A link between polygamy and war | Hacker News Reader

A link between polygamy and war

economist.com

147 pointssohkamyung106 comments

A neat (for lack of a better word) thing to look at is bride prices-this article briefly touches on it but it was something I discussed a lot with our exchange student from Turkmenistan last year. Prior to our conversation I had never spent much time thinking about how buying a bride would work in practice, but it turns out that it ends up being a fine (although horrible) example of capitalist endeavor.

So in Turkmenistan its expected that the grooms husband will provide a 'gift' to the parents of the bride. This 'gift' is negotiated between the parents and is for all intents and purposes a bride price. The bride's family obviously is looking for an adequate return on their investment, while the grooms family is looking to get the bride for as cheap as possible. My exchange student's parents are both well educated doctors and her older sister is a US trained economist with an excellent high paying (for Turkmenistan) job, who will in all likelihood inherit an apartment in the city core, and is in fine physical shape.

These are all fine qualities and ones that her parents have invested heavily in over the years with the assumption that her bride price will reflect the investments in her. However, the exact OPPOSITE thing happened. The men in Turkmenistan have no interest-like people the world around they want the best deal possible, so they instead go to the villages and buy a bride from there for a few goats and a handful of cash (our exchange student thought this was a shamefully small amount of money, but for the people in the villages its significant). The men don't expect their wives to work, and aren't looking for intellectual equals. Her parents have effectively improved them to such a point that they've now been priced out of the market.

There’s also an expectation that women will marry ‘up’, even in first world countries, I think. It’s very ironic that women who develop themselves have a smaller option pool of mates.

If they were willing to marry internationally I think their options would be much nicer, but their parents aren't allowed to leave the country and they're very close so that puts a pretty big barrier in place for them to leave.

It's not really an expectation. There have been studies on this, and women do tend to prefer mates at or above their social status (whether that means educationally, professionally, economically, etc). It makes finding a spouse late in life for successful women incredibly difficult.

Correction: Finding a spouse [of higher status] late in life is incredibly difficult for successful women [who have insane requirements and won't settle for less].

Expectations aren't about what you prefer, it's about what other people want you to do. There are definitely women encouraging their daughters to pick someone wealthier.

Why is it ironic? Isn't it simple default that there are fewer successful people in most commonly used metrics like financially, socially, culturally etc? So if a women is successful they will have less mates to choose from.

If we pick that as the default, then is it then not ironic that successful men (using financial metrics) have a larger option pool of mates?

I personally don't find either ironic, but rather a very clear difference between the genders in the correlation between financial success and dating. The really interesting part is the causes of this difference, and whom is driving it.

I think larger option pool is not equal to larger option pool to 'marry up'. What I have seen is that successful males often execute option of selecting prettier females instead of successful ones. This thing is far more common in poorer non-western societies but I imagine western societies wouldn't be totally immune to this.

It is trophy wife thing. You marry to signal to other guys that you are above them sexually, but you are not actually looking to do things together with wife, spend time with her or anything like that.

No, it's not a default. The default is that successful women have a bigger pool to choose from and they really do.

What happen in practice is that they refuse to consider anyone who is not more than themselves, effectively ignoring the vast majority of the pool. The more successful and pretty, the bigger the pool, which they balance by being even more selective.

"[T]hey refuse to consider.." We all bring our own experiences, but as one of those highly educated women, many men refuse to consider me. A lot of guys do still want someone who doesn't match them economically or intellectually.

Of course this is not universal. But have you ever had a guy (gal) just walk away from you in a club after hearing what you do for a living? Math. The death knell for a previously reasonable flirtation.

I stopped disclosing what I do for a living a long long time ago.

What definition of "capitalism" are you using to refer to this as a "capitalist endeavor"? The "return on investment" (as you put it) aspect? Wouldn't, say, a communist make similar justifications? For example: "we provided your education as a child so you'll abide by our directives as an adult."

I don't think buying/selling women was a communist cornerstone.

The reason I say this is a capitalist endeavor is the recognition of an asset (the daughter), the want to see the most return (as large of a bride price as possible), and then seeking to improve the asset through education, travel, and competition to lead to a better selling price.

Sorry, I'm not an economist but I'm not seeing a connection. It seems like you just may not like the idea of capitalism and are trying to connect it to something else which you consider to be bad.

