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