What is the assumption that immortal superbeing would chose to do such a thing based on -seeing as there are no immortal superbeings around-?
I imagine the chief benefit of monogamy is that you don’t need to compete for the limited resources of attention, and affection, and reproductive/nurturing capacity from the person you love—a sense of competition which can manifest itself in feelings of sexual jealousy, possessiveness, etc.
Now imagine a hypothetical future scenario in which those resources are effectively unlimited; in the sense that each person is perfectly capable of perceiving the need/desires of their prospective partners, and satisfying them as best as possible, with capacity to spare; in which you don’t need to compete for reproductive capacity or material resources are plentiful.
The benefits of monogamy then seem nullified, the benefits of polyamory seem without a downside to them.
That having been said, something being “evolved” in the sense of “What Would Immortal Superbeings Do” seems rather useless in determining what current-day people should do given their current-day emotional and physical circumstances.
Now imagine a hypothetical future scenario in which those resources are effectively unlimited; in the sense that each person is perfectly capable of perceiving the need/desires of their prospective partners, and satisfying them as best as possible, with capacity to spare; in which you don’t need to compete for reproductive capacity or material resources are plentiful.
I think that would only be possible if the whole human race had the attentional resources to be a group marriage. I’m not sure it makes sense to say that everyone could be that good at modelling everyone one else.
My imagination only extends to raising Dunbar’s number to 300, and I think that even that would produce large but hard to specify social changes.
I imagine the chief benefit of monogamy is that you don’t need to compete for the limited resources of attention, and affection, and reproductive/nurturing capacity from the person you love—a sense of competition which can manifest itself in feelings of sexual jealousy, possessiveness, etc.
Now imagine a hypothetical future scenario in which those resources are effectively unlimited; in the sense that each person is perfectly capable of perceiving the need/desires of their prospective partners, and satisfying them as best as possible, with capacity to spare; in which you don’t need to compete for reproductive capacity or material resources are plentiful.
The benefits of monogamy then seem nullified, the benefits of polyamory seem without a downside to them.
That having been said, something being “evolved” in the sense of “What Would Immortal Superbeings Do” seems rather useless in determining what current-day people should do given their current-day emotional and physical circumstances.
I think that would only be possible if the whole human race had the attentional resources to be a group marriage. I’m not sure it makes sense to say that everyone could be that good at modelling everyone one else.
My imagination only extends to raising Dunbar’s number to 300, and I think that even that would produce large but hard to specify social changes.