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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   21702 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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Scott’s article lists ways we could regulate love but don’t, including:

  • Dating licenses can be revoked for sufficiently serious crimes - eg cheating, domestic abuse, or persistent alcoholism/drug use.
  • Centralized government database of who is in a relationship with whom at any given time. You can check the database to make sure your partner isn’t leading a double life.

We have this, it’s called marriage. Historically the community has regulated love quite closely, and its recent failure to do so has led to plummeting birth rates, MeToo, and record levels of celibacy.

It is also the case that Scott is a rich man with a literal harem. As he says himself:

my wife is objectively the best person in the world, and I can’t be fully dissatisfied with any system that allowed me to find her.

People who do well under the current system want to keep it. Incels and people whose wages were driven down by cheap labour don't, for obvious reasons.

EDIT: A number of people commented saying that Scott had given up the polyamory post-marriage. Quote from Highlights From the Comments on Polyamory:

"I want my wife to definitely be the most important person in my life and vice versa. But I find I can carve out a category “secondary partner” that doesn’t interfere with this, any more than her having friends , hobbies, children, etc interferes with this. Probably other people’s psychology doesn’t work this way, and those people wouldn’t enjoy being poly."

It is also the case that Scott is a rich man with a literal harem

What? I think people have been taking the poly angle a little too liberally here; he got legally married and immediately had kids, that's not Bay Area poly paradise fuck sixteen people every week we don't normatively impose gender or orientation here sign up to the list for my birthday gangbang practice. Besides, I feel uncomfortable discussing his personal life like this, but I don't think he has a harem or anything close to it (unless you count all the followers of the Real Caliph as being his intellectual groupies, in which case I admit the soft impeachment).

Historically the community has regulated love quite closely, and its recent failure to do so has led to plummeting birth rates

Big, if true.

I suppose historic attitudes on this were different, it's odd that has become one of the holdouts on government intervention.

And I don't feel that community regulation is equivalent to government regulation.

I don't feel that community regulation is equivalent to government regulation.

On the basis of distance from you, or the ability to send you to prison, or something else? Your post talks about disliking having your friends chosen for you by your parents and goes on to discuss the government, so I assumed you saw them both as being somewhat similar.

Could you add more detail? Or point to a post where you’ve discussed this?

I don't feel that community regulation is equivalent to government regulation.

On the basis of distance from you, or the ability to send you to prison, or something else?

I think you can't have neither, and at worst you'll have both. And they do have many different characteristics.

Your post talks about disliking having your friends chosen for you by your parents and goes on to discuss the government, so I assumed you saw them both as being somewhat similar.

I made the comparison mostly to give some sense to people of how it feels. I picked the most relatable experience I could think of. Not the most similar comparison.

Could you add more detail? Or point to a post where you’ve discussed this?

Detail on what specifically?

I made the comparison mostly to give some sense to people of how it feels. I picked the most relatable experience I could think of. Not the most similar comparison.

Thanks, I get where you're coming from now.

It is also the case that Scott is a rich man with a literal harem.

How does he have a literal harem? As far as I recall, he was in a polycule with Ozy and one other person. Is there some more information about his relationships I'm not aware of?

He’s married, and has a secondary on the side.

Wait, who is the secondary? My understanding is that the polycule was a thing of the past.

I think it came up at some point in the last six months of Astral Codex but I had a quick scan and didn't see it. I still think it's true but take with a pinch of salt.

EDIT: he mentioned it again in an article this week. See parent comment.

If we're going to have this whole discussion about regulation, it is perhaps worth noting that for many, this would have been understood to be a contradiction or at least a betrayal - the affair at best is an undermining or a betrayal of the marriage, or at worst, is a sign that he isn't validly married at all.

(Traditionally, valid marriage requires intent - to marry someone, both you and they must agree to marry each other, freely, with full knowledge of what marriage is. Given that Scott and presumably his partner did not intend sexual fidelity to one another when they said their vows, their vows are deficient - they were not made with correct understanding of what marriage is, nor with the intent to constitute a marriage properly understood. Ergo he is not married as such. This is still the formal position of e.g. the Catholic Church.)

At any rate, yes, I think it is probably true to say that Scott's situation is highly atypical, and not a good one to generalise from. Does he feel subjectively happy? No idea. But the rules that govern his relationships are weird, and would not work for all or most.

I feel like this whole Bay Area rationalist scene is a group that - and I don't mean this pejoratively, though I realise it may sound like this - would benefit from acknowledging their own freakiness. They are a small, highly-selected group of weirdos. They are bizarre. They should not generalise from themselves to humanity. This is the case for most small highly-selected groups, and it is always worth remembering. Most people are not like you.

We don’t say “freakiness” we say “outlier” or “tail of the Bell curve” or “unrepresentative” or “three standard deviations out”.

As sweet as Scott is being, I doubt his wife is ‘out of his league’ in looks or any other way. And he doesn’t have a ‘harem’, he’s just Bay Area Poly, and I doubt that he’s hugely more popular with the ladies than his wife is with men.

He’s being romantic of course. As for having a ‘harem’, I put it that way because I seethe with jealousy for dramatic effect, but AFAIK he is in a long-term relationship with a secondary partner along with the wife and I think that counts.

But I do note that he stopped writing searing articles about the plight of awkward young men not long after his blog blew up in popularity. And I do kind of resent him for writing a cheerful paean to free-for-all love now that he’s got what he personally wanted.

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