All of ChrisPine's Comments + Replies

You have to like to learn how to be a wizard.

Only if they won't let you throw it away.

ChrisPine400

It's a cautionary tale about Norwegian food.

D_Alex120

It explains lutefisk.

Quote from Garrison Keillor's book Lake Wobegon Days: Every Advent we entered the purgatory of lutefisk, a repulsive gelatinous fishlike dish that tasted of soap and gave off an odor that would gag a goat. We did this in honor of Norwegian ancestors, much as if survivors of a famine might celebrate their deliverance by feasting on elm bark. I always felt the cold creeps as Advent approached, knowing that this dread delicacy would be put before me and I'd be told, "Just have a little." Eating a little was like vomiting a lit

... (read more)

The second part is largely a filtering effect, yes. I probably should have left that part out. But the first part was a study done on Mormons, not ex-Mormons. Extreme sexual guilt is a big part of growing up Mormon.

I've heard a number of stories of "good" Mormons getting married and finally being allowed to have sex, and... they can't do it. They can't handle it. Or they manage to, several days later, only to end up feeling horribly guilty about it, locked in the bathroom, crying...

It's not a happy religion.

I read this, and thought of Wednesday: "Among all American religions, Mormonism is the single most sexually guilt ridden. Mormonism scores 37%% higher in sexual guilt than even Catholics."

from here: http://www.atheismresource.com/2012/sex-god-a-new-and-fascinating-book-by-darrel-ray

I don't know how many ex-mormons you've talked to, but I've talked to quite a few, and in nearly every case we were miserable in the church, and much happier outside of it.

3MixedNuts
That's purely filtering, isn't it? Anyone who isn't miserable, or doesn't expect to stop being miserable if they get out, stays in.
ChrisPine180

Which got even more upvotes... [sigh]

Please don't become reddit!

I only just got into town. :-)

ChrisPine130

Just took the survey. It was odd how only the word "Other" was translated into the Norwegian "Andre"... and everything else was in English.

I see your murder analogy as less useful than the child-parent analogy, FWIW.

Anyway, I asked, and you answered:

Why would your partner need to leave you for another if they could just have you both?? Because they might like the other more, which would hurt me enough that I would not want to stay.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... that is not an answer to the question I asked! You see, already, by examining the hypothetical situation, we are getting somewhere. :-)

So are your fears truly about being left, or about feeling a level of jealousy and hurt that you don't th... (read more)

1[anonymous]
Both, of course. The jealousy and hurt is, in part, a rejection to a fear of being left or rejected. And in part it's just base possessiveness, probably. I'm good with that. I'm answering questions about these feelings because I'm in a discussion about them with people who presumable don't feel them (or not in the same way). I'm not confused or in the dark about the source of my feelings on the matter. This is not the first time I've thought about my feelings, just as I'm sure when you explain why you're okay with poly, it's not your first time working through these thoughts either. Sure. But why would I, when I have zero desire to?

Have you ever felt jealousy? Romantic or otherwise?

Yes, both. But I don't see jealousy as this big emotional dead-end. "If you see jealousy, run the other way! Only evil will you find here!" Jealousy is a response. Like a rash or something. It's an indication that something needs to be dealt with. It could be the emotional equivalent of skin cancer... but it's more likely that it's the equivalent of a need to use a different brand of soap. Upon further inspection, it's often not that big of a deal.

Having multiple children doesn't threaten th

... (read more)
1[anonymous]
Because they might like the other more, which would hurt me enough that I would not want to stay. Oh, it was written off long ago; my curiosity is academic, not for assessment with respect to personal change. I am in a successful, long-term monogamous relationship, and neither of us want that to change. I'm not sure what you mean by what monogamy "has left in its path." If you mean divorce rates, I can only repeat that my anecdotal experience with polyamorous couples has seen them split up at least as frequently.

I was not, no. :-)

(But if you know that one, too, please share.)

I guess that the original poster didn't mean to say "special", but rather "unique" or "exclusive".

Ok, then I would ask how the OP feels if their SO talked to another person. Or became friends with. Or found attractive. Or flirted with. There are some things that we can expect to be unique or exclusive in just about any relationship. (Certainly there are many things that are exclusive in my own primary relationship!) So it's more a matter of changing where that line is drawn.

