Can we please just bring back the concept of being a selfish piece of shit? Imagine cheating on your fiancee in front of her, forcing her to be complicit in it with emotional and financial blackmail, and then demanding people refer to you as a polyamorous utilitarian and bless all your sins. I would only be five percent as disgusted if the guy just accepted he is a selfish piece of shit instead of being a selfish piece of shit AND demanding that we acknowledge his virtue within the context of his worldview. He knows he’s a selfish piece of shit, we know it, he knows we know it, so who are we pretending for?
Yeah - one of my main issues with this flavour of radical progressivism is how it can be used to frame a rich white guy's desire to bang anything that moves in front of his girlfriend as some sort of civil rights issue
Or at least not preening about how great you are. “Polyamory” is objectively weird and if you’re in multiple relationships, even if everyone is genuinely on board with the situation, you should at least have the good sense to be ashamed of it.
For some reason I’m not bumped if someone is from Africa or something and they have an actual tradition of it but otherwise there’s just a ton of motivated reasoning where people go “wow, I can’t believe it turns out that I should just get everything I want, all the time, with no limitations.”
On the other hand, the African guy isn’t “polyamorous” in the way that people in the west want to use that term, right? He’s from a patriarchal culture where guys are allowed to have multiple wives because women are treated as property rather than full moral agents.
Granter, I’ve never had a real life one on one with somebody in these situations but in interviews I’ve seen their attitude just kinda seems like a shrug “yeah, that’s what we were told was the thing you do.” Also it seems like it’s usually the parents setting it all up.
There’s definitely stuff over there that I find messed up and would outright alter if able (like child marriage) but it’s important to remember no one living started all of this and most people just go with the flow. They just inherited a messed up flow.
Every person I’ve known to be polyamorous is someone who made sure I knew they were polyamorous, and when people let you know certain facts about themselves it usually is because they think it’s the superior choice (cf. some vegans, some forever maskers).
I’m sure I know people who are polyamorous who haven’t made it known to me, in the same way I don’t tell people I’m a monogamist, or make sure when I mention my husband that I also mention he is the only person I am emotionally and sexually involved with. The facts of our relationships aren’t worth mentioning because neither of us is boasting or proselytizing and there’s otherwise no need to make it especially clear what our emotional or sexual needs and habits are.
This reminds me of the New Years party I was at, where this woman told me her family were Jewish holocaust survivors about 30 seconds after meeting me. I honestly had no idea what to say to that, so the conversation went in a different direction. The funny part is I am also the descendant of a Holocaust survivor but it is inconceivable to me to drop that into a casual conversation with a complete stranger! I’ve been wondering ever since what motivated her leading with that so quickly.
If it was this past New Year’s maybe she put it out there bc of the recent conflict in Israel and Palenstine. I can see a situation where if you run in circles where people talk hot button political issues at parties one would maybe ungracefully put that out there to kind of let people know who they were talking to in order to avoid people just saying banal shit about the topic to come across as interesting. Kind of like, “if you want to talk about Jews, be forewarned about who you are talking to.” That’s my charitable interpretation... if it were this year.
If i encountered a stranger at a party who said that to me within seconds of meeting, my inclination would be to suspect her of lying. At the very least, I would feel certain that her family were not “real” Holocaust survivors, as Norman Finkelstein’s parents drew the distinction: those who survived internment in a concentration camp or those who were resistance fighters or in hiding. Simply belonging to a targeted group, and surviving the years 1938—1945, is a separate category. Claiming a common identity with others whose actual physical survival was threatened is cheap and inconsiderate, and rings false.
Interesting theory and distinction. Yes, to me it literally means you had direct relatives in the camps (or barely escaping the camps, etc). I could claim to be the survivor of all sorts of things if it only referred to shared identity—heck, I’m part Slavic, so I guess that makes me a survivor of slavery!
I did wonder if it was such constant conversation while she was growing up that she considers it a casual conversation piece.
This is more a tangent than agreement or rebuttal, but I note that essentially everyone alive today, other than maaaaaaaybe a couple of groups that have survived in total isolation like the Sentinelese, is a descendent of essentially everyone who was alive in ~500 AD and left any descendants at all. The inexorable quadratic logic of two parents for every child means that even tiny rates of intermarriage and interbreeding rapidly propagate through entire populations to give everyone a (tiny) percentage of lineal descent from common ancestors.
I’m personally pretty confident saying “survivor” means you survived a specific thing, and being a descendant of a survivor means your parents/grandparents survived a specific thing.
Then again, the reason you don’t tell people that you’re monogamous is because that’s normal and there’s no reason to announce that you’re normal. It’s a shame that people don’t have the good sense to be at least ashamed about having such extreme sexual appetites that they feel the need to be “polyamorous.”
I always assumed it was about boredom within the relationship or needing a shot of that “exciting new relationship “ feeling, without blowing up your marriage completely.
Ok my example sucked, but my point was even though I haven’t experienced it, I am reasonably certain there are polyamorous people who are not smugly superior about their polyamory.
It’s not for me - I’m a goose, I mate for life - but to each their own, lid for every pot, etc etc.
I saw something recently about monogamy in birds. It seems that there's a correlation with how far/long their migration is to how monogamous they are. The shorter the migration the more likely they are to stay with the same mate. The theory is that the longer the migration, the more likely the pair will split up and loose each other.
A bit like people who use the word normal in the judgemental, rather than statistical sense, and try to impose shame on things which they personally do not like rather than minding their own business?
There’s quite a shade of difference between normal and normative (and between abnormal and non-normative). It’s about the difference between being descriptive v. sitting in judgement. The statement “Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common” — which is frequently attributed to Dorothy Parker — exemplifies and clarifies the point.
The problem with describing heterosexuality as “normal” because heterosexual intercourse is required for reproduction, is that “heterosexuality” and “homosexuality” as we understand them, are extremely modern phenomena. Until we started to define sexuality as an identity, it was typical for people who were attracted to the same sex to have both procreative heterosexual relationships and romantic homosexual relationships.
I see your point but what Parker was saying was that homosexuality should not be classed as abnormal any more than, say, being an Olympic athlete or a writer of enduring interest would be considered abnormal (granted, my examples betray a partisan bent 😃). A person who is rare or unusual can be called an exception, and her/his way of being can be conceived of as a variation, an alternative, etc., if non-judgmental terminology is desired. During Parker’s lifetime, homosexuality tended to be characterized in the dominant discourses as deviant, maladjusted, and defective. The word “abnormal” carries such connotations, and it is yoked by way of the antonym system to “normal”. But of course, in terms of reproduction, heterosexuality has historically been both normal and normative: only since the introduction of AI and IVF has it been something other than the exclusive means of propagating a species. Among livestock, it is no longer the normative means of reproduction — and with artificial wombs and human gene editing just around the corner, it may be only a matter of time before humans do it the old way only in a place like Huxley’s savage reservations.
Correct. It's one thing to object to some scumbag using polyamory as a justification for cheating. It's quite a another thing to object to the entire concept even when all parties consent.