Turkmenistan's recent history is as a (Soviet) socialist republic and it ranks very, very low on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom. I'd need further convincing that this practice is reflective of a culture which embraces capitalistic ideals like free markets and voluntary exchange.

I took the comment to mean that some marriages are an economic exchange, a trade of money for goods, as opposed to an emotional bond of love between people. The specific economic system mentioned isn't super relevant, I'd guess he didn't mean to fit such a literal definition of capitalism.

Surely the attempt to elicit a higher price via marketing is indicative of a capitalist ideal. Under a communist ideal (ie not necessarily a real system that's ever existed on Earth, AFAICT there has yet to be a state that's fully embraced communism; dictatorships don't count) improvement would be sought in order to better the collective good, rather than elicit a particular family's profit.

That a transactional system exists in a dictatorial regime that bears some communistic characteristics doesn't mean that transactional system (bride price) isn't "Capitalist".

Agreed. In a communist society you would look out for the greater comunal interest. For example, family would be expected to let their marry to have more children, without expecting anything directly in return, but for the greater good of the people.

We also have a real word example. The Soviet Union awarded medals to women who bore and raised large families: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Heroine

> AFAICT there has yet to be a state that's fully embraced communism; dictatorships don't count)

Ah, the classical "no true scotsman" that pops up in every discussion on the virtues of communism.

It's weird how people praising or arguing in favour of communism repeatedly claim that communism never existed, particularly unsavoury and atrocious communist regimes, but somehow every single far-fetched example involving some kind of transaction that has a negative connotation is somehow a prime candidate to represent capitalism.

> I don't think buying/selling women was a communist cornerstone

By default in communist regimes women are by default the regime's means of prosuction, destined to a life of work while kept on a maintenance plan by their masters. So whether they aren't being sold, they are managed like an asset, where low upkeep abd high output is favoured while high maintenance and problematic/opinionated individuals are destined to be written-off sue to their impact on production.

Complete aside, and I looked in your profile for a way to pm you instead of making this comment where I am sure to burn karma. I noticed in two separate comments that you are improperly using hyphens.

> ... no interest-like people the world ...

Hyphens join two words. This sentence was hard to parse and was nonsensical until I realized the hyphen was intended as a separator. Consider spaces around hyphens when joining parts of a sentence. I was stuck for a spell wondering what an "interest-like" person was - was it a person with a return on value?

Cheers.

Thank you for the info I’m aware that the hyphen used that way is a personal quirk. But I’m always looking to improve my written communication so I’ll use them correctly going forward.

FWIW sometimes I'll do an emdash -- which allows a conceptual aside -- by using two hyphens, but always with spacing so as not to confuse the usage with word-joining.

When an em dash is used to indicate a pause, it's most often used without spacing between words and the em dash—except in newspapers [1].

[1] http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

Yes, my usage would normally be with endash in traditional media AFAIAA. Punctuation, like grammar, serves the user in my mode of writing.

I believe the punctuation you intended was the em-dash—so called because it is the width of an "m" in typical typography—which acts as a kind of weaker replacement for semicolon or parentheses. You can type it with option+[-] on an Apple device. If you can't or don't know how to type the character on the device you're using, a pair of hyphens are conventionally understood to represent the em-dash, as "--". No spaces are required on either side of this mark in any case, though if you choose to use a single hyphen to represent it then including spaces would certainly be better (clearer) than not including them.

Agree with the comment. That sentence made no sense whatsoever. Had to re read 10 times to figure out that the hyphen was probably wrong. Then still not sure whether it was a failed copy/paste or multiple words missing.

If you have troubles with using hyphens, I'd recommend to not use any, ever. There are barely any English word requiring one and noone will care if it's missing.

Personally -- due to laziness -- I just do this when typing plaintext.

I wish parents raised children because they love their children, instead of treating them like human cattle.

I wish that in-laws were looking to maximize lifelong success of their grandchildren by the selection of the character, aptitudes, and excellences of his wife.

A man who is not a coward and not a weakling should find a wife who is better than him, in many ways, who forces him to be his best self and grow in capabilities even when it is painful. He would never give himself so much power over her identity and strength as one gets by "buying" her.

