I’d move it further upstream - it’s insane that anyone treats evolutionary psychology as a rigorous science. It’s a series of theoretical propositions that are largely untestable and unfalsifiable.
Yet another example of how easy it is to fool well-off, educated people with scientism and rhetoric.
Certainly, we shouldn't be using it as a guide for present-day moral guidance. I think it has the capacity to be more scientific, but I do agree that people tend to use it more as a cudgel to buttress unrelated political beliefs.
Tobias: You know, Lindsay, as a therapist, I have advised... a number of couples to explore an open relationship where the couple remains emotionally committed but free to explore extramarital encounters.
Lindsay: Well, did it work for those people?
Tobias: No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but... but it might work for us.
As someone who really doesn't like West, especially what she brings to the wider mass media, and will casually refer to her as a "braphog" in mixed company, what I've learned about her in the past week makes me genuinely sympathetic to her.
This is true, however bad cheating is of course. It is like how random, opportunistic crime is bad but not as bad as state sanctioned violence, organized, and willed in cold blood.
An endorsement saying "The single most important book on human sexuality since Kinsey..." is not so much a red flag as a May-Day parade with a brass band.
"The liberal values of personal liberty and individual fulfillment from which polyamory derives its philosophical justification are directly at odds with the institution,"
Hmm. I would say polyamory is also at odds with the liberal values of personal liberty and individual fulfillment.
It seems like what it usually boils down to is one party (usually the guy) contending for their chimpanzee-brain wishes and dressing it up in the language of liberal values while the other party (usually the woman) accepts it in an old-fashioned spirit of humility and self-sacrifice.
I mean, it's true that personal liberty tends to undermine itself, or rather, one guy's personal liberty undermines the other person's. It seems obvious *to me* that monogamy is better for people who care about consent and equality, but, well, men can be very persuasive and pushy.
(I also think there is more going on with Ms West's weird marriage...In her case I suspect there she believes she is the heroine of a story and in a couple years she'll break up with this jackass and write yet another book about finding herself, for real, this time.)
One of the obnoxious things about the polyamory movement is its attempt to graft onto LGBTQIA2SLMNOP++ (an already crowded field).
I once hate watched an Instagram video between two progressive influencers talking about how polyamorous couples don’t feel “safe” to be out in public, how they are unable to share about their partners with others. They were using similar language to how you would describe gay couples in the Deep South.
As a gay person who grew up in West Texas, I find it deeply offensive to talk about polyamory this way. Only recently did gay people get the right to marry and many of us are still searching for a monogamous spouse. These people already have that but want more and are acting like their experience is akin to what gay couples experience.
Polyamory works for gay relationships because homosexuals don't have “relationships”, just friends and housemates with whom they engage in mutual genital play. (Lesbians mostly don't even engage in mutual genital play after the first few weeks.) Engaging in genital play with others, when that is all you have in scope, increases your net utility in the same way that it is more fun to have more friends to watch movies or go for walks with.
In straight relationships, i.e. actual, real relationships, sex is an act of mystical union in which two previously separate beings form a sacred bond that can only be diminished by dilution. This is why virginity, while sadly unobtainable in a partner these days, remains the platonic ideal because, even serially rather than concurrently, the metaphysical bond is diminished by having diluted it between multiple partners.
No, gay people can have real relationships, real marriages. I have known plenty myself. There’s also plenty of gay people who believe deeply in monogamy https://reformationproject.org/values/
Belief is ultimately meaningless. All that matters is reality. You can believe in gay marriage or square circles or other impossible contradictions until you're blue in the face: it won't make them real.
Spouses turn on a dime whenever someone in their circle gets divorced. Husbands raise their eyebrow when their wife wants to hang out with a newly divorced woman, assuming she's having floozy bar crawls. Wives want to get rid of his newly divorced best friend, assuming he's frequenting strip clubs and going on one-night stands.
To be frank, that's often the case, and many of the newly divorced are more than happy to drag someone into their new lifestyle. Polyamorous relationships are this hazard times ten. Gotta cut them off.
Further reading on the topic: Conn Caroll recently published Sex and the Citizen which purports to respond to a lot of the issues with Sex at Dawn. I have read neither book, but I did listen to his discussion with Razib Khan
Those kinda seem like different things, legal but regulated vs illegal. Or is it mere social stigma? Do you kick nonmonogamous people out of your parties?
You really haven’t justified the headline claims at all, when your only two arguments are ‘it didn’t work for my friends’ (fine, but of very limited evidential value) and ‘marriage is inherently incompatible with it’ (nonsense, marriage is whatever we want it to be, and the traditions of millennia include all sorts of terrible stuff so there’s little reason to defer to them).
You can tell the author is young and inexperienced because they think polyamory was fad invented in 2010 by a single book. This generation that grew up on the internet really doesn’t have much perspective and knowledge.
It's insane that anyone would take the argument that polyamory is good because that's how we lived in the ancestral environment seriously.
Common features of the ancestral environment: hookworms, intertribal warfare, infant mortality, rape.
Uncommon features of the ancestral environment: complicated spreadsheets where you resolve with your metamour who gets to bone Josh on Thursdays.
I’d move it further upstream - it’s insane that anyone treats evolutionary psychology as a rigorous science. It’s a series of theoretical propositions that are largely untestable and unfalsifiable.
Yet another example of how easy it is to fool well-off, educated people with scientism and rhetoric.
