META: This is an example of what I consider beyond the boundaries of germane LW discourse. It also boarders on violating the no-politics rule. Though the author raises some interesting questions and I trust their intentions were honest, I am down voting in net disapproval.
Tackling interesting and unusual issues is very much a "germane LW discourse". And I don't see this crowd trying to politicize this particular issue.
"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 somethin...
Adapting the law on man-woman unions to also cover man-man unions does not involve any technical hurdles on the legal side, it's just applying existing laws in a slightly different context.
Marriage with more than two people, however, would require many changes to the text of the law (except in places where the law already covers polygamy).
This. Poly marriage is also more complicated because of child custody (in particular given the increased instability of a relationship the more people who are part of it). Also significant is that there are multiple kinds of poly arrangements and covering them all in a useful legal way is difficult.
I say this as someone generally supportive of poly relationships. Eventually it'll be a fight worth having, but I'd wait for the current struggles over gay marriage to die down (I give that about 20-30 years)
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.
I think the real reason people in the social circles LWers tend to hang around in oppose poly marriage is because they don't want icky Muslim and Mormon men getting married to more than one woman.
People likely to practice polygamous marriage are low status in our societies, thus we tend to see forbidding that as a good idea. This is how humans work. Everything added onto this is just clever rationalization imo.
I tend to agree. Customizable contracts would be the best solution.
For some reason I'm picturing the Creative Commons licenses.
I think laws forbidding cousin marriage are unfair and should be the next target of civil rights activism. Incest laws in general makes no sense except as a eugenics measure. Either we dump these laws or we judge all eugenic measures that rise above it in the cost-benefit metric as acceptable. Else we are just picking and tormenting loving couples because of some historic baggage.
And where is the transhumanist spirit? Technology lets a brother and a sister have as healthy a baby as anyone else's.
Edit: Added the eugenic argument, I originally didn't think I would need to.
Incest laws in general makes no sense.
I believe I've previously pointed out inbreeding depression to you; from Jensen 1969:
...In Japan approximately 5% of all marriages are between cousins. Schull and Neel studied the offspring of marriages of first cousins, first cousins once removed, and second cousins. The parents were statistically matched with a control group of unrelated parents for age and socioeconomic factors. Children from the cousin marriages and the control children from unrelated parents (total N=2111) were given the Japanese version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC). The degree of consanguinity represented by the cousin marriages in this study had the effect of depressing WISC IQs by an average of 7.4%, making the mean of the inbred group nearly 8 IQ points lower than the mean of the control group. Assuming normal distributions of IQ, the effect is shown in Figure 9, and illustrates the point that the most drastic consequences of group mean differences are to be seen in the tails of the distributions. In the same study, a similar depressing effect was found for other polygenic characteristics such as several anthropometric and dental variables.
T
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.
Should we use eugenic reasons forbid the marriage of women over 40 planing on having babies as well?
Yes. We should also encourage the use of sperm donors as resulting in 1/5 the birth defect rate. (On a large scale, this advantage would erode, but that is easily dealt with by encouraging men to donate more and treating them less like crap; we can think of it as 'sperm banking', akin to existing practice of 'egg banking'.)
In the Western world most people are pretty out-bred, one generation of inbreeding does very little damage
Do you know this, or are you guessing? If I were to go looking for any studies in out-bred populations, at how many points of average IQ damage would you concede the point?
Yes. We should also encourage the use of sperm donors as resulting in 1/5 the birth defect rate.
Ok you win eugenics is a good idea. But after designer babies are the norm, this rationale becomes obsolete.
I know a few stable triads, a couple of stable quads, a triad that became a quad after about ten years and two couples about two years after that, and a household that I don't quite know how to characterize but is closer to a line marriage than to any other relationship model I know of. As far as I know, all of them want legal protections that reflect the reality of their relationships. Some of them pursue that on their own, with lawyers; others of them shrug their shoulders and do without those protections. One of the stable quads presents as two married couples.
Allow people to enter into whatever legally binding contracts they so desire regarding relationships. Abandon the limitation to one specific "marriage" contract.
I think the government should just not get involved in marriage. It's a social and religious issue, not a government one. Also, there's no good way to make marriage work for zoophiles.
Do polies want to marry each other or do such relationships not lend themselves to permanence above a threshold of partners?
I personally know one three-person poly family that consider themselves married and would be legally married if they had the option. I know of others as well.
Some changes would need to happen for poly families to get the same rights as married couples, particularly when it comes to taxes. And I assume that some hub-bub would be created about sanctity, and people getting married "just for tax reasons," and I am sure someon...
I wonder what kind of legal recognition might work to encourage and recognize pet owners who have developed particularly deep (I'm not talking sexual necessarily) bonds to their pets. Considering the benefits of such relationships to society I think they deserve some recognition, not really marriage (which was brought up by some commenters), but something.
After all, many if not all the arguments for gay marriage apply to poly marriage as well.
Actually I oppose all state sanctioned marriage.
My position is that polygamy should be tolerated, but not celebrated (or recognized by law). My reasons:
1) It will probably lead to a shortage of women, as some men hog all the women for themselves. Women are more willing to share a man than vice-versa. (Whether this is cultural or biological is irrelevant. Either way you'll end up with a shortage of women.)
2) Poly marriages are not as stable as two person relationships. The more premises an argument has, the less likely it is to be sound; so too for marriage. Dan Savage says that he's been to number of "poly weddings", but has never been to a poly tenth anniversary party.
My understanding is that most polyamorous relationship aren't 3+ person groups where each partner is equally married to each other partner. Some are one person married to 2 (or more) people, and some are more like a married pair, where each partner (or just one partner) has secondary relationships. Polyamorous relationships can become pretty complex, and it seems like it might make more sense for polyamorous people to work out their contracts on an ad hoc basis, especially since polyamory (as opposed to cheating) seems to be extremely rare.
One estimate* ...
My general view is there's nothing inherently wrong with poly (although it's not for everyone), and legal stuff shouldn't be used to prevent poly relationships. However, poly marriage is more complex.
Legalizing gay marriage is, in a sense, trivial. The transformation of the law to allow it is fairly straightforward.
But having some form of legalized poly marriage is rather more complex, and it seems to me those complexities largely arise from the fact that, when legalizing it, you have to choose whether or not marriage will be transitive. Regardless of whic...
A thought occurred to me today as I skimmed an article in a rationality forum where the subject of gay marriage cropped up; seeing as the issue has been hotly contested in various public fora and especially the courts, what about poly? After all, many if not all the arguments for gay marriage apply to poly marriage as well.
Questions for LWers who are currently in a such a relationship, or have an opinion to share:
Do polies want to marry each other or do such relationships not lend themselves to permanence above a threshold of partners? Should polies campaign for the right for a civil union anyway? what are the up and down sides of this? etc