TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
No bio...
User ID: 616
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Hmm you make it sound so nice, but idk man. I still have a lot of trouble squaring the religious proscription toward monogamy with casual sex with an extramarital partner.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
This says something important about communication of conservative ideologies, though I'm not entirely sure what, and perhaps says even more about the terribleness of ideologies that are able to win within the attention economy.
I think the problem is that the attention economies cater to what people want to hear, instead of what they need to hear.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Not sure, I suppose I’m a fool. Perhaps I just was naive or was willing to wave it away. Perhaps I have begun to focus more on Christ. Could be many reasons.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
This is boo outgroup.
Conservatives are my ingroup bud. I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian, lol. I don't know about Matt Walsh but in my experience Shapiro is extremely nasty and judgmental in person, which I see as hypocritical if he actual follows Christ.
Wait isn't he Jewish anyway?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
I have been increasingly souring on Trump's mockery of the faith for a while, this was just the straw that broke the camel's back. He clearly does not care about Christ at all, and only cynically signals his Christianity in an empty way.
Also, I'm curious for your thoughts on the polyamory debate? I actually considered tagging you but didn't want to call you out hah.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Yes sadly that’s the case, and I also think it’s a related problem. That being said, once you figure it out once with one person you’re ideally “done” for the most part.
As Kat says, when you bring poly dynamics in you exponentially increase the amount of conversations you have to have.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Do you think people with open marriages that just have sex and no emotional relationship on the side can still have that pair bond?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Absolutely. I think the kids part is especially important.
If your goal for life is to just be hedonistic and enjoy yourself, I suppose it’s fine. But if you care about society as a whole and future generations, it seems very problematic.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
I don’t think it’s magic dirt, I just think culture has strong effects and the founding culture of a place influences future culture there quite a bit.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Absolutely! She actually has a section describing some of the arguments she's dealt with, and good Lord it sounds awful:
Imagine every time you started or ended a relationship, you had to establish every social norm from scratch.
Is it OK for partner to have sex with your best friend?
Is it OK to kiss somebody else in front of your partner?
What about them having sex in your bed when you're out of town?
Is it OK to have sex with another person then tell your partner the details?
Is your partner allowed to bring his lover to Christmas with your family? What about your kid’s birthdays?
If your partner’s lover is having a mental health breakdown, is it OK for your partner to go comfort her when it’s your day with him?
The list is endless, and so will your arguments about it.
I especially don't see how you can raise kids in a poly relationship, without having all sorts of humongous issues and problems. With both parents typically needing to work nowadays, having kids is already extremely demanding on a family's time. Add in other relationships on top of that, and it basically seems like a non-starter.
I agree with the net negative on society, for another reason though - polyamory being seen as even slightly social acceptable destabilizes every monogamous relationship. Now monogamous people have endless thoughts and temptations about "oh maybe we should be poly" which fractures and already crumbling marriage rate. It really is just... bad, in my view.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
It seems lately that within the rationalist / post-rationalist diaspora on twitter and elsewhere, polyamory is starting to come into the crosshairs. I've seen a few 'big' accounts in the tpot space come out against polyamory, but the biggest one has to be the recent post that Kat Woods put on the Slate Star Codex subreddit, Why I think polyamory is net negative for most people who try it.
I wont summarize the whole article, but recommend you go read it. The TL;DR is:
- Most people cannot reduce jealousy much or at all
- It fundamentally causes way more drama because of strong emotions, jealousy, no default norms to fall back to, and there being exponentially more surface area for conflict
- For a small minority of people, it makes them happier, and those are the people who tend to stick with it and write the books on it, creating a distorted view for newcomers.
Also, a rather hilarious quote from the middle:
When your partner starts dating a new person, that person can’t just have drama with your partner. They can have drama with you. And your partner can have drama with their other partner.
It gets complicated fast.
I remember once I had drama caused by my boyfriend’s wife’s boyfriend’s girlfriend’s girlfriend (my meta-meta-meta-metamour)
In general, I think this is a continuation of the vibe shift against social experimentation within the rationalist communities, trying to push them back a bit more towards 'normal' social standards. It has been happening for quite a while, and I'm not surprised it continues to happen. My basic view is that while the experimentation and willingness to shrug off societal norms led to a lot of fascinating and good new ideas within rationalist groups, unfortunately, as always happens with these sorts of things, issues arose that reminded people why these ideas were fringe in the first place.
For those not steeped in rationalist lore, there have been many 'cult-like' groups that have hurt people arising in the rationalist and especially EA space. Some of the early and notable ones were Ziz, the whole Leverage fiasco, and then of course later on you have the highest profile issue with SBF. But these are just the most notable and even news worthy. On top of these there are dozens, probably hundreds, of smaller scale dramas that have played out in day to day life, similar to what Kat talked about above.
I actually think her point about drama scaling with more surface area in polyamory to be quite salient here. In general one of the purposes of societal norms and rules is to make sure everyone knows how they and others are supposed to act, so that arguments over constraints and less annoying and difficult. When you throw out major parts of societal norms, things get complicated very quickly.
Of course the whole polyamory issue ties into the broader culture war in many ways - notably the push back we've seen against wokeism, and the radical left more generally. I think overall the appetite people have for radically changing social norms has shrunk dramatically over the last few years. Sadly, I am not sure that necessarily means we'll go back to a healthy, stable balance. Looking at the people on the conservative side, the loudest champions of a traditional moral order seem to be grifters, or at least hypocrites where they say one thing, and do another in their personal lives.
That being said, I am hopeful that the uneasy alliance between the new conservative, Trumpian movement and traditional Christians is finally fracturing. To bring in another CW point, Trump recently posted an AI generated image of himself as the Pope. This understandably pissed off a lot of Christians, and led to them ending their support for Trump's antics. (I happen to be one of them.)
To which his response is, basically, "why can't you take a joke?"
Anyway, I am curious to see where all these social norms shake out, especially with regards to relationships and dating.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Secondly, teenagers are not allowed to have relationships with each other. This is taken seriously, and there is much more effort put into this than into getting young people married when the time comes for that. The results for local marriage rates are predictable; the shift in social roles, especially in young men, does not happen as a result of wish casting by a third party. Obviously the young women have some share of the blame here but it is fair to discuss the two things separately.
How do you try and combat this for your own kids, if you homeschool?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
I suppose I didn't really get a solid answer from that? Perhaps I didn't read closely enough.
My alternative is Christian forgiveness and love.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
My point at this point, which I think is quite clear, is that ownership is essentially and definitionally the right to deprive others. That's it. I don't like that. In fact, I detest it with passion and rage. I hate it. So, I want an alternative.
You can detest it all you want, you still didn't answer @aqouta's question, which is what is your alternative?
There is a reason we have property, and why it's central to all human civilization. Provide literally any alternative and we can discuss, but you are just saying you hate it and then asking antagonistic questions here.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Kulak and Trace are the only ones I’ve seen cash out so far. Are there more I’m missing?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Yeah I have tried writing up the story a few times, and have discussed it a lot. I hope to get to it over time.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
7mo ago
Thanks for asking! It’s too long a story to get into now but the basics were listening to Peterson and John Vervaeke talk about how reality and truth can differ between “objective” reality versus “narrative” or “participatory” truths.
It’s a deep rabbit hole but long story short I went down it for a few years and ended up believing Christ was the Son of God, both in fact and in narrative.
We kind of like it that way, I think. A big issue with the Catholic church imo is that power has corrupted them over the centuries.
More options
Context Copy link