And as far as this: "Anxiety about the possib... (read more)

2[anonymous]
With "superiority", I was not exactly referring to your post, but to a general trend I noticed in other posts, where bisexuality and polygamy were (I think, admittedly, half jockyingly) publicized as "evolutionally superior" (?), at least if we were "immortal superbeings". According to mdcaton's post (quote: "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.") that does seem to be a trend, though the Alicorn's post, nor your review seemed to contain any sort of "zealotic" element. To restate my opinion, I don't think of the polygamous arrangement as necessarily superior, nor inferior, mainly because it's a highly subjective decision to make, and what could work for someone might not work for someone else. On paper, it sure seems to solve many problems -which is why I agreed to give it a try in the first place-. To name a few: the fact that, through you might feel jealousy and some amount of fear (because of the potential risk that your partner might change her mind and unceremoniously "dump" you to enter in a monogamous relationship, which, considering sex and the general level of intimacy involved with "third parties", would in my opinion increase with respect to a "proper" monogamous relationship -by that I mean one in which the people involved are faithful and sincere with one another-, at least if said partner was not exactly sure about what she wanted from a polygamous relationship -so, arguably, this woudl not apply to a "proper" polygamous relationship either, I guess-... but that's debatable, and not really the issue here), cheating would no longer be an issue (though, if you were comfortable and open enough to sleep with other people in a polygamous, I doubt that would have been a cause of worry), and certainly, if something was to happen to one of the two, the other would have the support of third parties and you wouldn't need to worry abou

Yes. Of course if you have multiple children they're individually less special to you!

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:

You have less time and energy for each, less brain-space to store facts about each

...then I'd have to agree with you. Certainly, I have less time and energy to devote to each child.

and you aren't even culturally allowed to have a favorite!

For the record, I never ... (read more)

I suppose no analogy would be perfect, but saying that kids can be jealous doesn't seem to justify or explain rational adult emotion. I would certainly not agree that kids with siblings are ultimately worse off than those without!

Getting back to the original point of seeing one's partner with another makes one feel non-special... I still don't know why someone (some healthy adult with decent self-esteem) would say this. My guess is that I am finding it hard to understand because I have been in that situation, and the OP (jmed) hasn't. So jmed is trying to ... (read more)

0[anonymous]
I think that the issue here is something Alicorn explained in her 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.]" I guess that the original poster didn't mean to say "special", but rather "unique" or "exclusive". In Alicorn's post, it is made clear that they don't have a "bunch of undifferentiated" relationships, but in my opinion, that's what the first commenter understood, and probably, thinking about it, the idea of being so easily repleaced made him think "she considers me like a car's wheel: I am not there? No problem, someone else will be". That doesn't have anything to do with his perception of himself, but with the perception of him he believes his partner might have. Maybe I should not have put there those comments about children's behaviour, because they seem to distract fromt he main point, I just wanted to note that even in a situation where fear of abandonment is not justified (the mother in question will always be their mother, even after the birth of her new child), there is still jealousy, as well as a subconscious fear. As pointed out by Alicorn, and considering adults and romantic relationship (which can, in fact, end), there is "Anxiety about the possibility that my primary would be stolen away by some more appealing secondary.". In this case, we are talking about an event that could actually happen, and has to be accounted for. In the end, Alicorn concludes that the odds of their relationship ending because her boyfriend might prefer another woman to her would be lower than those of them breaking out because of simple loss of interest. Also, in the thread where Alicorn's partner talked about his view of the experience, occasional feelings of jealousy had been mentioned. Who said that emotions were rational? When had they ever been? Just because you intellectually know that you mat
ChrisPine100

Because seeing my partner being emotionally or physically intimate with someone else (or knowing they were, even without seeing it) = immediate non-specialness.

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?

I apologize for rocking the boat, if I have.

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.

2[anonymous]
Have you ever felt jealousy? Romantic or otherwise? I don't feel it over my partner finding someone else attractive -- that's too distant and automatic to be a threat -- but a pursued relationship with someone else is too much of a threat to my relationship. I also don't see this as an unfounded insecurity that I should work on reducing; if you're more secure in your primary relationship than I would be in a poly scenario, I feel like you may not be updating sufficiently given available information about human relationships. Having multiple children doesn't threaten the loss of your previous children. That's why. I accept that this may be true for you. It does not appear to be true of most of the poly folks I've come across. I have seen a lot of drama and boat-rocking and boat-sinking. Hell, it just happened again, publicly, in Tortuga. It is possible that I have not come across a proper representative sample of poly relationships and have an inaccurate view. But I remain skeptical of your claim to this benefit for poly. Thank you for your perspective on the matter. I feel a bit like an anthropologist dropped into a foreign land.
Alicorn340

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?