Polyamory doesn't appeal to me personally but if it floats the boat of the consenting adults down the street, let them have at it.
This is the second time you’ve demanded other people feel shame about something that does not negatively effect you in this comment section. That seems kinda mean. How would you feel about being told to feel shame about the way you live?
First off, if you wanted to act all morally superior over the fact that you have proclaimed yourself Normal, and therefore inherently better than those who are Abnormal, I'm not really sure why you're doing it here. It's Sunday-- shouldn't you be looking down your nose at other people in church?
Second, polyamory is about the number of sexual or romantic partners, not the frequency with which you have sex. Polyamorous asexuals exist.
Third, what the hell business is it of yours what someone else's "sexual appetites" are?
Man, nothing grinds my gears quite like this combination of pig-ignorance and absolute self-assuredness. It's like Dunning-Kruger took comment form.
"Abnormal" according to whom? It strikes me that your moral views are more knee-jerk than actually thought out, and I don't think that's a good basis for what should and should not be socially acceptable.
And expanding the definition of what's "normal" is fair game. It's the same process gay people had to go through to be accepted. Granted, some will try to normalize things shouldn't be normalized (eg, pedophilia), but that's part of the larger conversation to be had about any behavior. If poly is practiced consensually, I don't see where it's really anybody's business, and the fact that offends social conservatives is not sufficient reason to stigmatize anything.
The only poly people I knew ended up divorced within two years of the experiment. Luckily they both found other partners, and are now back in monogamous relationships.
In a recent Substack post, I think Helen Lewis said put it best when talking about polyamory:; "Middle-aged (adj.): When you read about polygamy and you’re mostly jealous of . . . all the free time these people seem to have."
How do people have the time? Even if I though it would be sexually fulfilling, there would be way too much drama and dealing with other people's shit (i.e. emotions) than I could deal with. I find it difficult to keep up with what's going on at my husband's work, keeping track of what the kids need for school, and my own full time job, the housework (and three needy cats) that I just couldn't handle the emotional burden of another human.
A slim majority of the people I know who talk about it don’t seem to be actually doing it- they are either heterosexual couples can’t can’t or don’t find a third or they are divorced single guys who claim the reason they can’t find anyone is they are being discriminated against due to their polyamorous orientation.
I avoid people who want to overshare about their sex lives. I used to come across a lot of poly people at the school my sons attended for homeschooling enrichment classes. Rich parents with too much time on their hands and no personal boundaries. I would do a lot to avoid “the poly moms” because they wanted to talk about it ceaselessly.
You never cease to amaze us. How does a middle aged suburban wife/mom/white collar worker know so many people with offbeat personal lives? I think the only people you didn't know personally were minor-attracted persons and the bestiality enthusiasts?
Sometimes I'd swear you were a 28 year old Brooklyn hipster with multiple piercings, tattoos and purple hair.
I do have tattoos and used to have a nose piercing, which died a painful death when I was rough housing my kids when they were younger. The hole from the piercing, which I’d had for 15 years at that point, healed with no mark in under an hour so that was that. Never any purple or colored hair though.
There is a word for my affliction. That word is:
Seattle.
I am a late comer to the suburbs having mostly lived in urban areas until I was in my 30s (we moved out of Seattle in 2012, though the boys went to school there until 2019 and I work there- my office when I actually have to go there is very close to downtown Seattle.) We escaped the city but as of yet have not figured out a non-disruptive way to escape the metro area so here we stay. If we didn’t have kids or an elderly man with dementia in our care, we say we’d definitely be gone but who knows. My husband is especially craving the small town setting he grew up in. That said, for all my kevetching about Seattle and the very nutty people we meet, I have mostly lived in this area for 40 years this summer and it’s the closest thing to a hometown I will ever have. I think it’s safe to say I have a love-hate relationship with it. There’s a lot to shit on about Seattle: reactive lefty politics, extremely expensive housing, everyone being a little too cool for school. But at the same time, I can walk to a gorgeous waterfront or hit quiet green trails on all directions from where I live. It’s rarely very cold or very hot. There are some big city amenities and I really am attached to the Seattle Mariners. We have a lot of friends here and I really like the parish we go to. My mom’s grave is here. It’s home, like it or not; warts and all. If we do move away, I’ll miss it at times I’m sure. I will also have to use GPS to get around and that will be weird.
Also, people just tell me weird things. I think I have a sign on my head that I can’t see.
A few months ago, I gave an older woman a ride home from an informal gathering and while I was driving her home she just divulged that she is in a relationship with a couple and they all live together and then she did the super overshare thing that had me attempting to change the subject to ANYTHING else I could think of for the last 10 minutes of that car ride. What the hell do you even say in situations like that? And how are they finding me.
Ha! No. It is possible that people were hitting on me back in, say, 2002 and 2007. Not now.
Once in 2007, we were at the SF Opera and a couple walked right up to me and my husband and gushed that people “must propose marriage to you all the time”. My husband was like “yeah, people like me, 5 years ago”. We chatted with them during intermission and turned down their offer to go out afterwards. We joked that they were murderers or swingers and either way, we weren’t finding out.
At 43, I do not have the skin, hair or figure of 27 year old me and I am carrying a lot of extra weight that I am slowly taking off. Fortunately for me, my husband sees me through rose colored glasses and seems to think I still look like I used to. Since we are both very geared towards monogamy, this works for us.
Polyamory is like bestiality and surrogacy, people that argue that it doesn’t do harm if the people (or animals) report that they are cool with it or like it or want it, but... the people who subject themselves to it ain’t right. And we know they ain’t right. And we all pretend we don’t know this because they report that it’s healthy and good for them and “who are we to judge?”.
I've meet basically two kinds of polyamorous couples in my life. Some of them approach it very maturely, they have a primary partner but both partners enjoy having sex with other people, usually together. Those couples are typically somewhat quiet about it with people they don't know or who aren't interested in that kind of thing. The other type I've met are couples where one person is FAR more invested in the relationship than the other and the more dominant partner just gets to sleep around with whoever they want while the other partner clearly hates it but wont leave. THOSE couples typically can't shut up about it.
I don't know anybody who is polyamourous unless you count a couple of women aquaintences I have who willfully turn a blind eye to their partners fucking about.
I have a little bit. Unlike most people who responded, I'm fairly poly positive and have seen it work out well for friends (interestingly, in a hetero context). But I've also seen it work out badly!
Honestly, what has bothered me is when people refuse to discuss sexism and homophobia in the context of polyamory when not all relationships are heterosexual, or act as if there's a way to do poly "correctly" that will erase any messy human elements.
It's also very tiring to constantly hear that polyamory is inherently "queer." Was once at a backyard party where it became apparent there were (exclusively cis hetero) poly relationships going on, but one of them couldn't shut up about how queer/gay it all was. Idk if it's "enlightened" exactly, but a woman dating two men and acting like it makes her gayer than a lesbian is weird and awkward.