This makes a culture of rape. If the woman is a commodity and her "no" or any other word or personal desire is, in nearly every other context, a doormat to be walked upon then it makes the "valley" between a meaningless no in every other context and the forcing upon her the meaninglessness of a no in a sexual context an inconsequential crack in the ground. Her "no" should always be heard, and that only comes when she is treated as a human, not as a commodity; that only comes when her voice is always heard and valued as much as every other voice.

The wishes and actions of the sister somehow don't enter this analysis at all. Reading this, it is not even her hard work and effort that got her education and job - the emphasis is on her parents efforts.

And I mean, they contributed, just like all parents contribute to offsprings success or failure. But, we don't talk about it that way normally - especially people in HN like to frame themselves as self-taught or at least as someone who got where he is due to own effort. I haven't seen a single comment here so far that would put that much emphasis on parents work and that little on geeks agency when talking about highly educated geeks without partner.

The "self-taught" is just a gentle way to say that they didn't attend college. The outside world would jump to the conclusion of being too broke or not capable.

> Her parents have effectively improved them to such a point that they've now been priced out of the market.

Out of that market. They're now in a different market. Perhaps it's a smaller one. (And perhaps it's a market where "bride price" isn't the way things are done...)

There's still a market for Mercedes-Benz cars, even though they cost more than Chevrolets...

I'm opposed to polygamy for the obvious humanitarian concerns, and other issues raised in the article. But at the same time, I'm curious about the long-term genetic impact of monogamy vs polygamy.

IQ and many personality traits have been shown to be correlated significantly with genes (many of these studies are based on adopted children, for whom genes and upbringing are decoupled). In monogamous societies like in America, someone who's highly smart and industrious, will likely end up with the same number of children as someone on the opposite end of the spectrum. In polygamous societies, someone who's smart and industrious can easily end up with 2-10x the number of children as the average man. In terms of natural selection, this clearly puts significantly more selective pressure on intelligence and personality-traits.

Over a few decades, I doubt this will amount to much. But over a couple centuries/millenia, I wonder if polygamous societies would wind up as a race of smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes, in comparison to us monogamous dolts.

"I'm curious about the long-term genetic impact of monogamy vs polygamy."

I think you might be overlooking the fact that women can and do have sex with other men than their husbands.

It's a complicated issue certainly, however as far as I'm aware cuckoldry (where children are product of adultery) is relatively rare, under 2%, don't have a source offhand but that's the hearsay as it were.

I think the implications were about sex before marriage, not just actual cases of having another persons child.

Rates of births out of wedlock has been steadily increasing and is nearing 50% (may already be passed it).

Its an interesting thought -

couple thoughts, its assumes a cream rises to the top, such that your mating success will correlate with whether you're smart and industrious

I suspect that there might be a tendency in polygamous societies for there to be a lot of effort put into setting up structural barriers to prevent mating competition from smart and industrious competitors.

Such that you actually weed out a lot of smart/industrious genes.

---------

Its not the case that history doesn't have examples of monogamous societies competing with polygamous societies over the time span of centuries/millennia.

And from a back of the envelope scorekeeping, it doesn't appear that the results are polygamous smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes outcompeting monogamous dolts.

Regarding the historical analysis, we do seem to be in a provably unique point in history. For most of human history, population was constrained by the availability of resources. Ie, the Malthusian trap. The number of healthy children one can raise, was constrained by the amount of material resources one had at his disposal. Not to mention that even in monogamous societies, birth-control was rare, and mistresses/children-born-out-of-wedlock were prevalent.

It's only in the past 100-200 years that the nature of population-control has changed so dramatically. Due to the widespread availability of birth-control, the increasing taboo against mistresses, and the abundance of food/shelter/medical-care, the number of children one sires is no longer well-correlated with financial prosperity.

Luckily, the effects of improved education and nutrition have drowned out any potential genetic effects from the above. But I suspect any potential consequences in natural-selection will take several centuries to fully pan out.

This might end up as a "nature vs. nurture" question.

The flip side of this argument, is that in modern monogamous societies (especially with birth control enabling easy family planning), the smart and industrious couple will probably have the ability to devote more time and resources to the relatively small amount of children they have.

Whereas, the smart and industrious polygamous male (traditional polygamy tends to almost always be patriarchal)'s resources will be spread more thinly among their X wives and Y babies.

