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Raemon comments on Ritual 2012: A Moment of Darkness - Less Wrong
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Not speaking for them, but what I do actually think is that there is some portion of the population that would gravitate towards polyamory, but don't because of cached thinking, so increasing rationality would increase the number of polyamorous people.
It came up in conversation with my second cousin today that I have four boyfriends who all know about each other and get along and can have as many girlfriends as they want. My second cousin had never heard of anything like this, but it sounded immediately sensible and like a better way of doing things to him. Just being in a position to learn that an option exists will increase your odds of doing it.
Well, sure; I agree.
Let me put it this way: it's one thing to say "some people like X, some people don't like X, and rationalists are more likely to consider what they actually want and how to achieve it without giving undue weight to social convention." It's a different thing to say "rational people like X, and someone's stance towards X is significant evidence of their rationality."
This community says the second thing rather unambiguously about X=cryonics and X=atheism. So when cryonics, atheism, and polyamory are grouped together, that seems like significant evidence that the second thing is also being said about X=polyamory.
So I figured it was worth clarifying.
Two more points:
It's possible for a trait to be strong evidence both for extreme rationality and for extreme irrationality. (Some traits are much more commonly held among the extremely reasonable and the extremely unreasonable than among 'normals;' seriously preparing for apocalyptic scenarios, for instance. Perhaps polyamory is one of these polarizing traits.)
Sometimes purely irrational behaviors are extremely strong evidence for an agent's overall rationality.
But those are only different if your 'significant' qualifier in 'significant evidence' is much stronger than your 'more likely' threshold. In other words, the difference is only quantitative. If the rate of polyamory is significantly higher among rationalists than among non-rationalists, then that's it; the question is resolved; polyamory just is evidence of rationality. This is so even if nearly all polyamorous people are relatively irrational. It's also so even if polyamory is never itself a rational choice; all that's required is a correlation.
EDIT: Suppose, for instance, that there are 20 rationalists in a community of 10,020; and 2 of the rationalists are polyamorous; and 800 of the non-rationalists are polyamorous. Then, all else being equal, upon meeting a poly person P a perfect Bayesian who knew the aforementioned facts would need to strongly update in favor of P being a rationalist, even knowing that only 2 of the 802 poly people in the community are rationalists.
Yup, all of that is certainly true.
Similarly, there is likely some number N such that my weight being in or above the Nth percentile of the population is evidence of rationality (or of being a rationalist; the terms seem to be being used interchangeably here).
So, I started out by observing that there seemed to be a property that cryonics and atheism shared with respect to this community, which I wasn't sure polyamory also shared, which is why I made the initial comment.
I was in error to describe the property I was asking about as being primarily about evidence, and I appreciate you pointing that out.
In retrospect, I think what I'm observing is that within this community atheism and cryonics have become group markers of virtue, in a way that having a weight above the abovementioned Nth percentile is not a group marker of virtue (though it may be very strong evidence of group membership). And what I was really asking was whether polyamory was also considered a group marker of virtue.
Looking at the flow of this discussion (not just in this branch) and the voting patterns on it, I conclude that yes, it is.
We also have to be careful again about whether by 'mark of virtue' we mean an indicator of virtue (because polyamory might correlate with virtue without being itself virtuous), or whether by 'mark of virtue' we mean an instance of virtue.
In other words, all of this talk is being needlessly roundabout: What we really want to know, I think, is whether polyamory is a good thing. Does it improve most people's lives? How many non-polyamorous people would benefit from polyamory? How many non-polyamorous people should rationally switch to polyamory, given their present evidence? And do people (or rationalists) tend to accept polyamory for good reasons? Those four questions are logically distinct.
Perhaps the last two questions are the most relevant, since we're trying to determine not just whether polyamorous people happen to win more or be rationalists more often, but whether their polyamory is itself rationally motivated (and whether their reasons scale to the rest of the community). So I think the question you intend to ask is whether polyamorous people (within the LessWrong community, at a minimum) have good reason to be polyamorous, and whether the non-polyamorous people have good reason to be non-polyamorous.
This question is very analogous to the sort of question we could ask about cryonics. Are the LessWrongers who don't want to be frozen being irrational -- succumbing to self-deception, say? Or are the more cryonics-happy LessWrongers being irrational? Or are they both being rational, and they just happen to have different core preferences?
I agree that "whether polyamory (or cryonics, or whatever) is a good thing" is a thing we want to know. Possibly even the thing we really want to know, as you suggest.