People want to be queer so badly these days without having to engage in homosexual sex or relationships. It must be baffling for older generations of gays.
Not directing this at any specific comment, but I think what people miss when they say “the only polyamorists I know never shut up about it” is that there’s a good chance they have a colleague or an acquaintance who is the private, quiet type of polyamorist, who is just as embarrassed by the loudmouths as everyone else.
It’s the availability heuristic: the most insufferable and socially awkward people end up representing the entire group. I don’t have a solution, but it’s worth keeping in mind, if you ask me.
Is this a safe space to declare it's no surprise that type No. 3 is likely the most successful? For better or worse, men seem wired to be more prone not give a phook about intimacy issues.
I don't know about that. I've read that men are far less likely to tolerate infidelity from a female partner than women are to tolerate it from a male partner. I think the dynamic is different in gay relationships though.
I spent several years in Somerville, Massachusetts, and because of that, I met way too many people who really really into polyamory. I will say this --a lot of them are just sex nerds. If they weren’t gonna corner you to talk about their sex life, they would probably corner you to talk about Star Wars, or some thing.
"Autistic people with a special interest in sex" certainly describes a lot of polyamorists, as far as I can tell. The Aella types.
Even though I am not someone with that particular interest, for obvious reasons, I get a little defensive when assholes start attacking them as depraved and shameful.
Keep in mind that the only "polyamorists" you think you've met are the ones who want to tell you they are polyamorists. Most people don't talk about their sex lives with random people they meet, and most people that do (regardless of their sexual preferences) have something wrong with them. The normal ones wouldn't tell you about it, even if you asked.
The only straight people I've known who seem to successfully maintain multiple relationships are definitely quirky*, but also have good enough social awareness not to info-dump about their niche interests to uninterested parties.
*Possibly neurodivergent, but maybe just sort of odd.
I can't help wondering what is meant ny the term "shocking his penis". This guy strikes me as the sort whose penis is too jaded and has seen too much to be truly shocked by anything
I can visualize things in my mind and it is like watching a movie, the way Katie says Janna can do. With my eyes, I’m seeing the back of my eyelids; it’s my brain that’s visualizing things.
Me, too. And the more recent it is the better/longer the video clip. I'm having a hard time understanding how someone could remember events without the visual element.
In fact, how could you process visual images at all? Vision works because your eyes are sensing light at various frequencies and intensities, then they give that data to the brain. The brain must store it in order to process it and turn it from a collection of sensed data into perceived objections and motion. For instance, if you couldn't remember visuals you wouldn't be able to tell whether a car in front of you is moving because that requires remembering where it was an instant before.
"In a shared and loving way, we both acknowledged that the trauma we had experienced, her going through cancer, me hurting my hand, had created a difficult environment for our relationship to continually thrive"
I definitely remember things in my mind. I see it like a movie. Not literally, I also see the back of my eyelids, but my brain paints a picture that I can somehow see. It's like my head sees it, but my eyes don't. Does that make sense?
Same for me. And with words I remember how things are spelled by picturing the word in my mind. I wonder how Katie remembers how to spell things without visualising the letters?
I don’t have aphantasia (I’m actually not convinced it exists; I think we’re just confusing each other by using different words to describe the same experience) but I don’t spell by visualizing; I spell by sounding words out in my head. For common words it’s automatic; for harder words it’s more conscious. I will never not imagine hearing “Wed-nes-day” or “Feb-ru-ary” anytime I need to write those words.
This is really interesting. What about for words which make no phonetic sense if you're not familiar with other alphabets though, such as Irish names like Laoghaire or Caoimhe? Do you just have to learn how they would sound read phonetically to remember them?
Ha, I have no idea because I have no idea how to pronounce those words. For Irish names I am familiar with, like Siobhan, I guess I’ve just memorized “the name that sounds like ‘sha-von’ is spelled ‘si-ob -han’” and mentally sound out the wrong pronunciation as I write it?
God the naked forest guy seems like such a priiiiiiick. I can’t come up with anything else to say about the situation, so I’ll move on to mind pictures instead!
I feel like I spend so much time in my head visualizing things, hearing music/sounds, recalling sensations etc. I don’t understand how aphantasics structure their thinking without these things. It’s so interesting!
One note on the discussion: Jesse mentioned people not knowing all the details of their childhood kitchen as proof that they weren’t truly seeing it.
I think this is confusing perfect memory with visualization. Most people who can visualize don’t have photographic memories; their memories degrade like everyone else’s. But that doesn’t change the “seeing” they do when trying to recall a place from many years ago. Sometimes, through sustained visualization, I find that more details of things I’ve forgotten can emerge also!
I am curious what the implications are for eyewitness identification, which I understand is notoriously unreliable. Despite being a visualizer, if I’m not paying close attention to something I probably won’t be able to recall it accurately. I don’t think my ability to identify a suspect would be any better than Katie’s, for instance. I’m curious what others think!
Also we actually take in very few details when we look at a scene in real life. Our brains do a lot of glossing over, which is obvious if you have ever taken LSD and experience what it's actually like when your brain is taking in more of the details. Or when you realize something was in a room with your for a long time but you never registered it.
Similarly, when we visualize things we visualize the key bits that make it feel like a full scene, while glossing over the details. So it's normal people don't remember the details even though they can picture the scene.
This also becomes clear when you try to paint something and realize your mind's eye didn't tell you what details precisely to put in each section. I'm assuming most people who can visualize can't see every detail in every bush, and will need to look up reference bushes to make them feel like what the mind's eye is roughing in.
I don’t understand. Why does this guy have any money? Why is anyone listening to him about anything? I read world class prick about 10 seconds into watching this guy… does almost everyone have a personality disorder now so birds of a feather and all…
He bought venmo cheap, merged it with his startup (Braintree), then sold the combined entity for a lot more. IMO, he was mostly selling Venmo, and his wealth comes primarily from that single good trade. His new startup Kernel seems like complete bs.
I don’t think anyone sees an image of what they’re imagining in their field of vision, which Katie seems to be positing as a possibility at times, right? Apart from hallucinations. I can clearly visualise objects or people in my mind and populate it with as much detail as I want, but memories can be anywhere between somewhat detailed (usually embarrassing memories are very detailed...) and fairly fuzzy.
If Sophie Scott is a mediocre neuroscientist, then I’m some type of pond scum (i.e., a grad student) but i do study vision so wanted to highlight what’s being said here. Mental imagery is not vision. Katie said in the episode 198 that when she closes her eyes all she sees is the back of her eyelids. Well, that is true for everyone, no matter how vivid their mental imagery is. It is as if the two experiences occupy separate ‘dimensions.’ If someone’s mental imagery did occupy the same ‘dimension’ as vision, that would indeed be a hallucination. If there were people who could ‘literally see’ what they were imagining, I would drop what I’m doing and focus my research on that group. It would be like studying a population of wizards. Amazingly, there are people claiming to practice such wizardry: tulpamancers. These folks claim to be capable of imagining a being into perceptual reality. I’m skeptical. But if they are in fact doing this, then the experience presents an unbelievably rich opportunity for studying the neural basis of perception and imagination, much like the experience of people with aphantasia is. Here’s an interesting post from the tulpa community: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/comments/18axe2/a_warning_for_any_and_all_potential_tulpamancers/
Ok, as a mostly non-visualizer, I'm grateful for this! A bit of introspection, concentrating on what happened when I tried to visualize something, anything, brought up exactly the question of separate "dimensions". It makes a lot more sense that way. But I still wonder, do good visualizers picture things while their eyes are open? Is there interference between seeing and imagining?