At present, I'm not aware of a current polygamous society that is known for technological or intellectual sophistication. In addition to the above, the overall social structure in polygamous society seems to be negatively impacted, owing to the large quantity of unmarried, potentially violent, men that need to be dealt with somehow (as alluded to in The Economist article). Consequently, I'm also not aware of a polygamous society which embraces liberal values politically, or embraces democratic style political structures.

In other words, from the evidence I see, it seems likely to me that the negative consequences of polygamy wipes out any potential genetic benefit.

> But over a couple centuries/millenia, I wonder if polygamous societies would wind up as a race of smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes, in comparison to us monogamous dolts.

this has already been happening, if you compare western monogomous societies to islamic polygymous societies.

there are plenty of smart-hard-working-competitive-assholes in both western and islamic society, and there are plenty of dumb-lazy-nice-guys in both islamic and western society as well.

In a monogamous society the variance in the number of children may be lower, but the variance in number of grandchildren or great-grandchildren can be large.

And as the article mentioned, if children are less likely to live to grow up under polygamy, then that effect is magnified over multiple generations.

Another point is that material success is not completely genetic, and therefore if it is too strongly selected for, good genes will be selected out that would otherwise result in later generations being successful.

So I think it is not at all clear that it is evolutionarily beneficial.

What about a society that is polygamous without contract? Many of the issues of polygamy seem to happen not because of the actual marriage contracts, but because of the relationships formed. Even if you remove the contracts, if we allow those relationships, don't we still have an issue?

Does a society where polygamous relationships are allowed suffer some of the same core problems that a society which allows polygamy suffers?

You don't need polygamy to produce an enormous number of offspring. You just have to chose to produce as many children as possible, across more than one generation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/nyregion/21yitta.html

I cannot find the excellent psychologist essay about this topic from a few years ago, but here's a relevant summary of the concepts: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/resolution-not-conflict...

Now you've got me interested, look harder! (:

If I find it, I'll post it. I did just find this, however, and it touches on the same concepts (and may lead you to relevant content): https://medium.com/homeland-security/the-sexual-origins-of-t...

> Wherever it is widely practised, polygamy (specifically polygyny, the taking of multiple wives) destabilises society, largely because it is a form of inequality which creates an urgent distress in the hearts, and loins, of young men.

I expected that the sentence ends with "...of young women", because they are obviously seen as objects of a man's wealth and not as individual beings. It is an inequality not only of rich and poor but also one of male and female. How can one not see this?

You are confusing "rich men" with "young men" (and men in general actually). If women are treated as objects by afluent people the ones to blame are the "objects" selling themselves and the buyers.

My guess is because women are already severely oppressed in these societies and it is men's distress that can cause instability because they at least have power.

The men generally don't select the women in these societies; the marriages are arranged by both sets of parents. That's quite a different type of inequality.

Still, women have a quite measurable exchange value. And from the perspective of who has what to say in a marriage, gut feeling tells me it is the husband.

Polygyny may actually be advantageous to most women, while being bad for most men: https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200707/ten-politica.... This is because it allows many women to have a more desirable mate than they would otherwise have, while many men end up with no mate at all.

From that perspective, it's no wonder that many patriarchal cultures outlawed polygyny.

In a way we reverted to this situation after women's sexual liberation. Before the time comes to have children, the most attractive men acquire most of the sex. And this is during the time in which women's attractiveness is at its highest.

It is not until it is time to have children that most women settle down with a man of equal attractiveness (and sometimes not even then since the state will step in to provide resources to single mothers).

You seem to be unaware of how many western wonen in their 40s and 50s are having multiple partners.

But don't forget that these women who are in polygamous marriages will have sons, and most of them won't be able to get married, which presumably will make their mothers unhappy. It's a cruel system.

It makes no sense to discuss objectification in regards to the level of societal development that is implied by polygyny. Nobody there is seen as an individual being in a sense that no one's human rights are guaranteed or even promised to be. This is only about basic needs. Of course, the men at the top are winners, and winners take all. Women are inequally treated by them but get their basic needs covered (safety and resources, reproduction and opportunity to care for their children etc). Majority of men, though, simultaneously have to fend for themselves AND are deprived of sex. They are worse off, biologically and personally. They have less to lose, too: no offspring, no stability, no relationship, however inequal; which makes it so much easier to challenge the status-quo. Moreover, men are more likely to respond to violence in just about any context, especially this. No wonder that their frustration is a greater factor in societal disturbance induced by polygyny.

