Firstly, I probably ought to have toned down some of my response here. You’re a real guy with real people around you and it’s always important to remember that down from the narrative level the personal is the most important. So, anyway, sorry to you and your loved ones.
You are basically correct on the situation with my parents.
It’s always hard for any of us to sort out what are the failures of the system versus the failures of our particular piece of the system. No system is perfect and culturally enforced monogamy on the scale we had a few generations ago didn’t produce 0 difficult family circumstances. Likewise, I’m sure there are probably polygamous relationships where I’d have a real hard time identifying a victim because everyone involved seems to be doing well. That said, it’s also equivocating for me to put it that way because I think one of these both in theory and in practice is clearly superior to the other and far less prone to be abused. And I also think that to not have an abusive polyamorous relationship you basically have to Mr. Magoo your way through a field of incredible hazards to arrive unharmed at the other side. Great for you if it all worked out but also it’s not like there’s a very good road through the sewer holes and moving I-beams that everyone can just follow.
“I've seen many people talk about the monogamy failure mode and claim this is a strike against polyamory. To score points against polyamory, I think you would have to prove that switching the marginal person from monogamy to polyamory increases the risk of the polyamorous failure mode more than it decreases the risk of the monogamous failure mode.”
To this I would just refer back to the statistics on the likelihood of abuse when an adult other than a parent is in the home. Why would those be different in a polyamorous situation? That’s my general system level proof of which one of these is likely better for children at the social level of analysis. Also the statistics about the general well-being of children with two parents in the home. That is very clearly more stable, you probably know those statistics better than I do, and while of course not perfect it does seem very hard to argue that if that wasn’t the case for more people (which we know is possible because it was the case for virtually everyone not that long ago) general welfare would be much better.
To argue for polyamory being generally better you’d have to make the case why the statistics about adults other than the parent being in the home don’t apply in the general case and also point to a historical precedent. Note, I know that something being “generally better” doesn’t mean anything in terms of legality/enforcement or what someone should do in their day to day reality. If someone’s gay while I think it’s better for a kid to have a mom and a dad I’m still going to encourage them to figure out a way to have a child because that is the greatest good available to them (note, I don’t think being polyamorous is like being gay). And I’m not in favor of anyone kicking down anyone’s door or publicly shaming them for their private lives.
I don’t think from purely an ethical perspective that this is as simple as a grid of success and failure modes. I mentioned this in another comment but say you’re a man from Mars. You can see what people are doing but can’t really tell why and they can’t explain it to you (your translator tech is broken and your biology is too different to make inferences). Would you easily be able to tell that the failure mode of monogamy isn’t just polyamory? Say you see one person go into another person’s house, mate, and leave and they get back home the other human there makes loud noises. That’s the same if it’s a husband cheating on his wife or if it’s polyamorous and someone gets jealous. The labels are different but the behavior is the same.
Pulling apart the success mode of polyamory… I’d challenge you to reconsider your entire mental model of consent in this scenario. If someone says “yes” to you is that enough for you to consider that you have full moral authorization to do something? I have not always lived by this, but I don’t think that a single “yes” is consent without additional questions. I am not saying you don’t follow any of these already I’m just explicating them to apply to the happy polyamory scenario. We have at minimum three additional obligations to a person to really know we have their consent. One is to reasonably imagine that out of all the possible lives they are likely to live would the the happiest bulk of those possible lives think that what they are consenting to is a good idea? And if I were them, but still knew what I knew, would I be okay with whatever the situation is that they are consenting to? And a third since becoming a parent: would I be okay with someone doing this to/with my kid? You’re famous and you’re quite good at making arguments. You have additional obligations. Is this person consenting to you because you are famous and is what they are consenting to likely to cause them harm? If there is some conflict you are sorting out with them, if they had your ability to quickly array facts and speak them out loud would their side of whatever dispute become stronger? That last test is the best one I have against motivated reasoning.
When you have a “primary” relationship would you ever be okay with someone making you one of their “secondary” relationships and treating you like a lower priority when this is consuming your time/resources to go make another bond with someone else? I haven’t read all of your old stuff but someone pointed me to a piece a few weeks ago where it seems like some people were pretty shitty to you. Can you easily imagine a future where if this satellite person wasn’t spending their time with you that they go off and find a more fulfilling relationship? If the answer to that question is yes and you imagine that person thirty years in the future what do they ask you to do right now in order to help them on their way? Are you doing that? Maybe the answer to that exercise really is “I love you so much that I always just wanted to sort of be in your orbit, but never really mattering enough to be in the home with you.” I won’t lay out the last one because I just typed it out and it felt mean but yeah, if the person you loved most in the world was involved in this kind of a situation would you think that is what is best for them and everyone is doing their best for them?
