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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32724 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

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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.

I find it interesting that, despite being an extremely open-minded person who always been interested in finding different ways of doing things, this has never applied to anything regarding sex. I have always been instinctively repulsed anything even slightly aberrant in that domain.

Given that Katxwoods explicitly mentions crying herself to sleep while her boyfriend is out banging "falling in love with" other girls, it would be remiss of me not to mention this immortal tweet:

When you see two people are in an open relationship it’s like which one of you came up with the idea and which of you cries to sleep at night

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.)

May I ask why? I'm a Catholic, and not a particular fan of Trump, and I found the picture both inevitable and mildly amusing. I'm seemingly one of the few big fans of the late Pope Francis, and of the papacy in general, but "I should be pope" just seems in the universe of a mildly irreverent joke. In the same way that a local church used to have a sign up saying they were looking for a new pastor, and I joked about applying. If anything, joking about becoming the Pope is, in my mind, a positive in that it places the papacy as a position of value.

Every Catholic I have asked in person has said some variation of this.

I think non Catholics have a really difficult time modeling the way that Catholics actually think about stuff.

I think it's more people who hate Trump, and probably also hate traditional Catholic teaching, jumping on this about "see what the guy you like is really like? isn't he horrible? you should be offended!" because of their fixed notions that he appealed to the Evangelical Religious Right Vote and they've been trying ever since to drive a wedge between him and that support by "but he's not really religious at all, in face he's a sinner!" posting of examples. You don't say. Remember the fuss about the blue suit at Pope Francis' funeral?

It was dumb, but if I'm going to be offended by social media posts about Catholicism, this is about 9000th on my list of "I am shocked and appalled".

If anything, joking about becoming the Pope is, in my mind, a positive in that it places the papacy as a position of value.

Yeah, this is exactly how I felt about what Trump meant by it -- "Man, wouldn't it be great if I were Pope! Look how cool the Pope looks!"

Probably most of the commenters weren't born when Benedict XVI was elected, but the amount of "pope Palpatine" imagery going around then was way more offensive (at least, if like me you were happy a traditionalist got elected).

The one you linked is pretty lame, but I liked the meme overall. IMO the good version is the one thats just him with lightning coming from his hands, eg 1, 2. To me at least the "evil" part of it isnt relevant, its that the picture looks consistent in a way it wouldnt for a lot of people. In part because of the ritual setup, and in part his body language - he seems confident in a way that Francis for example didnt.

Some of the spicier ones seem to have been scrubbed and the milder ones were all I could find, but I remember. Oh yes, I remember.

The Bush admin also didn't post any of those images, making this a strange comparison.

It's funny when the ingroup jokes about the ingroup. It's disrespectful when the outgroup jokes about the ingroup. Simple as. Trump isn't catholic, so I don't want him making even relatively harmless jokes about my religion.

Are you Catholic? And if so: were you raised by and around other Catholics?

Being offended by this seems really forced to me. I wonder if the people taking offense just come from a different culture?

Are you Catholic? And if so: were you raised by and around other Catholics?

Yes. Yes.

The performative outrage by my non-religious ingroup (liberals) is unnecessary and overblown, and I'm not super offended, but I think Trump's post was stupid, and annoying, and I didn't like it.

I'm a Catholic, and not a particular fan of Trump, and I found the picture both inevitable and mildly amusing.

Only mildly amusing? I found it holy amusing!

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.

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.

Well, now that you're asking, my current opinion on Polyamory is very 2007:

Labels are for soup cans

Any attempt to create new rules for human sexuality seems to me to ultimately turn into an attempt to create opportunities to rules lawyer around human sexuality. A certain class of person tries to use the creation of a community or a movement around human sexuality to find opportunities to badger people into having sex with them even if they don't want to. Free love, polyamory, parts of the gay rights movement, much of the trans rights movement.

I never really had any interest in the community aspects of polyamory, or the whole lifestyle/polycule thing, for that reason. It mostly seemed like an elaborate way for people to take advantage of each other. There was a time in college I enjoyed reading stuff like Dan Savage or Sex at Dawn, and I don't think much of the theoretical case can be easily brushed aside, but I was never a true believer in the concept.

For me and my wife, bringing a girl home for a threesome occasionally was a lot of fun, but is now largely a hobby we no longer have time for, like golf or backpacking. Our adventures in bringing in an extra girl were fun, formed excellent memories and long lasting friendships, and lead to remarkably little drama. I highly recommend it if you get the chance, much like the Grand Canyon, it's one of the few things in life that doesn't disappoint.

I do have to laugh and think of Solon's advice to Croesus when I read these rose-tinted takes on the joys of lifelong monogamy in posts dunking on the plyggies.

Have your wife never asked you to bring a boy home for a change?

No. She's never been interested in that, for a variety of reasons.

For me and my wife, bringing a girl home for a threesome occasionally was a lot of fun

I really did not expect to hear something like this from you.

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.

proscription

*prescription

"Proscription" and "prescription" are approximately opposite in meaning.

Why are you recommending extramarital sex right after invoking your religious affiliation?

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

"My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many."

Okay that was pretty great.

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.

I say this as someone who actually kind of likes Trump as a personality (though not a politician), but ... say what? If you asked me to write down a million qualities about Trump I don't think "cares about Christ" would ever make the list. How did you get here in the first place? I must know.

I remember seeing, at the start of Trump's first term, a meme on Facebook with a picture of Trump walking on the beach with Christ and the caption "Obama kicked you out, but I brought you back in" or something similar, and there have been several preachers of standing unknown to me who have stood on stage with Trump and called him Christ's vessel here on earth. The first item was probably the work of redneck fringe Christians who don't bother going to church or leading lifestyles that could be described as anything approaching biblical, and the second is probably from the wackaloon end of actual practicing Christians, but these poles are far enough apart to suggest that there's a broader element among religious people who think that Trump is doing God's work in a way that they don't attribute to normal politicians. Even openly religious politicians like Mike Pence or Rick Santorum never seemed to receive the kind of awe that Trump does, probably because they're humble enough to realize that such adoration is kind of sacrilegious.

Several of Trump’s inner circle of pastors(eg Robert Jefress is essentially an ayatollah for a certain kind of southern Baptist at this point) are actually a very big deal among the evangelical mega church Protestant set.

Would you mind expanding on this a little? In Pittsburgh everybody is Catholic and the few who aren't are some kind of mainstream Protestant. Megachurches weren't really a thing here until the late '90s and even now I probably know more Jehovah's Witnesses (and a lot more Greek Orthodox) than Evangelicals. The upshot is that anything I know about what the actual "religious right" is getting across the pulpit is more my own interpolation based on media reports rather than the actual cultural experience of living among these people, so it's hard to figure out what's widely believed versus what's overhyped by the media.

It's probably not a shock to you that Protestants in practice tend to reinvent church authority by 'whose interpretation of the bible is the best' or that megachurch Protestantism, whether denominational or not, is an outgrowth of Baptist Protestantism. Baptist Protestantism(and Baptists insist by their own description they are not a denomination- the SBC is a confederation of 'local' 'individual' churches with fairly wide theological variance explicitly tolerated. Other Baptist conventions are very similar- that's why they don't call themselves a church, that's reserved for the 'local' 'individual' churches) in turn separated from Anglicanism through a radical rejection of the more high-church features of Anglicanism- in addition to the radical independence of Baptist churches, they also don't believe in the sacraments. Not 'restricted list of sacraments'- they full blown don't believe there's any such thing as a sacrament. Baptism, communion, marriage, etc are seen as commandments from God to mark a change the faithful have already made within themselves and not as actions that actually do anything. That's why they insist on adult baptism by full immersion; it showcases a commitment made individually which a child is incapable of making, and with that mentality an insistence on full immersion makes a lot of sense because the important thing is imitating what the bible shows and not the minimally effective form which an ex opere operato theology would point to. This is naturally orthopraxic, obviously, and one of the unspoken orthopraxies is that the senior pastor of an independent church needs to be followed in biblical interpretation absolutely(see 'Protestants in practice tend to reinvent church authority').