Do good visualizers picture things with their eyes open? Sure! Right now, I'm picturing Mickey Mouse doing jumping jacks on the desk next to my computer while I type these words. Now he's desperately trying (and failing) to yank the top of my thermos open so he can drink my coffee. Now he's flipping me off. As vivid and entertaining as it was for me to experience that little episode, at no point was Mickey in the same 'phenomenological dimension' as my desk and thermos. (Sorry, probably didn't need to add the fancy word, but couldn't help myself.) Now, is there interference between seeing and imagining? Sure! When I amp up the details on Mickey and his wild antics, I necessarily pay less attention to my visual scene. To experience Mickey flipping me off and cursing me out in frustration requires a bit of effort and focus. When I exert that effort to make the mental image more vivid my visual experience suffers. Absent minded drivers may be familiar with an extreme example of this. They've been mind-wandering, lost in imagination, and when they 'come back' from their reveries realize that their entire visual scene (i.e., the road, other cars, their exit which they just missed) was completely absent from awareness. Their attention was fully captured by imagination and so their vision was totally unattended. When something is totally unattended, it is unconscious. So that’s an example of imagination interfering with vision. There is some evidence that the interaction runs the other way too: imagination enhancing vision. The literature is a bit complicated and not definitive, but it may be the case that priming oneself with imagination will make something that is difficult to see a bit easier to detect.
I can put things into my visual field if I want, like adding a green chair in the corner. But the parts that my brain isn't "looking" at are never as highly defined as real things are in my peripheral vision. I can convince myself that I'm adding as much detail and zoom in, but as soon as I add detail somewhere else, the rest gets wiped like an etch a sketch.
I'm not good at visualising how things will go together (just ask my wife!), but I use drawing things out to "fix" the stuff I won't be visualising.
Right but it’s happening in your head still right? You’re not literally seeing a green chair in front of you in the same way you see other furniture. That’s what I was meaning.
I think it’s interesting how hard it is, or rather how full of pitfalls it is, to try and describe something that you do so unthinkingly to someone who doesn’t have that ability - and when you never even knew that that ability could be lacked. Like describing “seeing” something in your minds eye seems impossible to misinterpret because of course everyone knows that it’s not *really* seeing in the way one sees with one’s eyes, but just another way of saying “imagining” or “visualising”. But then someone like Katie comes along and one has to start trying to explain that no, it’s not like walking around with an augmented reality headset watching green chairs pop into reality at every turn.
Yeah - it's like it's obviously a different sort of thing. And I have to actively think it - it would never happen if someone else were talking about a green chair in their room. Then I'm thinking more about platonic ideals of chairs and green and room?
It’s like there’s a movie screen inside my head that turns on when I visualize things. I don’t see what I visualize in my real life field of vision, it’s all projected onto the screen inside my mind.
Yikes, they skated over the worst part of that Brian Johnson story: a woman who just recovered from cancer has to pay half a million to a millionaire? Will he actually make her pay it? Can she even? Is she broke now? How much is he actively trying to destroy her life at this point?
Yes, I see my childhood kitchen in detail. I see the dents in the kitchen cabinets. I see (and smell!) all the loose rubber bands in the junk drawer, tangled up with the scissors and pliers and odds and ends of rolls of tape. I see the broom closet and all the things on the shelves.
Had a long conversation about polyamory with a friend and while we both agreed it would be great for a couple to treat sex with outsiders as just a physical thing for fun, I think the ability for people to divorce that from their emotions is just not there for most people. Jealousy and the range of emotions that come with sex are just too ingrained in us to intellectualize it away.
Like a lot of ideas, the theory of polyamory is fine but as soon as it collides with the messy reality of human emotions, as well as the tendency of some people to mistreat others and the tendency of some people to accept mistreatment, it falls apart as an ethical proposition. Whenever I've met a polyamorous couple they always seem to be comprised of a person who is super keen on polyamory and a person who is merely tolerating it in order to cling on to their partner.
In theory, a one night stand sounds fun! But the reality is I can’t have sex with someone I don’t want or have a relationship with. The last two (actually only two!) times I tried to have a one night thing I ended up marrying them.
Can we please just bring back the concept of being a selfish piece of shit? Imagine cheating on your fiancee in front of her, forcing her to be complicit in it with emotional and financial blackmail, and then demanding people refer to you as a polyamorous utilitarian and bless all your sins. I would only be five percent as disgusted if the guy just accepted he is a selfish piece of shit instead of being a selfish piece of shit AND demanding that we acknowledge his virtue within the context of his worldview. He knows he’s a selfish piece of shit, we know it, he knows we know it, so who are we pretending for?
Yeah - one of my main issues with this flavour of radical progressivism is how it can be used to frame a rich white guy's desire to bang anything that moves in front of his girlfriend as some sort of civil rights issue
“Of course I slept with my daughter’s best friend! What would Jesus do, am I right?!?”
Or at least not preening about how great you are. “Polyamory” is objectively weird and if you’re in multiple relationships, even if everyone is genuinely on board with the situation, you should at least have the good sense to be ashamed of it.
For some reason I’m not bumped if someone is from Africa or something and they have an actual tradition of it but otherwise there’s just a ton of motivated reasoning where people go “wow, I can’t believe it turns out that I should just get everything I want, all the time, with no limitations.”
On the other hand, the African guy isn’t “polyamorous” in the way that people in the west want to use that term, right? He’s from a patriarchal culture where guys are allowed to have multiple wives because women are treated as property rather than full moral agents.
Granter, I’ve never had a real life one on one with somebody in these situations but in interviews I’ve seen their attitude just kinda seems like a shrug “yeah, that’s what we were told was the thing you do.” Also it seems like it’s usually the parents setting it all up.
At university I knew a Muslim girl from some country in East Africa whose dad had like ten wives. But it was hard to even begin to relate tbh.
There’s definitely stuff over there that I find messed up and would outright alter if able (like child marriage) but it’s important to remember no one living started all of this and most people just go with the flow. They just inherited a messed up flow.
Yeah, his hair slicks back real nice. Total piece of shit.
It’s funny to find myself accidentally in the zeitgeist, but I’ll take it! I published an essay yesterday on polyamory’s superiority complex: https://open.substack.com/pub/kier/p/polyamorys-superiority-complex?
Have you run into polyamorists who think their lifestyle means they’re enlightened?