You have always struck me as a good and fundamentally decent person and I want to state I still think that is who you are? You gave someone an organ for crying out loud. But have you, genuinely, ever asked yourself these questions in reference to polyamory? These are very hard standards to meet and I think the simple “yes” version of consent where you back it up with “I’m trying to not be patronizing and I’m honoring their agency!” becomes almost Faustian in this context. Which of these views of consent and obligation would you rather have applied to you and the ones you love the most?
I don’t think polyamory does well in this reference frame.
Try to put on the same hat you would wear if we were talking about cousin marriage. Locally you’d probably find all kinds of cases where everything is fine and you could say “seems to be working for them, no genetic defects in these children, but it’s just not for me.” But if you pull back the lens you can see if everyone does it that this is genetically damaging the entire society and the health of the nation and that probably some social institutions broke in such a way that people stopped dating outside of their family. I think polyamory is similar. Local cases are fine, and if anyone is already in a historical situation where everyone is fine I’m not saying throw them into a garbage can, but at scale it doesn’t work.
Taking the man from Mars perspective again if someone brought you a system diagram of human reproduction and there were all these lines all over the place of how mating clusters worked and someone asked you to find the simplest, least entropic state, how long would it take you after understanding how humans mate to come back with monogamy? Even one minute?
As you are likely to you continue to see no problem with polyamory as a theoretical system, can you admit the ethical model outlined here around consent is a better model than the “yes, and asking more questions would be wrong because I’m honoring your agency!” If in your own mind you can see a better future for someone than whatever it is they are doing that you happen to like, I’m sure you will feel compelled to help them along in that direction because you’re the same guy that was so distressed over the suffering of a stranger you gave them a kidney.*
*Because I remember your kidney article well enough to remember you objecting to something like a sibling to these ethical tests being applied to you and someone denying you the ability to donate and I can already sense the version of you that lives in my head standing up to make the objection, I don’t think a fair reading of that is they were asking how all the imagined future versions of you would feel about having saved someone’s life at low risk.
"To this I would just refer back to the statistics on the likelihood of abuse when an adult other than a parent is in the home. Why would those be different in a polyamorous situation? That’s my general system level proof of which one of these is likely better for children at the social level of analysis. Also the statistics about the general well-being of children with two parents in the home. That is very clearly more stable, you probably know those statistics better than I do, and while of course not perfect it does seem very hard to argue that if that wasn’t the case for more people (which we know is possible because it was the case for virtually everyone not that long ago) general welfare would be much better."
Hm, this didn't occur to me because I rarely see poly people bring a third person into the home itself. I more often see partners interact with the children the same way as any other close friend.
But also, thinking about this in near mode - does this mean people shouldn't live with their extended families? Shouldn't have nannies? That single moms shouldn't remarry? I think usually people agree that an extra parent-figure is worth this risk, especially if very carefully screened. I haven't thought about this much because I haven't seen this situation, it's not something I have a strong opinion about, but it doesn't seem that different from things which we already acknowledge are good.
I'm not sure I agree with the man from Mars argument for two reasons. If the third partner was living with the couple, it would look completely different from cheating. If they weren't, I think the Martian would process it as an unusual sort of friend or relative - someone sometimes comes to the house, everyone is glad to see them, they all hang out together, and maybe the third person helps take care of the kids sometimes. I don't think it would look very much like cheating unless the Martian already privileged the have sex/don't have sex distinction above everything else. But also, I'm not sure I agree with the Martian argument at all. Movers bringing your stuff to a new home would look to a Martian a lot like thieves robbing you. So what? Are we supposed to draw some deep conclusion from that?
"When you have a “primary” relationship would you ever be okay with someone making you one of their “secondary” relationships and treating you like a lower priority when this is consuming your time/resources to go make another bond with someone else? I haven’t read all of your old stuff but someone pointed me to a piece a few weeks ago where it seems like some people were pretty shitty to you. Can you easily imagine a future where if this satellite person wasn’t spending their time with you that they go off and find a more fulfilling relationship? If the answer to that question is yes and you imagine that person thirty years in the future what do they ask you to do right now in order to help them on their way? Are you doing that? Maybe the answer to that exercise really is “I love you so much that I always just wanted to sort of be in your orbit, but never really mattering enough to be in the home with you.” I won’t lay out the last one because I just typed it out and it felt mean but yeah, if the person you loved most in the world was involved in this kind of a situation would you think that is what is best for them and everyone is doing their best for them?"