Enter the megachurch- an extremely large church, often with satellite branches, with a single senior pastor, many of whom are essentially hereditary. This sprung up around the same time as evangelicalism- which is really an approach to soteriology emphasizing the relationship of the individual with Jesus, naturally fitting the orthopraxic and internal-spirituality emphasizing nature of Baptist Protestantism(nondenoms are just Baptists light). But I think they're separate trends. There's lots of tiny Baptist/nondenom churches with a senior pastor who has a day job because the church isn't big enough to cover his salary which have the same soteriological approach. The soteriological approach also allows Protestants having it to reach a truce with Catholics, Orthodox, confessional Protestants, etc- the internal spiritual relationship with Jesus is more important than having a particular theological belief.

TLDR if you go to your nearest non-black megachurch on Sunday there's a decent chance one of the sermons will be livestreamed from the principle church(probably located in the south somewhere). A lot of Trump's megachurch pastors in his inner circle have congregants across the country, not just in their own city- I pointed out Jefress because he's based in Dallas, but there's other examples.

The soteriological approach also allows Protestants having it to reach a truce with Catholics, Orthodox, confessional Protestants, etc- the internal spiritual relationship with Jesus is more important than having a particular theological belief.

Yes, I have heard the common refrain from people of evangelical upbringing that "it's okay, as long as you love Jesus." As you said, this is almost certainly a huge part of why American evangelicals are much more open to good relations with Catholics than confessional Protestants: for the evangelicals I know, the tension with Rome is less "they believe doctrines I believe to be heretical," and more "I do not believe that Catholics love Jesus Christ."

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%2027%3A6-8&version=NIV

Now I will give all your countries into the hands of my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; I will make even the wild animals subject to him. All nations will serve him and his son and his grandson until the time for his land comes; then many nations and great kings will subjugate him. If, however, any nation or kingdom will not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon or bow its neck under his yoke, I will punish that nation with the sword, famine and plague, declares the Lord, until I destroy it by his hand.

You might be surprised at the number of evangelicals (I am not suggesting that's where TheDag is coming from) who claim to see Trump as a godly man. I am unsure how, or if it's just because of the bible-holding charade of a few years ago.

There are many evangelicals who believe that Trump is the fulfillment of some sort of prophecy.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FCGfE9yMnXc

Yes, this is very true. I personally know people like this. Typically there's the belief that he was a philanderer and a cheat, but had a conversion experience.

I guess it's just the vain hope that someone, anyone, will stand up for their belief system in the public square. I believe Trump's views on Israel have also influenced this -- it's hard to overstate how much a large segment of American evangelicals are passionate about the state of Israel and believe defending it to be essential for the fulfillment of Biblical prophesy. The only way I can explain it to non-evangelicals is to say that they view Israel with the same quasi-cultic fervor as many Catholics view Fatima: this is the revelation of the end-times!!!!!

So when Trump moves the embassy to Jerusalem, it's seen as a statement of affiliation with Biblical prophesy.

Typically there's the belief that he was a philanderer and a cheat, but had a conversion experience.

At the very least, a near-death experience has been known to have that effect before. I wouldn't rule it out.

And this is the logic they use to justify it. Not "here's evidence of it" but "maybe it could be true."

And this is the logic they use to justify it.

I'm right here, thank you very much. My "maybe it could be true" was based on my hazy remembering that Trump literally said "Now I'm more of a believer" when interviewed a month after the assassination attempt. In general, I'm pretty amenable to the idea that a sudden mortality check may in fact make people reevaluate their lives. "Maybe it could be true", indeed.

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.

This is a surprise to you? I've never seen him exhibit even the most basic form of contrition or repentance. I've never seen him admit fault in any substantive way. The man is a walking monument to the sin of pride. As for cynical signaling of Christianity, this seems the norm for modern presidents to me, with the exception of W and Carter, two of the worst presidents of the modern era. I don't disagree with your assessment, but I do wonder how any of this is new information.

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.

h the exception of W and Carter, two of the worst presidents of the modern era

What was so bad about Carter?

Jimmy Carter had a way of messing up the USA. (To the tune of the Oscar Meyer theme song, which probably only makes sense in America)

Inflation. Unemployment. Energy crisis. Iran hostage crisis.

The issue with rationalist communities is that they arose at the point in time where there still existed a remnant of Gatekeeping for the internet at large, even as the midwit hordes were beginning to clamor over the gate.

As such, everyone who got into said movement existed in an environment where most of their peers - the remnant of the old guard - were still very much on the far end of the bellcurve, if not in intelligence, then in terms of habit, mannerism, or philosophy. Things such as the (comparatively)early gay rights movement, aethism, polyamory, ect, ect - factions that were far from mainstream yet still had an active, often intelligent voice on the internet, because the people speaking about such things were often very intelligent and/or industrious, creative, and self-motivating. They had to be. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been there.

The rationalists did not - could not - understand that they were the johnny-come-lately to the various alt/punk/counterculture movements of the time, or that they were(imo) ultimately a transitory movement as a whole. They sought to mimic their betters in alot of ways, striding through open fields where chesterton fences once lay, not questioning where the rocks under their feet came from. The constant flow of individuals taking up the shield of rationalism continued to be watered down from the first moment it was established, as each successful wave of people brought an overall shift in the environment, both internet and IRL.

And so here we are. We've seen the alchemical crucible at work, we've seen the results. People have wandered the field until it's barren and the only thing left to do is dig, only to stumble across the base of all those fences and realize they were present for a very good reason. That while certain and single individuals might be able to hop across said fence and even deal with the consequences thereof, that despite looking up and admiring those people for various reasons, the horde wandering said field now has to contend with the revelation that they are not those people. They are not their heros, they are not special, and those rules existed not as a way to restrict or punish them but to tell them what to have for breakfast tomorrow.

Or, even worse, they have to come face to face with the revelation that despite them handling the trials and tribulations of no fence to be seen, that other people cannot.

So, now we've seen the end-game - a group of people with a very tenuous relationship on sanity whom carry the shield of rationalism by murdering their enemies, and the same people whom have considered themselves rationalists are now stuck in a very uncomfortable position with some very awkward questions to answer. This was an end-game that no one could have foreseen - had someone wrote a book about this, said plot-arc would likely have been received as 'cute, but unbeleivable'. Or, if you like, 'boo outgroup'.

As for where we'll go from here? Well. I don't know. I guess we'll see.

You could write the exact same thing about classical liberalism, except the relevant time period was the late-1800s/early-1900s (objectively, the freest time period ever to exist on planet Earth- rich enough for people to rapidly distinguish themselves, scientific progress was making quantum leaps [ironically, the discovery of quantum mechanics actually marks the end of this era], demand for industrial labor was so high that even single-digit-aged children were gainfully employed, and very little effective State capacity to enforce any sort of morality whatsoever).

Actually, you can do that with sexual liberation in the '60s and '70s, too: yes, some people are capable of maintaining the kinds of relationships categorically called evil by some tradition or other, but those people are not you. And the tools and concepts we left laying around have been misused as weapons in their hands; words like "homophobia", "consent", and "orientation" are incredibly useful/necessary tools when minds like ours talk amongst ourselves, but they're thermonuclear-grade infohazards to normies. (And just because someone is in a special sexual category, that doesn't mean they're like us.)

that despite looking up and admiring those people for various reasons, the horde wandering said field now has to contend with the revelation that they are not those people

And now they're resentful of the people who went before simply for having dared to go before- you can usually identify this group through their virtue Georgism (they believe things can be "ruined for everyone" for that reason).

So, now we've seen the end-game - a group of people with a very tenuous relationship on sanity whom carry the shield of rationalism by murdering their enemies, and the same people whom have considered themselves rationalists are now stuck in a very uncomfortable position with some very awkward questions to answer.

Those people are generally called "Jacobins" (also "progressives"). Liberalism in France never truly recovered after the Revolution.

As for where we'll go from here? Well. I don't know. I guess we'll see.

At this point I'm mostly just focused on self-defense- defending both my right and responsibility to be better than everyone else, one person at a time. It's not sustainable, and it tires me out, but I do what I can.

Far be it from me to defend Trump’s picture, but it was more ‘in bad taste’ than it was actually offensive. Certainly the voices crowing about it being offensive are mostly offended by Trump rather than the actual image.

I mean it was a bad joke, but it wasn’t an offensive one.

Yes, based on my priors, if you had told me that Trump had outraged Catholics by comparing himself to an important character of the RCC, I would have been surprised to learn that he has merely settled for being the pope.

The holy spirit is in all of us, so is it really wrong for trump to call himself god?

