Psy-Kosh comments on Poly marriage? - Less Wrong

-9 Post author: h-H 06 June 2012 07:57PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (127)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 11 June 2012 06:12:03AM 0 points [-]

Hrm... If it really would end up being significantly one sided (regardless of which side it would end up as) then it would likely be bad. But the question is how one sided it would be. (I guess really the best way is to actually go around looking at poly relationships (not the cults, but actual freely formed poly relationships) and see what tends to happen on average.

Comment author: MileyCyrus 11 June 2012 06:36:59AM 1 point [-]

Even a small imbalance in the sex ratio can make a big difference.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 11 June 2012 11:11:04AM 1 point [-]

Hrm... interesting. Reading that, however, doesn't seem to imply that a small imbalance in the sex ratio necessarily makes anything more than a small difference. Did I miss it, or is there something in the original actual paper that implies small imbalances produce large effects? (My investigation into this topic is practically nonexistent, however.)

(I am curious also about the wording... Sexually active males vs sexually receptive females.)

Comment author: MileyCyrus 11 June 2012 02:54:34PM 1 point [-]

If you look at the study (warning: PDF) you can get quantified information. Looking at page 5 you can see that a woman in .925 city (like Philadelphia) will get married a year earlier than in a 1.075 city (like Portland). So maybe the effect isn't that big after all.

Although I would expect the results would be more dramatic if we comparing the operational sex ratios of countries rather than cities. If the sexual market is unfavorable, it's a lot easier to import a mate from another city than another country.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 12 June 2012 06:42:16AM 0 points [-]

Hrm... So the question is does data at the scale of countries (or at least larger regions within countries) exist for this?

Anyways, thanks. I may have to update a bit on this matter (conditional on poly actually being likely to cause imbalance.)