I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what you mean here. If you mean "X is Y's primary, but Y is X's secondary", I agree that's not a good kind of relationship. I don't really see it happen and I think people would be against it with their usual "be against specific unhealthy dynamics" module. If you mean "do you think someone will help their other partners find primaries and build happy families", then yes, this seems to be what happens. I wrote my partner's dating site profile, and my wife actually tried to match up one of her partners with a mutual friend last week.
I do hope that I'm adding (rather than subtracting) to most of my partners' lives, and they're adding (rather than subtracting) to mine. I don't want to do too much personal infodumping to you, but one of my partners helped me through a really hard time, let me live with them when I had nowhere else to live, and was partly responsible for me starting this blog. Another comes over once or twice a week to help take care of our children. I've helped one of my partners get their business to work, and am helping another partner and her husband figure out IVF and genetic screening issues.
I continue to be interested in knowing the exact way it doesn't work at scale. We have Aella's survey data which says poly relationships seem to last as long as mono and have the same level of self-rated security and satisfaction. If you tell me a specific theory about the problem with poly relationships, I can probably get Aella to test it.
I’ll email you for the sake of observing the forms of truth-seeking but I would advise you to ignore it because you have twins who matter way more. I feel like I’m scolding someone who is gay about being gay and that isn’t my intent. You’re a person, whatever a perfect relationship might be with zero entropy at zero degrees kelvin doesn’t matter as much as your humanity. If you have history with people that certainly matters and it’s very important.
I have my own bullshit which I fully admit might color my views here. I doubt I’ll be able to think up some test that could be obtained by filtering some columns in a spreadsheet that someone hasn’t already filtered. But I’ll see if I can’t think of something worth typing up an email over.
Everything you're saying makes sense and I'm not upset. I hope I'm not crossing the line by discussing your childhood trauma too dispassionately. I'll probably ask people in general for a test in a Highlights From The Comments post, so don't feel obligated to figure one out if you're not excited about doing so.
Trivers' theory of genetic conflict raises its head here. It's bad for her existing children, but can permit her to have additional children who have entirely different interests.
Firstly, I probably ought to have toned down some of my response here. You’re a real guy with real people around you and it’s always important to remember that down from the narrative level the personal is the most important. So, anyway, sorry to you and your loved ones.
You are basically correct on the situation with my parents.
It’s always hard for any of us to sort out what are the failures of the system versus the failures of our particular piece of the system. No system is perfect and culturally enforced monogamy on the scale we had a few generations ago didn’t produce 0 difficult family circumstances. Likewise, I’m sure there are probably polygamous relationships where I’d have a real hard time identifying a victim because everyone involved seems to be doing well. That said, it’s also equivocating for me to put it that way because I think one of these both in theory and in practice is clearly superior to the other and far less prone to be abused. And I also think that to not have an abusive polyamorous relationship you basically have to Mr. Magoo your way through a field of incredible hazards to arrive unharmed at the other side. Great for you if it all worked out but also it’s not like there’s a very good road through the sewer holes and moving I-beams that everyone can just follow.
“I've seen many people talk about the monogamy failure mode and claim this is a strike against polyamory. To score points against polyamory, I think you would have to prove that switching the marginal person from monogamy to polyamory increases the risk of the polyamorous failure mode more than it decreases the risk of the monogamous failure mode.”
To this I would just refer back to the statistics on the likelihood of abuse when an adult other than a parent is in the home. Why would those be different in a polyamorous situation? That’s my general system level proof of which one of these is likely better for children at the social level of analysis. Also the statistics about the general well-being of children with two parents in the home. That is very clearly more stable, you probably know those statistics better than I do, and while of course not perfect it does seem very hard to argue that if that wasn’t the case for more people (which we know is possible because it was the case for virtually everyone not that long ago) general welfare would be much better.
To argue for polyamory being generally better you’d have to make the case why the statistics about adults other than the parent being in the home don’t apply in the general case and also point to a historical precedent. Note, I know that something being “generally better” doesn’t mean anything in terms of legality/enforcement or what someone should do in their day to day reality. If someone’s gay while I think it’s better for a kid to have a mom and a dad I’m still going to encourage them to figure out a way to have a child because that is the greatest good available to them (note, I don’t think being polyamorous is like being gay). And I’m not in favor of anyone kicking down anyone’s door or publicly shaming them for their private lives.