I feel about polyamory as the Victorians were said to feel about sex: do what you like but don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses
Right? Nothing is a mood killer quite like sanctimony.
Every person I’ve known to be polyamorous is someone who made sure I knew they were polyamorous, and when people let you know certain facts about themselves it usually is because they think it’s the superior choice (cf. some vegans, some forever maskers).
I’m sure I know people who are polyamorous who haven’t made it known to me, in the same way I don’t tell people I’m a monogamist, or make sure when I mention my husband that I also mention he is the only person I am emotionally and sexually involved with. The facts of our relationships aren’t worth mentioning because neither of us is boasting or proselytizing and there’s otherwise no need to make it especially clear what our emotional or sexual needs and habits are.
This reminds me of the New Years party I was at, where this woman told me her family were Jewish holocaust survivors about 30 seconds after meeting me. I honestly had no idea what to say to that, so the conversation went in a different direction. The funny part is I am also the descendant of a Holocaust survivor but it is inconceivable to me to drop that into a casual conversation with a complete stranger! I’ve been wondering ever since what motivated her leading with that so quickly.
If it was this past New Year’s maybe she put it out there bc of the recent conflict in Israel and Palenstine. I can see a situation where if you run in circles where people talk hot button political issues at parties one would maybe ungracefully put that out there to kind of let people know who they were talking to in order to avoid people just saying banal shit about the topic to come across as interesting. Kind of like, “if you want to talk about Jews, be forewarned about who you are talking to.” That’s my charitable interpretation... if it were this year.
That’s very possible, I would suppose.
It was this year—this could definitely be the case.
If i encountered a stranger at a party who said that to me within seconds of meeting, my inclination would be to suspect her of lying. At the very least, I would feel certain that her family were not “real” Holocaust survivors, as Norman Finkelstein’s parents drew the distinction: those who survived internment in a concentration camp or those who were resistance fighters or in hiding. Simply belonging to a targeted group, and surviving the years 1938—1945, is a separate category. Claiming a common identity with others whose actual physical survival was threatened is cheap and inconsiderate, and rings false.
Interesting theory and distinction. Yes, to me it literally means you had direct relatives in the camps (or barely escaping the camps, etc). I could claim to be the survivor of all sorts of things if it only referred to shared identity—heck, I’m part Slavic, so I guess that makes me a survivor of slavery!
I did wonder if it was such constant conversation while she was growing up that she considers it a casual conversation piece.
This is more a tangent than agreement or rebuttal, but I note that essentially everyone alive today, other than maaaaaaaybe a couple of groups that have survived in total isolation like the Sentinelese, is a descendent of essentially everyone who was alive in ~500 AD and left any descendants at all. The inexorable quadratic logic of two parents for every child means that even tiny rates of intermarriage and interbreeding rapidly propagate through entire populations to give everyone a (tiny) percentage of lineal descent from common ancestors.
I’m sure this person was insufferable, but can we avoid trying to decide who gets to claim the title of capital-S Survivor?
This isn’t the high jump of the oppression Olympics.
I’m personally pretty confident saying “survivor” means you survived a specific thing, and being a descendant of a survivor means your parents/grandparents survived a specific thing.
Maybe she knew you were (somehow, maybe even not in a creepy fashion?) and thought it wss strange that you didn't talk about it together?
That strikes me as impossible but I guess I don’t know that with 100% certainty.
So, they’re the CrossFit enthusiasts of sex?
Then again, the reason you don’t tell people that you’re monogamous is because that’s normal and there’s no reason to announce that you’re normal. It’s a shame that people don’t have the good sense to be at least ashamed about having such extreme sexual appetites that they feel the need to be “polyamorous.”
I don’t think it’s “extreme sexual appetites” that spur polyamory. I think it’s avoidance of deep intimacy. Or maybe they are just cut out that way.
I don’t think monogamous people have any less of a sex drive than the polyamorists.
I always assumed it was about boredom within the relationship or needing a shot of that “exciting new relationship “ feeling, without blowing up your marriage completely.
Ok my example sucked, but my point was even though I haven’t experienced it, I am reasonably certain there are polyamorous people who are not smugly superior about their polyamory.
It’s not for me - I’m a goose, I mate for life - but to each their own, lid for every pot, etc etc.
Are we back to the bestiality stuff, then?
Underrated comment.
I saw something recently about monogamy in birds. It seems that there's a correlation with how far/long their migration is to how monogamous they are. The shorter the migration the more likely they are to stay with the same mate. The theory is that the longer the migration, the more likely the pair will split up and loose each other.
A bit like people who use the word normal in the judgemental, rather than statistical sense, and try to impose shame on things which they personally do not like rather than minding their own business?
There’s quite a shade of difference between normal and normative (and between abnormal and non-normative). It’s about the difference between being descriptive v. sitting in judgement. The statement “Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common” — which is frequently attributed to Dorothy Parker — exemplifies and clarifies the point.
Since heterosexuality is the way we reproduce, I would argue that it is “Normal”, in the sense that if it were rare our species would die out.
The problem with describing heterosexuality as “normal” because heterosexual intercourse is required for reproduction, is that “heterosexuality” and “homosexuality” as we understand them, are extremely modern phenomena. Until we started to define sexuality as an identity, it was typical for people who were attracted to the same sex to have both procreative heterosexual relationships and romantic homosexual relationships.
I see your point but what Parker was saying was that homosexuality should not be classed as abnormal any more than, say, being an Olympic athlete or a writer of enduring interest would be considered abnormal (granted, my examples betray a partisan bent 😃). A person who is rare or unusual can be called an exception, and her/his way of being can be conceived of as a variation, an alternative, etc., if non-judgmental terminology is desired. During Parker’s lifetime, homosexuality tended to be characterized in the dominant discourses as deviant, maladjusted, and defective. The word “abnormal” carries such connotations, and it is yoked by way of the antonym system to “normal”. But of course, in terms of reproduction, heterosexuality has historically been both normal and normative: only since the introduction of AI and IVF has it been something other than the exclusive means of propagating a species. Among livestock, it is no longer the normative means of reproduction — and with artificial wombs and human gene editing just around the corner, it may be only a matter of time before humans do it the old way only in a place like Huxley’s savage reservations.
Correct. It's one thing to object to some scumbag using polyamory as a justification for cheating. It's quite a another thing to object to the entire concept even when all parties consent.
Polyamory doesn't appeal to me personally but if it floats the boat of the consenting adults down the street, let them have at it.
This is the second time you’ve demanded other people feel shame about something that does not negatively effect you in this comment section. That seems kinda mean. How would you feel about being told to feel shame about the way you live?
I feel reasonable shame when I do abnormal things and think that it’s normal and good for societies to enforce mores through shame.
Jesus Christ on a cracker.
First off, if you wanted to act all morally superior over the fact that you have proclaimed yourself Normal, and therefore inherently better than those who are Abnormal, I'm not really sure why you're doing it here. It's Sunday-- shouldn't you be looking down your nose at other people in church?
Second, polyamory is about the number of sexual or romantic partners, not the frequency with which you have sex. Polyamorous asexuals exist.
