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Comment by taraskuzyk | Hacker News Reader

I would really appreciate it if someone could help me understand what the last few sentences of it meant, it kind of flew over my head:

"So I guess this is kind of an argument in favor of humility, or against open-mindedness. If you have high openness to experience (and if you read this without a gun to your head, you probably do) you might wonder why so many people have low openness. Maybe this is part of why."

What is "this is part of why" referring to, the entire article? I just don't really see how any of it would lead people to be less open minded

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A big part of "the normal way" things are done is related to subtle (and by-design, unspoken) social reasons.

If you are open-minded, you're open to considering that the normal ways things are done might not be the best way -- which it is not along all axes, but it does incur some advantages for reasons that must remain unspoken for the advantages to be incurred.

This has two potentially bad consequences: (1) you might come to miss the advantages provided, and (2) you might erode the effectiveness of the deceitful mechanism.

An easy example is open relationships. They're difficult to navigate and often end in drama. (Personal opinion: they're awesome but require a ton of emotional maturity, and some time, to make work.) The lie here is that romantic commitment is a sacred value -- in reality it's a way to bind yourself to avoid the instability and hurt that can easily result from open relationships.

If you're not able to handle open relationships, your open-mindedness will have hurt you. And if you want to return to monogamy, your lack of belief in romantic commitment might be an impediment too.

People get burned by their open-mindedness a few times, or see examples of people getting burned around them, and they shut that part down.

It's the essence of conservatism: a belief that it's easier to break something that works than to improve things. (Forget politics, you can just think about this at the personal level.)

I'm fairly certain that not all marriages are based on fear of the potential pain of open relationships. Sure, some folks may be motivated along the lines you speak of, but there's plenty of us who got deep into it because we value the depth that comes from that one forever-friendship that is intimate on a level that can't be experience with the guys from the bar.

So, yeah, careful about painting with too broad a brush there.

> I'm fairly certain that not all marriages are based on fear of the potential pain of open relationships

I don't think that's what the parent comment was saying. I read it as "being too open-minded can backfire on you, and here's an example of how," and not as "people only get married because they're afraid of open relationships," which is how I read your sentence.

On the other hand, you assert that you "got deep into it because [you] value the depth that comes from that one forever-friendship that is intimate on a level that can't be experience[d] with the guys from the bar."

But can't you have that relationship _without_ marriage?

And so in that case, why marriage at all?

And the obvious answer to that is that now we're back to OP's example of the unspoken plan to get married to bind the other more tightly to you, with the side effect (or perhaps main effect) of making separation painful and difficult, thereby increasing the chances of both of you staying in that forever-relationship.

In other words, you don't _need_ to get married to have an intense forever-relationship with someone, but if you want safety and security and the knowledge that they won't (can't?) leave you, then you get married for all the reasons in OP's blog post.

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Marriages are based on agricultural tribal societies finding it more efficient to not have males compete for females too hard.

I think you can find beauty / intrinsic meaning in marriage, and that it can be done for other reasons than forced commitment.

But I'm not trying to explain why you (or anybody else in particular) committed to a single person romantically. I'm trying to explain why it's popular in general.

Imagine we could reset social norms around monogamy. Maybe you would still be monogamous for other reasons. I suspect many monogamous people, without the normative baggage, would go polygamous -- i.e. they don't consider monogamy to be intrinsically superior/good the way you do. I also suspect that over time the norm towards monogamy would creep back in for purely pragmatic reasons.

> careful about painting with too broad a brush there.

Which is precisely what every single "plan" from the article does.

I don't think monogamous relationships have something to do with them being sacred and more with partners that have incentives and expectations for their emotional involvement. I believe open relationships are the opposite of maturity and lack commitment and of admittance to yourself and your own needs. But I have no experience here, it just seems silly to me that if two people are unhappy to pull even more people into it.

To equate open mindedness with your preference in relationships or sexual ambitions is quite reductive. Might have been different just 30-40 years ago, but today it seems to be more controversial to say that you do not want to see displays of sexuality everywhere or that you look for classic relationships. There are also almost no expectation of society towards any forms in relationships. I could not name you a single one aside from some tax laws.

Your definition of conservatism is turned around in my opinion.

I knew this was going to turn into a debate on polyamori lol. I'm not going to answer your comments, but it suffices to say you probably don't suffer from your open-mindedness :)

(Agreement or disagreement on open relationships being immaterial to open-mindedness. The open-minded attitude is to consider what might make a stance true. Instead, to preserve your priors on open relationships, you're forced to assume a bunch of things, such that I am lying, and that I am unhappy, etc...)

Your comment about the social zeitgiest is interesting. Where I live (in western Europe) open relationships are quite unpopular (despite being more popular than they've ever been). I actually expect the same to be true in the US, outside of some affluent circles (if we're talking about in-the-flesh relationships).

How would you define conservatism?

(I don't consider my definition as negative btw. I have a conservative mindset on quite a few things where I think improvement is hard, or we're stuck in a local optimum and the cost of getting out would be currently unbearable.)

You described conservatism as moving on and breaking things, that seems to be turned on its head. I would think it is more about gradual changes instead.

Open relationships is a fun topic to discuss, especially on the internet.

For many such relationships are out of the question, perhaps due to insecurities and not being aware of their self-worth or for other reasons. Personally I don't think I want to be engaged romantically with more than one person at a time. Why? Because I do would get jealous and I likewise want to commit myself to someone. For myself and my partner. I also don't really feel a desire to romantically engage others.

But those that advertise open relationships it often comes with some patterns. For once that is mentioning the required emotional maturity and attributing it to participants. That is interesting because I perceive this as fishing for confirmation for personal choices. But perhaps my skepticism has the same motivation. But where do you think you need maturity? I assume it means to accept compromises? Where is that needed in such a relationship?

> You described conservatism as moving on and breaking things, that seems to be turned on its head. I would think it is more about gradual changes instead.

No you've got that backwards. I wrote "conservatism thinks it's easier to break things than to improve them". If you think a change is more likely to break things than to have a positive impact, you don't do the change. Hence, conservatism.

As for the rest, I'm not especially keen on debating or even discussing open relationships. I'll humor you for a sec, but won't reply further:

Of course everyone says it requires maturity, because it does. It's so obvious, I agree it's not a very interesting point to make, but I think the point is to acknowledge that open relationships often fail, and are not for everyone.

> That is interesting because I perceive this as fishing for confirmation for personal choices.

Man I was making an example in answer to a question lmao.

> But where do you think you need maturity? I assume it means to accept compromises? Where is that needed in such a relationship?

Jealousy is a naturally-occuring feeling. And it's quite natural to have some insecurities too. The maturity part is the ability to acknowledge them (first and foremost, to yourself), and to be open and talk about them, in a very open way, i.e. not loaded with assumptions and what the other person thinks/wants/feels.

People might be less open to questioning certain things, because those things work well for them, and they work well because they aren't questioned. There is an adverse selection for questioning them.

For example, let's say everyone in your society has an arranged marriage. The marriages produce children who then get arranged marriages themselves. This keeps the society going by providing a steady supply of new people. If someone starts to question it, they don't get an arranged marriage, and don't have any children. The questioner does not get promulgated.

(Note this is not an argument for or against arranged marriage. There are obviously many ways to arrange society and raise children.)

This is part of why - it’s no good for society for too many people to question some of its fundamental precepts

"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far." - Lovecraft

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