I don’t think from purely an ethical perspective that this is as simple as a grid of success and failure modes. I mentioned this in another comment but say you’re a man from Mars. You can see what people are doing but can’t really tell why and they can’t explain it to you (your translator tech is broken and your biology is too different to make inferences). Would you easily be able to tell that the failure mode of monogamy isn’t just polyamory? Say you see one person go into another person’s house, mate, and leave and they get back home the other human there makes loud noises. That’s the same if it’s a husband cheating on his wife or if it’s polyamorous and someone gets jealous. The labels are different but the behavior is the same.
Pulling apart the success mode of polyamory… I’d challenge you to reconsider your entire mental model of consent in this scenario. If someone says “yes” to you is that enough for you to consider that you have full moral authorization to do something? I have not always lived by this, but I don’t think that a single “yes” is consent without additional questions. I am not saying you don’t follow any of these already I’m just explicating them to apply to the happy polyamory scenario. We have at minimum three additional obligations to a person to really know we have their consent. One is to reasonably imagine that out of all the possible lives they are likely to live would the the happiest bulk of those possible lives think that what they are consenting to is a good idea? And if I were them, but still knew what I knew, would I be okay with whatever the situation is that they are consenting to? And a third since becoming a parent: would I be okay with someone doing this to/with my kid? You’re famous and you’re quite good at making arguments. You have additional obligations. Is this person consenting to you because you are famous and is what they are consenting to likely to cause them harm? If there is some conflict you are sorting out with them, if they had your ability to quickly array facts and speak them out loud would their side of whatever dispute become stronger? That last test is the best one I have against motivated reasoning.
When you have a “primary” relationship would you ever be okay with someone making you one of their “secondary” relationships and treating you like a lower priority when this is consuming your time/resources to go make another bond with someone else? I haven’t read all of your old stuff but someone pointed me to a piece a few weeks ago where it seems like some people were pretty shitty to you. Can you easily imagine a future where if this satellite person wasn’t spending their time with you that they go off and find a more fulfilling relationship? If the answer to that question is yes and you imagine that person thirty years in the future what do they ask you to do right now in order to help them on their way? Are you doing that? Maybe the answer to that exercise really is “I love you so much that I always just wanted to sort of be in your orbit, but never really mattering enough to be in the home with you.” I won’t lay out the last one because I just typed it out and it felt mean but yeah, if the person you loved most in the world was involved in this kind of a situation would you think that is what is best for them and everyone is doing their best for them?
You have always struck me as a good and fundamentally decent person and I want to state I still think that is who you are? You gave someone an organ for crying out loud. But have you, genuinely, ever asked yourself these questions in reference to polyamory? These are very hard standards to meet and I think the simple “yes” version of consent where you back it up with “I’m trying to not be patronizing and I’m honoring their agency!” becomes almost Faustian in this context. Which of these views of consent and obligation would you rather have applied to you and the ones you love the most?
I don’t think polyamory does well in this reference frame.
Try to put on the same hat you would wear if we were talking about cousin marriage. Locally you’d probably find all kinds of cases where everything is fine and you could say “seems to be working for them, no genetic defects in these children, but it’s just not for me.” But if you pull back the lens you can see if everyone does it that this is genetically damaging the entire society and the health of the nation and that probably some social institutions broke in such a way that people stopped dating outside of their family. I think polyamory is similar. Local cases are fine, and if anyone is already in a historical situation where everyone is fine I’m not saying throw them into a garbage can, but at scale it doesn’t work.
Taking the man from Mars perspective again if someone brought you a system diagram of human reproduction and there were all these lines all over the place of how mating clusters worked and someone asked you to find the simplest, least entropic state, how long would it take you after understanding how humans mate to come back with monogamy? Even one minute?
As you are likely to you continue to see no problem with polyamory as a theoretical system, can you admit the ethical model outlined here around consent is a better model than the “yes, and asking more questions would be wrong because I’m honoring your agency!” If in your own mind you can see a better future for someone than whatever it is they are doing that you happen to like, I’m sure you will feel compelled to help them along in that direction because you’re the same guy that was so distressed over the suffering of a stranger you gave them a kidney.*
*Because I remember your kidney article well enough to remember you objecting to something like a sibling to these ethical tests being applied to you and someone denying you the ability to donate and I can already sense the version of you that lives in my head standing up to make the objection, I don’t think a fair reading of that is they were asking how all the imagined future versions of you would feel about having saved someone’s life at low risk.
