I experienced a discussion on facebook a few months ago where someone tried to calmly have a discussion, of course it being facebook it failed, but I am interested in the idea, and wanted to see if it can be carried out here calmly, knowing it is potentially of controversy. I first automatically felt negative to the discussion but then I system-2′d it and realised I don’t know what the answers might be:
The historic basis of relationships was for procreation and child rearing purposes. In the future I expect that to not be the case. either with designer-babies, or just plenty of non-natural birthing solutions as to make the next generation make-able without needing to go through a regular-family structure.
At that time, the potential for intra-family sexual relations would be possible and not at all whatsoever biologically-risky of causing genetic abnormalities.
How will the world’s opinion change about intra-family intra-relations in the future?
Potentially anyone consenting could have sexual encounters with anyone else who is also consenting. However there are existing relationships where one party carries the power—i.e. parent-child, where even if the child is above consenting age (even as far as 10+ years above the age of consent) there can still be power held by the parent over the child.
That was the only point of value before the thread turned to a mush-zone.
Of course there already exist normal relationships with power imbalances. And as was mentioned a few days ago here—an abusive relationship sucks if its from an AI to you, or from a human partner to you.
The big phrase to keep in mind for incest is “conflict of interest”. We are expected to keep certain kinds of social relations with our relatives. Also having romantic and sexual relationships conflicts with those.
Furthermore, because there is a natural tendency for humans to be less attracted to close relatives than to others, it is in practice very likely that a sexual/romantic relationship with a close relative will be dysfunctional in other ways—so likely that we may be better off just outlawing them period even if they are not necessarily dysfunctional.
I am of the opinion that I am “of similar brain” genetically and phenotypically and equally theoretically “of similar mind” to people who are related to me. Therefore able to get along with them better. When looking for partners today, I look for people “of similar mind”, or at least I feel like its a criteria of mine.
Do you have a source for “natural tendency for humans to be less attracted to close relatives than to others”? I am interested.
There are other mechanism that prevent siblings that lived together as children from developing romantic interest in each other as well. As a result most cases of incest between siblings are not by siblings that lived together as children.
That has impressive applications on why foreigners or “exotic” people have a bonus placed on them for desirability. I must say I did know about MHC mechanism, and the studies done on birds, but not the human one. Also I did not connect the two.
I don’t see any moral reason why this should not happen, aside from deontological. It’s possible to make the case that you would be more likely to end up in a dsyfunctional relationship, but it’s possible to make the opposite case too—you have a much better idea of what the person is REALLY like before entering into a relationship with them, so you’re less likely to enter into a relationship if you’re incompatible.
I think this is one of those “gay marriage 50 years ago” things. People are going to come up with all sorts of excuses why it’s wrong, simply because they’re not comfortable with it.
I think this is one of those “gay marriage 50 years ago” …
That’s partway where the original discussion was going.
less likely to enter into a relationship if you’re incompatible.
if only that were true for all people who enter relationships.
(rational relationships is a recent pet topic of mine)
I would apply the rule that I apply to polyamory—there are ways to do it wrong, and ways to do it less wrong. I do wonder if it has an inherent wrongness risk to it, but people probably implied that about being gay 50 years ago...
It could be, for anything that people aren’t comfortable with. This isn’t in any way a rebuttal to arguments—it’s an explanation for bad/non-arguments.
I think this is one of those “gay marriage 50 years ago” things. People are going to come up with all sorts of excuses why it’s wrong, simply because they’re not comfortable with it.
And do you have evidence they were wrong? According to gay activist groups themselves half of all male homosexual relationships are abusive, for example.
Almost all of the evidence I’ve seen has shown they’re wrong. A quick google for statistics on incidences of abuse vs. heterosexual relationships showed they were wrong, and the few sources I’ve seen (which I couldn’t find through my quick google) that showed the opposite where from biased organizations already predisposed against homosexuality.
I could be convinced of the opposite, but that one sentence you gave will hardly bump my prior.
In the absence of a singularity, I would not expect this to become widely accepted within my lifetime. I’d say polyamory is the next type of relation likely to become tolerated and that is still at least ten years off. Incest is probably only slightly less despised than pedophilia, but I’ve seen pedophilia frequently equated with murder, so that’s not saying much. Bestiality is probably the least likely thing I’d expect to become accepted. None of these three are going to happen within a timeframe I’d feel comfortable making predictions about, but never is a really long time so who knows.
