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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.
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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