Psychohistorian

Karma: 3,414

Psychohistorian 31 Jan 2011 14:34 UTC
60 points
0
on: Optimal Employment
The math here is extremely misleading.

You used the average figures from a dataset of people making an average of about $55,000 a year for the US figure. That is, the people who spend 37% of their income on housing is from people making about half of the amount you hypothesize someone making. Since you can live in the same apartment, eat the same food, and so forth (with some exceptions depending on locale), that gives you another ~$38,000 in post-tax income in the US. You also ignore benefits (and promotion opportunities) and things like expense accounts, which can be substantial.

You are also comparing unlike people: one is an average American citizen, who probably has kids and a high discount rate, the other is an individual free to travel to another country specifically searching for a high disposable income job. The fact that the average American does worse is largely irrelevant, because the hypothetical person you’re advising is already not-average.

It may well be a great idea to work abroad for a few years; it does sound fun and that’s a lot of disposable income for limited skill. But if you’re going to make a point with numbers, at least make a cursory effort to use plausible numbers and compare relevantly similar people, or at least admit that you’re failing to do so.

Psychohistorian 8 Feb 2011 4:36 UTC
57 points
in reply to: Bo102010’s comment on: Procedural Knowledge Gaps

How should you interact with a police officer—what are your obligations, your rights, and how should you conduct yourself?

I’m a law student. I’ll take this one. This applies to the US specifically, though being polite and deferent are probably universal.

In short: TL;DR answer: Be polite, calm, and friendly. If you are guilty of a crime, admit nothing, do not give permission to search anything that would be incriminating, say that you don’t want to talk to the officer (unless answering extremely general questions), and, if you are detained, ask to speak with a lawyer. Be more compliant if you are innocent, but if you get the slightest hint that they think you’re responsible, stop complying and ask for a lawyer if detained. For more mundane interaction (i.e. speeding tickets) be polite and deferent, and don’t confess to anything unless they totally have you nailed. Arguing with cops will very rarely advance your case; save that for court if you care enough to challenge the ticket. More detail follows.

In minor cases (e.g. speeding tickets), you generally want to be polite, deferential, and honest, but probably don’t volunteer too much information, except insofar as it’s obvious. If you were going 85 and the cop asks why he pulled you over, it’s probably wiser to admit you were speeding than to play stupid; in some borderline cases, being honest and likable will get you out of a ticket or into a lesser ticket. Arguing with police officers is generally not going to get you anywhere. If they’re wrong about some material fact, you’ll probably have to deal with it in court. Being calm, friendly, and deferential (address them as “officer”) is often your best chance of avoiding a ticket, and will almost always avoid any escalation. In some cases, crying or explaining yourself may work, but if they don’t believe you, it may make things worse. Similarly, if you made some mistake (i.e. did not see the speed limit change) it may be helpful to say as much politely, but again, you won’t win an argument.

For more serious offenses (basically, anything criminal greater than a speeding ticket).

Edited to add: Basically, never talk to the police or other similar authorities under any circumstances, except where it can’t be avoided, e.g. speeding tickets.

A police officer is either detaining you or they are not. If they are not detaining you, you are free to stop talking with them and leave. If they are detaining you, you have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. If you are being detained, and you ask for an attorney, ALL QUESTIONING MUST CEASE. Anytime you hear a story about some guy the police were grilling for eight hours: if he’d asked to speak with an attorney, they’d have had to stop.

In general, if you even think you might be guilty of something, it is best not to try to explain yourself and not to make up excuses. Most criminals don’t think they did anything morally wrong. The police will not share your perspective. Especially if you are guilty, you should ask if you are free to go, and if you are not, ask for an attorney. This is advisable even if you are innocent if the crime is significant.

The police CAN legally lie to you in order to exact a confession; this is a rather common tactic. That means they can tell you someone has positively ID’d you, or tell you that your fingerprints have been found, or that your accomplice has turned on you even when these things aren’t true.

Of course, if you actually have an accomplice, you should hope you’ve both credibly committed to cooperating in a prisoner’s dilemma. Omega cannot save you now.

You should never give police permission to search anything unless you know that there is nothing incriminating there. If the officer tells you that the law entitles him to do something, and then ask for his permission, you should probably tell him that he does not have your permission, but if what he says about the law is true, you’re not going to stop him. Even if the police find incriminating evidence, if they did not have a legal right to search where they were searching (i.e. they lack probable cause), that evidence generally cannot be used against you in criminal proceedings.