The holy spirit is in all of us, so is it really wrong for trump to call himself god?

  1. The Holy Spirit only indwells within Christians; in Catholicism this is mediated by being in a state of grace, which by all appearances Trump is not.
  2. Yes.

I'm personally of the opinion that a polycule where everybody involved got on and was in perfect alignment would be a fine thing, and yet the general complexities of human personalities, motivations and the inherent moving targets that life events present mean that this is incredibly impractical.

I'd thus rather just stick to monogamy to ultimately simplify my life. There's nothing wrong with driving in automatic instead of manual, especially when manual in this sense has about 20 ejector seat and suicide bombing buttons on the dashboard with no labels

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.

This is boo outgroup.

I'd say the loudest social media voices right now are Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro. Who specifically do you mean are hypocrites and grifters?

Hypocrisy has always been a lazy accusation. Better to be a person who believes there should be a standard and personally fails to meet it than someone who rejects all standards.

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?

Not to beat a dead horse, but that is a less than convincing defense.

This essay is bad and I should feel bad.

I should feel bad because I made exactly the mistake I am trying to warn everyone else about, and it wasn’t until I was almost done that I noticed.

How virtuous, how noble I must be! Never stooping to engage in petty tribal conflict like that silly Red Tribe, but always nobly criticizing my own tribe and striving to make it better.

Yeah. Once I’ve written a ten thousand word essay savagely attacking the Blue Tribe, either I’m a very special person or they’re my outgroup. And I’m not that special.
Just as you can pull a fast one and look humbly self-critical if you make your audience assume there’s just one American culture, so maybe you can trick people by assuming there’s only one Blue Tribe.

Gotta love vintage Scott.

Hah ok yeah perhaps they’re not my in group. Oops. ;)

He is. Very openly.

To which his response is, basically, "why can't you take a joke?"

My response is basically "why can't you take a joke?".

As an anti-Catholic act, posting a picture of yourself as the pope is pretty weaksauce. It isn't even saying anything bad about the pope, except maybe "the Pope is only human", which a lot of people do sincerely believe, and Trump doesn't seem to be a Catholic.

This... led to them ending their support for Trump's antics. (I happen to be one of them.)

I'm inherently suspicious of "this minor act is why I can't possibly support this politician any more!" Yes, there's such a thing as a last straw, but something like this shouldn't be a last straw unless there are substantial unrelated reasons why you no longer support him. If that picture is the major reason why you don't support him, you're way, way, overreacting.

It's tasteless, but that's Trump. I wasn't offended, more "can you please not?" The Onion ran a series of joke articles about Pope Francis both during his illness and in the period up to/after his death, some of which would be way more offensive to a serious Catholic.

He had illegitimate kids? What a funny thing to say!

While we are sincerely touched by the outpouring of condolences from across the world, we request that you respect our family’s need for space so we can navigate the loss of our beloved father,” said Ignacio Vásquez of Argentina, one of Francis’ 16 known children, who were born on six continents to at least seven different mothers.

A skit on the most sacred sacrament of the entire faith, likening it to drink driving? How hilarious!

“Our autopsy found the Holy Father had a substantial amount of Eucharist in his system— roughly four times the legal limit—at the time of death,” said Ruini, who added that measurements of the pope’s blood of Christ (BOC) were consistent with those from someone who had communed with Jesus for decades.

And of course, this charming photo.

I think that there is nothing wrong with holding the POTUS to a higher standard than some random satire website or social media shitposter. If a top Democrat had been making such a joke, then the GOP would likewise try to make political hay with performative outrage.

hay with performative outrage.

Yes, but it would be performative outrage.

Pretty much nobody would actually say and mean "well, I used to be a supporter of that top Democrat, but now that he made a bad joke, I can no longer support him!"

IDK, that would be really out of character for them, an that alone might be a problem, irrespective of how bad that joke really is. Trump has been "unserious" from the start, so he can do it.

It’s crazy to think that there was a time when the Onion was genuinely funny.

The lone and level sands stretch far away, I guess.

It still is, sometimes, but yeah it goes hard in the wrong direction on some things. When you're losing a battle of wits with the Babylon Bee, it's time to put down the bottle and decide "I should quit drinking methylated spirits".

My response is basically "why can't you take a joke?".

What' the joke? Haha, Trump in a Pope outfit? Forget about offense, for the moment. Where is the humor even hypothetically supposed to be coming from?

For people who've taken to semi-ironically referring to Trump as the "God-Emperor", depicting him as the literal pontiff is sort of like the ne plus ultra of that. Sort of like the political equivalent of a Chuck Norris joke, or perhaps those memes where there's an election in a country other than the US and someone makes a meme depicting every electoral district in the country being won by the ultimate dark horse candidate - JEB BUSH! In fact the more I think about it, the more I think the latter example illustrates the humour - it's funny because it's completely implausibly ridiculous, and yet the person is keeping a straight face.

The idea of Trump becoming Pope is just funny in its own right, both because of its incongruence and because it's so on brand for a man of such limitless arrogance - and yet whose arrogance, oddly enough, seems strangely warranted (after all, people laughed when he said he was going to be President, and he sure showed them). The picture of him as Pope is only funny insofar as it visualises an already funny mental image.

I admittedly laughed when I saw the Trump in a pope outfit and a headline about what he said.

Hard to explain humor. It was just someone ridiculous doing something ridiculous.

I can also understand that plenty of people might not find it funny at all.

I mean, the ‘oh no’ meme with orange smoke coming out of the chimney is genuinely funny even if the Pope Trump I AIslop isn’t. And I think the actual comments from Trump were something along the lines of ‘of course I’d be a good pope but they can’t elect me’ and an endorsement of Dolan.

“Everyone’s speculating about who it’s going to be. But there’s one guy you never considered…”

It seems lately that within the rationalist / post-rationalist diaspora on twitter and elsewhere, polyamory is starting to come into the crosshairs

Always has been, this happens every few years. Was Kat's post the origin post for this round, or was she prompted by something else? It's been over a year since poly did the New Yorker/NPR/etc circuit.

issues arose that reminded people why these ideas were fringe in the first place.

There's a few issues around it. One of which is the typical-minding by the WEIRDest people around, and outside of a small, hyper-selected group influenced by the Berkeley egregore, such experimentation has a much higher failure rate. There's also the "what is the rationalist community for" question that was asked and left largely-unresolved several years ago, by Sarah Constantin and Zvi part one, Zvi part two that explicitly says polyamory is bad. Zvi's post always struck me as so idealistic it crosses well into arrogance, but I get that was also the atmosphere at the time- changing the world in wild ways and encouraging adoption of poorly-tested social technologies that may not generalize is something to be incredibly careful with, and broadly, they're not.

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.

Didn't Sam Altman suggest that in Yudkowsky's efforts to inoculate against paperclipping AI he basically hyperstitioned the field into existence? The anti-human branches of AI researchers are almost certainly a rationalist-descended cult-like phenomenon.

It's never really been clear the degree to which rationalist/EA spaces are prone to certain kinds of sex pest, or just unusually public at writing blog posts about them rather than quietly jettisoning them.

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.

Exceedingly few "true conservatives" are able to win in the attention economy. 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.

Didn't Sam Altman suggest that in Yudkowsky's efforts to inoculate against paperclipping AI he basically hyperstitioned the field into existence? The anti-human branches of AI researchers are almost certainly a rationalist-descended cult-like phenomenon.

I've certainly seen similar thoughts suggested in places. You can certainly question whether Musk would have helped create OpenAI without having encountered Yudkowsky's ideas, but it's hard to reason on how much OpenAI particularly pushed forwards the current AI paradigms. Would they have been discovered elsewhere? It's worth remembering that machine learning models had a renaissance several years before LLMs, with self-driving cars being the initial ignition factor. This was back when LessWrong and associated platforms were still super niche.

There's also the question for AI doomers of what the cost/benefit would be. Let's say that Yudkowsky's writing brought forward AGI by 10 years. However, what would be the state of AI safety if he never started writing? Having an extra 10 years for a far smaller AI safety movement could easily be a worse outcome.

Personally I think the question of what the purpose of rationalism is has been answered: it was to create the AI safety movement. Yudkowsky built up rationalism into a "big tent" to attract more interest and provide intellectual scaffolding. Over the years rationalism has splintered into various more effective sub groups, including AI safety but also EA and its associated movements. Rationalism was never coherent enough, but these smaller groups have accomplished important things.

