Poly marriage?

"What discussions are germane to LW discourse?" is currently an open question being discussed. For example, in Focus on Rationality, Oscar_Cunningham demarcates germane vs not-germane by the following criterion:

I'm suggesting is that LessWrong posts [...] should focus on rationality. They can talk about other things too, but the question should always be "What can X teach us about rationality?"

By that criterion, this post certainly isn't germane. But I disagree with Oscar and think his criterion is too restrictive. I laid out my thoughts (albeit in a stream of consciousness) here. The gist of what I said is this:

LW should definitely have a focus on learning epistemic/instrumental rationality. But I'd also like to posts on applying rationality to important topics. I think both can compliment each other nicely, and both are useful.

Even by that looser criterion, I am finding this post to be outside what I find acceptable for LW discourse. Like I said, it may be an interesting set of questions. And I agree with you that it is a bit of an unusual issue. But when I log onto discussion, it's just not the type of conversation I am looking for. There's something else missing from the topic needed for me to include it in the set of topics I approve for LW. And moreover, the set of topics the majority of people approve for LW.

Alternatively, it may be just you're looking for. In that regard, I think you're in a minority of posters. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to turn this from a divergence of values into a disagreement on facts. Since values on the issue seem to cluster around positions like Oscar's and mine more so than yours, it's an uphill battle for you. Like what happened in this thread, others will be pretty quickly down voted.

About the other point: I find the point of whether this discussion boarders on the political much more clear cut. The OP knows that gay marriage is a heated political issue. I think it's a fair inference that they know polygamy is, too. The OP brings up both, as well as the question of whether "polies [should] campaign for the right for a civil union."

Now, I don't think most regulars would come into this post and try to intentionally politicize this issue more than it already is. Regulars likely know better than to do that. Actually, I think it is possible that some LW-ers, advanced in rationality, could have a reasonable conversation about the issue.

But so far as I understand it, the scenario of one bad political discussion is not why we have a rule against political discussions. Our rule against political discussions is, in part, a Schelling fence against one good political discussion leading to more political discussions, some of which likely won't be as successful. But those political discussions serve as a slippery slope to more, even worse political discussions. One reason for that is the kind of person political discussions generally appeal to and would attract to LW. (Read: people without the knowledge of what actually can make a political discussion successful.) And so on and so forth, I trust you know how a slippery slope argument works.

As with the first issue of LW discourse, you're free to disagree with me on this. If you were to write up arguments for why we should broaden our boundaries of what we consider germane or for why the no politics rule should be weakened/repealed, then that would be contrarianism worth reading. Who knows, popular opinion might change. (Especially if your arguments are sound and LW-ers are otherwise rational enough to have political conversations. If the majority couldn't change their minds on this non-political issue given a sound argument, then political discussions certainly wouldn't work.)

Until the point when community norms/rules are changed, I still think that this post violates them. So my disapproval and down vote remains. I think I've said all I have to say on the topic and have other priorities at the moment, so I'm tapping out. Please feel free to take the last word.

I'd wait for the current struggles over gay marriage to die down

It has died some time ago in more socially progressive countries, but none recognize a group marriage, so, I agree, clearly social mores are not the only or even the main issue.

My guess would be that, just like in Physics, in Law the general n-body problem (ahem) is much less tractable than the two body problem. I suspect that there are many relevant legal issues that have not been even touched and will have to be addressed, before a reasonable group marriage framework can be constructed. Child custody/support/rights, potential for spousal abuse are some of those.

On general grounds, one would also expect the stability of such a union be much less than that of a 2-person one, thus reducing the need for legal protection. Most polys freely admit that they have a "primary" and one or more secondaries, who are not in an equal position. Again, the analogy with orbital motion is quite interesting, but I will not push it further.

(in particular given the increased instability of a relationship the more people who are part of it)

Children by default stay in the marriage, unless the judge rules that the it would be best for the parent leaving the marriage to have full custody. Voila problem solved.

Downvoted for "Disingenuous". If you disagree with a point, it is generally better to just counter it, than to accuse the commenter of making it in bad faith.

ETA: Downvote removed, following removal of the accusation.

Do you mean normatively or descriptively (i.e. “a sufficient reason why we should denied”, or “why we have denied”)? I agree with the former, but I'm not so sure about the latter.

ITYM 'good'?

Yes thank you for the correction.

I've certainly heard the argument that polygamy is tied into oppressive social structures, and therefore legitimizing it would be bad.

Same argument can and has been applied to other kinds of marriage.

Would you say this is rationalization?

Yes. Because legalizing such marriage would if anything improve the legal standing and options available to the women in such marriages. It would also ensure fairer distribution of resources, not to mention custody issues in case one of the parents dies. Also Polygamous marriages in the US and Europe are a fact on the ground, a social reality, that we should deal with. Refusing to do so is just perpetuating discrimination.

FWIW I'm very skeptical of the whole "status explains everything" notion in general.

Status doesn't explain everything, it does explain situations like this.

Should we use eugenic reasons forbid the marriage of women over 40 planing on having babies as well? The defect rate in children is the same just so you know. In the Western world most people are pretty out-bred, one generation of inbreeding does very little damage and very few Westerners will choose to marry their cousins generation after generation.

The parents were statistically matched with a control group of unrelated parents for age and socioeconomic factors.

Do "socioeconomic factors" include the parents' IQ?

I've seen it argued somewhere that the acceptability of cousin marriage in society also relates significantly to the presence of corruption/nepotism/tribal thinking in that society.

You mean hbdchick?