If police are questioning you about someone else (who is not a spouse) who may have been involved in a crime, it gets fuzzier. I’m not entirely sure how extensive police power is; ultimately, the state has some capacity to compel your testimony (there’s no right not to incriminate others), but this generally doesn’t work because someone who doesn’t want to testify can generally testify to a lack of memory on whatever issue (as people might do if threatened by the mob).

It’s also worth noting that roommates and people living with you can, under certain circumstances, authorize searches of your possessions. They can certainly authorize searches of common areas.

This is endlessly more complicated, but this should be a pretty good overview. You cannot be compelled to say anything incriminating, and if the cops are bargaining with you, that probably means they don’t have enough to get you on. Again, if you’ve done something, or if they think you’ve done something, you’re going to want a lawyer to sort things out. The risk is obviously a lot higher if you’re guilty, but you can run into serious risks even if you just seem possibly guilty.
What links here?
- Topics from “Procedural Knowledge Gaps” by NancyLebovitz (11 Feb 2012 21:38 UTC; 58 points)

Psychohistorian 1 Jan 2013 10:08 UTC
45 points
on: You can’t signal to rubes
You’ve basically come up with four criteria that describe the use of the word “signal” in a highly specific context—traits that exist for pure signalling purposes in evolution or game theory—and then decided, arbitrarily, that this is the one true meaning of “signal.” I do not think you have provided adequate evidence or argument to back this claim up.

If everyone around me is a Republican and I am not, it might make sense that I would do things that would signal that I am a Republican, even if these are very cheap and have obvious positive returns. Your definition would not allow this—if it is cheap and has obvious positive returns, it is not “signaling” to you. What you’re saying is that if I send a birthday card to a coworker I hate, then I am not “signaling” that I like that person because it’s too cheap to send the card.

It may make sense to speak of weak or strong signals, or reliable or unreliable or misleading signals. But you’ve arbitrarily said that the word applies only when a certain arbitrary threshold is crossed (your 2 and 4).

Incidentally, your theory might actually work if 4 were eliminated and 2 read “the behaviour is more likely to occur if you possess a certain characteristic than if you do not.” This would cover my birthday card example—it’s cheap, but I’m more likely to do it if I like the person, so it does signal liking the person. But this change would also fix the counter-productive manager. She’s doing things that she is more likely to do if she is decisive and in charge. Since she’s being evaluated on those criteria, and not “good manager-ness”—which is not generally observable—it would make sense that she would choose to give those signals rather than not. But revising the theory appropriately seems to nullify most or all of your objections.
What links here?
- Vaniver's comment on You can’t signal to rubes by Patrick (1 Jan 2013 16:57 UTC; 14 points)

Psychohistorian 10 Jul 2012 19:20 UTC
34 points
on: What Is Signaling, Really?
A simple, interesting, complementary fact is that the cigarette manufacturers all saw profits skyrocket when laws started banning cigarette ads on TV. All of their products are largely interchangeable, so advertising doesn’t tell you anything new about the product, it just builds brand loyalty. So it saves everyone costly signalling.

It’s also extremely difficult for new cigarette manufacturers to break into the market. It’s very hard to use a really clever ad campaign to increase your market share when you’re not allowed to advertise on TV. Curiously, this may actually harm consumers, in that it prevents competition from lowering cigarette prices. I suppose this analogizes to the idea that if everyone were suddenly banned from displaying their wealth, it would be very difficult to woo Helen of Troy unless you had clearly shown your wealth prior to the ban. Thus, banning signalling can lead to losses, as the wealthiest suitor may be unable to woo Helen if he came to the game too late.

Psychohistorian 15 Mar 2010 22:25 UTC
34 points
on: Undiscriminating Skepticism
There’s an additional issue of subtlety that isn’t addressed here. People will typically reveal “improper” views by starting small and seeing if their audience is sympathetic, not because they are irrational, but because they aren’t stupid and they care about consequences.

That is, if I’m in some highly religious town, I’m not going to open my conversation with, “So, this whole God thing makes about as much sense as Santa Claus, am I right?” I’m going to open with, “You know, there’s something about the story of Job that just doesn’t sit right with me,” or something else small, safe, and exploratory.

Psychohistorian 14 May 2009 19:02 UTC
34 points
in reply to: Aaron’s comment on: A Parable On Obsolete Ideologies
This reminds me of a rather interesting argument I foolishly got into on an internet forum that had no connection to religion. First mistake.

