Mar 29, 2023·edited Mar 30, 2023Liked by Ozy Brennan
This is a neutral addition related to "Lack of Scripts for Polyamory".
I think because I approach it from a Queer perspective, my script has always been "find out if the person is polyamorous or polyamorous-interested before asking them out". Very similar to "find out if they are queer or queer-allied before flirting with them". So, reading stories in one of the articles about a polyamorous person trying to convince someone about polyamory while they were in the process of asking them out just really caught me off-guard.
I want to add the addendum, that the reason Queer people have that level of carefulness is because they are a marginalised group, and scared of the recipient of their flirting responding in a strongly-negative way. But, I am similarly scared of monogamous people responding in a strong negative fashion. (I understand why their protectors come up, but it doesn't mean their protectors do not scare me.)
I'm not in the EA community, but from the outside this Time article looks like a blatant attempt to portray a fairly universal human problem as caused by the norms of the EA community. The article does bring this counterargument up a little, but I don't think it addresses it enough.
I believe that doing bad stuff is a human universal, that rationalizing bad stuff is a human universal, and that humans tend to draw on rationalizations from whatever culture they live in. If someone rationalizes bad behavior, will changing the culture they draw that rationalization from reduce bad behavior, or will it just change what rationalization they use? Other people seem to treat cultural disapproval as omnipotent and think that all problems, especially sex-related ones, will go away if culture condemns them hard enough. I am skeptical, to say the least.
This reminds me strongly of how the Bankman-Freid fiasco was treated as somehow discrediting of effective altruism, even though there isn't a large charity in existence that hasn't had people manage money poorly and/or unscrupulously. If having someone do that discredits a charity then all charity is discredited.
> These are, as I understand it, less often considered appropriate conversation topics among high-achieving college students who aren’t weird Internet people.
Extremely weird for me to read this given my East Coast Ivy League experience where these were all normal topic of conversation there, too. Granted perhaps I was also in a bubble there; but maybe it's more a generational thing. When I was in school 20 years ago I slept with professors; I gather this sort of thing is no longer acceptable.
"Many younger or less powerful people are genuinely attracted to older or more powerful people. Successful researchers, charity founders, or bloggers are cool, and being attracted to cool people is the human condition."
Your analysis would be a lot more useful if you weren't so head-in-the-sand about the obvious fact that this is overwhelmingly a *biological female* phenomenon (with a solid evolutionary explanation), while the equally well-explained typical biological male phenomenon is to expend said coolness on opportunities to pair with youth.
"Many younger or less powerful people are genuinely attracted to older or more powerful people. Successful researchers, charity founders, or bloggers are cool, and being attracted to cool people is the human condition."
This is a tangent, but the above doesn't apply to straight men right? AFAICT most of them care 80%+ about looks, 20%- about everything else.
This is a neutral addition related to "Lack of Scripts for Polyamory".
I think because I approach it from a Queer perspective, my script has always been "find out if the person is polyamorous or polyamorous-interested before asking them out". Very similar to "find out if they are queer or queer-allied before flirting with them". So, reading stories in one of the articles about a polyamorous person trying to convince someone about polyamory while they were in the process of asking them out just really caught me off-guard.
I want to add the addendum, that the reason Queer people have that level of carefulness is because they are a marginalised group, and scared of the recipient of their flirting responding in a strongly-negative way. But, I am similarly scared of monogamous people responding in a strong negative fashion. (I understand why their protectors come up, but it doesn't mean their protectors do not scare me.)
I'm not in the EA community, but from the outside this Time article looks like a blatant attempt to portray a fairly universal human problem as caused by the norms of the EA community. The article does bring this counterargument up a little, but I don't think it addresses it enough.
I believe that doing bad stuff is a human universal, that rationalizing bad stuff is a human universal, and that humans tend to draw on rationalizations from whatever culture they live in. If someone rationalizes bad behavior, will changing the culture they draw that rationalization from reduce bad behavior, or will it just change what rationalization they use? Other people seem to treat cultural disapproval as omnipotent and think that all problems, especially sex-related ones, will go away if culture condemns them hard enough. I am skeptical, to say the least.
This reminds me strongly of how the Bankman-Freid fiasco was treated as somehow discrediting of effective altruism, even though there isn't a large charity in existence that hasn't had people manage money poorly and/or unscrupulously. If having someone do that discredits a charity then all charity is discredited.
> These are, as I understand it, less often considered appropriate conversation topics among high-achieving college students who aren’t weird Internet people.
Extremely weird for me to read this given my East Coast Ivy League experience where these were all normal topic of conversation there, too. Granted perhaps I was also in a bubble there; but maybe it's more a generational thing. When I was in school 20 years ago I slept with professors; I gather this sort of thing is no longer acceptable.
"Many younger or less powerful people are genuinely attracted to older or more powerful people. Successful researchers, charity founders, or bloggers are cool, and being attracted to cool people is the human condition."
Your analysis would be a lot more useful if you weren't so head-in-the-sand about the obvious fact that this is overwhelmingly a *biological female* phenomenon (with a solid evolutionary explanation), while the equally well-explained typical biological male phenomenon is to expend said coolness on opportunities to pair with youth.
"Many younger or less powerful people are genuinely attracted to older or more powerful people. Successful researchers, charity founders, or bloggers are cool, and being attracted to cool people is the human condition."
This is a tangent, but the above doesn't apply to straight men right? AFAICT most of them care 80%+ about looks, 20%- about everything else.