Third, what the hell business is it of yours what someone else's "sexual appetites" are?
Man, nothing grinds my gears quite like this combination of pig-ignorance and absolute self-assuredness. It's like Dunning-Kruger took comment form.
First of all I posted that comment on Saturday evening 😘
Second of all, I am actually morally superior to people who make their abnormal sexual appetites the business of other people.
"Abnormal" according to whom? It strikes me that your moral views are more knee-jerk than actually thought out, and I don't think that's a good basis for what should and should not be socially acceptable.
Nah.
And expanding the definition of what's "normal" is fair game. It's the same process gay people had to go through to be accepted. Granted, some will try to normalize things shouldn't be normalized (eg, pedophilia), but that's part of the larger conversation to be had about any behavior. If poly is practiced consensually, I don't see where it's really anybody's business, and the fact that offends social conservatives is not sufficient reason to stigmatize anything.
Just because it’s right to respect gay people doesn’t mean we are obligated to treat every other sexual peccadillo as being equally respectable.
Is this the royal "we"?
🙄
The only poly people I knew ended up divorced within two years of the experiment. Luckily they both found other partners, and are now back in monogamous relationships.
In a recent Substack post, I think Helen Lewis said put it best when talking about polyamory:; "Middle-aged (adj.): When you read about polygamy and you’re mostly jealous of . . . all the free time these people seem to have."
How do people have the time? Even if I though it would be sexually fulfilling, there would be way too much drama and dealing with other people's shit (i.e. emotions) than I could deal with. I find it difficult to keep up with what's going on at my husband's work, keeping track of what the kids need for school, and my own full time job, the housework (and three needy cats) that I just couldn't handle the emotional burden of another human.
A slim majority of the people I know who talk about it don’t seem to be actually doing it- they are either heterosexual couples can’t can’t or don’t find a third or they are divorced single guys who claim the reason they can’t find anyone is they are being discriminated against due to their polyamorous orientation.
I avoid people who want to overshare about their sex lives. I used to come across a lot of poly people at the school my sons attended for homeschooling enrichment classes. Rich parents with too much time on their hands and no personal boundaries. I would do a lot to avoid “the poly moms” because they wanted to talk about it ceaselessly.
You never cease to amaze us. How does a middle aged suburban wife/mom/white collar worker know so many people with offbeat personal lives? I think the only people you didn't know personally were minor-attracted persons and the bestiality enthusiasts?
Sometimes I'd swear you were a 28 year old Brooklyn hipster with multiple piercings, tattoos and purple hair.
I do have tattoos and used to have a nose piercing, which died a painful death when I was rough housing my kids when they were younger. The hole from the piercing, which I’d had for 15 years at that point, healed with no mark in under an hour so that was that. Never any purple or colored hair though.
There is a word for my affliction. That word is:
Seattle.
I am a late comer to the suburbs having mostly lived in urban areas until I was in my 30s (we moved out of Seattle in 2012, though the boys went to school there until 2019 and I work there- my office when I actually have to go there is very close to downtown Seattle.) We escaped the city but as of yet have not figured out a non-disruptive way to escape the metro area so here we stay. If we didn’t have kids or an elderly man with dementia in our care, we say we’d definitely be gone but who knows. My husband is especially craving the small town setting he grew up in. That said, for all my kevetching about Seattle and the very nutty people we meet, I have mostly lived in this area for 40 years this summer and it’s the closest thing to a hometown I will ever have. I think it’s safe to say I have a love-hate relationship with it. There’s a lot to shit on about Seattle: reactive lefty politics, extremely expensive housing, everyone being a little too cool for school. But at the same time, I can walk to a gorgeous waterfront or hit quiet green trails on all directions from where I live. It’s rarely very cold or very hot. There are some big city amenities and I really am attached to the Seattle Mariners. We have a lot of friends here and I really like the parish we go to. My mom’s grave is here. It’s home, like it or not; warts and all. If we do move away, I’ll miss it at times I’m sure. I will also have to use GPS to get around and that will be weird.
Also, people just tell me weird things. I think I have a sign on my head that I can’t see.
A few months ago, I gave an older woman a ride home from an informal gathering and while I was driving her home she just divulged that she is in a relationship with a couple and they all live together and then she did the super overshare thing that had me attempting to change the subject to ANYTHING else I could think of for the last 10 minutes of that car ride. What the hell do you even say in situations like that? And how are they finding me.
Is it possible that you're really interesting and attractive and everyone wants you to join their polycule?
Ha! No. It is possible that people were hitting on me back in, say, 2002 and 2007. Not now.
Once in 2007, we were at the SF Opera and a couple walked right up to me and my husband and gushed that people “must propose marriage to you all the time”. My husband was like “yeah, people like me, 5 years ago”. We chatted with them during intermission and turned down their offer to go out afterwards. We joked that they were murderers or swingers and either way, we weren’t finding out.
At 43, I do not have the skin, hair or figure of 27 year old me and I am carrying a lot of extra weight that I am slowly taking off. Fortunately for me, my husband sees me through rose colored glasses and seems to think I still look like I used to. Since we are both very geared towards monogamy, this works for us.
Polyamory is like bestiality and surrogacy, people that argue that it doesn’t do harm if the people (or animals) report that they are cool with it or like it or want it, but... the people who subject themselves to it ain’t right. And we know they ain’t right. And we all pretend we don’t know this because they report that it’s healthy and good for them and “who are we to judge?”.
Me, I’m judging. It’s a no.
I've meet basically two kinds of polyamorous couples in my life. Some of them approach it very maturely, they have a primary partner but both partners enjoy having sex with other people, usually together. Those couples are typically somewhat quiet about it with people they don't know or who aren't interested in that kind of thing. The other type I've met are couples where one person is FAR more invested in the relationship than the other and the more dominant partner just gets to sleep around with whoever they want while the other partner clearly hates it but wont leave. THOSE couples typically can't shut up about it.
I don't know anybody who is polyamourous unless you count a couple of women aquaintences I have who willfully turn a blind eye to their partners fucking about.
Haha. The black American underclass has been engaged in this behavior for about 60 years now. But there's no fancy Latin-derived terminology for it.
The downus lowus
I have a little bit. Unlike most people who responded, I'm fairly poly positive and have seen it work out well for friends (interestingly, in a hetero context). But I've also seen it work out badly!
Honestly, what has bothered me is when people refuse to discuss sexism and homophobia in the context of polyamory when not all relationships are heterosexual, or act as if there's a way to do poly "correctly" that will erase any messy human elements.
It's also very tiring to constantly hear that polyamory is inherently "queer." Was once at a backyard party where it became apparent there were (exclusively cis hetero) poly relationships going on, but one of them couldn't shut up about how queer/gay it all was. Idk if it's "enlightened" exactly, but a woman dating two men and acting like it makes her gayer than a lesbian is weird and awkward.
People want to be queer so badly these days without having to engage in homosexual sex or relationships. It must be baffling for older generations of gays.