Anyhow, it involved someone saying Christianity was a religion of peace, and I couldn’t help but quote:

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father...” (full quote here)

His response, with what I assume was a completely straight face, was, “I’m glad you quoted that. Christ is just encouraging spirited debate within the household.”

This would be hilarious if it weren’t so terrifying.

Psychohistorian 23 Dec 2009 4:09 UTC
31 points
0
on: The 9/11 Meta-Truther Conspiracy Theory
This controversy reminds me of an astronomy professor of mine. He was semi-obsessed with showing that the moon landing was not faked, to the point of conspiracy-nut enthusiasm, despite supporting the status quo. He’d go off on long anecdotes in class about how he saw some light at such and such a latitude at a certain time, which showed unquestionably that there must have been a man-made vehicle at such-and-such a point. Then, he said one thing that stuck with me: if it were faked, that means there are at least hundreds, more likely tens of thousands, of low- and mid-level government employees who are keeping their lips absolutely, perfectly sealed.

That was all the argument I ever needed to hear to dissuade me from crackpot government conspiracy theories. Once an event reaches a certain magnitude of size, cost, and planning, P:Everyone stays quiet rapidly approaches zero. The payoffs and probability of a guilty conscience are simply too high with a large enough N.

Psychohistorian 25 Apr 2011 4:05 UTC
30 points
0
on: Being Wrong about Your Own Subjective Experience
I may simply be unclear on what it means to be “wrong about the subjective quality of your own conscious experience,” but it seems to me that this post is completely irrelevant to that question. All of the evidence shows flaws in our predictive ability, our memory, and our language. I don’t see any contradictions or wrongness; indeed, I’m still unsure what such would look like. I’ll go through it step by step.

Someone predicted that people couldn’t experience echolocation. He was wrong. No evidence was offered that he could experience echolocation. Moreover, comparing the ability of the untrained to notice the difference between a T-shirt and a mixing bowl, and the ability of a bat or dolphin to render rich detail is disingenuous. But disputing the detail is besides the point: his mistake was about his abilities, not his actual experience. It’s not like he experienced echolocation and didn’t know it, or failed to and thought he did.

Does a coin look circular? This seems to be purely semantic and, if anything, a product of language. No one is disputing my ability to see a coin or predict or understand its properties. The problem is mostly whether we’re describing the image on our retina or the translation our brain maps onto it. We see an elliptical image which we almost inseverably perceive as round because of the operations our brain does. I don’t see anyone making a mistake about what coins look like, or having some erroneous experience.

When you’re asked to imagine something, your brain does one thing. When you’re asked to reflect on your imagination, or recall your brain has trouble doing so. This doesn’t seem like someone being wrong about conscious experience so much as (at most) having difficulty consciously remembering a prior experience. Where’s the error?

Dreaming in color—I don’t even see where you’re going with this. Some people do, some don’t. It changes over time. Where’s the error? Are there people who think they dream in color but don’t, or vice versa? How is this relevant?

[ETA: Further discussion suggests the argument: there isn’t a real change in frequency of color in dreams, but there is one in reporting, therefore, people are making mistakes. To that, I think there are two responses:
1. This evidence is very weak. It’s entirely possible that there has been a change in dream color. Since we have no idea what causes it, it’s rather hasty to say, “More (or fewer) people must be making mistakes than did before.” It’s not impossible, it’s just weak evidence where we have no understanding of the mechanism.
2. This is likely a language error. For many people, dreams are unlike the waking world. This is rather like the circular/elliptical coin. It’s not information about the dreams. It’s not a problem with us experiencing our dreams.]
There are things that occur below our consciousness—this seems principally an issue of memory. Our brain doesn’t register (and certainly doesn’t record) certain things. There’s no error here. It’s not that I feel I have no feet when I do, or that I feel I am not driving when I am.

It’s possible I’ve simply misinterpreted the claim you’re making. But if it’s:

you can be wrong about the subjective quality of your own conscious experience.

I really fail to see a single shred of evidence in everything you cite. You show that there are errors in our memory and our ability to predict, but you do not offer a single example of someone being wrong about the subjective quality of their own experience—it doesn’t even seem like you suggest what such error would look like.

Even if I am missing something, it still seems like your point is that “What constitutes your subjective experience is unclear” not “X is a subjective experience that is wrong.”
What links here?
- [deleted]'s comment on Being Wrong about Your Own Subjective Experience by lukeprog (25 Apr 2011 11:30 UTC; 0 points)

Psychohistorian 31 Jan 2011 20:45 UTC
29 points
in reply to: Louie’s comment on: Optimal Employment

Groups with wildly different incomes all the way from $25k/yr to $80k/yr all spend between 32-37% of their income on housing.