Rationalism accomplished its job in creating these, and now the original husk still just soldiers on, oblivious to it's obsolescence.

Personally I think the question of what the purpose of rationalism is has been answered: it was to create the AI safety movement.

This was never a question - Yudkowsky set up the so-called rationalist community with the explicit purpose of creating a future generation of AI safety researchers. Or rather AI researchers more generally, because at the point when he did it (LessWrong was founded in 2009) AlphaGo was still years away, academic AI (both the GOFAI and neural nets factions) was in a long-term rut, and the state of the art was machine learning algorithms for recommending viral content. As of 2009, Yudkowsky thought that the problem was "build an aligned AI slowly and secretly" because nobody else was doing anything he expected to lead to working AI.

My assumption is that an underrated source of weirdness in the rationalists community is that the first thing Yudkowsky did to promote this community was to write a viral Harry Potter fanfic, meaning that the 2nd generation of rationalists (after the Overcoming Bias readers) were pulled in from Harry Potter fandom, bringing everything wrong with that community into "Rationalism".

Depending on how you define "true conservative", it's surely relevant that human attention responds very powerfully to novelty. RETVRN can do well because it is or was novel, but it's very hard to actually live that way in modern society because there are so many non-RETVRN options available and the social forces that prevented people from failing to live up to expectations are now absent.

Thus RETVRN is full of grifters and the less-novel conservatives are absent.

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.

Now available in Substack form!

I think this is an obvious and inevitable result of the rat-sphere growing and expanding, to the point that it includes many people who are "normies" along many if not most axes (a category I'm happy to include myself in). The first-generation rationalists were genuinely weird people (disproportionately likely to be autistic, gay, trans, asexual, vegan or all of the above), for whom maybe polyamory really did "work". But it's misleading to draw conclusions about what works for the general populace from such an atypical, heavily selected sample. As rationalism got bigger and bigger, it started attracting more and more normies, for whom polyamory is far less likely to work.

Within the rat-sphere, one of the most prominent evangelists for polyamory is Scott, who's also asexual. I don't think this is a coincidence. Some poly people like to pat themselves on the back about how romantic jealousy is just a bad habit that they've managed to transcend. But let's be honest: 90% of what we call "romantic jealousy" is just sexual jealousy, and it stands to reason that a person who doesn't experience sexual attraction in the conventional way probably doesn't experience sexual jealousy in the same way either. To reuse one of Scott's own points*, you don't get any Virtue Points for "transcending" an unpleasant emotion if it's an emotion you literally don't feel. I suspect many of the early outspoken advocates for polyamory were asexuals (or at least people with atypically low sex drives) who were inadvertently typical-minding the more conventionally-sex-driven people in their vicinity, assuming that - "well, if I could easily overcome my (vastly lower than typical, if not nonexistent) romantic/sexual jealousy, why can't everyone else? Must just represent a massive character failing on their part." This is a bit like someone who doesn't even like drinking alcohol marching into an AA meeting and announcing "I just stopped drinking, what's the big deal? You guys must be weak - skill issue". Katxwoods's point about "low baseline of jealousy" is exactly what I'm talking about here.

(Alternative/complementary hypothesis: maybe if you literally don't feel at all jealous when thinking about your girlfriend getting railed by another man, it might mean that you don't actually love her as much as you claim to? Perhaps you even have an avoidant attachment style, and you're deliberately seeking out romantic partners who it wouldn't bother you to lose, as a defense mechanism? Just a thought.)

Meanwhile, all of the conventionally-sex-driven people being evangelised to about how amazing polyamory is - they wonder why they're really struggling with feelings of sexual jealousy in a way the low-sex-drive people don't seem to be at all, and feel guilty and ashamed of themselves that they can't overcome this "moral failing", unaware that they're playing a completely different ball game to the asexual/low-sex-drive polys. I mean, Jesus, even puff pieces about what a wonderful alternative lifestyle choice polyamory is still make it sound miserable and even emotionally abusive:

[My girlfriend] started seeing this dude who was an absolute stud, having sex with him and having a great-ass time, and I felt totally lame and inadequate.

That was really hard for me, for obvious reasons. I felt like, I’m a hundred percent replaceable. It took a lot of conversations. She was like, There’s nothing wrong with you, this is going to pass, therapy will help. Lots of tears were shed. But medication helped me, talk therapy helped me

Just imagine feeling sad and upset that your girlfriend is fucking another man who's more attractive than you, and thinking "Yes, obviously this is an unhealthy emotional response, I need to dose myself up with antidepressants". I pity this poor man, and hope he realises he's being manipulated and gaslit sooner rather than later.

Follow-up thoughts here.

*Google highlighting doesn't appear to work on this page, Ctrl-F "virtue points".

I suspect many of the early outspoken advocates for polyamory were asexuals (or at least people with atypically low sex drives) who were inadvertently typical-minding the more conventionally-sex-driven people in their vicinity, assuming that - "well, if I could easily overcome my (vastly lower than typical, if not nonexistent) romantic/sexual jealousy, why can't everyone else?

You aren't the only one who has come to that conclusion.

I still believe this, for that matter, especially that last part about "if you're doing this, please just shut the fuck up and enjoy the sex, you're scaring the normies with your Ace Pride". Not having a strong emotional response to this stuff can be an absurdly powerful relationship tool, but incredibly destructive if paired with a personality type given to using that as a weapon (normies, predators) or as a means to go 'lol, I'm smarter than u'.

maybe if you literally don't feel at all jealous when thinking about your girlfriend getting railed by another man, it might mean that you don't actually love her as much as you claim to? Just a thought

The implication that I'm still invited in that case would be doing a lot of the heavy lifting; but there are relatively specific/unlikely circumstances that would need to be fulfilled for that to occur (and "fucking some random dude for basically no other reason" does not qualify).

You know what helps there? Not therapy. It's finding a hot girlfriend to be poly with, and spending all your time and attention with her, and telling your current girlfriend "wow I'm so glad you persuaded me to open up our relationship, New Partner is so fantastic!" If current girlfriend gets jealous, you can lecture her about how she needs to get over this and maybe she should try therapy?

If she's genuinely a believer in polyamory, she'll be happy for you or try to persuade herself that she should be happy with the situation. If she's having fun with the new hot guy but didn't think you'd find a possible replacement for her, she'll either try to talk you back into "maybe we should be monogamous" or you break up and both of you can now be happy with your hot new replacement partners.

If she's having fun with the new hot guy but didn't think you'd find a possible replacement for her

Sure, but now you're into the "this is just cheating with extra steps" failure mode.

Note that this is a failure mode because "being poly" is being used as a weapon/to get one over on the original partner and not actually in that partner's best interest at all. But then again, it's that [attitude], and not necessarily the object-level, killing the relationship; other than shits and giggles/not actually liking the partner I don't understand why anyone would do this.

Well, I genuinely don't think "I should get therapy for my normal human emotions" is a good prescription. If he was being possessive and controlling and unreasonable and accusing her of whoring around with guys just because she looked at a guy on the street, that's when you need therapy. Being in a relationship where you expected or hoped for monogamy but then you were persuaded into being poly - or letting your partner be poly - and having difficulty with that? That's normal. "Oh get therapy, go on medication" is the crazy stuff here.

Now if they've decided the game is worth the candle, that's their decision and good luck to them. But the talk about "all the female presenting persons are leading and are so empowered and queer" and the wife of the guy who got depressed about being replaced by the stud is a self-described "radical alien witch academic nerd" and they treated the entire thing like some horrible blend of the worst kind of management speak work situations: "We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called “agile scrum,” which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing" - I just feel like shouting "man, get out of there and find someone normal who will be happy to be monogamous with you!"

It is cheating with extra steps, except the women are patting themselves so hard on the backs for being in charge and rebellious and all the rest of it. If the men decided to stop being the acquiescent partners/spouses and left, or they decided to be 'radical alien witches' themselves, I feel the entire house of cards would collapse.

Being that Machiavellian and manipulative sounds mentally and physically exhausting, not to mention time-consuming (rather similar to how I think I'd find polyamory, come to think of it). In his circumstances I think I'd rather cut my losses and put my energy into finding a partner whose relationship style matches my own.