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 equal... (read more)

6[anonymous]
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? Not the best example. Does it never happen that one child suffers because he feels that his sibling is "stealing" his parent's attention away from him? It's something I have seen it happen before, even when the mother does love her sons equally -while her love might remain, the same could no longer be said about her "undivided" attention, which is what causes the problem in young children, when they are informed that they are going to have "a little brother"-. While it is not a rationally sound stance, that kind of jealousy is certainly not an uncommon emotion. Furthermore, does it never happen that one of the sibling feels slighted because he is constantly compared to his more successful brother? While the mother might, in theory, love them both equally, life is not always as it looks on paper. It's not uncommon to have a situation where there is a "preferred" child (maybe because he excells in sports, like the father, whereas the other brother doesn't even like football, and prefers classical music). To put it clearly, it's also something Alicorn also underlined: # Anxiety about the possibility that my primary would be stolen away by some more appealing secondary. #. She later decided that the odds of that happening are lower than those that things might go wrong simply because of loss of interest. However, that does not mean that one should dimiss such concern out of hand with a "I don't know why you would say this", as if the fear of abandonment was not a real, "natural" emotion. Ultimately, the children in the example will always remain that mother's sons, no matter what. A romantic relationship is not like that. Breakups do exist, it's not as if the possibility that he/she might decide to pursue a monogamous relationship with a partner he/she met at a later date is might be a real

I guess my philosophy is that fairytale monogamy is optimal for the young (say under 200 years or so)

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.

This is why I've always felt vaguely guilty about not being bisexual, since immortal superbeings clearly would be.

I'd be very interested in hearing about that hack. I haven't been able to pull it off, myself, and also feel vaguely guilty about it. (Especially after seeing the grace and ease with which my wife pulled it off.)

wedrifid170

This is why I've always felt vaguely guilty about not being bisexual, since immortal superbeings clearly would be.

I'd be very interested in hearing about that hack.

So am I. We are talking about the "becoming an immortal superbeing" hack, right?

9Kaj_Sotala
See here.
ChrisPine110

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. :-)

[Disclaimer: I'm having a pretty strong negative emotional reaction to this post, and much of this thread, but I'm really trying to give you the benefit of the doubt; I apologize if I come off as snippy.]

Your post only makes sense if God does not exist

No, it makes sense in any case. Even if there's a god. Even if that god is omniscient. Even if that god is benevolent. And even is that god is perfectly rational!!

There's a difference between "rational" and "ethical". (By your argument, Satan could not possibly be rational... is that y... (read more)

About vegetarianism: you seem to be confusing two different positions:

  • it is ok to not eat animals
  • it is not ok to eat animals

One is the Mormon position, and the other is the vegan position. I understand that the Mormon church would be ok with something living a vegan lifestyle. No problem.

I am talking about being able to coherently hold the Mormon position and the vegan position. I'm talking about having the freedom to decided for myself that I believe it is wrong to eat animals. This is different from the freedom to just not eat animals. One is about ... (read more)

-7JohnH

I'm just not sure we're having the same conversation here, John. I really didn't want to debate Mormon theology or the existence of God. My main point was that the Mormon church is too restrictive in terms of what is "allowed", both in terms of behaviors and beliefs. Too restrictive on things that might give Wednesday happiness some day.

However, you started that sentence by saying it wasn't a logic game. If logic and reason are not to be used in determining what is really right and wrong and divine revelation is out then what are you left with?

... (read more)
-3JohnH
I assumed it was, based on the "not in moderation". Yes it does. You are free to read section 89 where it is so forbidden to see why. Not sure the trees would have died. Also not sure of the exact nature of the flood. The myth is an extremely common one and myths are usually based on some sort of fact. That we haven't definitively shown what this was based on does not mean that it did not exist. I just showed that the church would not find this to be incorrect. I actually know some members that hold this exact position and they are members in good standing. Like I said some of the presidents of the church have held this position. Something being culturally being less acceptable has nothing to do with whether it is incorrect or not. That the culture within much of the church would be biased against holding a vegetarian or vegan position it is true but that is nowhere near the same as saying the church itself holds the position to be wrong. I assume that you do not hold that position then. I have had multiple discussions with people that did hold that position and it is one of the more annoying things to deal with. Alcohol causes about 23,000 fatalities a year. Pools appear to cause about 3,500 fatalities per year. Tobacco causes about 400,000 fatalities per year. Cars cause about 40,000 fatalities per year. Many of the alcohol deaths are also car fatalities as well. Per usage alcohol has a higher death rate then either tobacco or pools. Over the long term tobacco clearly has a higher death rate. I am unsure as to if marijuana has a similar long term usage effect. To be consistent society should either make alcohol and tobacco illegal or legalize all other substances with a similar amount of harm. I personally think each state should be able to make the decision.