Not directing this at any specific comment, but I think what people miss when they say “the only polyamorists I know never shut up about it” is that there’s a good chance they have a colleague or an acquaintance who is the private, quiet type of polyamorist, who is just as embarrassed by the loudmouths as everyone else.
It’s the availability heuristic: the most insufferable and socially awkward people end up representing the entire group. I don’t have a solution, but it’s worth keeping in mind, if you ask me.
Is this a safe space to declare it's no surprise that type No. 3 is likely the most successful? For better or worse, men seem wired to be more prone not give a phook about intimacy issues.
I don't know about that. I've read that men are far less likely to tolerate infidelity from a female partner than women are to tolerate it from a male partner. I think the dynamic is different in gay relationships though.
I spent several years in Somerville, Massachusetts, and because of that, I met way too many people who really really into polyamory. I will say this --a lot of them are just sex nerds. If they weren’t gonna corner you to talk about their sex life, they would probably corner you to talk about Star Wars, or some thing.
I once went to a dinner party where most of the guests turned out to be poly.
I once went to a dinner party where someone had the sheet music to ‘Doctor Horrible’ and most of the guests knew the songs well enough to sing along.
It was the same dinner party. Poly people are nerdy as fuck.
I went to a nerd college and lived in the nerd dorm at that college. This is... very recognizable.
"Autistic people with a special interest in sex" certainly describes a lot of polyamorists, as far as I can tell. The Aella types.
Even though I am not someone with that particular interest, for obvious reasons, I get a little defensive when assholes start attacking them as depraved and shameful.
I cannot picture you getting defensive about something!
Keep in mind that the only "polyamorists" you think you've met are the ones who want to tell you they are polyamorists. Most people don't talk about their sex lives with random people they meet, and most people that do (regardless of their sexual preferences) have something wrong with them. The normal ones wouldn't tell you about it, even if you asked.
The only straight people I've known who seem to successfully maintain multiple relationships are definitely quirky*, but also have good enough social awareness not to info-dump about their niche interests to uninterested parties.
*Possibly neurodivergent, but maybe just sort of odd.
I’d rather they showed me their home videos than talk to me about Star Wars. Anything but that.
This song accurately sums up my experiences with polyamorous people https://youtu.be/DTsdKycVZZ4?si=cfk3gnKupjFxVPMk
Or same thing.
I can't help wondering what is meant ny the term "shocking his penis". This guy strikes me as the sort whose penis is too jaded and has seen too much to be truly shocked by anything
Is this what Peter Gabriel was talking about?
Let me be your sledgehammer
I think it means he hooks it up to some wires and runs and electrical charge through it?
A couple amps will do it, I reckon?
I can visualize things in my mind and it is like watching a movie, the way Katie says Janna can do. With my eyes, I’m seeing the back of my eyelids; it’s my brain that’s visualizing things.
Me, too. And the more recent it is the better/longer the video clip. I'm having a hard time understanding how someone could remember events without the visual element.
In fact, how could you process visual images at all? Vision works because your eyes are sensing light at various frequencies and intensities, then they give that data to the brain. The brain must store it in order to process it and turn it from a collection of sensed data into perceived objections and motion. For instance, if you couldn't remember visuals you wouldn't be able to tell whether a car in front of you is moving because that requires remembering where it was an instant before.
I think the cats are already polyamorous.
Meeow!
"In a shared and loving way, we both acknowledged that the trauma we had experienced, her going through cancer, me hurting my hand, had created a difficult environment for our relationship to continually thrive"
- deposition of the Jaundiced Skinwalker
He’s such a great example of using psychobabble to reinforce the same old BS.
I definitely remember things in my mind. I see it like a movie. Not literally, I also see the back of my eyelids, but my brain paints a picture that I can somehow see. It's like my head sees it, but my eyes don't. Does that make sense?
Same for me. And with words I remember how things are spelled by picturing the word in my mind. I wonder how Katie remembers how to spell things without visualising the letters?
I don’t have aphantasia (I’m actually not convinced it exists; I think we’re just confusing each other by using different words to describe the same experience) but I don’t spell by visualizing; I spell by sounding words out in my head. For common words it’s automatic; for harder words it’s more conscious. I will never not imagine hearing “Wed-nes-day” or “Feb-ru-ary” anytime I need to write those words.
This is really interesting. What about for words which make no phonetic sense if you're not familiar with other alphabets though, such as Irish names like Laoghaire or Caoimhe? Do you just have to learn how they would sound read phonetically to remember them?
Ha, I have no idea because I have no idea how to pronounce those words. For Irish names I am familiar with, like Siobhan, I guess I’ve just memorized “the name that sounds like ‘sha-von’ is spelled ‘si-ob -han’” and mentally sound out the wrong pronunciation as I write it?
Yep, spelling is just reading the letters that I see
God the naked forest guy seems like such a priiiiiiick. I can’t come up with anything else to say about the situation, so I’ll move on to mind pictures instead!
I feel like I spend so much time in my head visualizing things, hearing music/sounds, recalling sensations etc. I don’t understand how aphantasics structure their thinking without these things. It’s so interesting!
One note on the discussion: Jesse mentioned people not knowing all the details of their childhood kitchen as proof that they weren’t truly seeing it.
I think this is confusing perfect memory with visualization. Most people who can visualize don’t have photographic memories; their memories degrade like everyone else’s. But that doesn’t change the “seeing” they do when trying to recall a place from many years ago. Sometimes, through sustained visualization, I find that more details of things I’ve forgotten can emerge also!
I am curious what the implications are for eyewitness identification, which I understand is notoriously unreliable. Despite being a visualizer, if I’m not paying close attention to something I probably won’t be able to recall it accurately. I don’t think my ability to identify a suspect would be any better than Katie’s, for instance. I’m curious what others think!
Also we actually take in very few details when we look at a scene in real life. Our brains do a lot of glossing over, which is obvious if you have ever taken LSD and experience what it's actually like when your brain is taking in more of the details. Or when you realize something was in a room with your for a long time but you never registered it.
Similarly, when we visualize things we visualize the key bits that make it feel like a full scene, while glossing over the details. So it's normal people don't remember the details even though they can picture the scene.
This also becomes clear when you try to paint something and realize your mind's eye didn't tell you what details precisely to put in each section. I'm assuming most people who can visualize can't see every detail in every bush, and will need to look up reference bushes to make them feel like what the mind's eye is roughing in.
A while ago I heard a podcast about a deaf man who basically learned how to use language. It was fascinating.
Looked it up I am fairly certain it was this one https://radiolab.org/podcast/91725-words I recommend you give it a listen!
I suppose I'm showing my age by associating the name Bryan/Brian Johnson with the singer for AC/DC.
100% bro 🤘
This side of the pond, he was a celebrated cricket commentator.
Johnners! Almost as posh as Blowers.