Yeah but degree of difficulty between 'find a hot guy for low commitment casual sex' versus 'find a hot girl for low commitment casual sex' is a Dark Soulsian difference in difficulty curve.

Most of the experiments in open relationships and polyamory I've observed have generally been defeated by this biological reality. If the original pair is at all matched in sex appeal and not both 12/10 international athletes, the girl will generally be able to procure sexual partners far more easily

Yeah but degree of difficulty between 'find a hot guy for low commitment casual sex' versus 'find a hot girl for low commitment casual sex' is a Dark Soulsian difference in difficulty curve.

Skill issue.

Unless one is a superior being (read: top 1% in IQ, conscientiousness, compassion etc. etc.) the only form of polyamory which works is a harem.

Despite it being such a loaded term, smaller harems can be pretty functional for people in their pre-kid life. I think women (people?) are generally much more comfortable with this sort of arrangement than most expect.

Uh, can a harem work in a society which cares about how the women involved feel about it? All the historical examples are societies which didn’t.

Yes. It's shockingly functional.

I know that there is that one family in Hokkaido that is explicitly a harem, but otherwise I’m kind of drawing a blank.

Unless we are counting the “rich/hot dude screwing multiple women and not committing to any one of them” as similar…?? I don’t think it’s the same though.

I’d appreciate if you could elaborate.

I think polyamory works best if everybody involved is bisexual, and therefore everyone in the polycule can loosely be dating everybody else.

Or if the circle is/stays very small? Then you can have two bisexual + one straight person.

Oh, all sorts of configurations can work. But in your configuration the straight person might still feel jealous when one of the bisexuals is sleeping with the other instead of the straight one. The jealousy problem is however obliterated if everybody's screwing everybody.

He meant that, if you have 1 heterosexual and 2 bisexuals of the opposite sex, everyone can still sleep with everyone else. If there's nobody else of the same sex being heterosexual doesn't affect the number of combinations.

I think this works with one straight man and two bisexual women, but might not work with the average straight women and two gay men. I think jealousy is much more likely if your partner is having other sex to which, by definition, you're not invited - sex the very thought of which might enrage you. If you're all bisexuals, and your other two partners are doing nothing together that they haven't also done with you in the mix - who's counting? But a straight woman with no interest in watching Boyfriend One sodomize Boyfriend Two might get upset if they're spending too much time together instead of on her.

I mean, straight women fucking love seeing hot men railing each other, so this doesn’t seem like that much of a problem to me.

Do they? Last time I saw data on this I thought it said straight women didn't really consume gay porn.

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I don't see how bisexuality changes that. If you're a woman with two bisexual boyfriends, how does being interested in other women affect whether you're "by definition not invited" to M/M sex? Without adding a girlfriend you're not having sex with women either way. Bisexuality isn't required for a woman to be interested in two men having sex, as seen by (for instance) the market for yaoi.

Bisexuality isn't required for a woman to be interested in two men having sex, as seen by (for instance) the market for yaoi.

You misunderstand- yaoi isn't quite a match for yuri since most of the appeal (and remember, that's why it's called yaoi) comes from self-inserting as the bottom [edit: this isn't entirely what happens, but I think it's a useful first-approximation in this case].

So the attraction from an otherwise-straight woman seeing two dudes having sex would generally be that self-insertion. If her husband is the bottom, he's assuming her role, and women don't tend to like that very much -> "feels like you're not invited".

If that was another woman instead the dynamic is instantly and instinctively different, since she by definition isn't going to be topping the man and the "invitation" comes in the form of "watch his attractive might and dominance without being replaced". The distaff/mirror counterpart would be if a woman brings a boy home (as in: young/inexperienced enough to dominate [and not replace the man's role in the relationship], cute enough not to be aesthetically repellent), but the average age of such a participant quickly creates practical problems [it ain't the '70s no more].

Two women doing it, from the male perspective, extend the "invitation" by "come and watch the show" (and the other woman gets some variety out of it that the man himself cannot provide- women are generally more aesthetically pleasing than men are when naked), which is why MFF/MmF threesomes are inherently stable if all the participants are nominally straight, but MMF/MfF threesomes are not (the latter inherently replacing the woman's submissive role).

Not even then; being the mother of the current sultan was highly influential and powerful position, so all the wives/concubines competed to make sure their son was the chosen heir. This included killing off other wives/concubines, killing off their kids, engaging in conspiracies, faking conspiracies to get rid of rivals, etc.

Being the favourite of the sultan or emperor meant the concubine or wife's family cashed in on the opportunity to gain power, status and wealth; in the Tudor court of Henry VIII, the great families jockeyed to put their daughters before him as possible mistresses and potential queens, and their fall could be as spectacular as their rise.

An ambitious concubine could even work her way up to being empress in her own right.

So it was never as simple as "guy on top gets to bang all the hot chicks", and even under systems where men could have multiple wives, that didn't prevent jealousy or power struggles - see the story of Dhruva, famous devotee of Vishnu. Even though he was heir to the throne, his father's preferred second wife drove him away in favour of her son.

See also the current dramas playing out with Elon and his various concubines.

Conservatives pooh-pooh "magic dirt theory", but I think there may be something to it. Polyamory isn't really a rationalist thing; it's a San Francisco area thing. It got into rationalists because they're in the San Francisco area. Possibly rationalism is also a San Francisco thing, but even then, it's common cause, not one causing the other (despite rationalizations of same). If rationalism had begun in LA, it'd be all about hookers and blow instead.

Relevant historical point -

A big part of the the sexual history of SF (gay Mecca, summer of love, polyamory etc.) is that in WW2, you could get kicked out of the Navy for being gay and that was the port they discharged you in. So, you have a bunch of young, fairly in shape gay men in the same spot.

"Magical dirt" isn't wrong, it's just a lazy causal method. Magical dirt is real, it's often just the product of historical randomness.

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.

I'll just copy part of a very recent post which mostly encapsulates my view of polyamory (contrasting it with other alternatives to monogamy):

Ironically, this is also why polyamory is imo by far the worst for a functioning society; It's basically expanding the dating period of many young people's life to the entirety, with all the anxieties, drama and labor it entails. If you have work & kids, you just don't have time for that. Since work is usually necessary for all but the richest, that means you skip the kids. Communes often have similar problems but to a lesser degree, and as long as they're not too large and have clear boundaries to everything else, can be made to work. I don't like the intrinsic inequality stemming from Harems, but from a practical PoV they work just as well as traditional couples since the boundaries and expectations are simple and clear.

Listening to some of the stories, that may even be to charitable to polyamory; Even the regular dating period for most young people had clearer expectations and less drama.

Listening to some of the stories, that may even be to charitable to polyamory; Even the regular dating period for most young people had clearer expectations and less drama.

Hm, could polyamory of the non-harem type be a way of prolonging the dating period for those who are into it? There are probably borderline people around for whom "settling down" sounds like a death sentence. Sex on a schedule, chores and bills, taking your partner for granted... Forming a polycule means the fun part of serial relationships is always on the table: flirting, dating, etc. Even drama for those who like it. And if you don't, breaking up with 33% of your partners sounds less painful than breaking up with 100% of them.

Some of the stories about polycules I see online are not about the happy, well-off couples having sexy new partners like the NYT lady with her book. There's a lot of "I'm disabled, neurodivergent, and unemployed, and without my polycule I wouldn't have people to help me pay my bills and look after me when I'm ill".

For some (a lot?) of people, it's not about sexy new partners but a support system of "I help you out when you can't walk because your joints are flaring up, you help me out when I'm having one of my mental health crises, the others chip in to buy groceries and pay rent, etc."

As ever, this comedy song is apposite more than it should be.

it's not about sexy new partners but a support system

That's it. That's the whole thing. Romantic involvement and religion are the only part of society modern technology and economics have yet to fully atomize. Polyamory offers both, in a way, to a certain kind of atheist. Polyamory forms a community and ideology at the same time. Of the rat/poly/atheist people I know IRL, two of them single mothers with apparently little to lose, and one of them actually tried Protestantism at an earlier point but couldn't manage to swing the "belief in god" part.

As ever, this comedy song is apposite more than it should be.

It must be said, I've met a handful of people who were poly, and not one of them was someone I could even imagine going to bed with.

This meme continues to be an important statement of this.

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.