This simply indicates that as people get richer, they demand better housing. I live in Manhattan. I could get the same apartment if I go on to be an associate at a law firm making $165k a year or a public defender making $50k. However, if I’m doing the former, I’m probably going to spring for a nicer apartment. If my primary goal were saving money, as is implied in your job comparison, I could easily live in the PD’s apartment on an associate’s salary.

The fact that most people who can save big on housing choose not to is not applicable in your hypothetical; to the extent that it is, more expensive housing implies higher quality of life.

Psychohistorian 27 Dec 2009 19:34 UTC
29 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: One Life Against the World
I’m 99% sure you’re missing the point.

Falling down a hill is quite painful. However, once you start falling down a hill, you’re going to keep falling until you reach the bottom, unless you make a conscious and coordinated decision to stop yourself, if you are even able to. In that sense, once you start falling down a hill, it is very easy to keep falling, because it’s what happens if you don’t try to change things.

In the same sense (and I apologize for the unpleasant metaphor) pregnancy is easy; once a woman is pregnant, barring miscarriage, she’s gonna have a kid. It’s going to be painful and at times miserable, but it’s going to happen. I agree with you that there’s less disutility experienced if she has an abortion, but she has to make a conscious choice to do that, go to a clinic, and pay a bill. It may be the more pleasant way out, but, in this context, it’s not easier; it doesn’t really happen by accident (excepting spontaneous miscarriage, which is admittedly fairly common, but besides the point).

Everything you describe is something she endures; there’s no willpower to it. This is in contrast with saving a life as discussed earlier, which requires a deliberate, conscious decision, negotiating some mild bureaucracy, and writing a check. If you get pregnant and do not actively choose to do something about it, you have a kid. If you get a checkbook and do not actively choose to write checks to charities, you don’t save any lives. That’s what easy means.

ETA: You also assume that abortion has no cost beyond its monetary cost. For women who believe it is wrong for whatever reason, it may be far, far more unpleasant than having the child.

Psychohistorian 26 Jan 2010 19:26 UTC
28 points
on: You cannot be mistaken about (not) wanting to wirehead
This conclusion is too strong, because there’s a clear distinction that we (or at least I) make intuitively that is incompatible with this reasoning.

Consider the following:

I don’t want to try sushi. A friend convinces/bribes/coerces me to try sushi. It turns out I really like sushi, and eat it all the time afterward.

I don’t want to try wireheading. I am convinced/bribed/coerced to try wireheading. I really like wireheading, and don’t want to stop doing it.

These sequences are superficially identical. Kaj’s construction of want suggests I could not have been mistaken about my desire for sushi. However, intuitively and in common language, it makes sense to say that I was mistaken about my desire for sushi. There is, however, something different about saying I was mistaken in not wanting to wirehead. It’s an issue of values.

Consider the ardent vegetarian who is coercively fed beef, and likes beef so much that he lacks the willpower to avoid eating it, even though it causes him tremendous psychic distress to do so. It seems reasonable to say he was correct in not wanting to eat beef, and have this judgement be entirely consistent with my being incorrect about not wanting to eat sushi. The issue is whether my action has a non-hedonic value. Eating sushi (for me) does not. Eating beef for him does. His hedonic values get in the way of his utilitarian values.

This dilemma actually integrates a number of rather complex problems. I’m hereby precommitting to making a top-level post about this before Friday. Let’s hope it works.

Psychohistorian 21 May 2010 19:29 UTC
26 points
on: The Tragedy of the Social Epistemology Commons
Wouldn’t rationality help people get things on the two bottom tiers? If so, shouldn’t your theory predict that people in more dire circumstances are more rational, when I believe the opposite tends to be the case?

A much, much simpler explanation is that rationality is hard and not-rationality is easy. Just as all good families are quite similar and bad families are often uniquely different, there’s basically one correct epistemology and a whole lot of incorrect ones. Because truly terrible, survival-inhibiting epistemologies have been eliminated through natural (and social) selection, we’re left with a bunch that, at the very least, do not inhibit reproduction. Extremely high-quality epistemology does not appear to be particularly conducive to Darwinian reproductive success, so it never exactly got selected for. Indeed, extremely high quality epistemology may be contingent on a certain level of scientific progress, and thus may have only been practicable in the past few centuries. Imagine trying to simply exist in the world 20,000 years ago, where the only answer you could give to nearly any question about nature or how the world worked was, “I haven’t a clue.”

