Explicit symmetrical polyamory has never emerged stably in history so far. It's worth asking why.

As far as I know, explicit symmetrical anything hasn't existed for very long...

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!

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.

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.

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.

Polyamory is a better arrangement for young non child-producing couples than for people who want kids.

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.

(Smart polys, police this so we can all have a real discussion!)

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.

n 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!

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.

Are primary poly relationships, even like Alicorn and MBlume, as stable over time as mono?

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.

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.

I think your theoretical understanding of human sexuality has left you ill-prepared for making predictions about real-world cases like this.

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.

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.

Explicit symmetrical polyamory has never emerged stably in history so far.

Tell that to the people of Laguna Pueblo, prior to Christian missionaries. They'd be vastly amused to find out they never existed.

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?)

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.

A good point; that said, a surprisingly large number of heterosexual or bisexual males I know are very much attracted to signs of "toughness" in females, including scars, fighting ability, etc.

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.

Although this is an old article I came to it from the Theory of Knowledge article (link below). I'm commenting because this crystallizes my objections to a repeated theme at LW: that irrationality comes from unquestioned cached thoughts, and that modern education systems exacerbate this tendency. In other words, I'm questioning whether password-guessing and memorization in education are actually avoidable, even at the highest levels of optimization, and whether this isn't in fact the result of the expansion of knowledge and the limits of human cognition.

I'm not even going to argue whether those are true statements and whether they are bad. But my own background has raised questions about what the solution might be. My idealistic assumptions about how people should learn used to track the predominant ones on LW much more closely. I'm currently in a technical graduate program for a profession that is different from most other types of graduate programs because in this field, the first few years are spent memorizing huge reams of information and taking multiple choice tests (have a guess as to what I'm studying?) My fellow students and I would genuinely love to really understand from a critical perspective all the information that is getting shoveled into our brains. But doing that, rather than memorizing lists of word correspondences, takes time that we just don't have. Therefore in reality our tests are really just exercises in figuring out which bar to press so we get the food pellet. (I like that analogy better than "guessing passwords".) And perhaps most scandalous, once we're "in the system", we students recognize the need for it to be this way even though it's frustrating.

Scandal! Unethical? Stupid? Cynical, at least? Maybe yes to all. But the pragmatic reality is that there's a trade-off. There's such a massive amount of material that no human who ever lived would be able to critically digest it all unless the training lasted far longer than it does, and while the system is certainly not optimized, the body of knowledge itself is so rife with detail not predictable from first principles that until the limits on cognition fundamentally change, this will continue to be the case.

So, regarding the strategy students can adopt, the two ends of the spectrum are: 1) You can just memorize details long enough to regurgitate them in the lever-pressing experiments, and understand nothing critically; or 2) You can insist on trying to critically understand everything, and you will certainly fall behind and fail. You. Yes, you, reading this, because you're human, and this applies to all humans. ("Not me! I'm special! I still care about my fellow man, the human spirit, etc." Sorry, can you tell I've had this conversation before?)

Unfortunately, given the pace the material is presented and tested, you'll end up much closer to #1 than #2. Even if you disagree with my assessment that a body of knowledge can be such that large amounts of memorization are necessary, this still raises the omnipresent problem of how to maximize whatever it is you want to maximize while surrounded by irrational humans (who are running the schools, and who believe that memorization is necessary). If you want to do the thing you're being trained for, you need the piece of paper. To get that paper, you have to pass the tests. To pass the tests you need to just memorize and not think. I guess I could just declare the whole enterprise unethical and forget about this profession and move out in the woods somewhere. So if you can tell me how to maximize career satisfaction and income out in a nice forest away from everyone instead of memorizing reams of B.S., I'm all ears. Seriously.

As knowledge accumulates, this problem is only going to get worse, and extend to more fields. Certainly education has not yet been optimized but all fields are not math and physics, and there's enough unpredictable detail in the world that as knowledge accumulates, so will the memorization required to learn that knowledge. And if we can't always use critical thinking at every step - which we can't - then password-guessing is better than nothing.

Post I came in from: http://lesswrong.com/lw/70d/theory_of_knowledge_rationality_outreach/

It's a social gathering for anyone interested in discussing anything relevant to the LW community. I personally have been part of discussing rationality in general, cryonics, existential risk, personal health, and cognitive bias (among other topics) at the 2 meetups I've been to. It's a good excuse to meet some other folks and trade ideas, start projects, etc.

I don't think we have an agenda organized for this one. But if you're curious, take a look at the comments from the September SoCal meetup for an idea about what was discussed and what people thought was good/bad/interesting about it.

A lot of the recent discussion of cryonics in the blogosphere is about others' basis for rejecting it. If you want it to become more available that's probably one of the steps to take. But grossly selfish? Or ghoulish, or an affront to nature, or any of those things? Much of medicine today would seem that way to someone living two centuries ago. For my part, I don't oppose it if others want to do it, and I applaud anyone who wants to use technology to improve their lives even if I think they're barking up the wrong tree; I don't plan to do it myself. I'm puzzled as well why people would react so negatively to the idea. In many married couples, one spouse significantly outlives the other. Is that so disturbing to people?

My questions for cryonicists are outlined in a post on my blog (link below) but the main issue is: if you think that you'll one day be thawed out and cured, so that you'll feel better in a better world, a) why wait until you're dead? At worst, there will never be a technology to repair the damage to your brain from the time oxygen stopped coming at death until you were frozen, and at best, it will make it harder for your doctors to revive you. If you really believe this, get frozen while you're still alive. (Think of the people who are currently frozen. No doubt today, less than a half century later, we're already better at treating whatever it is that killed them. But even if we found a way to thaw people out without causing further damage, we still can't cure death.)

Second, if indeed it's centuries before a cure for your terminal disease is found, who's going to be checking on your behalf? Nobody remembers what you look like or your name; nobody loves or cares about you anymore. (This would have to be contractual, but of course if you break a contract with a sleeping person that no one cares about, I think you're safe from consequences for a while.) And when you're revived, what are you going to do in this future economy? Where are you going to live? That's a separate objection but it's one of the reasons I wouldn't want to do it.

My original post: http://speculative-nonfiction.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-do-cryonicists-wait-to-be-frozen.html

Gah! I couldn't make meetings in the Bay Area, then I moved to SoCal. Finally a meeting in SoCal, and I'm away today. Is there a calendar?

Fixing the leak is the best solution. Much easier and more realistic with a team of one (yourself) than it is with more than one.

While we can all probably give examples from personal experience equivalent to the real estate agent leaking the minimum price, my personal favorite resulted in the current border of California. Ever wonder why the West Coast border between the U.S. and Mexico is between San Diego and Tijuana? At the end of the war that resulted in this border, there were American troops occupying Mexico City. Why draw the line there? Turns out that the U.S. negotiators had a list of must-gets and nice-to-haves. Alta California and Colorado country were must-gets. Baja was viewed as a desert waste and a nice-to-have. The list got leaked to the Mexican delegation by an American personally acquainted with one of the Mexican negotiators, so the Mexican team dug in their heels and wouldn't give up Baja. Point: keep negotiation teams small. Fewer leak-points. One (yourself) is best, because only then do negotiator interests exactly correspond with YOUR interests.