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Comment by geomark | Hacker News Reader

Is monogamy in humans the result of evolutionary pressures or a social construct to serve other purposes? With the right social indoctrination the majority might not care at all about monogamy, even find it strange and undesirable, ala Brave New World.

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I think I care about the well-being of my family more than a cheap thrill.... by many orders of magnitude.

What if you don't have a family? In Brave New World there are no families. Technology plus social indoctrination have eliminated the need and desire for them.

That's a hard pass from me. I rather we didn't use Brave New World and 1984 as guides on how to build the future.

Same for me. But of course that is because we have been conditioned to feel that way, isn't it?

Sure, but that's not something people feel comfortable hearing, judging by your downvotes.

It's just not true. We're not robots.

It's more nature than nurture. Babies died in a Romanian orphanage because they were only fed and diaper changed and not held for example. I can't find the source right now but I did find this https://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-kids-...

A partner, of both the sexual and emotional variety, is far more satisfying than any random sexual hookup. Its the bedrock foundation of my life. Some sort of short lived satisfaction from hooking up with a random doesn't hold a candle to what we have. I'm not religious, we don't have kids, and we've been together for almost 20 years.

You know monogamy and pair-bonding are observed in many species? Several species of apes, monkeys, birds and fish have been observed to implement life-long pair bonding.

From a cold, logical perspective there are certainly evolutionary benefits to having a pair-bond not least of which is future certainty of care, for yourself and your joint offspring.

Even for pair-bonded species, DNA testing has repeatedly found offspring to have fathers different from the mate.

So maybe natures optimal path is closer to pair-bonding + promiscuity, rather than either on their own?

From a cold logical perspective, it would be advantagous to have many mates you share with others, that all take care of any offspring, since then even in the event of the death of the biological parents, the social parents can continue care for the offspring. Redundancies and failsafes are better if you have more.

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