Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@thathopeyetlives

“cheating on marriage with a prostitute is OK” is Bad News. You’re looking at hyperpatriarchy there - the mortal consequences of it might be more… “contained” than either the anarchy we have today or the polygamy you attack, but it’s still very much not *good* even if you think mankind can permit adultery ever which it can’t.

Well, that’s Futurist Shitposting instincts - i.e., I proposed that combination because I find it hilarious, and also culture-shocking and weird relative to today, but feasible for a regime which is socially conservative in pragmatic synthesis ways, yet having retained a touch of the social liberalism of our time.

On the other hand, there are arguments to be made for it.

…which you’re already aware of, judging by what you just wrote there.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[squareallworthy]

The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao, but for any finite period of time with duration d there is a tellable tao T with duration d_T ≥ d.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

@industrialangel

What is your reasoning for the dislike of serial monogamy and extramarital sex? If your concerns are primarily focused on the continuation of nations/states through good childraising, I would expect an exception for extramarital sex that occurs without damaging the ability of a family to raise healthy productive kids. Privacy of one’s own bedroom and all that?

Something like that, which is why I haven’t heavily pushed policy along these lines, as I haven’t as heavily considered it and I’m hesitant to bring the iron hand of the state down and accidentally break something.

Some sort of new policy paradigm would be more appropriate, but I haven’t developed one in this case.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

@poipoipoi-2016

In response to that last, I’ve heard enough stories about my paternal grandparents to really want divorce to be a thing that happens more often, but at the same time, I heard enough stories about Grandma and her six husbands to be deeply suspect of divorce.

I realized that something related showed up in my life. There was a guy I knew online. Black guy living in a city. His step dad had him working at his small business, and it interfered with his ability to complete school. Then he was of age, and the step dad tried to kick him out, but he didn’t have a job, so he was sneaking into the house to avoid ending up homeless. His resume was terrible, just a few cobbled-together, unformatted paragraphs. I would say “shouldn’t they teach resume writing in school?” but even if they did, the terrible step dad might have had him working or something so that he wasn’t able to attend or complete that! But he was a decent guy, and had a good work ethic, so I went through carefully building a resume with him, and he got a job soon enough after and was able to move out. It’s no wonder he had been depressed earlier! And, like, in between then, we got advice from my ex-girlfriend’s partner, who has lived the low-class life, on how to try to keep him out of the street at night until he could move out.

But how many guys like him are out there, even in this country, you know? Who don’t have a hand-me-down laptop and a connection to a bunch of random nerds who know how to write a resume for him so he can get a stable income?

So I can’t really be a true GOPper, but also the risk with the step parents stuff is real.

[mitigatedchaos]

@neoliberalismnightly

still though, aren’t libraries a thing?

1. Is the library going to let him stay overnight?
   
2. Is the library going to tell him what he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know?
3. Is the library going to think to ask him to look at his resume to try and find out why he’s having so much trouble getting a job?
4. Is the library going to carefully go over his first draft at a new resume according to an intuition on writing these things by someone who can speak a bit of corporatese?
5. How fast can the library improve his professional (not casual, which in this case was fine due to his communicating on the internet a lot before) writing skills?  Is it fast enough?
6. Is the library going to help him filter the information he does receive in case some of it is junk?

Having libraries is good in part for these reasons, but it isn’t really enough.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@poipoipoi-2016

In response to that last, I’ve heard enough stories about my paternal grandparents to really want divorce to be a thing that happens more often, but at the same time, I heard enough stories about Grandma and her six husbands to be deeply suspect of divorce.

I realized that something related showed up in my life. There was a guy I knew online. Black guy living in a city. His step dad had him working at his small business, and it interfered with his ability to complete school. Then he was of age, and the step dad tried to kick him out, but he didn’t have a job, so he was sneaking into the house to avoid ending up homeless. His resume was terrible, just a few cobbled-together, unformatted paragraphs. I would say “shouldn’t they teach resume writing in school?” but even if they did, the terrible step dad might have had him working or something so that he wasn’t able to attend or complete that! But he was a decent guy, and had a good work ethic, so I went through carefully building a resume with him, and he got a job soon enough after and was able to move out. It’s no wonder he had been depressed earlier! And, like, in between then, we got advice from my ex-girlfriend’s partner, who has lived the low-class life, on how to try to keep him out of the street at night until he could move out.

But how many guys like him are out there, even in this country, you know? Who don’t have a hand-me-down laptop and a connection to a bunch of random nerds who know how to write a resume for him so he can get a stable income?

So I can’t really be a true GOPper, but also the risk with the step parents stuff is real.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.

vs.

It is exclusively non-African races, such as white people, who still carry hybrid human/Neanderthal genes.

in the same post.

