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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28397 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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I'm probably going to be corrected by some theology major (I don't care) but let me give my best explanation of Calvinism:

Before you're born, it's already predetermined whether you're going to heaven or hell.

"So why, pastor, should I be good and righteous"

"My son, when you sin, it reveals that you're wicked and going to hell. Best, therefore, to abstain from sin."

As a persuasive technique, this probably works just as good as anything. It's often difficult to tease out causality in noisy data. I point this out in the context of Scott's latest post. Look at the graphs here and tell me what you notice:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-polyamory

I notice that choosing to be monogamous or polygamous barely matters at all across many aspects of wellbeing. But there is one key difference: fertility. Polygamous people have many fewer children.

Does polygamy cause infertility or does infertility cause polygamy? Does it matter? It's extremely dysgenic and bound to go the way of the Shakers.

I wonder if polygamists have fewer children because they aren’t very likeable? Many of my polygamist/polyamorist/swinger/ethical nonmonogamist/very enlightened friends routinely post online about how awkward they are and how they hate flirting and want to just get straight to the sex (le heckin’ sexy timerinos, natch).

This mentality, as well as the idea of explicitly rejecting the concept of pair bonding, seems like anti social cope to me.

To steal man it: polies recognize that a lot of what we consider normal human interaction isn’t very enjoyable to them, and they reject it. As long as they stay inside of their ingroups, they believe this will work out well for them.

As others have pointed out: it is definitely causing some /priors updating/ that anybody takes this data even remotely seriously. This would be like polling a bunch of redditors about religion and then reporting on it as if this was a meaningful sample.

Come and poll my church and see if the people who self report as cheating on their wives are more happy in their marriage or not.

As others have pointed out: it is definitely causing some /priors updating/ that anybody takes this data even remotely seriously. This would be like polling a bunch of redditors about religion and then reporting on it as if this was a meaningful sample.

Right, that killed me. From Scott, emphasis mine:

I was surprised how certain people were that poly relationships were disasters that couldn’t work, compared to how little of a sign there was of that in the data. I like Aella’s explanation that most mono people’s experience of poly people is mono people “experimenting” with “opening up their relationship”, which is a natural danger zone. An alternative is that Aella got a bad sample (but her sample ought to be much more representative than mine), or that poly people lie / misremember / have a hard time answering surveys.

More representative, maybe, but still not even vaguely representative. "We only polled the people at the back of the church! How religious could they be??" I think Scott's ~asexuality just means he is typical minding really hard on these subjects.

As others have pointed out: it is definitely causing some /priors updating/ that anybody takes this data even remotely seriously. This would be like polling a bunch of redditors about religion and then reporting on it as if this was a meaningful sample.

I can't remember if it was here or back when we were still on plebbit but someone posted one of Aella's polls about sexual satisfaction in marriage and the number of people here defending it with all sorts of weird rationales ("Of course representative, sexually well adjusted men follow prostitutes on Twitter and participate in their polls!") was baffling to say the least, and made me lower my already low estimation of much of the rationalist movement.

I'm just going to guess polyamorous people are less religious than monoamorous people, and religiousness tends to be the one thing in modern society that might lead to people having large families.

I wonder if polygamists have fewer children because they aren’t very likeable?

Well, there's poly for the right reasons ("because I actually am a high-decoupler and am unironically capable of treating sex as a toy or tool"), and then there's poly for the wrong reasons ("because I'm not attracted to -> don't want to primarily pair-bond with my husband or wife, I just want to be able to have my cake and eat it too, and my partner doesn't have enough self-respect to call me out for doing it").

I think there are significantly more people who are poly for the wrong reasons- and people who are just trying to get out of doing the work they're supposed to be doing tend to be substandard partners. As for the people who are poly for the right reasons, their standards for a partner are going to be higher than normal, so they're going to pair up -> have kids less.

I mean, how many high decouplers are there really? Even among very intelligent people it’s rare, and some degree of significant intelligence is likely a prerequisite, so we’re talking about less than 1% of people.

Even among very intelligent people it’s rare, and some degree of significant intelligence is likely a prerequisite, so we’re talking about less than 1% of people.

They're also intelligent enough to keep quiet about it and are probably too busy enjoying the sex to post about it; you're more likely to hear it as "friends with benefits" from them... because they're usually also smart enough to know saying "poly" is a blunt instrument typically used by the people who are doing it for the bad reason I mentioned in the other comment.

(Same thing with every sexual expression that isn't "I'm straight and normal", really; the phrase to expose the other capabilities is probably more along the lines of "but if it's you, it's OK".)

What, specifically is "having my cake" and "eating it" referring to here?

In this case, "enjoying the stability (emotional, financial) of a husband/wife relationship" and "fucking whoever I want on the side".

In other words, the people for whom "poly/open relationship" means "cheating is bad only because it's not discussed up front; I don't like you enough to commit exclusively but I still want you to pay my bills". It's an attempt to actively exploit a power imbalance in the relationship and people who do that are generally bad people.

This is why "swinging" is generally viewed slightly more positively than "poly", since it can be a good-faith attempt to fix marital problems (age related and otherwise) and implies an already established track record of "turning my partner into their best selves"... whereas poly is [currently] the "cash up front" equivalent.

I think I understand. Someone having their cake and eating it too is someone who hypothetically would commit, or can commit, because they don't see sex as a toy. But they might try to abuse someone's infatuation to get sex without putting in commitment.

On the other hand, swingers view sex as a toy and keep that decoupled from their emotional attachment to their spouses or whatever.

What exactly is unethical about the first case though? It sounds like taken to it's logical conclusion, hookups and casual sex are unethical for normal monogamous non-swingers. Or is it only unethical when there's a "power imbalance" (which is really just an infatuation imbalance)? Clearly this cake-having cake-eater is capable of decoupling sex from commitment, because that's what hooking up is?