Certainly, we shouldn't be using it as a guide for present-day moral guidance. I think it has the capacity to be more scientific, but I do agree that people tend to use it more as a cudgel to buttress unrelated political beliefs.
Hookworms and polyamory are pretty bad but there are good arguments in favour of the other three.
Arrested Development said it best:
Tobias: You know, Lindsay, as a therapist, I have advised... a number of couples to explore an open relationship where the couple remains emotionally committed but free to explore extramarital encounters.
Lindsay: Well, did it work for those people?
Tobias: No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but... but it might work for us.
Haha, I've seen that quote so many times and never knew it was about polyamory! Gotta read the ancient texts.
As someone who really doesn't like West, especially what she brings to the wider mass media, and will casually refer to her as a "braphog" in mixed company, what I've learned about her in the past week makes me genuinely sympathetic to her.
successful cheating, engaged in by a person mindful of the feelings of their partner, seems infinitely preferable to polyamory
This is true, however bad cheating is of course. It is like how random, opportunistic crime is bad but not as bad as state sanctioned violence, organized, and willed in cold blood.
An endorsement saying "The single most important book on human sexuality since Kinsey..." is not so much a red flag as a May-Day parade with a brass band.
"The liberal values of personal liberty and individual fulfillment from which polyamory derives its philosophical justification are directly at odds with the institution,"
Hmm. I would say polyamory is also at odds with the liberal values of personal liberty and individual fulfillment.
You think? Isn't that the whole point?
It seems like what it usually boils down to is one party (usually the guy) contending for their chimpanzee-brain wishes and dressing it up in the language of liberal values while the other party (usually the woman) accepts it in an old-fashioned spirit of humility and self-sacrifice.
I mean, it's true that personal liberty tends to undermine itself, or rather, one guy's personal liberty undermines the other person's. It seems obvious *to me* that monogamy is better for people who care about consent and equality, but, well, men can be very persuasive and pushy.
(I also think there is more going on with Ms West's weird marriage...In her case I suspect there she believes she is the heroine of a story and in a couple years she'll break up with this jackass and write yet another book about finding herself, for real, this time.)
One of the obnoxious things about the polyamory movement is its attempt to graft onto LGBTQIA2SLMNOP++ (an already crowded field).
I once hate watched an Instagram video between two progressive influencers talking about how polyamorous couples don’t feel “safe” to be out in public, how they are unable to share about their partners with others. They were using similar language to how you would describe gay couples in the Deep South.
As a gay person who grew up in West Texas, I find it deeply offensive to talk about polyamory this way. Only recently did gay people get the right to marry and many of us are still searching for a monogamous spouse. These people already have that but want more and are acting like their experience is akin to what gay couples experience.
Polyamory works for gay relationships because homosexuals don't have “relationships”, just friends and housemates with whom they engage in mutual genital play. (Lesbians mostly don't even engage in mutual genital play after the first few weeks.) Engaging in genital play with others, when that is all you have in scope, increases your net utility in the same way that it is more fun to have more friends to watch movies or go for walks with.
In straight relationships, i.e. actual, real relationships, sex is an act of mystical union in which two previously separate beings form a sacred bond that can only be diminished by dilution. This is why virginity, while sadly unobtainable in a partner these days, remains the platonic ideal because, even serially rather than concurrently, the metaphysical bond is diminished by having diluted it between multiple partners.
No, gay people can have real relationships, real marriages. I have known plenty myself. There’s also plenty of gay people who believe deeply in monogamy https://reformationproject.org/values/
Belief is ultimately meaningless. All that matters is reality. You can believe in gay marriage or square circles or other impossible contradictions until you're blue in the face: it won't make them real.
Polyamory is for parrots.
Spouses turn on a dime whenever someone in their circle gets divorced. Husbands raise their eyebrow when their wife wants to hang out with a newly divorced woman, assuming she's having floozy bar crawls. Wives want to get rid of his newly divorced best friend, assuming he's frequenting strip clubs and going on one-night stands.
To be frank, that's often the case, and many of the newly divorced are more than happy to drag someone into their new lifestyle. Polyamorous relationships are this hazard times ten. Gotta cut them off.
Polyamory is when insecure people are bound by the delusion
Further reading on the topic: Conn Caroll recently published Sex and the Citizen which purports to respond to a lot of the issues with Sex at Dawn. I have read neither book, but I did listen to his discussion with Razib Khan
https://www.razibkhan.com/p/conn-carroll-sex-and-the-citizen
What exactly do you mean by not condoning nonmonogamy?
Responding to it the same way we do to gambling or drug addiction
Those kinda seem like different things, legal but regulated vs illegal. Or is it mere social stigma? Do you kick nonmonogamous people out of your parties?
You create polyamory rehab and support groups and crisis hotlines. /s
I feel like this is a great argument for legal hookers
You really haven’t justified the headline claims at all, when your only two arguments are ‘it didn’t work for my friends’ (fine, but of very limited evidential value) and ‘marriage is inherently incompatible with it’ (nonsense, marriage is whatever we want it to be, and the traditions of millennia include all sorts of terrible stuff so there’s little reason to defer to them).
You can tell the author is young and inexperienced because they think polyamory was fad invented in 2010 by a single book. This generation that grew up on the internet really doesn’t have much perspective and knowledge.
Do you have a point?
Can you read?
Yeah you just didnt say anything other than dude is young. I thought you may have had a point you forgot to add
Young and thinks that world history started when they joined social media 15 years ago. It’s a silly and misinformed take.
You want to drop an example or just keep hinting that young people know nothing
Read the example in my first comment