I flatly don't believe in polyamory being real as I have typically heard it articulated. I don't believe that people who share the sort of bond that happily married people share can ever exist among people that aren't monogamous. They're not monogamous couples with extras bolted on, they're people that are failing to form successful pair-bonds concocting unstable edifices based on their desire for promiscuity and unwillingness to engage in genuine commitment to another person. I really hope there won't ever actually be a push to normalize this behavior with some social obligation to pretend that I believe polygamists have relationships that are as respectable as actual marriages.

I don't believe that people who share the sort of bond that happily married people share can ever exist among people that aren't monogamous.

This seems like a strong categorical claim.

Consider

  • A, B and C are in a pairwise sexual, mutual and otherwise exclusive relationship.

  • A and B are married, but also work in porn and both have sex on the set with other people.

  • A and B are married, and sometimes they agree to invite a stranger to their bedroom and both fuck them.

It is far from clear to me how all of the above lack something which happily married monogamous people have.

I am sure that there are claims of the form "X couples can form a special bond in a way that people in other forms of relationship can not", which someone somewhere has made for X being "lesbian", "same-race", "dominant-submissive", "straight", "enlightened", "Christian", "black", "child-producing", and so on.

It is far from clear to me how all of the above lack something which happily married monogamous people have.

I don't think I'll be able to convince you then, but it's pretty obvious from where I sit, even though it's a subjective view rather than empirical.

I am sure that there are claims of the form "X couples can form a special bond in a way that people in other forms of relationship can not", which someone somewhere has made for X being "lesbian", "same-race", "dominant-submissive", "straight", "enlightened", "Christian", "black", "child-producing", and so on.

I have no issues with someone expressing such views. I'll disagree with them but I don't really have some ironclad way to knock down their ideas. I might share some of them, I definitely don't share all of them, but I think it is broadly fine to say that not all relationships are equal.

Who gives a shit though? Like you say, maybe this jury-rigged relationship is the best they can get. So good luck and god bless.

I dislike the use of the word ’normalization’, I feel it grants the woke frame of living under ‘hegemonic heterosexuality’, and all the other axes of oppression. Ie, that the abnormal are oppressed. The alt right/woke right otoh, believe they should be. So they angrily debate whether normalization is a good thing or a bad thing.

But to me it is nothing. Because modern society does not, and I especially do not, oppress anyone for not being normal. So the stakes are very low.

That's what I would have said about gender woo until it swiftly moved from just being left alone into conscripting everyone else into participating in it. If people want to do something I don't approve of with their own lives, sure, that's their call, whatever, but I am now leery of pushes for normalization.

It turned out that gender woo was way more memetically contagious than (it appeared|its advocates thought|its advocates were willing to say). I think poly will prove to be as contagious or worse; we just haven't seen the floodgates from legal recognition yet so it's still "a weird SF/alt-lifestyle thing". Poly requires new people to be poly with, once the people you were seeing have moved on, and that means evangelizing to normies. And if you believe that most people are not capable of practicing poly without causing xkcd#592, this boils down to going up to people and saying, "hey, have you tried this sweet new infohazard?"

I was once briefly involved with an attractive ENM girl who only wanted something casual, and while that might sound the start of a salacious story that'll makes the reader say "tfw", it was the most stifling period in my dating life. Anyone else I wanted to see, I would have to have the "poly conversation" with, and I couldn't bring myself to do that. It just felt too much like peddling bad memes to decent women, and after I missed out on a couple of relationships with decent girls that way, I decided it was better to be single than help worsen the modern dating world.

And once I broke things off, it turned out that even a relationship that casual couldn't go back to being a friendship. Either she was only keen to hang out as friends because of the possibility of adding a sexual element to the friendship, or breaking things off hurt too much to stay friends. Whichever was true, poly opened a branch of the decision tree which only had bad outcomes.

I recently came across this article that really cemented your view for me.

This woman lives with her husband and two side pieces and she's on her own for a startling amount of time while she's giving birth. Her husband is in no rush to make it to the delivery room:

My water broke at 5am. Plot-relevantly, I had gone to sleep only two hours prior...

I woke up my husband as the very last step – I went into his room and said “my beautiful love,” at 5:30am, which we both know full well is a crime. By nature, we keep similar hours.

He emitted a quarter-awake “you are inflicting horrible crimes on me and you are not forgiven” moan.

When I said, “I think my water broke,” he sort of flipped. Like a pancake but on its own.

“Oh!” he said.

“Nothing exciting is going to happen for a while. So I think you should get more sleep. Partners A and C are driving me to the hospital and getting me checked in.”

Later that day:

In the window where I should have eaten, the boyfriends who had brought me to the hospital had gone home to sleep, and my husband was on his way.

I had the bagel because my husband was near a bagel place and mentioned he could pick some up. It sounded like a treat, so I said yes. At the time he and I were coordinating on what he should pick up, my contractions were very slow, or hadn’t started yet. I had no idea how close the epidural was. Once he started picking things up, I watched his map location, was surprised by how slow he was, and decided not to ask for more things.

He agreed, and I went to the hospital... My husband arrived with some snacks at 1pm.

Husband goes home at some point. Next day:

Around 7am I was really panicked. I needed to course correct sharply to something else. I told my boyfriend to wake up my husband and explain to him what was going on.

To sum up:

But I cry uncontrollably when I think of how the actual moment my daughter came out of me feels like a bad drug trip. I have a blurry picture of that moment, only a few details crisp (like seeing the glowing rod coming out of a metal refinery). I remember being confused, misled, tricked into hurting myself, experiencing the birth of my daughter as a great alien rush of self betrayal, with no awareness of her, and full awareness of the people who had surrounded and outnumbered me, who did not seem to deal with me as an intelligent subject, who demanded my attention by shouting at me throughout the whole thing, barraged me with questions afterwards, questions I had already answered. I remembered the array of uniformed medical personnel around me a bluish blur of enemy forces who had worn me down and conquered me.

Indeed, managing the medical staff is the proper role of the husband in this situation. But I guess he was too tired to fully attend the brith of his child!

> going back to sleep after your pregnant wife's water broke

> lollygagging around buying snacks before showing up at the hospital

Surprisingly Chaddish attitude for someone who literally has a wife's boyfriend. Actually, two wife's boyfriends. But then again, as @HereAndGone mentioned, perhaps there was some confusion and motivational issues due to lack of paternal certainty. three_spidermen_pointing_at_each_other.jpg or Braun-Westbrook-Murray-almost-losing-uncontested-rebound.mp4, which could very well be a fresh meme from yesterday.

the people who had surrounded and outnumbered me, who did not seem to deal with me as an intelligent subject

Hmm... surely the hospital staff had no probable cause to proceed under such an impression?

Regardless of the author's particular cognitive ability (I suspect it's materially higher than average, especially higher than that of the median woman giving birth nowadays), I imagine hospital staff are trained to give clear, concise directions when things are chaotic. I suppose where the hospital staff may have failed, was to flatter and indulge her self-perceived intelligence during the birthing process.

To return to a basketball reference, if I'm coaching a basketball team and one of the players gets the ball unguarded in a corner, I'd be yelling "SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT!" and not saying "Please shoot the ball. Your true shooting percentage suggests you're a good shooter and analytics have long shown that corner three-pointers are one of the most valuable shots in the game from an expected value standpoint. This ask to attempt a field goal from your current location on the floor is time sensitive. Thank you for your understanding."

Particularly if the hospital had to deal with three different guys showing up with her - "so you're family?" "oh no" "spouse?" "he is, we're just her significant others". And then all three of them bugger off and leave her on her own.

If you're a nurse on a maternity ward full of women about to give birth, in the middle of giving birth, or just after giving birth, you don't have time to deal with all that drama.

Author certainly does think she's smarter than the average bear, but given the way she describes how she and her partners acted, and how none of them seemed to have researched "having a baby: what happen when?", e.g. "I have gestational diabetes, what does that mean when I go into labour?" for one, I think she's not that much more clever than the ordinary woman.

I told my boyfriend to wake up my husband and explain to him what was going on.

And today I finally understood the meaning of this verse in the Gospel of Matthew:

Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.

The only thing I can think of is that Dear Love Husband isn't 100% sure the kid is his, so he's letting Boyfriends A and B pick up the slack, and they feel the same ("it might or might not be my kid, no need to knock myself out about this"). This is why you have your mother and sisters around for the birth of your child, not the husband/boyfriend/guy you picked up and banged in that shopping mall parking lot.