On the other hand, swingers view sex as a toy and keep that decoupled from their emotional attachment to their spouses or whatever.

Maybe I'd be more sympathetic to poly if both partners go to a bar and one partner is actively wingman-ing for the other depending on the day. Which to me is the key difference- swingers read to me as "I want you to get as much satisfying sex as you can because I am happy when you have sex you enjoy (but I'm not going to get locked out of what I want, and if it starts to grate on the relationship it's always up for discussion/give-and-take"), while poly reads "I want me to get as much satisfying sex as I can; what my partner does is simply not my concern, and if I'm not in the mood for them or if they aren't getting as much sex as I am they can just fucking deal with it".

Perhaps that's an abuse of the term(s), but swinger is not [claimed to be] an orientation, whereas poly is, and orientations have "they can just deal with it, I was #bornthisway" baked in by definition. Not that that's inherently a bad thing- straight people do that all the time, after all- but "fucking whoever I want whenever I want is my orientation" has the ability to destroy a relationship in a way no other orientation does (though "I'm not a [gender I was born as]" or "I'm not attracted to you" can do it for mostly-but-not-completely-unrelated reasons).

I don't want to say it's unethical to be poly, or inherently abusive even (and negotiating it up front is probably the best thing to do in that circumstance anyway)- but that most people that invoke "poly" as "inviolable/orientation" are only doing it when their interest in being exclusive to their partner runs out, and that is not the mark of someone you want to continue to trust. The people you do want to trust are those that have been committed for a long time and can actually take their partner saying "no" for an answer... which is why swinging is something they do, not someone they are.

Fuck around and not lose at least 50% of joint assets.

For a trait to go extinct due to natural selection not only requires that it be straightforwardly genetic in way that's easy selected over (which is far from certain here), it also requires many generations of constant selection pressure.

Basically no one was discussing polygamy as a valid lifestyle when I was 20. What the world will look like when I'm 60, I have no idea.

So far this relationship between polygamy and fertility has lasted for much less time than a single generation. Given how contextual and cultural it seems to be, I wouldn't make any sweeping predictions which require that contemporary relationship to stay unchanged for a hundred years.

I would guess that a possibly important outlier for polygamous people is the "roving seducer" type of guy who fathers large numbers of children because he moves on after impregnating each woman. It's just that this kind of person isn't usually considered polygamous in the modern rationalist community sense of "polyamory".

Playing typology with these things beyond self-identification makes it mush in seconds, when we talk about Monogamy vs. Polyamory we are asking people which relationship style they ideologically affirm, not which one they practice. If we're doing practice, it's a mess. We'd have to equally distinguish between varieties of monogamist. If we really wanted to drill down I would propose a spectrum of practice running something like:

  1. "First kiss at the Altar" monogamists, who have never had significant romantic entanglements with anyone prior to marriage. The most ideologically committed monogamists.

  2. Virgins at marriage monogamists. What it says on the tin. May have had romantic, but not sexual entanglements prior to marriage with other partners.

  3. Widows/Widowers who remarried, along with extreme cases of divorce "victims." Last exit in traditional religion.

  4. Serial monogamists. Have had multiple romantic/sexual partners that did not result in marriage, prior to marriage or after a failed marriage, but had some form of "commitment" and exclusivity with each, never had more than one partner within the same time period.

  5. Serial monogamists with exceptions. Trended toward monogamy as a goal, but with occasional periods of hook-ups or hiccups in between. Probably also the right place to put people from 1-4 who cheat. The last of the ideological monogamists.

  6. Hookers up. People who have had multiple partners they are not committed to. They may not have actually had multiple partners within the same time period, but the relationships did not formally preclude that possibility as a condition to the relationship. Drift towards a 5.5 where they have monogamous partners, drift towards 6.5 where they are committed to the bit.

  7. Limited Polyamorists. People who have multiple partners within a ruleset with a primary partner that inherently limits the number and nature of those relationships. The first "real" poly category. Restrictions on Gender, location, care, etc. are common. Typically a requirement of being added to the "circle" is that one is equally ideologically committed to polyamory on this model, so that ie Cheaters are frowned upon.

  8. Equal Polyamorists. People who have multiple partners who are all equally able to draw on time, attention, resources. No primary/secondary distinction within the group. Extremely rare in the wild.

  9. Fully Open Relationships. A relationship structure within which everyone is free to pursue sex with whoever they please, at any time they please. No restrictions are placed on anyone. Typically the strongest believers in the value of "free love" etc.

1-4 are definitely Monogamists, 7-9 are definitely Polyamorists. 5-6 are a little mushy, one can label them either way. If you profess Monogamy but fuck around are you really monogamous? If you fuck around but don't get into the all the emotional and ideological stuff, are you really Polyamorous?

Then you get into the problem of lifetimes. Lots of people I know started out aspiring to 1 or 2, dropped into 4-6 for their twenties or even play at a 7 or 8, and have since rounded down to 4 in their middle age. Where do they fall? Some people get married as a 1 or a 2, then cheat or get divorced and land at a 4 or a 5.

But I hope what's obvious is that trying to poll that precisely is going to be useless, but at the same time trying to conflate categories is going to be useless. A 4 and a 1 are both "monogamous, but I would bet on them having very different TFRs. Ditto 9 and 7 with polyamory.

Then you get into the problem of lifetimes.

