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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:
Also, a rather hilarious quote from the middle:
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.
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.
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'."
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Absolutely! She actually has a section describing some of the arguments she's dealt with, and good Lord it sounds awful:
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.
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.
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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 itchanged 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.
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Thanks for the added insight here. I'll admit I was having a bit of lark when writing the post.
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Wait what?
Link here.
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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.
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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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