Oh boy, that article is an entire trip around the solar system. That woman sounds like she did approximately zero preparation reading up on what would happened during labour and delivery, what she should do, etc. She's kinda blaming the hospital, but I bet the hospital imagined "this is a grown-ass woman having a baby, presumably she has her shit together". They weren't expecting her to be trailing three separate guys who couldn't be arsed to figure out "should I get food for the woman having a baby?" or doing anything like "stick around and be helpful", plus she wanted her Ritalin in the middle of delivery? Yeah, no, that's not gonna happen.

The type of person who's on Ritalin for the ADHD (read: to help her push her grades up) and then of course she's on Soylent and gabapentin and coffee and and and... I'm surprised the hospital didn't just leave her in the corridor to get on with things seeing as how she took no responsibility at all in finding out what the hell she should be doing when having a baby. "Oh, you mean I can't get my venti soy latte espresso while my baby is in the birth canal? how unfair!"

full awareness of the people who had surrounded and outnumbered me, who did not seem to deal with me as an intelligent subject

...If I could do it over, I would argue hard to take Ritalin (which would have bought me 3 hours of physical energy) and gabapentin (which would have halted the serious anxiety I was having, and would not have put me to sleep if I’d also had Ritalin). I had both in my backpack. I had been taking both about once every 7-10 days throughout pregnancy with my psychiatrist’s blessing.

Gosh, they didn't treat her like an intelligent being? Could it possibly be because she didn't act like one? I mean, with the amount of preparation for the entire birth that she and the Three Stooges showed, why would they think she didn't have the brains God gave a doorknob? And newsflash, your psychiatrist is not an obstetrician, they don't and shouldn't be telling you what you can take during pregnancy, her psychiatrist probably just agreed "yeah, whatever" because otherwise she would have bitched and moaned unbearably about it.

What are the risks of using methylphenidate in pregnancy?

Some studies have suggested that there is an increased chance of miscarriage and some types of heart defect in the baby following use of methylphenidate in early pregnancy. Overall, it is very clear that most babies exposed to methylphenidate in the womb do not have a birth defect. It is also uncertain if these problems are due to methylphenidate itself, or to underlying factors that are more common in women taking methylphenidate.

Methylphenidate and similar drugs have been linked to reduced growth of the baby in the womb. This is thought to be because they can affect blood flow through the placenta.

Methylphenidate can potentially cause short-term withdrawal symptoms in the newborn baby if taken in the weeks before delivery. For this reason, a baby may be monitored for some time after birth to check for symptoms such as jitteriness, difficulty sleeping and breathing problems.

Gabapentin and pregnancy

Gabapentin is not generally recommended in pregnancy as there is not enough information about whether it's safe for your baby.

However, from the small amount of information that is available, there's no clear evidence that it's harmful. It should only be taken if the benefits of the medicine outweigh the risks.

If you take gabapentin for epilepsy, it's important that this is well treated during pregnancy, as seizures can harm you and your baby. Keep taking gabapentin, but talk to your doctor urgently. They may recommend you change to a different medicine.

If you're trying to get pregnant or have become pregnant while taking gabapentin, it is recommended to take a high dose of folic acid (5mg a day). You can get this from your doctor or midwife.

Ideally you'll take high dose folic acid for 3 months before you start trying to get pregnant and for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Do not worry if you have not taken it before you get pregnant, but start taking it as soon as possible once you know that you are pregnant. It helps your baby to grow normally.

If you take gabapentin around the time of giving birth, your baby may need extra monitoring for a few days after they're born. This is because they may have withdrawal symptoms from gabapentin.

We do not know what the long term effects of taking gabapentin in pregnancy may be on childhood learning and development. For safety, you'll usually be advised to take it only if the benefits of the medicine outweigh the risks. Talk to your doctor about the benefits and risks.

I think that anyone halfway sane who gets pregnant while being in a non-exclusive relationship would go out of her way to carefully select the father and then have the fatherhood confirmed through DNA testing. The alternative, "I just stopped taking the pill and continued to fuck my lovers, and it does not matter who is the father because we are all one big happy polycule" seems rather terrible.

To be fair, the risks of Ritalin or gabapentin are obviously much smaller when the baby is about to be born. This in particular:

Gabapentin is not generally recommended in pregnancy as there is not enough information about whether it's safe for your baby.

Is the typical medical CYA nonsense. There's not enough information about whether bagels are safe for the baby either.

This is the part I'm more concerned about:

If you take gabapentin around the time of giving birth, your baby may need extra monitoring for a few days after they're born. This is because they may have withdrawal symptoms from gabapentin.

Ms. Smartie wanted "I need my uppers, I need my uppers, and then I need my downers so the uppers won't make me too high" while in labour.

As per the linked information, taking Ritalin is a lot riskier:

Methylphenidate and similar drugs have been linked to reduced growth of the baby in the womb. This is thought to be because they can affect blood flow through the placenta.

Methylphenidate can potentially cause short-term withdrawal symptoms in the newborn baby if taken in the weeks before delivery. For this reason, a baby may be monitored for some time after birth to check for symptoms such as jitteriness, difficulty sleeping and breathing problems.

But her drug pusher psychiatrist said it was okey-dokey for her to keep taking her fixes during pregnancy, so what do I know?

And I would have argued to fuck the blood glucose numbers and have as much apple juice as I wanted. Maybe Soylent too, especially small amounts.

And that's not a good idea because...

Monitoring during labour

It’s important that your blood sugar levels stay in the target range during labour. This will help to prevent your baby’s blood sugar getting low in the first few hours after they’re born.

Take your testing kit with you to the hospital, so that you can monitor your own blood sugar at first. Once you are in active labour, the hospital team will monitor your blood sugar every hour to make sure it stays at a safe level. You might be given insulin and glucose through a drip to help with this.

I'm finding this stuff after some cursory Googling. She surely had an ob-gyn or other doctor during the course of her pregnancy? Who she could have asked all about this? But she seems to have just floated on by in a cloud of "me smart, me not need to figure this out" and then blamed the hospital staff for all being dumb and not even knowing what Soylent was. Four alleged adults in the house, the husband couldn't even be bothered to wake up for his kid being born, and none of them had a clue what to do during the labour and birth.

Do you think people with open marriages that just have sex and no emotional relationship on the side can still have that pair bond?

Probably not. I suppose they say they do but I don't really believe them.

n of one, but in the two serious polyamory ... groups (couples/thruples? what do we call these associations?) that I've encountered, it was a very obvious case of hyper-sexual female(s) with obvious emotional maladaptive traits paired up with dark triad male(s) who could totally divorce all emotional bonds from immediate physical gratification. To be a little blunt and crude - but, I think, accurate - it felt like the cast in a green room at a porno shoot.

couples/thruples? what do we call these associations?

I believe "polycule" is the preferred term.

I flatly don't believe in polyamory being real as I have typically heard it articulated. I don't believe that people who share the sort of bond that happily married people share can ever exist among people that aren't monogamous. They're not monogamous couples with extras bolted on, they're people that are failing to form successful pair-bonds concocting unstable edifices based on their desire for promiscuity and unwillingness to engage in genuine commitment to another person. I really hope there won't ever actually be a push to normalize this behavior with some social obligation to pretend that I believe polygamists have relationships that are as respectable as actual marriages.

There are three basic relationship scripts seen in primates (and they cover 90+% of non-primate vertebrate species as well): monogamy, harem-holding polygyny, and promiscuity*. Humans appear to have the required instincts to do all three, although monogamy appears to produce the best social outcomes. Most arrangements that exist under the umbrella of "polyamory" seem to be minor variations on one of the three. Most of the Bay Area rationalist polyamorists are in reproductively monogamous primary relationships, so their form of polyamory is basically monogamy with tolerated cheating. There is clearly a lot of "it's not a harem if the women are bi, it's a polycule" going on within polyamory, although the poly community tries to stigmatise it. But the forms of polyamory which are highest status within the community are things like "relationship anarchy" where you somehow manage to sign a lease with a partner while maintaining the sexual norms of promiscuity.

* Note that these are not particularly tied to the patriarchy/matriarchy axis. Monogamous animals are usually egalitarian, but patriarchal polygyny (gorillas, lions), matriarchal polygyny (peacoks), patriarchal promiscuity (chimps) and matriarchal promiscuity (bonobos, elephants) are all common.