Until I got here, this is where I was going to object. Among educated, high-income groups that aren't in the Bay Area or rationalsphere sorts of tastes, I would say that (4) and (5) are modal life arrangements, but with the capper being a completely monogamous and normal marriage sometime in their late 20s or 30s. Thinking about people I'm close to, this isn't just modal, it's the almost exclusive pattern. Mess around a bit as a teenager, go to college and date a few people with varying levels of commitment and varying levels of intermittent hookups, then start dating seriously after college, then after a couple relationships settle down. It's entirely possible that I'm in even more of a bubble than I realize, but it seems like not doing that is basically looked down upon among the upper middle-class.

Exactly normal, but also distinctly different from having a partner count of 1.

"First kiss at the Altar" monogamists, who have never had significant religious entanglements with anyone prior to marriage. The most ideologically committed monogamists.

Religious entanglements?

Doh good call

This kind of guy was never considered polygamous since polygamy always referred to marriage, and even now amongst Bay Area types refers to some kind of ‘open’ (in the sense that it is not secret) relationship. Similarly, having a secret second family with your secretary/mistress isn’t polygamy because your wife and (original) family don’t know about it.

Wait, why does Scott trust Aella’s data? Aella is an internet propagandist for polygamy and promiscuity. Many happy monogamists who find polygamy disgusting would never subscribe to her or follow her. Her monogamist followers are preselected with being unsatisfied with monogamy, and her polygamy followers are preselected with finding polygamy satisfying (hence why they are following a promiscuous woman who talks about it all day). Her most die hard followers are the most likely to take the survey, even just because they see the link more often, and the followers are those who have found the most benefit regardless of how it affects the median polygamist. “Just in, atheists are unsatisfied with atheism, as proven by a survey of atheists who follow Bishop Robert Barron on Twitter.” Am I missing something?

If there are things that are less likely to vary differentially with "how likely am I to see/respond to Aella's poll" then you can trust them more. Not sure how best to evaluate that, though.

Aella is an internet propagandist for polygamy and promiscuity.

You're making me like her even more than I already did. But yeah, I wouldn't necessarily trust her data unless it confirmed my pre-existing preferences, in which case fuck it.

Wait, why does Scott trust Aella’s data?

If it's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing with Made-Up Statistics.

I'm... skeptical, for a variety of reasons, but the underlying concept isn't obviously wrong. Bad data is still data if it's coming from an honest actor, and for the sort of really clear effects we should care about even a dishonest actor becomes a lot more obvious if they're just completely making things up.

I don't really think that article is applicable here. In Scott's case he's arguing about using made up numbers in the absence of data, not in favor of using whatever data was available. It's easy to imagine ways that data biased in ways you may not know can lead you away from the truth.

Her monogamist followers are preselected with being unsatisfied

i don't think this is a given, i'm repulsed by the idea of poly relationships and i follow anybody crazy enough to be entertaining on twitter (and the girl who showers once a month yet has time to bang 3 different guys a week is a goddamn spectacle). I could definitely imagine there being some selection bias in the data seeing as she reports polling in Fetlife and some un named "friend’s personality testing website" being about a quarter of the data.

The bigger issue is that it's self reported polling data collected in a somewhat conspicuous way. Anybody with any agenda about how many partners a person should have can add their 2 cents , and polyamorous people aren't going to say "yeah poly prettymuch sucks" on a poll they know people are going to gawk at on twitter.

In practice, "preselected with being unsatisfied" isn't going to mean "every single one is unsatisfied", it just means "being unsatisfied is disproportionately likely". You may be personally satisfied despite this being true.

That’s probably because you’re interested in diverse ideologies as a personality trait, which themotte userbase is generally selected for. I’m fairly certain that the median social media experience consists of people following accounts they agree with and which propagate their sense of identity. Consider also that in many healthy straight relationships, a person would be reasonably upset with their partner following a prostitute / pro-promiscuity egirl. If this is true, then I do think a whole class of people in healthy monogamous relationships with rules are much less likely to see the poll link, let alone participate in the poll.

Consider also that in many healthy straight relationships, a person would be reasonably upset with their partner following a prostitute / pro-promiscuity egirl

I think following on Twitter is a little different to following on OnlyFans, here.

A lot different but a husband would probably still have some explaining to to if a conservative wife fully understood what Aella is. Even more so if the first exposure was one of Alele's thirst posts. You're not getting a divorce over it but it's not going to be a fun conversation.

...polyamorous people aren't going to say "yeah poly prettymuch sucks" on a poll they know people are going to gawk at on twitter.

My impression is that this can be generalized across quite a few life decisions. People that have a huge amount invested in uncommon decisions that many people told them are bad ideas probably aren't going to regularly proclaim that they should have just listened to the crowd. Some will, of course, but many people will insist that their weird choice is actually excellent and superior to the normies.

Neither. Polygamy is generally hyper-fertile, but polygamy as practiced in the Bay Area by socially awkward screen addicts seems not to be.

Probably more about the selection effect and less about the polygamy.

Is the polyamorous tfr actually the same as the Bay Area as a whole?

I do agree with your point, though, polyamory is not the same thing as trad polygamy.

Polygamy (as opposed to polyamory) is obviously universally hyperfertile for the male, since multiple pregnancies are possible simultaneously and the fact of the polygamy means he’s usually wealthy enough to provide for many children. That it’s hyperfertile for the women depends typically on the fact that only the most trad and/or impoverished women in the modern world will agree to polygamous marriage, and both traits are strongly predictive of fertility rate.

Among polygamous ultra-rich Saudis post-2000 or so, my impression is that the women often have a much more modest number of kids, which I think suggests that tfr (which is of course calculated per woman) is not necessarily elevated by classical polygamy in and of itself.

That is a good point. The social status of having more children levels off pretty fast with living standards, I seem to recall. I'm guessing for hyperfertility to survive the middle class income trap, it needs both above average income and ideological commitment, probably religious. Mormons, Amish, Quiverfulls, etc.