[mitigatedchaos]

NEW IDEOLOGY UNLOCKED: NEONEANDETHAL WHITE REVIVALISM + ASIA™

As almost all land was once occupied by the neaderthals, only their closest descendants, such as the White Man, hold the ancestral rights to Earth.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[feotakahari]

As long as I’m picking fights:

“Actually, attacking LGBTs is one of the single dumbest things SoCons have done, because LGBTs do not actually undermine the nation just by being LGBT. In fact, gay marriage is good because stable family units are good, and we can incentivize the creation of stable queer families with similar methods to straight families.

“(Polygamy, as practiced by people that aren’t autistic-spectrum rationalists, is still bad though.) …

“It isn’t enough that I not marry my cousins and engage in polygamy. For my home to not be terrible, I must stop others from doing so as well. And if they want to make a place where those are the norms, then let them, and not me, suffer the consequences of that. I don’t need dumb social policies banned everywhere, only in the places I live in/am responsible for.”

I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.

I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.

Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.

To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.

[mitigatedchaos]

I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.

Are we immortal yet?  No?  Then it matters.  A lot.  Because each generation needs to create and raise the next generation.

The last time I checked, broken families are not good for people, statistically.  

You can choose to be single or unattached until you die.  It just doesn’t work as a way to structure mortal human societies, unless you are willing to do things that are, hmn… drastic.

I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.

Polygamy is bad along multiple axes.  

Polyamory, it hasn’t been proven.  

Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.

1. Polygamy is, generally, really polygyny, and married polygyny is bad for women, it’s bad for children, and it’s bad for men.

2. No one actually has to be trying to be an asshole, so long as most people are straight and men marry multiple wives more than women marry multiple husbands.

3. Not everyone is bisexual.

Alright?  So what are we supposed to do with all the “extra” men?

To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.

This isn’t about whether individual polyamorous people are mean.  It’s about the overall effect on society when polygamy is widely practiced, and “the overall effects on society when polygamy is widely practiced” are backwards anti-feminist-as-in-gender-equality societies when it’s a subset (even in developed countries), or the Middle East when it’s most of society.

When weird autistic (lovable!) internet nerds do it, it stays below the threshold necessary to fuck everything up, unless they’re foolish enough to start normalizing it and spreading it among normal people.

[feotakahari]

And that doesn’t seem at all cold-blooded to you?

When you get right down to it, I kind of suck at this “Utilitarianism” thing that I’ve built my life around. I stumbled ass-backwards into it because I don’t believe in human sacrifice, and “all human happiness has equal value” was the only way I could think of to avoid “some human happiness is worthless and can be freely discarded for the benefit of others.” I could try to build a rational argument for why some people being polyamorous doesn’t automatically lead to a massive spread of male-dominated polygamy that breaks society. But the reality is that after it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from gay couples so they’ll be raised properly, and it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from Native Americans so they’ll be raised properly, I’m inherently skeptical that children raised by folks who’re polyamorous will all turn out broken.

Also, someone tell @pervocracy he’s a “weird autistic lovable internet nerd.” You’re speaking about people like they’re overgrown children who aren’t capable of making their own decisions.

[mitigatedchaos]

And that doesn’t seem at all cold-blooded to you?

I recently made a post about how the tyranny of resource scarcity significantly limits our ability to provide medical care, so in fact, I can be cold-blooded.

I can even be cold-blooded and petty - I agree with Singapore’s decision to ban chewing gum because vandals were using it to disrupt the transit system.

When you get right down to it, I kind of suck at this “Utilitarianism” thing that I’ve built my life around.

You don’t need Utilitarianism to object to this: what have the “extra” “surplus” men done to deserve their situation?

But the reality is that after it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from gay couples so they’ll be raised properly, and it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from Native Americans so they’ll be raised properly, I’m inherently skeptical that children raised by folks who’re polyamorous will all turn out broken.

Ah, yes, we had all of those gay countries to compare to as an example.  So many of them.  And someone like me, who routinely suggests forming city-states to run political experiments, would never have suggested actually testing it on a smaller scale, which would have established just how (relatively) harmless it really was…

Look, we know what polygamy looks like in our countries (cruddy polygynous cults/backwards communities with “extra” “surplus” men).  We know what polygamy looks like when it’s the norm in a country (the Middle East).   We know single parenthood isn’t great, either.  

Hypergamy isn’t perfectly established, but it’s probably true enough to matter.  And once a social change has taken place, it’s difficult to put it back without great cruelty.