It's not so different now in America.

In what sense? Unless you mean the MRA/PUA bullshit about 10% of men getting 90% of the women.

The thesis of this article is that the artificial shortage of females ends up inspiring men to commit violence. The distress caused to women doesn't result in violence, generally.

Of course, this applies only if the polygynous marriages are exclusive. I find it in any case hard to imagine how to support four or more wives not just financialy, but also emotionally by myself (unless you think of them as just property). Most people spend hardly enough time with their one spouse.

One could imagine that actually polyamourous marriages would reduce violence in such a country. Why don't let your fifth wife be happy when you are busy with the others, or doing warlord stuff... I imagine people thought modern contraception would remove a lot of social norms and taboos around sex and marriage, but that didn't happen. I guess some things die hard.

You'll find from the article that in many cases the wives work at some task and the husband takes the money. So supporting them isn't entirely one sided (ie the husband isn't entirely providing). So you could look at wives in a lot of these cases as productive assets-they work, they provide you with children and raise them, and since they have no/little legal rights you can treat them however you want.

Polyamory (mentioned by captainmuon) is a universe away from what's described in the article.

I recommend reading the book "Sex At Dawn" for a thorough (if somewhat evangelical) dive into polyamory (as opposed to polygamy or monogamy), and how it has been used throughout human history and prehistory to construct stable societies with strong social bonds.

Worth pointing out that in most of the schools of thought in Islam, it’s not advisable to have more than one wife, except in situations where there are significantly more women than men. Islam and polygyny have a long and complex cultural history which is pretty interesting. And there is also polyandry in Christian countries like Nigeria, where cultural exceptions have been made. It seems to be mostly an African & Indian subcontinent thing...

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

> ... in most of the schools of thought in Islam, it’s not advisable to have more than one wife

I think this holds true in the general case.

I understand the fantasy, but I imagine the reality to be a lot closer to... well, to having two wives.

> every time a rich man takes an extra wife, another poor man must remain single

Or he could simply be already dead from all the warfare. These two things connect in positive feedback loop: men dying in war create gender misbalance that would push more women to become second and third wives as well.

Everytime a woman marrys a second or third cat - some poor men must become a culture warrior.

This looks like a case of correlation vs causation. The author tries to link polygamy as a factor to unstable states. I would say poverty is a far more common factor among the countries presented. A counter example would be Saudi Arabia which has polygamy but is stable due to its wealth.

That is true. But the form of polygamy practised in Saudi Arabia appears to be a 'milder' form: only up to 4 wives are allowed and most marriages are monogamous. But no mention of the 'bride price', as far as I can tell [1]

[1] https://www.quora.com/In-Saudi-Arabia-are-women-forced-into-...

I think polygamy just occurs in societies with unequal distribution of power between men and women. The reasons are generally either economic or religious. Poor economic conditions and religious extremes are both breeding grounds for conflict. Polygamy is mostly just a symptom of these two conditions.

Power imbalance between men and men seems to be just as important. Monogamist societies can be just as misogynic as polygamist societies.

Saudi Arabia is not stable at all, take out the easy money from oil, and hell breaks lose, you should compare same wealth & polygamy vs non polygamy.

As I said in a comment above polygamy seems to be a symptom of extremes in poverty and/or religious beliefs, both of which are direct causes of conflict/war.

You consider Saudi Arabia "stable"? They just had a coup d'etat this month, and have been involved in plenty of wars in the region, most recently in Yemen.

I'm not sure "being involved in war" has anything to do with being stable, seeing as the US has been "involved in war" for the past 250 years.

Also, Saudi Arabia did not have a coup d'etat by any reasonable definition. MBS "purging" his political opinions does not a coup make.

I only mentioned wars since the article was about wars.

But there is no war inside the country. USA is involved in wars, but it is stable.

Older article which claims the link between surplus of young men and instability [1].

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/an...

An article from the same publication with the same claim is not a good supporting resource.