I'm probably going to be corrected by some theology major (I don't care) but let me give my best explanation of Calvinism:

Then... what was the point of the pretend summary?

I’m preregistering my skepticism that a long, hypercorrect definition of Calvinism will be better than the one I gave.

It's not quite correct, in that your actions are also predestined. There is more of a direct motive—it's not like your choice doesn't matter, because the predestining itself is bound up in the choice. You can be directly motivated, not just by the evidence it gives.

I get that that's causally tricky to parse. It applies just as thoroughly to a world where God is only omniscient, even if not foreordaining, which is many people's alternative—he knows what's going to happen, which produces the same tricky-to-think-through-but-not-actually-weird-in-practice results.

It's also not quite correct in the sense that all that is not unique to those following Calvin, but it is what people colloquially refer to as Calvinism, but that's pretty irrelevant.

To be fair, it was more or less accurate

"My son, when you sin, it reveals that you're wicked and going to hell. Best, therefore, to abstain from sin."

And my response to this is: "So what? If I'm destined for eternal hell in 80 years I want to have an absolute blast before I die and being around people just like me will help with that." Signalling that I'm the kind of person going to hell is a good way for us hellbound to recognise each other and get together so that we can turn our lives into one continual orgistic rave of pleasure that we couldn't if we were all separated from each other. It far beats living a life of austerity and then ending up in hell anyways.

Dude, TDT. If you sin, then you are the kind of person God would have condemned to hell in the first place. If you don't, you are the kind of person who would be saved.

Think of it this way. There are two instances of you; one in the real world, and another one that God is simulating to decide whether to predestine you to heaven or hell. They are both sufficiently similar that they cannot logically choose different actions. If you sin, then you live in a universe where the copy God is simulating sinned as well, and you are going to end up in hell. Conversely, if you are virtuous, you live in a universe where God's copy of you was virtuous, and you are going to heaven.

Your being destined to heaven/hell is not disconnected from your life—God's providence involves both, and the former depends on the latter.

So your suggestion's a bad move.

While God may know your fate you, as a mortal, do not. By sinning as much as possible, you've merely proven that you are not one of the chosen. There is no chance that, having lived a life of sin, you will join the elect anyway.

This persuasive technique can be effective. It's famously employed by American sports coaches who say:

"Adversity doesn't build character, it reveals it".

Well, there is in the sense that God does convert sinners, but yes. Those who die godless are damned.

The point of predestination is that God, being timeless, already knows whether you're going to turn out to be a good person or a bad person. It's not as though you get a Hell mark on your forehead which dooms you no matter how many good things you do. It brings up awkward theological questions but from the point of view of the patient, trying to be a good person still has worth.

Saying, 'I'm obviously the sort of person who will go to hell so better sin as much as I can beforehand,' is silly and self-fulfilling.

So being a virtuous Calvinist is like one-boxing in the Newcomb's problem?

That's a good comparison:

In both, it's already known what the outcome will be (at least, to God/Omega). In both, what actions you take is tied up in it.

But you can't try to exploit the outcome being fixed, because it's dependent upon the intermediate steps—if you took the other option, you would find that it was that option that was fixed instead. So it makes sense to choose the better option.

There's a little more causation in Calvinism, but yeah, that's a good comparison. (Note, this analysis only requires knowledge: any system that has an omniscient God, which is to say most, will end up with the same result.)

I assume this is also the way that compatibilism works in general, including to atheists.

I understood every word in that sentence but not the sentence itself :P Could you explain, please?

Newcomb's problem is a thought experiment where a mysterious entity, who's known to be very good at predicting people's behavior, presents to you two boxes: one is transparent and contains a 1000$ and the other is opaque and might contain either nothing or one million dollars. You're given the choice of either taking only the opaque box (which is what I call one-boxing) or of taking both boxes. The entity tells you that it decided whether to put the money in the opaque box by predicting which option you will choose. If it predicted that you'll take both boxes, the opaque box is empty. If it predicted that you'll only take the opaque box, it put the million inside. What do?

If that was too muddled of an explanation, then have a Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox

Or alternatively, have a link to the explanation by everybody's favorite bombastic rationality guru: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ddcsdA2c2XpNpE5x/newcomb-s-problem-and-regret-of-rationality

That sounds about right. But I don’t see why you would ever take both boxes. The wikipedia page seems to suggest that it’s because you don’t trust the entity to predict correctly. I suppose it you really need $1000 that’s sensible but otherwise it looks like being a case of ‘so sharp you’ll cut yourself’.

Causal decision theory implies you should—after all, the money's either in the box or not, so there's no harm in taking it at this point; it's not like the money is somehow going to disappear.

I think it's wrong in this unusual case, but it is a thing it would advocate.

Yep. Only instead of a correct-so-far predictive alien, it’s the literally omniscient unfoolable inventor of human brains.

And instead of a thousand bucks or a million, one box holds a hundred years of short-sightedness and uncaring utility of others’ suffering. The other holds an eternity with billions of caring, noble people who would never betray you and a loving God even more amazing; in a body not subject to entropy and a mind not capable of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, or any mental illness; freed from the Dunbar Number of friends you can make and able to explore universes of new places and thoughts.

If you can’t comprehend that 80 years is an instant compared to eternity 🤷🏼‍♂️

Here's my guess as someone who knows literally nothing about Calvinism:

It's analogous to googling for symptoms of a disease in an effort to self-diagnose, particularly for something incurable and terminal like ALS. Your knowledge of the outcome has no effect on the outcome, but a certain anxious personality type will want to know the outcome anyway, for the peace of mind.

Exercising your willpower and moral judgement is the best method you have of gathering evidence. If you're able to abstain from sin, it's taken as evidence that you're predestined for salvation. If not, you're in trouble.