The historic basis of relationships was for procreation and child rearing purposes. In the future I expect that to not be the case. either with designer-babies, or just plenty of non-natural birthing solutions as to make the next generation make-able without needing to go through a regular-family structure.
How is this relevant? All these technologies are for producing embryos. You still need people to raise the children the same as before. And I would be very surprised if child-raising AI isn’t sex-bot complete (ie if we didn’t thoroughly decouple sex from human relationships long before we decouple child rearing from human relationships.
Raising children is definitely a factor in “why we have relationships”, but for now I was talking about “why we have taboos around relationships that happen between close genetic people”, especially when we solve the problem of close-genetic negative effects.
Wouldn’t “inter-family” be between different families? I’m not sure, but “intra-family” makes more sense to me, if you’re trying to refer to incestuous relationships. A quick google search suggests the same.
I’m not sure what society will do, but I don’t see anything wrong with incest or incestuous relationships in general, and don’t believe that they should be illegal. That’s not to say that incestuous relationships can’t have something wrong with them, but from what I can tell, incestuous relationships that have something wrong with them are due to reasons separate to the fact that they are incestuous (paedophilic, abusive, power imbalance, whatever).
Thanks for this. I believe, based on the responses that this might classify as an interesting and soon outdated; old-world belief. Glad to have made note of the idea.
I have no support for it, or personal interest, but I am also entirely not against it either.
The historic basis of relationships was for procreation and child rearing purposes.
Um, no. The historic basis of relationships was allying for a common goal. Or, did you mean sexual relationships. In that case it would be helpful to define what you mean by “sexual”, especially once it’s no longer connected to reproduction.
In the future I expect that to not be the case. either with designer-babies, or just plenty of non-natural birthing solutions as to make the next generation make-able without needing to go through a regular-family structure.
That would turn humans into a eusocial species. That change is likely to have a much bigger and more important effect then whatever ways of creating superstimulus by non-reproductively rubbing genitals are socially allowed.
granted. A historic reason for a relationship is procreation. but you are grasping at things that were not relevant to the original point and question, which was mostly answered by others in the suggestion of some concepts missing from my map.
ways of creating superstimulus by non-reproductively rubbing genitals are socially allowed.
I experienced a discussion on facebook a few months ago where someone tried to calmly have a discussion, of course it being facebook it failed, but I am interested in the idea, and wanted to see if it can be carried out here calmly, knowing it is potentially of controversy. I first automatically felt negative to the discussion but then I system-2′d it and realised I don’t know what the answers might be:
The historic basis of relationships was for procreation and child rearing purposes. In the future I expect that to not be the case. either with designer-babies, or just plenty of non-natural birthing solutions as to make the next generation make-able without needing to go through a regular-family structure.
At that time, the potential for intra-family sexual relations would be possible and not at all whatsoever biologically-risky of causing genetic abnormalities.
How will the world’s opinion change about intra-family intra-relations in the future?
Potentially anyone consenting could have sexual encounters with anyone else who is also consenting. However there are existing relationships where one party carries the power—i.e. parent-child, where even if the child is above consenting age (even as far as 10+ years above the age of consent) there can still be power held by the parent over the child.
That was the only point of value before the thread turned to a mush-zone.
Of course there already exist normal relationships with power imbalances. And as was mentioned a few days ago here—an abusive relationship sucks if its from an AI to you, or from a human partner to you.
Any thoughts?
(Edit: inter → intra, Thanks @Artaxerxes)
The big phrase to keep in mind for incest is “conflict of interest”. We are expected to keep certain kinds of social relations with our relatives. Also having romantic and sexual relationships conflicts with those.
Furthermore, because there is a natural tendency for humans to be less attracted to close relatives than to others, it is in practice very likely that a sexual/romantic relationship with a close relative will be dysfunctional in other ways—so likely that we may be better off just outlawing them period even if they are not necessarily dysfunctional.
I am of the opinion that I am “of similar brain” genetically and phenotypically and equally theoretically “of similar mind” to people who are related to me. Therefore able to get along with them better. When looking for partners today, I look for people “of similar mind”, or at least I feel like its a criteria of mine.
