least if we're just going to sit here & ask what could go wrong, and how badly.)
This is all to say that I feel just as replaceable & vulnerable in monogamous relationships as I do in polyamorous relationships.
But what about feeling special when you're not unique to your role (at a given time)?
I think the analogy (sometimes not an analogy at all) of friendships is better than the one about mothers loving their children that I'm seeing thrown around here. It also illustrates the point that some people do come up short. Some people are not the best friend of anyone, just as some people might not be a poly-primary for anyone, and who probably wouldn't have the easiest time finding a meaningful monogamous life partner either.
But let's assume things go well in your love life & friendships. Just because I have other friends doesn't mean I'm incapable of being exclusive best friends with just one person, or that that person can't change over time. (This is, in fact, something I have had more success in with friendships than with monogamous relationships, despite fewer social expectations to guide it.) This is where the analogy to monogamy ends, but the analogy to polyamory goes all the way down.
At times in life, I've been fortunate to have whole little groups of very close friends, each of whom I would describe as best friends & each with different or similar merits. I never thought any of them less than special to me, nor did it even occur to me that I should, since they were important in my life. (And similar to polyamory but dissimilar to monogamy, nothing kept these friendships together past their due date, which isn't to say that all of them have ended either.) I like to think that my friends got the same feeling from me, but certainly they made me feel special, lack of exclusivity & all.
I won't spell out the rest of the friend/poly analogy, since it's similar down through the other levels of closeness, but I will point out the one major thing I think it overlooks.
None of this can address the fact that monogamous people place a great deal of value on sexual exclusivity in a way that makes sex itself special. This is a fundamental difference which I think has something in common with orientation, though it seems more malleable than that. If you're poly, chances are you don't feel special because of the act of sex itself so much as the person sharing it with you. I don't mean to diminish the former, or to say that the latter isn't important to monogamous people, because it is; but I would say that there's a marked difference in emphasis, at least from my experience. (A better writer could get at this more accurately.) The point, anyhow, is that in switching to polyamory, I found that the sources of my feeling special were distinct from what they had been. Not better or worse, just different. So as far as feeling special goes, I can't say that I'm actually inspired to feel special by exclusivity, but there are other equally valid ways that I do.
And one last point not directly in reply to jmed's post. Jealousy is a common problem often brought up, and rightly so. It's destructive, powerful, involuntary, and difficult to manage, not unlike anger. I find it both interesting & odd that anger management is common, yet jealousy management is not.
With anger, there's a widespread public consciousness that it's possible (if difficult) to learn to move past it, even if that doesn't mean we're perfect at that; that there are plenty of programs & groups out there to help people do this; and that social expectations are so high in this regard that public outbursts of anger are hardly tolerated.
As for jealousy, there are small bubbles of consciousness (fortunately with a great deal of overlap with poly communities!) about similar control over one's emotions, insofar as possible, but it doesn't seem to be something many people work on, nor are they expected to do so. It is in this regard, and this only, that I view polyamory as preferable to monogamy, and not merely alternative to it. A cultural change would make it a moot point, but for now poly people seem to do a better job with it because, one, they're forced to, and two, they get more practice.
Hopefully someone reading through this thread a year from now will get to this post & think "Aha! I was just wondering why no one brought that up." Or maybe I'll be the only one who stirs up old news.
I don't know why you would say this, and I strongly disagree.
I have three children. Does loving one mean that the other two are not special to me?? Does a parent only have enough love for one child? Why should it be so different for lovers?
Interesting benefit of polyamory: there's a lot less that can rock the boat (or sink it)! We enjoy a stability we did not have before.
I didn't understand this line of argument before I was poly, and I don't understand it now. Yes. Of course if you have multiple children they're individually less special to you! You have less time and energy for each, less brain-space to store facts about each, and you aren't even culturally allowed to have a favorite! There's a sense in which you "love them all equally", sure, but I'd be willing to bet that something like 75% of parents would be unable to claim that under Veritaserum.
As for why it should be different for lovers, the psychology about lovers and children is very different. It's a conceit of our current sensibilities that we even use the same word to refer to how we feel about those, our siblings, our pets, and ice cream. There is no reason in principle why we couldn't have been hardwired for extreme strict romantic monogamy and still love lots of children.
Hmm... perhaps we don't mean the same thing when we use the word "special". If I pretend that you used a word unfamiliar to me instead and had to work only on context, where you continue with:
...then I'd have to agree with you. Certainly, I have less time and energy to devote to each child.
For the record, I never claimed to love them all equally, or to not have a favorite. (They are all my favorites, in different realms, but even so... it would be absurd to claim that it just happens to all add up to be equal.)
But I don't see what point you are making here. My point is that my love for the first child was not diminished by the arrival of the second. For some other definition of special (importance in my life), I would say that the first is just as special to me.