When you unpack the question in terms of improving lives, benefiting people, etc. you're implicitly adopting a consequentialist stance, where "is polyamory a good thing" equates to "does polyamory have the highest expected value"? I endorse this completely.
In my experience, it has a high positive expected value for some people and a high negative expected value for others, and the highest EV strategy is figure out which sort of person I am and act accordingly.
This is very similar to asking whether a homosexual sex life has the highest expected value, actually, or (equivalently) whether a homosexual sex life is a good thing: it definitely is for some people, and definitely is not for others, and the highest-EV strategy is to pick a sex life that corresponds to the sort of person I am.
All of that said, I do think there's a difference here between unpacking "is polyamory a good thing?" as "does polyamory has the highest expected value?" (the consequentialist stance) and unpacking it as "is polyamory the a characteristic practice of virtuous people?" (the virtue-ethicist stance).
Perhaps what I mean, when I talk about markers of virtue, is that this community seems to be adopting a virtue-ethics rather than a consequentialist stance on the subject.
We agree on the higher-level points, so as we pivot toward object-level discussion and actually discuss polyamory, I insist that we begin by tabooing 'polyamory,' or stipulating exactly what we mean by it. For instance, by 'Polyamory is better than monamory for most people.' we might mean:
More generally, we can distinguish between 'preference polyamory' (which I like to call polyphilia: the preference for, or openness to, having multiple partners, whether or not one actually has multiple partners currently) and 'behavioral polyamory' (which I call multamory: the actual act of being in a relationship with multiple people). We can then cut it even finer, since dispositions and behaviors can change over time. Suppose I have a slight preference for monamory, but am happy to be in poly relationships too. And, even more vexingly, maybe I've been in poly relationships for most of my life, but I'm currently in a mono relationship (or single). Am I 'polyamorous'? It's just an issue of word choice, but it's a complex one, and it needs to be resolved before we can evaluate any of these semantic candidates utilitarianly.
And even this is too coarse-grained, because it isn't clear what exactly it takes to qualify as a 'romantic/sexual' partner as opposed to an intimate friend. Nor is it clear what it takes to be a 'partner;' it doesn't help that 'sexual partner' has an episodic character in English, while 'romantic partner' has a continuous character.
As for virtue ethics: In my experience, ideas like 'deontology,' 'consequentialism,' and 'virtue ethics' are hopeless confusions. The specific kinds of arguments characteristic of those three traditions are generally fine, and generally perfectly compatible with one another. There's nothing utilitarianly unacceptable about seriously debating whether polyamory produces good character traits and dispositions.
I should note that my original question wasn't (and wasn't intended to be) about polyamory, but rather about MugaSofer's categorizations (and indirectly about LW's). So from my perspective, I have been having an object-level discussion, give or take.
But, OK, if you want to actually discuss polyamory, I'm OK with that too.
Were I to taboo "polyamory", I would unpack it as the practice of maintaining romantic relationships with more than one person at a time. I would similarly taboo "monamory" (were such a term in common usage) as the practice of maintaining romantic relationships with exactly one person at a time.
(And, sure, as you say, we can further drill down into this by exploring what "romantic" means, and how it differs from intimate friendship. And for that matter what "person" means and what a "practice" is and what it means to "maintain" a "relationship" and so forth, if we want.)
So by "Polyamory is better than monamory for most people." I would mean that the practice of maintaining romantic relationships with more than one person at a time is better than the practice of maintaining them with one person at a time, for most people.
And I would also say that someone who is currently involved in romantic relationships with no more than one person is not currently engaging in polyamory, though that's not to say that they haven't in the past nor that they won't in the future. And someone currently involved in romantic relationships with no people is not engaging in monamory either.
The difference between the unpackings you propose seem to have nothing to do with different understandings of "polyamory" or "monamory", but rather with different understandings of "better".
I would probably unpack "polyamorous" as applied to a person either as preferring romantic relationships with more than one person at a time or as requiring romantic relationships with more than one person at a time. I don't really care which meaning gets used but it's important to agree or conversations tend to derail. (Similar issues arise with whether "homosexual" is understood to exclude people attracted to the opposite sex. Both usages are common, but it's difficult to talk about homosexuality clearly if we don't know which usage is in play.)
Here's what I was trying to get at: Polyamory vs. monamory isn't a fair fight, because monamory is one relationship type. Polyamory isn't one relationship type; it's an umbrella term for thousands of different relationship types, including:
All of the above are off-the-table for traditional monogamous pairing. What are the odds that a majority of people would just happen to converge on exactly one ideal relationship type? If we expect people to have diverse preferences, we should expect polyamory to dominate monamory.