Also, polygamy is more dangerous than polyamory, but I don’t recommend polyamory to anyone.  You’ve got increased risk for STIs (much broader network of sexual contact), you’ve got the risk that they’ll fall in love with someone else and leave you, but without the increased transaction cost/friction of monoamory, you’re not their number one priority and if it comes down to a choice between you and someone else, they may pick someone else, you might just not even be poly, you could end up a single parent begging for money in online groups (okay okay, I wasn’t close to that particular drama, but it happens), etc.

(”But those are all risks in monogamy, too!”  Sure, but not ones that are part of the very structure of it.)

It’s not some kind of virtuous, enlightened thing we should all aspire to.  It’s just a preference that some people have.  It’s not even an orientation.

Also, someone tell @pervocracy he’s a “weird autistic lovable internet nerd.” You’re speaking about people like they’re overgrown children who aren’t capable of making their own decisions.

Oh, you think that’s what I meant by it?  

And not the more obvious “actually, because neurodivergents are different from neurotypicals, the outcome of neurodivergents doing something may be different than neurotypicals doing the same thing, particularly if there are fewer of them”?

[industrialangel]

Is serial monogamy a substantial improvement over polygamy?

As practiced in the US especially, the majority of people who get married/start a family do not remain together. Many of these relationships end after just a few years if I recall correctly. Divorce and new step parents can cause a lot of harm to children. I have had friends who have been neglected or abused by step parents or parents due to new monogamous relationships.

I would also love to hear thoughts on the impact of extramonogamous relationships. My understanding is that a large percentage of people in monogamous relationships in the US have had an affair. Do you think that monogamy or stable families are more important?

[mitigatedchaos]

As practiced in the US especially,

I don’t like serial monogamy, but I’m concerned that making it too hard to divorce might cause abuse levels (among adults) to increase, or just make things miserable for people.

(And yes, from what I understand, non-blood relatives are a major source of child abuse.)

My understanding is that a large percentage of people in monogamous relationships in the US have had an affair.

That’s a tough one.  My emotional instinct is to ban having sexual affairs, but that probably isn’t the right call.  Some people manage to work it out, and the ability to turn in your marriage partner for violation could lead to leverage for abuse.

My futurist shitposting instinct is to ban sex outside of their marriage for married people, except with a prostitute, then legalize some form of prostitution.  But I haven’t actually thought that one through.

---

Probably, resolving these issues will look weirder than what I have in mind right now.  I haven’t put tons of thought into this particular area of policy, other than that I don’t want to replicate the policies of known troubled communities.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

I will admit, when I realized that each generation must raise the next, and I mean really realized it, not just in passing, I became more right-wing.

[mitigatedchaos]

@silver-and-ivory why did you

If some subset of society just does whatever they want, as long as it’s not too big, then it doesn’t risk imploding society.  

However, for society to continue and be good to live in,

• Each generation must have and raise children
• These children must be raised to be of at least average virtue

Thus, the family is, in fact, one of the primary core units of society, and of great importance.  How people live, in the aggregate, matters a lot.  The education and raising of children matter a lot.  There is a maximum number ratio of wine-drenched spinsters and perpetual bachelors, beyond which, long-term, any nation will crumble.

How people live determines the wealth of society, the general pleasantness of society, and so on.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[feotakahari]

As long as I’m picking fights:

“Actually, attacking LGBTs is one of the single dumbest things SoCons have done, because LGBTs do not actually undermine the nation just by being LGBT. In fact, gay marriage is good because stable family units are good, and we can incentivize the creation of stable queer families with similar methods to straight families.

“(Polygamy, as practiced by people that aren’t autistic-spectrum rationalists, is still bad though.) …

“It isn’t enough that I not marry my cousins and engage in polygamy. For my home to not be terrible, I must stop others from doing so as well. And if they want to make a place where those are the norms, then let them, and not me, suffer the consequences of that. I don’t need dumb social policies banned everywhere, only in the places I live in/am responsible for.”

I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.

I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.

Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.

To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.

[mitigatedchaos]

I can’t bring myself to care about “stable family units.” I just can’t. The only reason I give a crap one way or another about gay marriage is that I know some gay people who want to be married, and I like those gay people and want them to be happy.

Are we immortal yet?  No?  Then it matters.  A lot.  Because each generation needs to create and raise the next generation.

The last time I checked, broken families are not good for people, statistically.  

You can choose to be single or unattached until you die.  It just doesn’t work as a way to structure mortal human societies, unless you are willing to do things that are, hmn… drastic.

I’m not sure if there’s meant to be a distinction between “polygamy” and polyamory in this post, but I know some polyamorous people. I like those people, and I want them to be happy, and that apparently means making polyamory into a thing that is considered acceptable.

Polygamy is bad along multiple axes.  

Polyamory, it hasn’t been proven.  