I don’t understand. Why does this guy have any money? Why is anyone listening to him about anything? I read world class prick about 10 seconds into watching this guy… does almost everyone have a personality disorder now so birds of a feather and all…
He bought venmo cheap, merged it with his startup (Braintree), then sold the combined entity for a lot more. IMO, he was mostly selling Venmo, and his wealth comes primarily from that single good trade. His new startup Kernel seems like complete bs.
(disclosure: am guy that hired Trace)
Did he put radio on the Internet?
Thank you!
I don’t think anyone sees an image of what they’re imagining in their field of vision, which Katie seems to be positing as a possibility at times, right? Apart from hallucinations. I can clearly visualise objects or people in my mind and populate it with as much detail as I want, but memories can be anywhere between somewhat detailed (usually embarrassing memories are very detailed...) and fairly fuzzy.
That’s what I always assumed - like, if you can “literally” see it, that’s a hallucination, not a visualization. Or maybe a waking dream.
For me it’s definitely in the mind, not with my eyes - but I can see it in my mind while using my eyes. Aren’t brains wild.
If Sophie Scott is a mediocre neuroscientist, then I’m some type of pond scum (i.e., a grad student) but i do study vision so wanted to highlight what’s being said here. Mental imagery is not vision. Katie said in the episode 198 that when she closes her eyes all she sees is the back of her eyelids. Well, that is true for everyone, no matter how vivid their mental imagery is. It is as if the two experiences occupy separate ‘dimensions.’ If someone’s mental imagery did occupy the same ‘dimension’ as vision, that would indeed be a hallucination. If there were people who could ‘literally see’ what they were imagining, I would drop what I’m doing and focus my research on that group. It would be like studying a population of wizards. Amazingly, there are people claiming to practice such wizardry: tulpamancers. These folks claim to be capable of imagining a being into perceptual reality. I’m skeptical. But if they are in fact doing this, then the experience presents an unbelievably rich opportunity for studying the neural basis of perception and imagination, much like the experience of people with aphantasia is. Here’s an interesting post from the tulpa community: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/comments/18axe2/a_warning_for_any_and_all_potential_tulpamancers/
Ok, as a mostly non-visualizer, I'm grateful for this! A bit of introspection, concentrating on what happened when I tried to visualize something, anything, brought up exactly the question of separate "dimensions". It makes a lot more sense that way. But I still wonder, do good visualizers picture things while their eyes are open? Is there interference between seeing and imagining?
Do good visualizers picture things with their eyes open? Sure! Right now, I'm picturing Mickey Mouse doing jumping jacks on the desk next to my computer while I type these words. Now he's desperately trying (and failing) to yank the top of my thermos open so he can drink my coffee. Now he's flipping me off. As vivid and entertaining as it was for me to experience that little episode, at no point was Mickey in the same 'phenomenological dimension' as my desk and thermos. (Sorry, probably didn't need to add the fancy word, but couldn't help myself.) Now, is there interference between seeing and imagining? Sure! When I amp up the details on Mickey and his wild antics, I necessarily pay less attention to my visual scene. To experience Mickey flipping me off and cursing me out in frustration requires a bit of effort and focus. When I exert that effort to make the mental image more vivid my visual experience suffers. Absent minded drivers may be familiar with an extreme example of this. They've been mind-wandering, lost in imagination, and when they 'come back' from their reveries realize that their entire visual scene (i.e., the road, other cars, their exit which they just missed) was completely absent from awareness. Their attention was fully captured by imagination and so their vision was totally unattended. When something is totally unattended, it is unconscious. So that’s an example of imagination interfering with vision. There is some evidence that the interaction runs the other way too: imagination enhancing vision. The literature is a bit complicated and not definitive, but it may be the case that priming oneself with imagination will make something that is difficult to see a bit easier to detect.
Yes, it’s called daydreaming.
I can put things into my visual field if I want, like adding a green chair in the corner. But the parts that my brain isn't "looking" at are never as highly defined as real things are in my peripheral vision. I can convince myself that I'm adding as much detail and zoom in, but as soon as I add detail somewhere else, the rest gets wiped like an etch a sketch.
I'm not good at visualising how things will go together (just ask my wife!), but I use drawing things out to "fix" the stuff I won't be visualising.
Right but it’s happening in your head still right? You’re not literally seeing a green chair in front of you in the same way you see other furniture. That’s what I was meaning.
I think it’s interesting how hard it is, or rather how full of pitfalls it is, to try and describe something that you do so unthinkingly to someone who doesn’t have that ability - and when you never even knew that that ability could be lacked. Like describing “seeing” something in your minds eye seems impossible to misinterpret because of course everyone knows that it’s not *really* seeing in the way one sees with one’s eyes, but just another way of saying “imagining” or “visualising”. But then someone like Katie comes along and one has to start trying to explain that no, it’s not like walking around with an augmented reality headset watching green chairs pop into reality at every turn.
Yeah - it's like it's obviously a different sort of thing. And I have to actively think it - it would never happen if someone else were talking about a green chair in their room. Then I'm thinking more about platonic ideals of chairs and green and room?
I would describe visualizing as “imagining what something looks like”. That’s what I want to ask Katie: can you imagine what something looks like?
It’s like there’s a movie screen inside my head that turns on when I visualize things. I don’t see what I visualize in my real life field of vision, it’s all projected onto the screen inside my mind.
I like this buffet style episode (the first half). Would be in favor of more where j+k talk about a few morsels of interest.
Yikes, they skated over the worst part of that Brian Johnson story: a woman who just recovered from cancer has to pay half a million to a millionaire? Will he actually make her pay it? Can she even? Is she broke now? How much is he actively trying to destroy her life at this point?
Yes, I see my childhood kitchen in detail. I see the dents in the kitchen cabinets. I see (and smell!) all the loose rubber bands in the junk drawer, tangled up with the scissors and pliers and odds and ends of rolls of tape. I see the broom closet and all the things on the shelves.
Had a long conversation about polyamory with a friend and while we both agreed it would be great for a couple to treat sex with outsiders as just a physical thing for fun, I think the ability for people to divorce that from their emotions is just not there for most people. Jealousy and the range of emotions that come with sex are just too ingrained in us to intellectualize it away.
Like a lot of ideas, the theory of polyamory is fine but as soon as it collides with the messy reality of human emotions, as well as the tendency of some people to mistreat others and the tendency of some people to accept mistreatment, it falls apart as an ethical proposition. Whenever I've met a polyamorous couple they always seem to be comprised of a person who is super keen on polyamory and a person who is merely tolerating it in order to cling on to their partner.
Along the same lines, I would imagine it's hard to find hetero couples where both parties are equally into open marriage and swinging.
It’s probably not a coincidence that “poly” seems to thrive in social circles with a relative lack of females and stereotypically nerdy guys.
In theory, a one night stand sounds fun! But the reality is I can’t have sex with someone I don’t want or have a relationship with. The last two (actually only two!) times I tried to have a one night thing I ended up marrying them.
Vegas?
Hahaha! Npe! Chicago and Bumfuck PA.
Oooh errr, Mrs! Too much information.
Sorry!