Much like religion, one will generally end up with whatever epistemology one is raised with, with whatever particular modifications your mind makes intuitively. Since very few people have minds that gravitate towards a rational epistemology, and since society doesn’t particularly value epistemic hygiene, it’s little surprise that rationalists do not abound.

Furthermore, your hypothesis that rationality is not conducive to tiers three and four does not appear to be well-founded. I suspect a lot of people would be significantly benefit from greater marginal rationality. An old acquaintance of mine has a Facebook status that regularly oscillates between, “OMG so good to be in love!!!!!<3” and “Oh no my heart was broken again how could u do this to me?” I would anticipate that just a little bit more rationality would greatly benefit this person.

Psychohistorian 14 Apr 2011 15:36 UTC
25 points
on: Three consistent positions for computationalists
I believe I have found the perfect, modern theory of consciousness, completely supported by every study yet done on the matter!

“We really don’t know what’s going on. More research is needed. But there’s probably no magic involved.”

Psychohistorian 15 Oct 2009 17:04 UTC
23 points
on: How to think like a quantum monadologist

I may feel the need to impose a certain structure on that formalism, for ontological reasons, and that may or may not have empirical consequences in the macro-quantum realm.

This sentence pretty much guaranteed that the entire article would be vague, riddled with empty jargon, unfocused, and uninformative. It was right. Not saying you don’t have a point; I’m saying this article is not clear enough for me to begin to determine if you have a point or not.

Psychohistorian 20 Jul 2009 1:31 UTC
23 points
in reply to: RobinHanson’s comment on: Sayeth the Girl
Gender bias is not some objective feature of writing; it is determined and defined by our perceptions. Men seem extremely likely to perceive it differently from women (see almost every sexual harassment lawsuit). Alicorn has never been super outspoken on this issue and has never been confrontational about it. As one of the most active female readers of this site, if she perceives a gender bias in many posts/comments here that she believes warrants a top-level post, that seems to me to be very strong evidence that something is wrong. That fact combined with the data she did provide seem to me quite convincing that this issue is at least worth thinking about.

Also, if I understand her correctly, her objection is not to making generalizations without overwhelming hard data, it is to making generalizations without the humility appropriate to generalizations not supported by overwhelmingly hard data. If some little study fits a pre-existing belief about ev-psych and how the genders work, posters shouldn’t be super-certain that it’s correct simply because it conforms to their pre-existing beliefs. After all, being human, they may well dismiss a similar study showing the exact opposite effect without second thought.

Psychohistorian 31 Jan 2011 20:52 UTC
22 points
in reply to: Louie’s comment on: Optimal Employment

It must be much higher than the 4% a typical American in your position has left. I’d be curious what the best case real world numbers are for people in your situation who are doing their best to optimize.

Which was on response to:

Personal anecdote: My own finances as well as those of six of my friends fall well outside those bands. (Emphasis added.)

You still seem to be missing the point. Statistical averages, even in percentage form, cannot be blindly projected across the entire income scale. Someone making $1M a year does not spend the same percentage on food as someone making $40k.

And what does it matter if he takes money out of his housing budget and directs it towards an expensive car? The point of disposable income is that you get to spend it on things you want. That includes nicer housing, restaurant meals, and fancy cars, the value of which is ignored in your calculations.

Psychohistorian 17 Feb 2012 14:10 UTC
21 points
on: Hearsay, Double Hearsay, and Bayesian Updates
I am sorry I did not manage to comment on this earlier; I did not suspect it would get promoted.

In short, your treatment of hearsay, and how the legal system addresses it, is simply wrong. Most of what you talk about is actually about the Confrontation Clause. I don’t know if this is due to an intentional simplification of your examples, but the cases you use just don’t work that way.

The main case you talk about, Davis v. Washington, is not a case about hearsay; just look at the wikipedia summary. It is a case about the confrontation clause. This is a clause that says that those accused of crimes have the right to confront the witnesses against them; if someone talks to the police under certain circumstances, that testimony may not be entered. It does not matter how reliable it is. See Crawford v. Washington. The “indicia of reliability test” was abandoned in Crawford, because it was completely circular—it was compared to doing away with a jury trial because the defendant was obviously guilty.

More generally, there is almost never a balancing test in hearsay. Hearsay is a series of rules that are applied systematically. Out of court statements are considered unreliable principally because the declarant is not under oath; there is no particular reason to believe they were being truthful. There is a series of rules that allow certain statements in for this purpose. The idea behind these rules is that they indicate the evidence is reliable. However, they operate purely formalistically: if something someone said was a statement for the purpose of medical diagnosis, it is admissible hearsay, even if the circumstances strongly demonstrate they were lying. The jury is permitted to figure that out.

