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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

> I think if you want to have a classical non-dying civilization as is known from history, you have to restrict sexuality and force desirable men to keep a single wife and vice versa.

If we're talking about what's known from history, this is total nonsense. Polygamy was permitted in China into the 20th century. China was the best place in the world by a whole host of metrics up to about the 17th century. It is still known now for the cultural stability it's displayed for the past couple millennia.

What did you mean by "classical non-dying civilization"?

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Polygamy has issues with excess males that aren't able to mate due to high-status males having their "harems", leading to very violent outbursts as those disadvantaged males don't have any outlet for their energy and society basically doesn't care about them beyond slaving away. China was also pretty much decaying society, which was perfectly utilized by British during Opium Wars. The typical mindset in China was to keep their old, dysfunctional ways, and add western technological advancements without replicating the conditions which allowed these to be created first, a meta-algorithm that killed Qing dynasty and that lasts until today. These days the effects of unoccupied males can be seen in the Middle East. Is that a model for your perfect stable and just civilization?

OT.

WRT Opium Wars I always found the casualty figures astonishing:

UK: 69

China: 18,000-20,0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War

Polygamy and proximity to the end of a civilization would be a interesting scatter plot.

How to get enough data though? :( I don't want to simulate miserable universes just to get that data and I certainly hope we don't live in one...

How do you think that would work? Whatever you mean by "end of a civilization", it's going to have nearly zero effect on polygamy. Polygamy is a marriage practice that people will do, or not do, according to their culture; changes of government / technology / etc. don't change it.

Going back up to my original example, you see polygamy practiced in China in the warring states period (ca. 500 - 200 BC), in the early Han (ca. 200 BC - 0), and the later Han (ca. 0 - 200 AD), and the three kingdoms period (ca. 200 - 300), and the Tang dynasty (ca. 600 - 900), and the Song dynasty (960 - 1279), and the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368; wasn't even a Chinese government), and the Ming dynasty (ca. 1368-1644), and the Qing dynasty (1644-1912; also not a Chinese government. The Qing actually outlawed foot binding, though this was not effective.), as well as through all the other intermediate periods not mentioned in that list.

However you want to count the end of a civilization, there won't be any relationship at all to polygamy practice; one changes and the other doesn't.

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