Related: "8,000 Years Ago, 17 Women Reproduced for Every One Man" https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success

This suggests that political stability depends on young men being able to pursue their romantic dreams. This would apply in any country, not just African countries. In nations in the West, an important limiting factor is the ability to get one's own apartment. That is, the ratio of average male wage to average rent. In the USA, the happiest year for this ratio was 1958, when people were spending 22% of their income on rent, on average. Not by coincidence, this was the peak year of the Baby Boom. In some sense, it was the best year in history to be a young white male in the USA. It was the year when it was easiest for an 18 year old male to get out of high school, get their own apartment, marry their high school sweetheart, and start a family. And of course, young people did this in huge numbers, which is why 1958 remains the peak year for teenage pregnancy in the USA.

But rent has been rising faster than the average male wage since 1958, and politics in the USA has become angrier and angrier. The mechanism that this article suggests, that polygamy leads to war, would also suggest an angry impulse in a country that has transformed from one where 18 year old men have their own apartment to a country where most men don't achieve their own apartment until their late 20s or 30s.

There certainly has been a change in the tone with which men talk about women. Nowadays you can find Pick Up Artist web sites where men in their 20s and 30s can supposedly learn tricks to win over women. The tone suggests that women are far away, and need to be tricked into things. In 1958, a woman was a person you lived with and shared your life with, starting when you were 18. Early marriage had its own problems, which have been picked apart in endless comedies, but according to this article, the ease of marriage in the 1950s would have explained the contentment that the American people expressed regarding their own government and way of life.

The other implication of this is that Consumer Price Index is a lousy way to track people's standard of living, because it tends to treat socks and lettuce and bicycles and apples and houses and automobiles and Xboxes and Nintendo consoles as all having the same weight to each other as their price. But if this article is right, that men need women or they become war like, that would suggest that one item (housing) has an emotional weight that makes it much more important than any other item. If we adjust the median male wage with the CPI then it seems male wages in the USA have been stagnant since 1973. But if we gave housing the kind of weight that this article seems to justify, then we could say that men have seen a declining standard of living since 1958. That is, the abundance of socks and lettuce and bicycles and apples and automobiles and Xboxes and Nintendo consoles does not make up for rising rent.

I found some charts that are relevant to the economic history that I've mentioned, and I've posted them here:

http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/do-men-become-warlike...

I think you confused a few points. You mention both men getting apartments so they can form families with their already existing relationships and men who don't have relationships turning to online resources to try to understand how to have them. These seem distinct phenomena. Especially since in many other cultures newly wed couples would live with one set of parents in a multi-generational household. This means while it would go contrary to current social expectations and there would be some stress from doing such, not having an independent home for a relationship should be considered separate from not having a relationship. The latter is what mimics polygamous societies, and if the theory about the disability they cause those societies is true, should give us cause for concern in our own.

That there is a correlation between the availability of housing and effects you mention might be driven by a third hidden factor.

fascinating article. These 2 were mentioned in the comments give additional insight:

  - Article on brideprice: https://today.tamu.edu/2017/08/08/what-is-brideprice-and-how-is-it-linked-to-terrorism/

  - Paper: https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00289

I've heard variations of this called "Blue-Balls Theory". Reproduction for males becomes a high-stakes all-or-nothing prospect such that using violence is often a better reproductive strategy than "peaceful failure".

This has implications for the economy of prostitution, and pornography.

correlation does not equal causation.

the article does not seem to consider open relationships and the many other non-traditional arrangements that are becoming more common & widespread.

You’ve reached your article limit

Open in incognito.

HN is just not equipped to discuss this sort of thing.

I think that's because an acknowledgement that the kind of marriage one selects has an "environmental impact" immediately brings the sacred cow of gay marriage into question.

When it really shouldn't. You still have a fundamental right to select the type of relationship that's right for you, but you do have a responsibility to be mindful of its effect on society. This doesn't just mean ban stuff. Perhaps for polygyny, that would translate into making the relationship non-exclusive, rather than choosing against it altogether.

Agreed w parent (not GP). Ability to choose your relationship structure is usually overridden by economic forces. (Related: do cows suffer from inflation?)

From past experience I've found that taking an economic/scientific approach to certain things, especially human relationships, is considered a profane act in certain parts of modern day society. Many of my past attempts to discuss the economics of relationships results in accusations of sociopathy for attempting to understand relationships under a transactional framework. I've yet to figure out the cause of such opposition.