And since abstinence from sin is a human impossibility, God provided an escape hatch: tell Him you don’t want to be that way, accept Jesus’ sacrifice as payment, and have certainty that you now have the good end firmly in grasp. Thereafter, expect to see your choices change as the Holy Spirit sanctifies (cleans) your choicemaker.

Except that virtually every current polygamist was born to a monogamist, just as virtually every homosexual was born from sex between two heterosexuals and every transwoman came out of a biological vagina. Polygamists aren't an insular ethnic tribe whose fertility matters, they're a meme, they can spread even without having children.

In Elizabethan England, London was a population sink, without a constant flow of people from the countryside London would have emptied. By your logic therefore, London was Dysgenic and bound to die out (as were European cities in general at the time). Between the fertile countryside and London, which was more influential on the future?

By your logic

This is usually a thought-terminating phrase and should probably be avoided here. Arguing that because someone thinks X about Y, they might also think A about B, and since you disagree with A and B, they should reject X and Y has several problems.

  1. There are lots of other confounding variables (In this case London in the 16th century and Polygamy in Portland) that make the comparison meaningless
  2. We don't know anyone's beliefs of A and B, so framing the discussion is just your opinion
  3. People don't reflexively have consistent opinions
  4. The phrase itself connotes a negative stereotype of an annoying twitter or forum arguer.
  5. It's easy to dismiss your parable example and is therefore unlikely to be productive (Yes, London would've been a population sink if not for factor η)

By your logic

This is usually a thought-terminating phrase

Where I come from we call it "proof by contradiction" and it's a fundamental tool of logic.

I don't think that's an accurate characterization of how it was used here or how it's typically used (Which is often the inverse, e.g. 'Oh republicans want to save unborn babies? then by their logic they should also support free universal healthcare for everyone ;) ') At the very least the total population of London vs the surrounding countryside is not an apt comparison to the portion number of people in LA or Portland or wherever that practice a certain lifestyle, and is certainly not a demonstration a formal logic syllogism.

"By your logic" isn't a claim about what the other person thinks or believes, it's a claim about what the structure of their argument logically implies. If polygamy is bound to die out because its practitioners fail to reproduce, then the same reasoning should generalize to other analogous situations. If it doesn't generalize, that implies the claim being made is either wrong or insufficiently precise.

Surely you believe it's based around what the logic of the argument implies, not the structure of the argument. A structure is just how it's organized. Anyways, the comparison between London's population flows 500 years ago and the individual mating practices of the people in Scott Alexander's blog are obviously not bounded by the same arguments or logic. It's totally meaningless.

"Structure" as in logical structure. If you argue "Polygamy's practitioners reproduce at a low rate, therefore polygamy is bound to die out," then you've made an argument with the following logical structure: "[Thing]'s practitioners reproduce at a low rate, therefore [thing] is bound to die out." If someone can find a value of [thing] that falsifies the claim, it implies that there is something wrong (incorrect or incomplete) about the logical structure of the argument presented.

So you agree that additional information is needed beyond effects on population growth. Which was the entire purpose of the analogy.

Ok cool you've attacked my turn of phrase, any thoughts on the question of genetic vs memetic spread of culture?

To say it doesn’t matter whether it’s causal… and then to immediately make the causal claim that polyamory is dysgenic is baffling. Clearly it does matter to you that the effect is causal!

It’s annoying when people are crying “correlation doesn’t imply causation” when the causal claim seems intuitively true to you. That doesn’t mean those criticisms of your argument aren’t valid (regardless of the truthfulness of your conclusions).

Just on point: Christian priests were celibate until recently, but they were very influential through the last few hundred years. It's quite possible for polygamy to survive as the luxury tip of a society, provided the society is self-replicating on balance.

(Reader, it is not.)

Catholics also had large enough families that the occasional kid choosing the priesthood didn’t cause TFR to drop below replacement.

As a catechumen I have some trepidation about this with my own kids. I’m old enough that we’re simply not going to have a big family, we have one kid, hope for two, if we’re very lucky might have three.

If our one kid chooses the priesthood I’ll be proud of his piety but sad about my family line.

Calvinist predestination (which is the only truly contentious point out of the five in Calvinism) is basically Schrödinger's cat: the only way to know where one is predestined is to die, and there is a single truth value in the future which cannot be directly known from the past.

However true it may be, though, it is also possibly the single stupidest way to approach Christianity, faith, free will, and eternity.

Jesus has guaranteed that whoever turns from wickedness and asks Him for forgiveness will have eternal life in the presence of overwhelming love; the kind of love which cares for all victims of others’ misdeeds, and seeks that none should be wicked. If you ask, then, what God finds wicked, He asks you what you find wicked when others do it and asks you to shun it from your choices, now and forever.

Calvinists affirm that all those who have faith in Christ will be saved.

Calvinist predestination (which is the only truly contentious point out of the five in Calvinism) is basically Schrödinger's cat: the only way to know where one is predestined is to die, and there is a single truth value in the future which cannot be directly known from the past.

If you consistently do really shitty things as a devout Calvinist, can you kind of deduce you’re going to hell?

It's Bayesian evidence in that direction, but God can and does save sinners, which we all were. (See Paul!)

No. Because you don't know what's around the corner. You might have such an experience of grace next week that you're saved on the spot. You might do something even better, you might go from Saul to Paul.

IIRC(not a Calvinist) that the answer for a doctrinaire Calvinist is no, it is not, the reprobate have no knowledge of their fate but the elect do.

Of course there are not so many doctrinaire Calvinists these days and lots of them are in cults so you can’t ask them.

I always thought predestination was a really bad way of dealing with theological fatalism.

