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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13940 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 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 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!

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.

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.

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