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lmm comments on Open Thread, October 27 - 31, 2013 - Less Wrong
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So, when marriage traditionalists argue that the absence of an established tradition of same-sex marriages is evidence that same-sex marriage isn't likely to work (since if it did, they'd expect to see an established tradition of same-sex marriage), you don't find that convincing... your position there is that:
a) marriage is just a special case of long-term, stable relationship, and
b) we do observe an established (if unofficial, and often actively derided) tradition of long-term, stable same-sex relationships among the small fraction of the population who enjoy such relationships, so
c) we should expect same-sex marriages to work among that fraction of the population.
Yes?
But by contrast, on your account we don't observe an established (if unofficial) tradition of long-term, stable multi-adult relationships, so a similar argument does not suffice to justify expecting multi-adult marriages to work among the fraction of the population who enjoy such relationships.
Yes? Have I understood you correctly?
You've accurately summarized what I said. I think on reflection point a) is very dubious, so allow me to instead bite your bullet: I don't yet have a strong level of confidence that same-sex marriages are likely to work. (Which I don't see as a reason to make them illegal, but might be a reason to e.g. weight them less strongly when considering a couple's suitability to adopt).
I think we may need to taboo "work" here; if we're talking about suitability as an organizational leader here then that's a higher standard than just enjoying one's own sex life. I would supplement b) with the observation that we observe historical instances of gay people making major contributions to wider society - Turing, Wilde, Britten (British/Irish examples because I'm British/Irish).
But yeah, that's basically my position. Interested to see where you're going with this - is there such an "established (if unofficial) tradition of long-term, stable multi-adult relationships" that I'm just ignorant of?
Um, polygamy? Concubinage? Both have long histories, and show up in cultures that are clearly functional.
Both of them are less gender egalitarian than modern polyamory, and it's not clear to me that there's ample real-world evidence of, say, Heinlein's idea of line marriages working out.
Clearly functional... but as functional? http://www.gwern.net/docs/2012-heinrich.pdf
I think it would be useful here to distinguish between what is/was/should be/might be the average and what is the acceptable range of deviation from that average.
A society where most men have one wife but some men have several is different from a society where most men have one wife and having several is illegal and socially unacceptable.
Probably not- I buy the arguments that the incentives generated by monogamy are better than the ones generated by polygamy, across society as a whole. (I am not yet convinced that serial monogamy enabled by permissive divorce laws is better than polygyny, but haven't investigated the issue seriously.) I meant more to exclude the idea that polygamy is only seen in, say, undeveloped societies.
Where I'm going with this is trying to understand your position, which I think I now do.
My own position, as I stated a while back, is that I base my opinions about the viability of certain kinds of relationships on observing people in such relationships. The historical presence or absence of traditions of those sorts of relationships is also useful data, but not definitively so.
EDIT: I suppose I should add to this that I would be very surprised if there weren't just as much of a tradition of married couples one or both of whom were nonmonogamous with the knowledge and consent of their spouse as there was a tradition of people having active gay sex lives, and very surprised if some of those people weren't making "major contributions to wider society" just as some gay people were. But I don't have examples to point out.
Notoriously, Lady Hamilton and Horatio Nelson had a public affair in the 1800s, without any objection from Lord Hamilton.
Right. As I've said, I think relationships tend to have big negative spikes analogous to stock market crashes, so am cautious about judging from samples of a few years.
Sure, absolutely.
Even watching twenty-year-old poly relationships, as I sometimes do, isn't definitive... maybe it takes a few generations to really see the problems. Ditto for same-sex marriages, or couples of different colors, or of different religious traditions... sure, these have longer pedigrees, but the problems may simply not have really manifested yet, but are building up momentum while people like me ignore the signs.
I mention my own position not because I expect it to convince you, but because you were asking me where I was going in a way that suggested to me that you thought I was trying to covertly lead the conversation along to a point where I could demonstrate weaknesses in your position relative to my own, and in fact the questions I was asking you were largely orthogonal to my own position.
Off the top of my head, Erwin Schrödinger.
Given this fact, I am now surprised by not having previously observed a seemingly endless series of jokes about it playing on the supposed indeterminacy of poly relationships.
I detect a horrible gap in the fabric of the universe! We need to create some ASAP!!
SMBC is on to it.