The reason this is brought up (perhaps mostly by poly people with more than one child) is that one's capacity for love, for this "specialness" is not fixed! Another child comes along, and your capacity grows. Another long-term, committed partner, and your capacity grows.
That is the point of the argument: capacity is not fixed in size.
Certainly, but the point about specialness-capacity-increase is fairly general. I would apply it to lovers, to children, to favorite movies, to desserts, to symphonies... the more things we love (or are special or meaningful to us), the more our capacity increases. These things, these experiences make us grow. (Well, maybe not desserts; that's a different kind of growth.)
And we accept that this is how we work in terms of children, movies, food, music... why make an exception for lovers?
Ok. I suppose not. I suppose we could have been hardwired for extreme preference for only one flavor of ice-cream... Do you just really not like the comparisons between different categories of things we like/love/enjoy? Of course our feelings for these different categories are all very, very different, but the generalization seems valid enough to me.
And especially: if they feel similar enough to me for the generalization to hold, then I'm really not going to be convinced that I must love only one by the argument "romantic love is different because it's different". (Which isn't what you were saying, but it's the message this line of argument addresses.)
Yes. Which is part of why I allow competition. Personally, I find it easier to feel special when I know that my partner has other options, but still chooses to spend most/all of her time with me. I want my partner to be spending time with the person (or people) she is best matched with, even if it's not me. But if it is me, then I feel great, especially when I see my partner dropping one of her other options in favor of spending more time with me, or telling me that she enjoys spending time with me more.
Yes. Why would my being special to someone imply that they couldn't have sex and/or long-term relationships with people they found attractive?
The thought of my partner sharing a particular level of connection (poorly specified, but I know it when I see it / imagine it) with another person triggers typical primate challenge behaviors in me. E.g., violence toward the other male. Along with feelings of having been hurt. Since I'm special to my partner, the implication is that she wouldn't want to make me feel hurt and highly violent.
You've never felt romantic jealousy? Or did you hack it away like Alicorn?
For males who do not share this trait, I wonder on the mechanism, and whether it might have some relation to measures of testosterone. Probably too simplistic, but a study I'd like to see nonetheless.
Why would my being special to someone imply that they couldn't have sex and/or long-term relationships with people they found attractive?
To quote Alicorn's original post:
I want to be someone's top romantic priority, ideally symmetrically. [This is satisfied by me and MBlume having an explicitly primary relationship instead of each having a bunch of undifferentiated ones.]
We are talking about a real need, a real issue here. While I consider the answer essentially correct, I also feel that dismissing the implied concern out of hand, as if it was not there to be considered, would be a mistake (after all, many of those considering polygamy are bound to feel that same way). Note that, as remarked, even here we have different levels, different shades, there is a difference between being someone's top romantic priorities and just a generic "one of the many".
I guess that what the original poster meant was "unique", "exclusive", rather than "special". Alicorn's post remaked that being the "top" romantic priority is 95% of the deal. The fact that the relationship is not "unique", but that you are just one of two, six, n romantic interests might make someone feel as if they were easily repleaceable, interchangeable like a car's wheel, whereas, in fact, the feelings of those involved are no less real or intense. Simply because there are others just like you does not mean that you don't matter to your partner. In other words, it does not make you "not special", only "not unique", which, to some people, might appear like the same thing, but it is not.
The problem lies in that remaining 5% that distinguish "top" from "exclusive" romantic interest. To some people, that uniqueness -the fact that the bond is unique, involved only you and your partner, and no one else- is something special and valuable in an of itself. The fact of the matter is that the value one places on exclusivity is highly subjective, everyone has to draw their own conclusions.
An unstated question that emerges in these two points is "can two people be fully satisfied with only each other?" -the original poster seemed to imply (I apologize if that was not the case) that the very need to have a relationship with other people besides the current partner means that said partner is not the "right" person, otherwise you wouldn't feel unsatisfied (as I heard in the past, essentially using artificial measures to keep up a relationship that should have ended ages ago)-.
While I don't completely agree with that, I must say that I would likely not consider polygamy simply because of some feeling of boredom I might end up feeling in the future. In general, in that respect, I must say that I don't see poly as the panacea to save a not completely satisfactory relationship. In my opinion, it would be entirely possible for two people to be satisfied with each other without resorting to outside partners. Communication is the real issue, here -without that, even with ten different partners one would never be able to have a functioning relationship-. So, I don't necessarily see polygamy as the answer to lack of interest in an existing relationship, nor as some sort of magical solution that would ensure the surivival of a future one.
To put it simply, you could very well feel lonely in a crowd.