"To this I would just refer back to the statistics on the likelihood of abuse when an adult other than a parent is in the home. Why would those be different in a polyamorous situation? That’s my general system level proof of which one of these is likely better for children at the social level of analysis. Also the statistics about the general well-being of children with two parents in the home. That is very clearly more stable, you probably know those statistics better than I do, and while of course not perfect it does seem very hard to argue that if that wasn’t the case for more people (which we know is possible because it was the case for virtually everyone not that long ago) general welfare would be much better."
Hm, this didn't occur to me because I rarely see poly people bring a third person into the home itself. I more often see partners interact with the children the same way as any other close friend.
But also, thinking about this in near mode - does this mean people shouldn't live with their extended families? Shouldn't have nannies? That single moms shouldn't remarry? I think usually people agree that an extra parent-figure is worth this risk, especially if very carefully screened. I haven't thought about this much because I haven't seen this situation, it's not something I have a strong opinion about, but it doesn't seem that different from things which we already acknowledge are good.
I'm not sure I agree with the man from Mars argument for two reasons. If the third partner was living with the couple, it would look completely different from cheating. If they weren't, I think the Martian would process it as an unusual sort of friend or relative - someone sometimes comes to the house, everyone is glad to see them, they all hang out together, and maybe the third person helps take care of the kids sometimes. I don't think it would look very much like cheating unless the Martian already privileged the have sex/don't have sex distinction above everything else. But also, I'm not sure I agree with the Martian argument at all. Movers bringing your stuff to a new home would look to a Martian a lot like thieves robbing you. So what? Are we supposed to draw some deep conclusion from that?
"When you have a “primary” relationship would you ever be okay with someone making you one of their “secondary” relationships and treating you like a lower priority when this is consuming your time/resources to go make another bond with someone else? I haven’t read all of your old stuff but someone pointed me to a piece a few weeks ago where it seems like some people were pretty shitty to you. Can you easily imagine a future where if this satellite person wasn’t spending their time with you that they go off and find a more fulfilling relationship? If the answer to that question is yes and you imagine that person thirty years in the future what do they ask you to do right now in order to help them on their way? Are you doing that? Maybe the answer to that exercise really is “I love you so much that I always just wanted to sort of be in your orbit, but never really mattering enough to be in the home with you.” I won’t lay out the last one because I just typed it out and it felt mean but yeah, if the person you loved most in the world was involved in this kind of a situation would you think that is what is best for them and everyone is doing their best for them?"
I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what you mean here. If you mean "X is Y's primary, but Y is X's secondary", I agree that's not a good kind of relationship. I don't really see it happen and I think people would be against it with their usual "be against specific unhealthy dynamics" module. If you mean "do you think someone will help their other partners find primaries and build happy families", then yes, this seems to be what happens. I wrote my partner's dating site profile, and my wife actually tried to match up one of her partners with a mutual friend last week.
I do hope that I'm adding (rather than subtracting) to most of my partners' lives, and they're adding (rather than subtracting) to mine. I don't want to do too much personal infodumping to you, but one of my partners helped me through a really hard time, let me live with them when I had nowhere else to live, and was partly responsible for me starting this blog. Another comes over once or twice a week to help take care of our children. I've helped one of my partners get their business to work, and am helping another partner and her husband figure out IVF and genetic screening issues.
I continue to be interested in knowing the exact way it doesn't work at scale. We have Aella's survey data which says poly relationships seem to last as long as mono and have the same level of self-rated security and satisfaction. If you tell me a specific theory about the problem with poly relationships, I can probably get Aella to test it.
I’ll email you for the sake of observing the forms of truth-seeking but I would advise you to ignore it because you have twins who matter way more. I feel like I’m scolding someone who is gay about being gay and that isn’t my intent. You’re a person, whatever a perfect relationship might be with zero entropy at zero degrees kelvin doesn’t matter as much as your humanity. If you have history with people that certainly matters and it’s very important.
I have my own bullshit which I fully admit might color my views here. I doubt I’ll be able to think up some test that could be obtained by filtering some columns in a spreadsheet that someone hasn’t already filtered. But I’ll see if I can’t think of something worth typing up an email over.
Everything you're saying makes sense and I'm not upset. I hope I'm not crossing the line by discussing your childhood trauma too dispassionately. I'll probably ask people in general for a test in a Highlights From The Comments post, so don't feel obligated to figure one out if you're not excited about doing so.
Email sent and likewise no offense taken.
> That single moms shouldn't remarry?
Trivers' theory of genetic conflict raises its head here. It's bad for her existing children, but can permit her to have additional children who have entirely different interests.