I suppose.
That said, not all two-person relationships are the same type of relationship either. My relationship with my husband is not very much like my mom's (former) relationship with hers, despite both relationships being monogamous... indeed, it has more in common with several of my friends' poly relationships.
That said, though, we can certainly ask whether there are more ways for N people to be in relationship at a time than for 2 people to be in relationship at a time? Yeah, I would expect so, I guess. (The prospect of itemizing them, as you seem to be trying to do here, seems both daunting and not terribly useful, though perhaps entertaining.)
Does the difference actually matter that much, in terms of what leaves people better off? Maybe. I'm not really sure. I'm not even sure how to approach the question.
Certainly, the more willing people are to explore a wide range of relationship-space, and the more able they are to recognize what leaves them better off in a relationship, the more likely they are to find a way of being in relationship that leaves them better off. But this seems no more (though no less) true for being willing to experiment with polyamory as for being willing to experiment with their nonpreferred gender as for willing to experiment with various sexual kinks as for many other things.
Non sequitur.
People eating what is usually called food should be a minority because there are so many other things that fit in your mouth: stones, grass, computer components ...
When two people meet, what is called some kind of handshake / traditional greeting should be a minority because there are so many other potential ways of interacting: touching their head, touching their elbow ...
Just because one "umbrella term" unpacks into more constituent types does not imply at all that the cumulative probability of a random human belonging to that umbrella term dominates.
Diverse preferences do not mean each atomic category is equiprobable.
Almost as if there are some ... common characteristics, which preclude some i.i.d. dispersion over every conceivable category?
I'm not saying what is or is not the majority "ideal relationship type". I'm just saying that I don't think your argument works.
If you're counting those as separate, you should also count homosexual vs heterosexual monamorous relationships, and long-term vs short-term monamorous relationships. :-)
With the caveat that every partner knows about it and consented to the arrangement, and not under duress. Otherwise it would be called cheating and/or coercion, which is far more widespread than polyamory. On a related note, when comparing polyamory to other arrangements, one has to account for the effects of cheating in a monogamous arrangement.
Agreed that consent and transparency are other dimensions along which clarity is useful.
I wouldn't object to unpacking "polyamory" as requiring a high level of consent and transparency.
Agreed that various degrees of coercion in relationships (of all sorts) are far more common than perfect consent.
Agreed that various degrees of deceit and/or concealment in relationships (of all sorts) are far more common than perfect transparency.
That seems too complex.
Are people happier, for the most part and all other things being equal, having multiple romantic parters, having single romantic partners, or is there too much variation between individuals to generalize?
Dave seems to be saying that there's too much individual variation to generalize. I don't think I can answer the question, because I don't know how to work out all other things being equal: right now it seems to me that lack of social acceptance makes polyamory a pretty bad choice for most people, even if they are inclined towards it. It very seriously limits the number of people you can have relationships with, for example.
I don't quite think I'm saying this.
I am saying that there are people who, for the most part and all other things being equal, are better off (which is similar to happier, I guess) having multiple romantic partners, and there are other people who (ftmpaaotbe) are better off having single romantic partners. (I also think, though I haven't previously said, that there are people who ftmpaaotbe are better off having no romantic partners.)
But if you insist on asking whether people are ftmpaaotbe better off with single or multiple partners, without reference to which type of person, I do think the question is answerable. I'm not sure what the answer is. I just think it's the wrong question to ask, and I don't care very much about the answer.
This is in a similar sense that I can tell you what a person's chance of getting pregnant after unprotected sex is, independent of their age or gender, but it's really a far more useful question to ask if I break the results out by age and gender.
And, yes, I agree that ftmpaaotbe conceals a wealth of trickiness. That said, "this is a bad choice because it's socially unacceptable" is also a very tricky line of argument.
Okay, gotcha...I actually made a new years resolution not to go on this website anymore, for the sake of time management, so this is my last post. But I think I understand your point! A good note to go out on.
Of course, if polyamory turns out to be the best thing for almost all people, or at least lesswrongers, then a consequentialist would behave the same way.
Also true.
Do you believe polyamory is the best thing for almost all people? (Or at least lesswrongers?)
On balance, no. In fact, I agree with your main point; I was about to add a note to that effect when I saw your comment. Ah well.
(Disclaimer: I am not particularly polyamorous myself, and I'm certainly not in a poly relationship.)