If nothing else, the increased number of people involved would make it harder to cope with possible attritions/jealousies that might arise in the future. It's all to easy to imagine the potential problems: your partner having a fight with her partner, and being irritable when she is with you, her partner becoming jealous with her and your relationship,... the mere fact that there are more people, and more variables to consider, make the list of "things that could go wrong" that much longer, negating pretty much any perceived advantage one might think to gain from such an arrangement, simply because of the increasingly complex dynamics.
Again, to summarize, put enough people together, and you will most likely end up saying something that one of them disagrees with. It's all too easy hurting someone without meaning to, even if you know him very well, and that problem is magnified if you increase the number of people involved (at least in my experience).
In the end, the only point I disagree with is the fact that polygamy might necessarily be the best way to have a satisfactory, lasting relationship. In my experience, that had not been the case, and in general, I think that, as a possible arrangement, it's not without its own share of problems, albeit different ones. It's not necessarily superior to a monogamous relationship, just... different. I guess that what I am trying to say is, don't expect it to be a magical solution to all of your problems, without proper communication, it will fail, just like anything else.
That sucks. A compatible partner that is successfully poly is some evidence that poly could also work for you, as well as being something that brings the possibility to your attention. Yet by meeting them you have instead cut off the whole possibility. You'd be better if you never laid eyes on them! :P
This is just the way I like to relate to myself but I'd decide I was allowed to switch to poly if it was a good idea but that I'm not allowed to date poly-inspiration-X. For at least as long as a limerance period could be expected to interfere with judgement and also long enough that I could see if poly worked for me without the interference. That way my infatuation biases don't get to subvert my decision making either by temptation or by defensive reaction.
That's a massive deal to me too. I am far more careful with shielding myself from asymmetry when playing poly. My primary partner also has to be able to accept that us having other relationships means that she will get less of my attention. Bizarrely enough not everyone gets this. Seriously... being poly doesn't add extra hours to the day!
For myself I am also reluctant to get into situations where I'm seeing multiple people within the same social circle. Or, more to the point, where my partners are seeing other people within my social circle. Simply because it changes the nature of my interactions with my friends. Sex begets competition. It makes people more like humans (status hungry monkeys) and less like 'people'. It's hard enough balancing egos and rapport with potential rivals when you aren't fucking the same girl (or guy). That just isn't the kind of game I like to be playing with my own friends. I prefer Settlers of Catan.
Fortunately most of my core circle is made up of (awesome, open minded but sincere) Christians so there is no chance that we'll end up with love pentagons. Just lots of couples and me doing WTF I want. :)
You know, I had assumed that Time-Turners were invented by a Hogwarts Headmaster who despaired of getting the school schedules straight and one day before deadline stayed up until 6AM inventing the Time-Turner, and that he (gender coinflip-generated) succeeded because he was the first person to try for time travel just to get extra time and not to change the past, and that the invention within Hogwarts is why they get a traditional free pass on using them. But some polyamorous past wizard would be just as reasonable an inventor.
I like love pentagons and poly chains within the community. It creates a familial feeling. Of course nothing's actually gone wrong in my immediate poly family yet. You can easily see how this could go wrong.
There aren't many places where people would be comfortable making that comparison! But I suppose if it wasn't for the inbreeding risk, Westermarck effect and massive potential for abuse incest would be the perfect family bonding activity. You're living with each other already!
And from my side I can see how it could go right. I visited Berkeley recently (bootcamp) and it was adorable.
My favorite part, at which there was actual LOLing:
"•[Imaginary Model Alicorn] acquired a certain level of status (respect for her mind-hacking skills and the approval that comes with having an approved-of "sensible" romantic orientation) within a relevant subculture. She got to write this post to claim said status publicly, and accumulate delicious karma. And she got to make this meta bullet point."
Since I first read this about a year ago, it had had an interesting side effect. I am less able to enjoy fiction where the plot requires a monogamous assumption to function. Plots and Tropes like "Love Triangle", "Who Will Zie Choose?", "Can't Date Them, Not the One", and some "Cheating Spouse" and "Jealous Spouse" now seem weird and artificial to me (unless the poly option is considered and discarded).
I was never a huge fan of romance or romantic comedy, so this is no great loss. It is an interesting minor memetic hazard though.
By analogy with an Idiot Plot which dissolves in the presence of smart characters, a "Muggle Plot" is any plot which dissolves in the presence of transhumanism and polyamory.
Shortly after generalizing this abstraction, someone at a party told me the original tale of the Tin Woodsman, in which there are two men vying for the attention of a healer woman who gives them replacement metal body parts while constructing a whole new body out of the spares. In the end, she decides that the men she's been healing are mechanical and therefore unloveable, and goes off with the new man she's constructed.
"Ah," I said, "a Muggle Plot."
They're surprisingly common once you start looking. I originally generalized it while watching the romantic subplot in Madoka. Blah blah, not a real human, blah blah, love rival..