That HN doesn't result in this reaction (at least not nearly as strongly as other places) means it is one of the places most equipped to discuss it.

But it is possible for the most equipped place to discuss something to still be woefully inadequately equipped to discuss it. The richest person in a room can still be poor.

"This is a remarkable article: it literally pins the blame for everything bad that non-white people do on the one thing white people (read Western Europeans) have criticized others for for two millennia: polygamy. Violence? Polygamy. Terrorism? Polygamy. Domestic violence? Polygamy. Child mortality? Polygamy.

Of course the article is so high on its own supply that it ignores divorce/remarriage of wives of elite polygamous men and, even more so, that enormous reality of western life: extra-marital sex. Despite this article’s claims, polygamy is always relatively uncommon. It would be good to know how common it is in comparison to men hogging more than one woman in non-marriage sexual relationships. Temporary? So are, in effect, many polygamous marriages. I’m stunned this article got published."- Jonathan Brown

The first paragraph is unresponsive. The second paragraph ignores the obvious fact that: 1) in the societies at issue here, divorce and remarriage, and extra-marital sex are not common; and 2) statistics showing that polygamy can be common (e.g. 40% of marriages in the Sudan).

Great article. So much well researched that author even doesn't know that place where Arab Spring erupt first (Tunisia) has outlawed polygamy. That article claims that all ills are due to polygamy which is complete nonsense. In Daesh countries (Iraq and Syria) polygamy wasn't that common.

> it literally pins the blame for everything bad that non-white people do on the one thing white people ... have criticized others for for two millennia

While I don't think that polygamy is the root of all evil, it is a fact that "white people" countries don't have these bad things happening. Wouldn't it be logical to suggest that some difference in behaviour might be the reason for it?

No. Correlations implying causation are not logical, and there might be numerous possible other factors causing either or both.

It's not necessarily a "correlation implies causation" fallacy when there is clear and detailed reasoning of how one thing causes the other.

Correlation does not prevent causation either. It's not enough to prove causation, but it's a hint that there could be something linking the two factors in some way. I find the article provides a convincing story of how one factor causes the other.

That article is factually wrong. Tunisia had outlawed polygamy and got Arab Spring. And how many suicide bombs did Iraq had before Gulf War? In Daesh countries (Iraq and Syria) polygamy wasn't that common.

>It's not necessarily a "correlation implies causation" fallacy when there is clear and detailed reasoning of how one thing causes the other.

If that reasoning is unproven, it's just as fallacious to assume that one thing is the result of the other. There are so many arguments that this doesn't work for that it's ridiculous. You can't just make something up and say it's the truth because it isn't illogical and you believe there's an inferred relationship between the two events.

Not implying.

But if you see correlation, it is logical to investigate for a possible causation.

The word "imply" is ambiguous. When people say "correlation doesn't imply causation" they mean that it is invalid logic to say because correlation, thus causation. But in everyday english, imply just means "to suggest", and correlation certainly does suggest causation even though that may not be the case. Correlation may equally suggest causation but in the reverse sense. Or a third cause of both things. I think you should always mentally enumerate those possibilities whenever someone is presenting a correlation.

You're right, correlations are absolutely useless for helping determine causation. That's why scientists never do correlational studies.

It's interesting, though, that you have nothing specific to say about how one should go about determining causality.

Maybe the topic may sound funny for some but it's not when you experience it.

  I am currently dating a girl who has been force-married at age 12 to a cousin of his father. The man is two decades older than her but she had nothing to say because her consent is not need according to "traditions". Women are "exchanged" as cattle in their culture. Those transactions build inter-tribal relations. I know a bit about their culture because i read social Anthropology @ uni. 

  She run away from the man 4 years ago & came back to live with her parents. The father is still pushing her to go back to the man. He has heard that his daughter is dating someone (Me) and is very treating her shabbily these days. 

  Whereas the girl's mother got to know me and we interact regularly. She is a very kind & soft-spoken woman. Her husband is now accusing her of supporting the "dalliances" of their daughter. The father is the one who is supposed to take the bride-price in case of marriage.

  I'm currently confused about it. I don't want to marry someone i've not paid the bride-price for. I don't want to leave the girl either because the love she has for me.

Hmmmm I'm confused... I'm really confused... Any help or advice...

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