The Orthodox style of biting the bullet and telling you that mystery doesn't have to logically make sense is probably the solution I respect the most, but even if you're a westerner that has to find a logical trick, there's a plethora of compatibilist arguments that are all much better.

Predestination just seems poised to generate either quasi-nihilist fatalism or a belief in universal salvation that renders Christian morality moot. At least in this world.

What do you mean by predestination?

Calvinists are generally compatiblists. We're neither nihilists, fatalists (in the Oedipean sense), nor universalists.

There is an undeniable tension between (God's) omniscience and (the gift of) free will, I call this tension theological fatalism.

Christians have varying ways of resolving this problem, and my understanding of the Calvinist solution (predestination) is that it essentially negates the impact of free will in this world. It has already been ordained whether you'll be saved and there is no act on your part that can change that. Your only way to find out is to die.

I see religion at least in part as a tool to shepherd humanity in this world, so I find this problematic for similar reasons I find strict Thomism to be flawed. It makes little sense to me that God that sacrificed himself for us wouldn't be trying to guide our actions even here. Or that he would gift us with free will if free will didn't allow us to prevent evil.

Now I suppose strictly speaking predestination is a sort of compatibilism. But compared to other compatibilisms it seems nominal at best. If one can't prevent their damnation, how free are they really?

There's some ambiguity in your comment, but I'll try to answer it.

It has already been ordained whether you'll be saved and there is no act on your part that can change that. Your only way to find out is to die.

There might be some readings of this where this is technically correct, but that's a pretty bad way to look at things, at least. Calvinists, as Protestants, think that our salvation is dependent upon our having faith. This is both necessary and sufficient for our salvation. Your lives are relevant to your salvation/damnation: you're damned for your sins, and saved due to faith in Christ.

But this is part of God's plan; in fact, the turning of people to him is itself his work.

It makes little sense to me that God that sacrificed himself for us wouldn't be trying to guide our actions even here.

You seem to be saying that God doesn't care about how we live our lives, and that this somehow follows from predestination. This is not true. For one thing, he told us things, in the commandments. For another, he actively works in us, giving us a new heart. Predestination isn't something laying out some separate path of salvation that has nothing to do with this life. Rather, those who were predestined and will ultimately be saved in the meantime go through thiselife, and, by the work of God, are brought to faith in Christ, are sanctified unto improvement in the Christian life and good works, etc.

Or that he would gift us with free will if free will didn't allow us to prevent evil.

We just don't want to.

Sorry, but libertarian-style free will is always really bizarre to me—you dislike the idea of any of it being determined, but then you end up with everything being arbitrary, which is plainly worse. My actions are based on things—whatever I like more/think is better/whatever other motivations shape my choices and ultimately result in whatever I choose, and it's weird to me that people would prefer that they didn't have reasons for choosing things.

If one can't prevent their damnation, how free are they really?

Given that you brought up Thomism, I assume you're catholic. Looks like Trent disagrees:

The holy Synod declares first, that, for the correct and sound understanding of the doctrine of Justification, it is necessary that each one recognise and confess, that, whereas all men had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam-having become unclean, and, as the apostle says, by nature children of wrath, as (this Synod) has set forth in the decree on original sin,-they were so far the servants of sin, and under the power of the devil and of death, that not the Gentiles only by the force of nature, but not even the Jews by the very letter itself of the law of Moses, were able to be liberated, or to arise, therefrom; although free will, attenuated as it was in its powers, and bent down, was by no means extinguished in them.

But I don't especially care whether we call our wills free or not; it suffices that we recognize that people are the sources of their actions and morally culpable for the choices they make. I am perfectly willing to affirm that people are unable to will themselves out of damnation. Eph 2:1.

I am perfectly willing to affirm that people are unable to will themselves out of damnation.

I guess this is where our disagreement truly lies, on what this means. It's evident that Calvinists still preach that one should live a godly life, but their doing so ultimately only successfully to the elect, while logically consistent, doesn't sit right with the essential meaning of salvation in my opinion.

I understand the position is that salvation is solely due to grace, but I believe synergism, whether Catholic or Orthodox makes a lot more sense as a solution. Regeneration preceding faith seems to sap the miraculous nature of grace and to obviate the need to preach the wicked.

Regeneration preceding faith seems to sap the miraculous nature of grace and to obviate the need to preach the wicked.

The opposite, rather. Regeneration preceding faith (logically, not temporally) makes our salvation a miraculous work of God. Preaching to the wicked is essential because God works through means, and we don't know who will be saved, (and, of course, he told us to).

What's your theological background?

we don't know who will be saved

I expected this answer, and it's the most coherent with the premise. But preaching the wicked simply being going through the motions of humility seems to undersell our purpose.

What's your theological background?

It's complicated. I think the best approximation for the current standpoint I study religion from at this time is the same sort of theistic rationalism as Thomas Jefferson. I'm most familiar with Catholic and Sunni theology but I'm always curious of the minutiae of any successful credo since it must contain at least in part a measure of eternal wisdom. That said, so far I have not found a unique philosophy that provides a comprehensive solution to Mystery.

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For what it's worth, historically Reformed theologians did resort to something more like compatibilist arguments. I know this claim sounds unlikely in a world where Calvinists proudly adhere to determinist views and claim there is no free will and so forth, so let me provide a source for it. Unfortunately, it turns out that through liberal theology on the one hand and anti-intellectual fundamentalism on the other modern Protestantism has jettisoned quite a bit of its theological tradition.

Whether there's free will is in part a semantic issue. Luther famously wrote "The Bondage of the Will". What he's talking about there is about free will but primarily through a moral lens: you are not free to do good. I'm pretty sure some have affirmed free will, but not in a compatibilist libertarian sense. People fight over the meaning of the term.