Yes. Because I originally didn't think people here would need that explicitly argued against. I will make the edict explicit.

In general I treat any relationship lasting more than about five years without a major destabilizing crisis as stable. The relationships I'm thinking about... hm. I'd estimate the mean to be about seven years. Of course, the mean relationship time of my cohort increases as I get older.

It's also worth asking how one should treat open relationships. That is, I know a lot of stable couples who have had third and fourth parties involved in their relationship for a year or two or four; I don't consider those stable triads or quads, but neither do I consider them monogamous relationships.

I should probably also note that I reject the pervasive cultural notion that a relationship that ends in something other than death has somehow failed.

People are bad at predicting what legal protections they may need in the future, and marriage covers a lot of them. Boilerplates are useful even in fields where there is pretty arbitrary freedom to customize.

Boilerplates are great and as you say they are available and in common usage even when there are arbitrary legal restrictions preventing all other possible arrangements. So there is no practical reason that we need to be prevented from making our own contracts.

Current marriage laws and traditional implementations thereof by the legal system are hostile to my interests for reasons including but not limited to being grossly sexist. It would take rather extreme extenuating circumstances for me to be willing to enter into such a contract. Mind you this government interference isn't nearly as offensive to me as the laws preventing me from purchasing and using drugs as I choose including such things as anabolic androgenic steroids and cognitive enhancing drugs but at least the latter legal restrictions are of the kind that can be ignored in principle.

An example of a legal contract that cannot be entered in to: One partner agrees to have children with the other on the condition that in the case of separation they will not be obliged to provide ongoing financial payments to their former partner. Not being able to make such an arrangement means that couples who would otherwise have - and expect to benefit from - children. (Of course for signalling reasons current situations are more likely to describe their aversion in purely emotion based language without admitting to real reasons. The effect remains.)

Marriage isn't just boilerplate for private agreements. It gives married people legal privileges: custody of children, hospital visiting rights, rights to decide partner's medical treatment in an emergency, tax reductions in some jurisdictions (usually for joint-owned property or for inheritance between the married partners), and so on.

Lack of good boilerplate for marriage-like agreements isn't the problem. In many states, private agreements cannot grant most of these legal rights. That's why abolishing government-defined and -controlled marriage is a prerequisite to equal-rights private agreements.

Nothing wrong with boilerplates, when they're not based on hundreds of years of sexist out-dated religious thought and enshrined in laws.

It's a social issue because there are social rules about how it works. It's not a government issue because they aren't rules people should (or do) get punished for breaking. Also, because it's nigh impossible for the government to control it anyway. They can refrain from calling you married, but they can't really keep you from living together, having sex, and possibly deciding to have kids. Not everyone that lives together is in a relationship. The government isn't going to know if you have sex. They could take away your kids and/or force you to get an abortion, but they won't.

Animals aren't citizens. Animals can't understand the idea of marriage. They can make something similar to marriage for zoophiles, but it's not going to be the same. It's not going to be fair.

The reason why I considered this is because I think genuine bonding at least with long lived animals produces humans who care about nature more as well as provides social benefits to those who can't find humans who would interact with them in this way.

By de-stigmatizing and even commending such relationships, perhaps clearly differentiating them from animal hoarders (who do themselves and the animals harm by trying to "take care" of too many), we would ideally cause more such relationships to develop.

My opinion on people interacting and bonding with social robots or programs is similar.

This may be a dumb question on my part, but is this from personal observation, studies you know of, other?

You know, I just looked it up and the evidence is less clear cut than I thought. In American poly culture, couples who want to date a woman are much more common than couples that want to date a man. Woman who want to date couples are called "unicorns", while men who want to date a couple don't have a word. But this kind of evidence cuts both ways; there are lots of couples that want women, but few women are jumping to date a couple.

Also: the existence of the cuckold subculture, where men ask their wives/girlfriends to have sex with other men. There are a few women who want the reverse, but there's not a subculture for it.

Wikipedia also describes some cultures where polyandry is practiced. It also says that polyandrous animals tend to have the females be larger than males, while polygynous animals tend to have males bigger than females. Since men are bigger than women, this is evidence that humans are polygynous rather than polyandrous.

It's not like we live in a "fair" universe where every male is entitled to a female.

Isn't that the point? Indeed because there's no law of physics preventing more than n men from experiencing long-term involuntary celibacy, since all other things being equal an universe where (n + 1) men out of N experience it is arguably worse than one where n men out of N experience it, then it's up to us to make the former case less likely (unless the costs outweigh the benefits).

Women are willing to share a man, and the man is unwilling to share his women.

Hrm... not sure such a bias makes sense, especially in a group marriage where everyone was involved in raising the kids, for example. (Again though, I'm not saying these things are unsolvable. Just... there's a bunch of little things like that that would, in fact, have to be specified.)

(I'll avoid commenting here on the extent to which the system presently mucks things up, since that's outside the scope of the discussion.)

The tenure/seniority rule does seem to be a shaky one. Anyways, I'm not claiming that these are unsolvable, merely that "legalize poly marriage" is insufficiently specified, and there's several tunable parameters that need to be tuned.

You propose for marriage to be non transitive. That's fine, but then that does lead to other things like how tax/insurance/etc should work. (One possibility would be that joint filing benefits be completely separated from marriage and instead work like this: Anyone is allowed to jointly file with ONE other person.)

There will be a number of other things that need to be addressed, though. I'm not at all opposed to poly stuff, merely that if one wants some form of legally recognized poly marriage, my question is basically this"what... precisely, is it you want the law to do? Taboo 'legalized poly marriage'"