Requesting clarification on a point in reply to this post because it doesn't deserve it's own Discussion post but I want to know, and since the core question is Muggle Plots I can't think of a better point.
Basically, I'm not sure whether the following hypothetical scenario counts as a "Muggle Plot" (in Elizier's sense of a plot a rationalist would easily be able to avert) or not. The scenario:
-An individual, A, splits into two individuals (called B and C for distinction). This is a philosophical style fission- in every sense in which it is physically possible, B and C are each identical to the original.
-A was and B and C are selfish individuals. B and C get into a serious fight (let's say a fight to the death, though I think that's peripheral) over Selfish Gain X, a gain which one of them can have but not both by it's nature. There is no intelligent solution to the problem of X that gives both of them even 50% of what they want.
Although many people here would argue that this is a Muggle Plot as B and C are the same individual, I see no contradiction in B and C's semi-utility functions in acting selfishly and ignoring the other's desires. However, given arguments that A, B, and C are the same person some people might call it irrational.
Not what I'd call a Muggle Plot, no. See also, The Fate of the Phoenix by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. Can be read without its predecessor novel.
http://oz.wikia.com/wiki/Nimmie_Amee
The retconned version is a bit more of a transhumanist story. Nick Chopper abandoned Nimmie Amee after his series of cursed injuries deprived him of his heart — construed here as the seat of the emotions. He was (some time later) fitted with a new heart; but it was a kind heart, not a loving heart, and so he didn't return to her.
Aside from the anatomic specifics, it's a problem of maintaining goals under self-modification!
As cool as that term sounds, I'm not sure I like it. I think it's too strongly reinforcing of ideas like superiority of rationalists over non-rationalists. Even in cases where rationalists are just better at things, it seems like it's encouraging thinking of Us and Them to an unnecessary degree.
Also, assuming there is a good enough reason to convince me that the term should be used, why is transhumanism-and-polyamory the set of powers defining the non-muggles? LessWrong isn't that overwhelmingly poly, is it?
Plots which are just about people not being rational are a subspecies of "Idiot Plots". Plots which are about people not behaving like SF con-goers are "Muggle Plots".
I don't really see the inherent superiority idea. Seems like there should be plenty of interesting ways to mess up everything with polyamory and transhumanism as well as with monogamy and bioconservatism, just like muggles and wizards both have failure modes, just different.
That kind of story doesn't assume that polygamy is nonexistent. It only assumes that polygamy is rare enough that it's pretty unlikely as a solution. If a similar percentage of people are willing to participate in polyamory as are gay, that's around 5%.. The odds that three random people in a love triangle, who aren't already selected for polyamory, are all polyamorous will then be 1 in 8000. That's small enough that the story really doesn't need to consider and then discard the option.
Judging from how many nominally monogamous people switched to being nominally polygamous in my social circle as the social norm changed, versus how many didn't, I strongly doubt that a plurality of the population is sufficiently exclusively and innately monogamous that considering alternatives is a waste of time.
Then again, I also doubt that 95% of the population is exclusively and innately heterosexual. OTOH, I've never lived in a normatively bisexual community, so I have minimal data
Amusingly, I find I'm subject to this effect despite being happily in a monogamous relationship myself, simply by virtue of living in an increasingly poly-normative social environment. Culture-default handling of traditional gender roles often have this effect on me as well.
Yeah, I have this problem too. I can still write mono characters, but I'm more thoughtful about it than I used to be. (I suspect I'd enjoy reading thoughtfully-written mono characters more.)
I'm considering it, but I do have some concerns. Mainly, the community that I reside in would probably find it low-status, since the majority aren't interested in that. I'm wondering if anyone else encountered this and how they handled it.
I'm reminded of this.
If you don't like something about your community, you can put up with it, you can change your community, or you can... change your community.
Can we get a follow-up about how this working a year later?
Works great! Primary relationship still strong, have also three other boyfriends (primary has two other girlfriends). I am well pleased :)
How about now?
We got married almost a year ago :D. I can't keep track of who-all spouse is dating (it fluctuates a lot) but I have three other nodes on the Big Unruly Chart Thing, one of whom is also dating spouse. Going very smoothly :)
Are you polysaturated yet? Most people seem to find 2-3 to be the practical limit.
I don't see very much of the two boyfriends who don't live in my house, so no. (They have other girlfriends to keep them occupied.)
Brilliant. Have you read Ethical Sluts? great book for poly folks. Also, Sex At Dawn is a book that shows quite a bit of evidence that humans are very bonobo like and aren't really that prone to monogamy. It is not deniable that monogamy is the cultural norm for most of us, however, it seems pretty clear to me that it is a product of socialization and can be changed. Beautiful work, this post, both the words and the content.
Sex at Dawn is weaker than its citations. Its conclusions appear sound but you will find Dark Arts in it.
Details?