I'd be interested in hearing more about the book—at least, a summary of where it gestures to in those authors. My impression was definitely that determinism was mainstream; that's what I've picked up from my own reading of old authors.

Those authors were later, not first or second generation reformers. (The earliest is the third generation Zanchi, I think.)

Not expecting to see Gomarus on there, since I thought he was a supralapsarian (and maybe Voetius as well)?

EDIT: Made the comment better. Also, this review seems relevant, if you can access it.

EDIT 2: Compatibilist->Libertarian. I misspoke terribly.

I cannot access the review unfortunately.

To put it briefly, the view described by @urquan is pretty much the view that the theologians described in the book have. There are a lot more details about things like different types of necessity, how free choice functions before the Fall, after the Fall, after regeneration and after glorification, etc. but the overall view is pretty much what urquan described. Also, the book deals mostly with free will specifically, not with all the doctrines of elections. So the text provided for e.g. Gomarus deals with all sorts of philosophical ideas about how free will works, but he does not go into supralapsarianism or anything like that.

However, you are also correct about Luther and Calvin not having that view! The authors of ‘Reformed Thought on Freedom’ actually acknowledge that explicitly in the conclusion of their book when discussing possible objections. I know that it sounds implausible that Calvin and Luther had anti free choice views whereas pretty much all their successors the next couple of centuries did try to retain a notion of free choice. However, based on what I’ve read in the book, I am inclined to believe that. The later theologians all using a scholastic philosophical apparatus are very careful to retain free choice, despite affirming a very high view of God’s sovereignty. For what it’s worth, Calvin at least does hint at a little bit of nuance in his views at some point in the Institutes. I’d have to take some time to find the passage again, but I remember that somewhere in the Institutes Calvin says that fallen humans sin ‘necessarily’ but aren’t ‘coerced’ to sin. So they can’t not sin, they sin freely in some sense. This seems to hint at something more like the view that Urquan described and which later Reformed theologians also defended, albeit without the careful technical scholastic language used by later Reformed theologians and there are other places where Calvin does not seem to show this nuance.

Note that I am here specifically claiming the Reformed tradition as Reformed Orthodoxy developed retained a notion of free choice, not that they didn’t believe God foreordained everything. How there can be an omnipotent and omniscient God, who knows and allows and in some sense causes everything that is, while also somehow not being the author of evil and allowing for human freedom, remains a tricky question. There is a long tradition from the Church Fathers, through the Middle Ages and into Modernity of theologians grappling with that problem. I am not even claiming here that the Reformed scholastics were particularly successful in their approach to answer this question, just that mainstream Reformed theology from the sixteenth up to and including the eighteenth century, stands in the same line as the Medieval scholastics trying to reconcile Gods sovereignty with human freedom. In fact, somebody like Bernard of Clairvaux who made some distinctions between different types of necessity gets cited approvingly a bunch of times by different theologians discussed in the book. Some of the theologians seem to not like the standard Latin term for free will ‘liberum arbitrium’, although they all acknowledge that the Church Fathers used that term and so they also seem uncomfortable (unlike Calvin and Luther) with completely rejecting that term. However, when you read the treatises in the book, it becomes clear that they are accusing their Roman Catholic and Remonstrant interlocutors of something like what we would call a libertarian free will view, while they themselves argue for something more like what we would call compatibilism today.

You specifically mention Gomarus, so let me try to summarise the treatise on free will from Gomarus provided in the books. Gomarus first talks about what free choice is:

Free choice is the free power of a mind-gifted nature to choose from those [means] leading to a certain goal, one [means] proposed by reason above another, or to accept or reject one and the same [means].

He goes on to make a distinction between free choice (liberum arbitrium) and will (voluntas). The will is concerned with what we want, i.e. with goals, whereas the free choice is concerned with means, i.e. making a concrete choice between A or B. Let me give an example to try and explain this distinction. If somebody is thirsty and wants to drink a glass of water, the thirst and the goal of satiating that thirst, is the voluntas. Nobody thinks somebody made a conscious free choice to be thirsty and desire a glass of water, that’s not what people talk about when they say ‘free will’. The person in the example then has a choice to drink a glass of water or not. That’s the liberum arbitrium. Unless he has knowledge that the glass of water is poisoned or something he will more or less certainly choose to drink the glass of water, but he was completely able to choose not to drink the glass of water.

After a bunch of specific definitions and distinctions and technical terms and stuff as is common in scholastic theology, Gomarus goes on to describe free choice in four states, the state before the Fall, the state after the Fall, the state after regeneration and the state after glorification. As I understand it, the key here is this distinction between liberum arbitrium and voluntas. The potency to choose either A or B, i.e. liberum arbitrium, is affirmed by Gomarus in all those four states. What changes, is the voluntas. The fallen unregenerate man has a corrupted voluntas that is no longer oriented towards God, but towards sin. Therefore, though he is completely free in the choices that he makes, he will always use that freedom to sin, because that is now his goal:

Although the unregenerate are not able to do anything but sin, they do it freely, for they elicit the exercise (exercitium) of an act in such a way that they are able not to elicit it, and they are in a way masters of their own acts. However, with respect to the kind (species) of act, they are determined, since they are able to do nothing else but sin and have evil as their object, under the pretext of good. Besides, it is not otherwise for the good angels, who, confirmed in grace, are necessarily determined with regard to the kind of act, for they are able to do nothing else but good, even if [the exercise] to elicit an act here and now is totally free for them.