My apologies... gjm summarized my position quite well. I also listed smoking (which I don't do), and some more mainstream sexual pleasures... I certainly did not intend a normative (or even a personal!) endorsement.

ChrisPine100

I'm not really sure how much I should reply to any of this... I'm not trying to convince you that your religion is wrong. Most of my family is still Mormon, so I'm quite good at hanging out with Mormons and not trying to convince them that they are wrong. (In fact, my deeply-ingrained strategy is to avoid conversations just like the one we are having right now.)

Perhaps I should start at the end:

For someone convinced of contradictions you haven't provided any. Remember you have to find the contradictions internally, so within the belief structure of the

... (read more)
-8JohnH
0Alicorn
Nobody I care about much is telling me I can't have alcohol or polyamory, and yet I find that my fun does not involve those things. I would appreciate a less normative endorsement of the options you list.

Wow... this was from a long time ago, and I don't remember exactly what I was thinking at the time, but I can try some guesses:

Contradictions in fact: there's really no good evidence for god or Jesus or the Book of Mormon or the Bible... these things are (at least to me) clearly false. (This is a site on rationality, not atheism, so I don't want to get caught up in a discussion on atheism... but if one is honest and rational, the contradictions abound.)

Contradictions in morality: Is alcohol really wrong? Smoking? Coffee?? Not sure what the Mormon positions... (read more)

-8JohnH

Oslo, Norway

0FourFire
Oslo, Norway.
ChrisPine110

It doesn't seem that it would make her any richer, happier, more successful...

Sounds like you weren't raised Mormon. :)

I was, so naturally what I'm about to say is extremely personal and important to me, and likely to be subject to the "what's true for me must be true for all Mormons", which is absurd, as most Mormons do not go one to become atheists as I have, but still...

...I cannot imagine how one could embrace the beauty and magnificence of this big world if one is stuck in the much smaller world of Mormonism. The contradictions mount and ... (read more)

-1JohnH
what contradictions?
ChrisPine300

Don't any of you have children?? Newborn babies are one thing, but there's a cuteness of seeing small, perfect little versions of yourself or your mate... I don't think a bunny could really compete.

No, other people's babies aren't that cute, but mine sure as hell are.

And in any case, I don't really see how this relates to... whatever it is you are saying about ev-psych (or the deeper mystery of cuteness). Why would you expect evolution to make us only find human babies cute? Evolution only has to work hard enough to keep us from abandoning our babies, a... (read more)

2brazil84
That thought occurred to me too. Evolutionarily, if our sexual instincts are very strong and well aimed, the cuteness instinct arguably doesn't need to be so precise.

Same here, so if anyone has any info...

It's not as easy if you don't live in California.

4James_Miller
Sign up with a U.S. provider. Chances are you will die of some non-sudden illness and have the ability to fly to the U.S. at the end stage of your life.

I liked it. :)

Part of the problem that I had, though, was the believability of the kids: kids don't really talk like that: "which was kind of not helpful in the not confusing me department, so anyway"... or, in an emotionally painful situation:

Key looked suspiciously at the librarian. "You sound like you're trying not to say something."

Improbably astute, followed by not seeming to get the kind of obvious moral of the story. At times it felt like it was trying to be a story for older kids, and at other times like it was for adults.... (read more)

1Blueberry
I actually have to disagree with this. I didn't think Key was "improbably astute". Key is pretty clearly an unusual child (at least, that's how I read em). Also, the librarian was pretty clearly being elliptical and a little patronizing, and in my experience kids are pretty sensitive to being patronized. So it didn't strike me as unbelievable that Key would call the librarian out like that.
-1Alicorn
You've hit on one of my writing weaknesses: I have a ton of trouble writing people who are just plain not very bright or not very mature. I have a number of characters through whom I work on this weakness in (unpublished portions of) Elcenia, but I decided to let Key be as smart I'm inclined to write normally for someone of eir age - my top priority here was finishing the darn thing, since this is only the third short story I can actually claim to have completed and I consider that a bigger problem.

They want a fun opponent.

In games with many players (where alliances are allowed), you could make the AI's more likely to ally with each other and to gang up on the human player. This could make an 8-player game nearly impossible. But the goal is not to beat the human. The goal is for the AI to feel real (human), and be fun.

As you point out, the goal in this contest is very different.