The basic idea behind hearsay, and indeed behind evidence law generally, is that certain statement are more likely to mislead the jury than to aid in finding the truth. However, your whole discussion of “indicia of reliability” seems to me to address an obsolete doctrine on the Confrontation Clause. Hearsay, in the vast majority of circumstances, does not involve any kind of balancing test or similar determination. It either meets a rule, or it doesn’t (though there is catch-all rule that gives the court some discretion—it can actually be somewhat problematic, because courts often get things wrong).

As to the issue of double hearsay—which I am used to hearing referred to as “hearsay within hearsay,” a per se rule against a certain number of levels doesn’t make a lot of sense. In the example you use, the bottom level of hearsay is very likely inadmissible; that’s enough to keep it out. But the circumstances under which one could admit multi-layer hearsay are pretty limited; it would have to have an applicable exception for every level. You don’t discuss any inadequacies with the exceptions, so I just don’t see why it follows that their repeat application should be unreliable.

Psychohistorian 16 Apr 2011 5:18 UTC
21 points
on: Offense versus harm minimization
A couple points.

You miss an important issue, which is the western concept as speech as a right. The Folsom street fair can have a promo poster of the last supper as Jesus as a naked black dude surrounded by transvestites, dominatrixes, and sex toys, and no major Christian organization will propose that anyone should be killed. They may try to get funding taken away from the fair, but that’s their right. Westerners have a concept of appropriate levels of conflict, and if someone violates them, we want to punish them. If someone asks me politely to keep it down, I probably will. If they tell mento shut up or they’ll kick my ass, my instinct is to talk even louder (especially if they’re bluffing). This is sensible as annoy of punishing improper behavior.

I also take issue with your characterization of offense as pain. In some cases—where it’s directed at someone, like racial slurs, it is. But in cases of taking offense at untethered actions, pain isn’t accurate. It’s not exactly painful when, say, a Klansmen sees an interracial couple, even if he finds their behaviour offensive. And even if it were, it seems obvious to menthat the couple should not allow that to affect their behaviour. If the Brits in your example just got arbitrarily angry about seeing trout pictures, I’m not sure the same reaction follows. Perhaps if you taboo offense, you get a more coherent picture of two separate emotional reactions.

Psychohistorian 26 Jun 2010 8:30 UTC
21 points
on: Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous?
Warning: broad, slightly unfounded generalizations forthcoming. But I think they’re insightful nonetheless.

I think that most people’s beliefs are largely determined by reward, power, and status. I want to state explicitly that I don’t endorse these social standards, but I think they’re pretty solidly established.

For virtually all women, sleeping with multiple men is not high-status. Being with a man who is seeing other women is a marker that she can’t get him to “commit” to her, and is therefore somehow deficient. For a substantial majority of men, they are not sufficiently attractive enough (overall, not specifically physically) to entice women into such a lifestyle. In other words, because women feel like they take a huge status hit being with a poly man, your average woman will only consider such a relationship with a man who might otherwise be out of her league. Thus, since most men date women roughly within their own league, most men do not have the opportunity to pursue this.

Men at the top, on the other hand, are probably chasing tail more than they’re chasing love or romance. Also, at least based on my knowledge of such men, they don’t view female infidelity as being OK—having your woman sleep with other men is definitely a status hit for any man—so it’s easier for them to engage in non-consensual non-monogamy than polyamory. This is also “efficient” in the sense that it gives them someone to manage their household/come home to, and some thrills on the side. Polyamory may lack those practical benefits, and is difficult to justify in a social setting for most professions, particularly high-paying ones (that are not entertainment). I would imagine showing up with two dates to business functions, or different alternating dates, might negatively influence one’s chance of making partner or the like.

Other obvious obstacles include the legal system and some of the practicalities of child rearing, but I really think the status structure explains a lot of people’s reticence to consider the lifestyle. That, and, of course, jealousy.

Psychohistorian 3 Oct 2009 4:13 UTC
21 points
on: When Willpower Attacks
This is interesting, but I think it could essentially be summarized in two sentences:

“Willpower is good if used to fulfill a healthful or desirable goal, and bad if used to fulfill an unhealthful or undesirable one. In other words, willpower, in a strict sense, is like any basic tool—however sharp or strong it is, its value is determined by the tasks to which it is applied, and the context in which those tasks are completed.”