  • Note that these are not particularly tied to the patriarchy/matriarchy axis. Monogamous animals are usually egalitarian, but patriarchal polygyny (gorillas, lions), matriarchal polygyny (peacoks), patriarchal promiscuity (chimps) and matriarchal promiscuity (bonobos, elephants) are all common.

Interesting to note that there are also birds that operate with matriarchal polyandry, with very skewed sex ratios and reversed sex roles. (There are other animals that are also polyandrous but I do not know how they work at all — iirc some (but not all) of them were more of a female risk-reduction, either of the female herself or for improved reproductive success)

This is quite funny since your name is Pigeon.

Unfortunately we pigeons are more boring in our pair-bonding!

Polyamory might be able to work for some people, but I think it's gotta be a net negative for society. I think it's simply a question of time. Every additional partner that you have creates a time commitment that you could have spent a). strengthening your relationship with your main partner, b). spending time with friends/building community, c). self-improvement/hobbies. A potential counterargument is that polyamory is just a different form of leisure, and so fucking around on the side is just like watching Netflix. I would respond to this in two ways. Firstly, maybe watching Netflix for 5 hours a day isn't great for society either. Secondly, I'm not sure that polyamory comes from the same pool of time as relaxing and watching Netflix. It's an inherently much more effortful activity, and is probably going to replace much more meaningful activities. Anecdotally, one of my roommates, who never practiced polyamory per see, but always had a "rotation" of girls going (maybe this is the cool chad version of poly, idk), never had time for any other hobbies or interests besides chasing tail, which I think has made him pretty boring and socially isolated.

one of my roommates, who never practiced polyamory per see, but always had a "rotation" of girls going (maybe this is the cool chad version of poly, idk)

There's a joke along the lines of "Ah, so you sleep with a bunch of different girls, who each also might or might not sleep with a bunch of different guys - but you really like them, and one of them might be your housemate? Back in my days, we used to call that 'being single in college'."

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.

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.

I've personally observed a bit of this happening.

There's a distinction between

"Couples who try poly as some kind of last-ditch attempt to salvage things" and

"Couples who try poly because one partner (usually the woman) is already planning to leave and wants to smooth the transition." i.e. infidelity with a few extra steps. and

"Couples who are genuinely high openness and communicate well enough to convey their desires and are happy to try new things."

But holy cow, the couples may not realize which one of those they are until they're already engrossed in a messy situation.

And once they dip a toe in, it is hard to withdraw unless both partners look each other in the eye and say "nah, not for us" and can still respect each other afterwards.

In my view you're intentionally creating the interpersonal equivalent of The Three Body Problem.

REGARDLESS of the initial conditions under which you enter the situation you will not be able to predict the medium-term effects and movements unless you happen to luck into one of the VERY FEW 'stable' orbits possible.

If everyone involved is conscientious, maybe it doesn't spin out of control. But if people start competing to be the 'center of gravity' of the relationship, or there's any instability present, the complexity of this 'system' you've created makes it all but impossible to maintain things without absurd levels of effort.

And for the vast majority of people, even those capable of it, I doubt its worth the effort, compared to the world where they just find a compatible partner and stick with them.

Literally every single time I read a pro-poly account of how it works, they're constantly talking about how they have to deal with their jealousy or a partner's jealousy and general emotional volatility and the constantly fluctuating energy levels you have to account for and how schedules collide regularly so constant negotiation and renegotiation is required, but oh my gawd when it works its just awesome!

It leads me to suspect that for many, the emotional rollercoaster is part of the point. Which is inherently unhealthy, in my opinion.

Perhaps there exist polycules where everyone gets along just fine, and there's minimal drama to report, and the extra effort to maintain it is negligible compared to standard monogamy, and these people just don't have much public presence.

If so, I'd kind of prefer they maintain their radio silence rather than try to make the case that what they do can work for other people.

I especially don't see how you can raise kids in a poly relationship

You can't. You hit cult territory real quick.

And I'm not boo-outgrouping the Mormons here. I'm earnest when I say that the SF EA polyamory people would do themselves some favors by reading up on the history of polygamy within the LDS. Theological arguments aside, the Mormons have developed a thriving community that has endured despite a hell of a lot of persecution. Hell, they have a $124bn Hedge Fund. And they built this community by carving out a separate peace with the rest of the United States. This meant recognizing that polygamy was largely viewed by non-Mormons as "holy shit, what?" levels of weird. So, they instituted a fatwa against it changed their "laws" on it and mainline-LDS, slowly, became a kind of Utah Flavored version of MegaChurch protestantism.

EA, at its Zenith (SBF at his prime, before the fraud) was getting a lot of positive press as a forward thinking, but non-progressive, ideology that serious thinkers could rally around.

Then the fraud hit. Which is always bad. Then, following the fraud, the icky-sticky reality of the polyamory and Bahamas f*ck house came out. SBF == modern day Brigham Young?

Mormonism is not actually an analogue for mega church Protestantism- Mormons and evangelicals are known for not getting along, Mormon culture avoids influence from evangelical culture and Vice versa.

LDS culture in practice is more like a mix of orthodox Judaism and early 20th century Catholicism, not an evangelical thing.

I don't think that Joseph Smith had access to Orthodox Judaism as a model. Anti-anti-Catholicism is clearly a major motivation for Mormonism - Joseph Smith's theology pushes back against the Protestant position on at least two big issues where the Protestantism of his day was over-emphasising their theological differences from Catholicism at the expense of shared Christianity (sacramentally ordained priesthood and total depravity/justification by faith alone). But I think the similarities between LDS and Catholic practice are convergent evolution of a functional hierarchical Church. (In particular, the different relationship between ordained ministry and hierarchy in the two Churches is such that theologically the hierarchy works very differently).

The other major influence on the development of LDS theology is Freemasonry. Joseph Smith came from a Masonic family and most of the early Mormon leaders were initiated as Masons in Illinois before the Church migrated to Utah. The Masonic symbols on the garments and the Masonic elements of the Temple Endowment ceremony are kind of obvious. The official position of the LDS hierarchy was that both organisations have privileged access to secrets that originated in Solomon's Temple before the death of Hiram Abiff, and the shared symbolism reflects this.

Joseph Smith and Brigham Young did not have access to Orthodox Judaism, correct, but there’s definitely convergent evolutionary similarities. Just like with early twentieth century Catholic practice, similar challenges lead to similar solutions.

Thanks for the added insight here. I'll admit I was having a bit of lark when writing the post.

Bahamas f*ck house

Wait what?

Link here.

Imagine every time you started or ended a relationship, you had to establish every social norm from scratch.

Does this not describe modern (at least post-Sexual-Revolution) monogamous dating as well? Communication styles, division of labor, etc. are all a mess of uprooted and jumbled expectations about huge issues, but just consider sex first. We live in a world where some people think fornication is a sin, others think you can sleep around with anyone you date until you officially have The Talk with one of them, and there's a big confused middle where a little promiscuity is fine but too much is sickening and people disagree about what kinds or quantities of sex cross the line. (link to 1994 movie clip, because it's not like this is a really new problem either)

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.

I think the difference with poly is scale. Maybe you do this with serial monogamy once every few months to a year (although hopefully eventually you stop serially dating and get married). With polyamory it's a problem (everything) everywhere all at once. You are always looking for new relationships and defining boundaries with new partners. It sounds like it fucking sucks, and I'm not sure why anyone would voluntarily participate unless they were a sociopath.

Its not a real question I'd ever ask, but yeah, what's the 'win condition' of Poly these days?

For monogamy, I'd suggest "have kids, raise them to adulthood, assist them in getting partners, help raise your grandkids, then live out the rest of your life in peace knowing you've got a secure legacy" is the path to 'victory.'

With Poly, there's never a (non-arbitrary) point when you can say you're 'done' and you can declare the relationships 'complete.' You always have the potential of adding or subtracting members, changing up the dynamics, and if kids enter the picture at all then what do you do? Do you just accept that you will be involved in an ever-changing dynamic up until the day you die?

The objective of Poly seems to be expending effort to maintain or develop the Polycule itself. I'd argue the objective of mono marriage is to create a concrete and meaningful platform on which you can build the other aspects of your life.

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