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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8690 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.

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…”

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