So Gomarus does not deviate from Reformed ideas about total depravity and such. What he argues is that man being fallen and in some sense not able to do anything but sin, is compatible with humans being free. They sin, not because of some sort of necessity, but because, their nature, being corrupted after the Fall, they want to. The argument Gomarus uses here about angels is also used a couple of times by other theologians in the book. Can good angels, glorified saints in heaven or even God sin? Christians typically believe it’s certain God is not going to sin, or that glorified saints in Heaven are not going to fall into sin again, but it would also be rather absurd to claim that God or glorified saints are not free. So this must mean it is possible for your will to be so strongly confirmed in good, that you will certainly always freely choose to do good. Likewise, for the unregenerate man, their will is corrupted to the extent that they will always freely choose to do sin.

I am not saying that this view is perfect or that the Reformed scholastics are able to answer all the questions this raises in a satisfactory way. But it is clear that somebody like Gomarus, who has a reputation of being a hardcore Calvinist, because he is the one who originally started the beef with Arminius himself, surprisingly actually confirms humans have liberum arbitrium, even in their fallen state, despite John Calvin and Luther rejecting that term.

See the second edit to the previous comment: I misspoke.

Anyway, to be clear, Luther and Calvin were able to talk about the will being free in a moral sense—your will is free when it's in alignment with God's will, rather than a slave to sin, etc. etc. They denied free will in fallen man, but not e.g. in glory.

This fits well with a compatibilist understanding (which I would affirm) but isn't quite talking about the same thing.

It looks like you're saying that people developed a broader understanding of free will afterwards, in a compatibilist sense, which makes complete sense. (Didn't Edwards, as well?)

It was arguing that they were misreading Turretin, mostly. I haven't read either the book or Turretin, and only skimmed the review, so I have no idea of the extent to which that is true. There seems to have since been more scholarly argumentation from people in response.

Thanks for the analysis of Gomarus. Much of this might be a terminological dispute, as they all believe in an exhaustive divine decree, and not in a Molinist sense either.

I don't think it's unreasonable to characterize Luther and Calvin as compatibilists, in the sense that they think that we are genuinely making meaningful choices, that they depend on us, that there's moral responsibility, etc. even though they think that they have qualms about the term free will. My impression was that something compatibilist-ish was just broadly mainstream within the Reformed world. But this is interesting, I wasn't really aware of these debates.

My understanding is that predestination wasn't originally interpreted by Calvinists as eliminating free will -- the argument for predestination wasn't total determinism, it was total depravity. So, the view was that people have free will (in a philosophical sense), their will is just totally entangled in sin such that it is impossible to choose the good without prevenient grace. Which, well, is essentially the Christian consensus since Augustine (at least in the West; the Orthodox are harder to pin down, though they would certainly insist that salvation is totally connected to cooperation with grace), but the unique proposition of Calvinism is that such grace is given only to the elect, and is irresistible.

This view is correct as far as I can gather from the book I linked to. Albeit with the caveat that John Calvin himself and Luther did reject the idea of free will. That being said, the book presents authors who for instance contributed to Reformed confessions and are all influential figures in the Reformed tradition, so I think it is reasonable to say that the Reformed tradition had a view similar to what you describe, even though Calvin himself did not.

I don't think there's much of a distance between the views.

It's worth noting, when you talk about people having free will, that that does not mean libertarian free will—it is fully compatible with determinism. (And yes, this fits with Augustine and others)

The Reformed theologians did affirm determinism, and had a notion of providence fully extensive over the world, such that nothing occurs without first being decreed by God. Nevertheless, @urquan is right that that is not what the word "predestination" usually referred to, it referring specifically to the choosing of people unto salvation.

To be clear, I agree that Luther and Calvin were more concerned with a moral sense of free will as you put it in another post. Actually in the conclusion of "Reformed Though on Freedom" the authors of the book touch on this topic as well:

We can distinguish between the religious intentions behind playing down free choice and working this out in an explicit ontology. Given the context of the Reformation, it is quite understandable that Luther and Calvin combated the idea that man is free to work out his own salvation, although with divine help. The moral and spiritual consequences of sin are at stake, and in this respect the Reformers rightly teach the total corruption of man.

So yeah, the view of the book which I think I agree with, isn't that Luther and Calvin were completely wrong and later generations of theologians fortunately completely rejected their view. Rather, Luther and Calvin correctly emphasized the corruption of fallen man over and against a more optimistic view of human nature that was common in the late Medieval/ early Modern period, but in doing so they made some statements that have unfortunate philosophical consequences. Later generations of theologians had more or less the same idea about the spiritual and moral consequences of sin, but were a little more careful and nuanced in working it out philosophically. While, to be clear, I don't think this should lead us to a negative view of Luther and Calvin at all, I don't think it is a completely theoretical point either. I know at least in the Netherlands, where I am from, there are some very conservative Reformed groups that fall into some sort of hyper Calvinism who would benefit greatly if they were told that contrary to popular belief, people like Gomarus and Voetius believed in free will.

Without using the words free will, what wrong beliefs do they end up having?

I guess I don't see what unfortunate philosophical consequences Luther/Calvin had.

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Total determinism is normal. See Calvin, Institutes book I, chapters 16-17, where he lays out an exhaustive model of providence.

This wasn't unique to Calvin, Luther also thought we were predestined, along with many Catholics (especially Dominicans/Thomists). You're right though, that's more explicitly talking about sin and salvation (as does Calvin later in the Institutes), but they also thought that all creation was predetermined, I believe.

It is nobility for the non nobles. Effectively, middle class people wanted to give themselves a noble title as elect without having the responsibilities of being a noble. They didn't actually want to fight in a war or take responsibility for society, they wanted to be special individuals with no real obligation to the people and rest of society. There isn't really chivalry, there is just being special by being born special.

I have read a fair bit of Calvinist theology from John Calvin himself up to contemporary stuff and I've never had a sense that there was some sort of class struggle going on behind it. Where did you get this idea?

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