You just had to bring up the one controversial issue popular on LW that I actually have an identity stake in, didn’t you?
You might be right, though. Poly doesn’t set off my “dangerously controversial” flags, but that’s probably selection bias talking; I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and run in fairly countercultural circles. Now that I’m actually thinking about it I can definitely see how it’d bring up strong negative associations in a lot of cultures. On the other hand, I don’t think the LW consensus holds it up as a universally preferable relationship model, either—but if it’s a taboo rather than a merely controversial position, that doesn’t actually matter. And I’d hardly call it essential to instrumental rationality.
Which leaves the question of where the line should be drawn. I’d say Alicorn’s “Polyhacking” is one of the best posts here on the instrumental side of the instrumental/epistemic divide, and I’d hate to see similar content relegated to conspiratorial mailing lists—but it’s hard to imagine a post more perfectly calibrated to trigger avoidance instincts in someone with a polyamory taboo. Adding more context or disclaimers would probably not be effective. The implicit policy so far seems to have been to ignore traditionalist taboos, presumably on the assumption that anyone with deeply rooted traditionalist instincts is unteachable, but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.
You just had to bring up the one controversial issue popular on LW that I actually have an identity stake in, didn’t you?
You might be right, though. Poly doesn’t set off my “dangerously controversial” flags, but that’s probably selection bias talking; I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and run in fairly countercultural circles. Now that I’m actually thinking about it I can definitely see how it’d bring up strong negative associations in a lot of cultures. On the other hand, I don’t think the LW consensus holds it up as a universally preferable relationship model, either—but if it’s a taboo rather than a merely controversial position, that doesn’t actually matter. And I’d hardly call it essential to instrumental rationality.
Which leaves the question of where the line should be drawn. I’d say Alicorn’s “Polyhacking” is one of the best posts here on the instrumental side of the instrumental/epistemic divide, and I’d hate to see similar content relegated to conspiratorial mailing lists—but it’s hard to imagine a post more perfectly calibrated to trigger avoidance instincts in someone with a polyamory taboo. Adding more context or disclaimers would probably not be effective. The implicit policy so far seems to have been to ignore traditionalist taboos, presumably on the assumption that anyone with deeply rooted traditionalist instincts is unteachable, but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.