Do you have a source for “natural tendency for humans to be less attracted to close relatives than to others”? I am interested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect
Thanks! I am not sure how my knowledge of the universe had a hole in this specific space.
One mechanism is the MHC complex
There are other mechanism that prevent siblings that lived together as children from developing romantic interest in each other as well. As a result most cases of incest between siblings are not by siblings that lived together as children.
That has impressive applications on why foreigners or “exotic” people have a bonus placed on them for desirability. I must say I did know about MHC mechanism, and the studies done on birds, but not the human one. Also I did not connect the two.
Thanks!
I don’t see any moral reason why this should not happen, aside from deontological. It’s possible to make the case that you would be more likely to end up in a dsyfunctional relationship, but it’s possible to make the opposite case too—you have a much better idea of what the person is REALLY like before entering into a relationship with them, so you’re less likely to enter into a relationship if you’re incompatible.
I think this is one of those “gay marriage 50 years ago” things. People are going to come up with all sorts of excuses why it’s wrong, simply because they’re not comfortable with it.
That’s partway where the original discussion was going.
if only that were true for all people who enter relationships.
(rational relationships is a recent pet topic of mine)
I would apply the rule that I apply to polyamory—there are ways to do it wrong, and ways to do it less wrong. I do wonder if it has an inherent wrongness risk to it, but people probably implied that about being gay 50 years ago...
And I’ve yet to see evidence that they were wrong.
Isn’t this a fully general explanation for anything at all?
It could be, for anything that people aren’t comfortable with. This isn’t in any way a rebuttal to arguments—it’s an explanation for bad/non-arguments.
And do you have evidence they were wrong? According to gay activist groups themselves half of all male homosexual relationships are abusive, for example.
Almost all of the evidence I’ve seen has shown they’re wrong. A quick google for statistics on incidences of abuse vs. heterosexual relationships showed they were wrong, and the few sources I’ve seen (which I couldn’t find through my quick google) that showed the opposite where from biased organizations already predisposed against homosexuality.
I could be convinced of the opposite, but that one sentence you gave will hardly bump my prior.
In the absence of a singularity, I would not expect this to become widely accepted within my lifetime. I’d say polyamory is the next type of relation likely to become tolerated and that is still at least ten years off. Incest is probably only slightly less despised than pedophilia, but I’ve seen pedophilia frequently equated with murder, so that’s not saying much. Bestiality is probably the least likely thing I’d expect to become accepted. None of these three are going to happen within a timeframe I’d feel comfortable making predictions about, but never is a really long time so who knows.
Not true at all. Nobody takes up a pitchfork when they hear about incest.
yes, obviously the singularity changes everything.
How is this relevant? All these technologies are for producing embryos. You still need people to raise the children the same as before. And I would be very surprised if child-raising AI isn’t sex-bot complete (ie if we didn’t thoroughly decouple sex from human relationships long before we decouple child rearing from human relationships.
Raising children is definitely a factor in “why we have relationships”, but for now I was talking about “why we have taboos around relationships that happen between close genetic people”, especially when we solve the problem of close-genetic negative effects.
Wouldn’t “inter-family” be between different families? I’m not sure, but “intra-family” makes more sense to me, if you’re trying to refer to incestuous relationships. A quick google search suggests the same.
I’m not sure what society will do, but I don’t see anything wrong with incest or incestuous relationships in general, and don’t believe that they should be illegal. That’s not to say that incestuous relationships can’t have something wrong with them, but from what I can tell, incestuous relationships that have something wrong with them are due to reasons separate to the fact that they are incestuous (paedophilic, abusive, power imbalance, whatever).
Thanks for this. I believe, based on the responses that this might classify as an interesting and soon outdated; old-world belief. Glad to have made note of the idea.
I have no support for it, or personal interest, but I am also entirely not against it either.
Um, no. The historic basis of relationships was allying for a common goal. Or, did you mean sexual relationships. In that case it would be helpful to define what you mean by “sexual”, especially once it’s no longer connected to reproduction.
That would turn humans into a eusocial species. That change is likely to have a much bigger and more important effect then whatever ways of creating superstimulus by non-reproductively rubbing genitals are socially allowed.
granted. A historic reason for a relationship is procreation. but you are grasping at things that were not relevant to the original point and question, which was mostly answered by others in the suggestion of some concepts missing from my map.
cute.