I know how a consequentialist (at least, one operating with the intention of maximizing 'human values') would unpack these questions, and I know how we could theoretically look at facts and give answers to ze's questions.
But how, on earth, would "is polyamory the characteristic of virtuous people" get unpacked? What does "virtuous" mean here and what would it look like for something or someone to be "virtuous"?
I know you probably didn't mean to get dragged into a conversation about Virtue Ethics, but I've seen it mentioned on LW a few times and have always been very curious about its local version.
Well, not being a virtue ethicist myself, I'm probably not the best guy to ask.
My question for virtue ethicists is "well, OK, but how do you tell who is virtuous?"
Then again, a virtue ethicist can just as reasonably ask "well, OK, but how do you tell what consequences are desirable?" to which I, as a consequentialist, essentially reply "I consult my intuitions about value." Life has more value than death, joy has more value than suffering, growth has more value than stagnation, and so forth. How do I know that? Geez, I dunno. I just know.
Presumably a virtue ethicist can just as readily reply "I consult my intuitions about virtue." I suppose it's no less reasonable.
Nitpick: while a significant fraction of rational people are not polyamorous, polyamory could still be better evidence for rationality than atheism. That's because there is so much atheists around, many of which became atheists for the wrong reasons (being raised as such, rebellion…).
Let's try some math with a false dichotomy approximation: someone could be Rational (or not), pOlyamorous (or not), and Atheist (or not). We want to measure how much evidence pOlyamory and Atheism are evidence for Rationality, given Background information B. Those are:
Now imagine that B tells the following: "Among the 6 billion people on Earth, about 1 billion are atheists, 10 millions are rational, and 1 million is polyamorous. Every rational people are atheists, and 5% of them are polyamorous".
So:
Applying the two formulas above, Atheism gives about 8 decibels of evidence for rationality. Polyamory on the other hand, gives about 28. And rationality itself, P(R|B), starts at about -28. pOlyamory is enough to seriously doubt the irRationality of someone, while Atheism doesn't even raise it above the "should think about it" threshold.
If this is not intuitive, keep in mind that according to B, only 1% of Atheists are Rational, while a whooping 50% of pOlyamorous people are. Well, with those made up numbers anyway. Real numbers are most probably less extreme than that. But I still expect to find more rationalists among a polyamorous sample than among an atheist sample.
Yes, that's true.
My reply to Robb elsewhere in this thread when he made a similar point is relevant here as well.
I agree. I wouldn't have worded the original comment that way.
They really aught not to, though, Living forever, like polyamory, is a preference which hinges strictly on a person's utility function. It's perfectly possible for a rational agent to not want to live forever, or be polyamorous.
Even if someone considers polyamory and cryonics morally wrong... in this community we often use rational and bayesian interchangeably, but let's revert to the regular definition for a moment. People who condemn polyamory or cryonics based on cached thoughts are not rational in the true English sense of the word (rational - having reason or justification for belief) but they are not any less epistemically bayesian...it's not like they have a twisted view of reality itself.
Atheism...well that's a proposition about the truth, so you could argue that it says something about the individual's rationality. Trouble is, since God is so ill defined, atheism is poorly defined by extension. So you'd get someone like Einstein claiming not to be an atheist on mostly aesthetic grounds.
Because of our semantic idiocy atheism implies adeism as well, even though deists, atheists, and pantheists have otherwise identical models about observable reality...so I'd hesitate to say that deism/pantheism imply irrationality.
Edit: Also, let's not confuse intelligence with bayesian-ness. Intelligence correlates with all the beliefs mentioned above largely because it confers resistance to conformity, and that's the real reason that polyamory and atheism is over-represented at lesswrong. Cryonics...I think that's a cultural artifact of the close affiliation with the singularity institute.
But we're talking about probability, not possibility. It's possible for a mammal to be bipedal; but evidence for quadrupedalism is still evidence for being a mammal. Similarly, it's possible to be irrational and polyamorous; but if the rate of polyamory is greater among rationalists than among non-rationalists, then polyamory is evidence of rationality, regardless of whether it directly causally arises from any rationality-skill. The same would be true if hat-wearing were more common among rationalists than among non-rationalists. It sounds like you're criticizing a different attitude than is TheOtherDave.
Regarding polyamory, it could also be founder effect — given that several of the top contributors are openly poly, that both men and women are among them, and so on.
Alicorn used to be mono, and I think so did Eliezer; and the fraction of poly respondents was about the same in the last two surveys, which... some part of my brain tells me is evidence against your hypothesis, but now that I think about it I'm not sure why.