Maybe “polygamists” as a class will make your home terrible. But I’ve never met “polygamists” as a class, just as I’ve never met “gay people” as a class. I’ve met individual people, and some of the individual people I have met don’t seem like they make society worse just by being present. Sure, I’ve also met polyamorous people who were assholes, but I think they’d be better covered by a rule against being assholes than a rule against being polyamorous.

1. Polygamy is, generally, really polygyny, and married polygyny is bad for women, it’s bad for children, and it’s bad for men.

2. No one actually has to be trying to be an asshole, so long as most people are straight and men marry multiple wives more than women marry multiple husbands.

3. Not everyone is bisexual.

Alright?  So what are we supposed to do with all the “extra” men?

To be clear, this is not to say that I don’t like you or don’t want you to be happy. I just feel like if you met some of the polyamorous people I’ve met, you’d have more in common with them than you seem to think.

This isn’t about whether individual polyamorous people are mean.  It’s about the overall effect on society when polygamy is widely practiced, and “the overall effects on society when polygamy is widely practiced” are backwards anti-feminist-as-in-gender-equality societies when it’s a subset (even in developed countries), or the Middle East when it’s most of society.

When weird autistic (lovable!) internet nerds do it, it stays below the threshold necessary to fuck everything up, unless they’re foolish enough to start normalizing it and spreading it among normal people.

[feotakahari]

And that doesn’t seem at all cold-blooded to you?

When you get right down to it, I kind of suck at this “Utilitarianism” thing that I’ve built my life around. I stumbled ass-backwards into it because I don’t believe in human sacrifice, and “all human happiness has equal value” was the only way I could think of to avoid “some human happiness is worthless and can be freely discarded for the benefit of others.” I could try to build a rational argument for why some people being polyamorous doesn’t automatically lead to a massive spread of male-dominated polygamy that breaks society. But the reality is that after it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from gay couples so they’ll be raised properly, and it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from Native Americans so they’ll be raised properly, I’m inherently skeptical that children raised by folks who’re polyamorous will all turn out broken.

Also, someone tell @pervocracy he’s a “weird autistic lovable internet nerd.” You’re speaking about people like they’re overgrown children who aren’t capable of making their own decisions.

[mitigatedchaos]

And that doesn’t seem at all cold-blooded to you?

I recently made a post about how the tyranny of resource scarcity significantly limits our ability to provide medical care, so in fact, I can be cold-blooded.

I can even be cold-blooded and petty - I agree with Singapore’s decision to ban chewing gum because vandals were using it to disrupt the transit system.

When you get right down to it, I kind of suck at this “Utilitarianism” thing that I’ve built my life around.

You don’t need Utilitarianism to object to this: what have the “extra” “surplus” men done to deserve their situation?

But the reality is that after it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from gay couples so they’ll be raised properly, and it turned out we don’t actually need to take children away from Native Americans so they’ll be raised properly, I’m inherently skeptical that children raised by folks who’re polyamorous will all turn out broken.

Ah, yes, we had all of those gay countries to compare to as an example.  So many of them.  And someone like me, who routinely suggests forming city-states to run political experiments, would never have suggested actually testing it on a smaller scale, which would have established just how (relatively) harmless it really was…

Look, we know what polygamy looks like in our countries (cruddy polygynous cults/backwards communities with “extra” “surplus” men).  We know what polygamy looks like when it’s the norm in a country (the Middle East).   We know single parenthood isn’t great, either.  

Hypergamy isn’t perfectly established, but it’s probably true enough to matter.  And once a social change has taken place, it’s difficult to put it back without great cruelty.

Also, polygamy is more dangerous than polyamory, but I don’t recommend polyamory to anyone.  You’ve got increased risk for STIs (much broader network of sexual contact), you’ve got the risk that they’ll fall in love with someone else and leave you, but without the increased transaction cost/friction of monoamory, you’re not their number one priority and if it comes down to a choice between you and someone else, they may pick someone else, you might just not even be poly, you could end up a single parent begging for money in online groups (okay okay, I wasn’t close to that particular drama, but it happens), etc.

(”But those are all risks in monogamy, too!”  Sure, but not ones that are part of the very structure of it.)

It’s not some kind of virtuous, enlightened thing we should all aspire to.  It’s just a preference that some people have.  It’s not even an orientation.

Also, someone tell @pervocracy he’s a “weird autistic lovable internet nerd.” You’re speaking about people like they’re overgrown children who aren’t capable of making their own decisions.

Oh, you think that’s what I meant by it?  

And not the more obvious “actually, because neurodivergents are different from neurotypicals, the outcome of neurodivergents doing something may be different than neurotypicals doing the same thing, particularly if there are fewer of them”?