An Unusual Paradigm

Kony

1) I’m tired of seeing Kony everywhere, but I guess that means the viral campaign worked.

2) I’m even more tired of seeing people get upset about people getting upset about Kony.

No, updating your Facebook status and posting the video to Reddit won’t change the world.

No, Invisible Children isn’t the group to donate to if you want to actually stop Kony in a politically reasonable way (as opposed to military intervention and empowering the corrupt, violent Ugandan government).

No, Kony isn’t in Uganda anymore, but he’s still a monster, etc.

But would you know anything about this guy without the video? Probably not. Awareness is 50% of the game. It doesn’t take every single person who gives a shit doing something to accomplish something. E.g.: Limbaugh is losing supporters and advertisers left and right (sorry for the Perez Hilton link - I feel a little dirty citing it). Everyone’s pissed, but only a small fraction of the people who are pissed are actually doing something about it; but they can only do something about it and be effective because everyone is pissed about it. CONSTITUENCY, PEOPLE!

If you want to do something about it, donate to someplace that isn’t Invisible Children; if you want to raise awareness, posting the video doesn’t hurt - it’s not like you’re doing something wrong as long as you’re not self-righteous about doing it. If you go nuts over people posting the video then you just come off as a contrarian who’s trying to ‘stay one step ahead of the status quo’ because, ya know, it’s cool and shit to be smart and informed. Getting upset at a necessary first step in the political and social process is like criticizing an aspiring six-year-old wannabe physicist for learning his/her multiplication table. “Psh, just knowing how to multiply isn’t going to help you model build. It’s not like you’re learning group theory or anything.”

On the other hand, don’t be self-righteous about posting the video either.

(To rephrase a tweet from my friend and blogger that was originally about Tim Tebow: I’m annoyed by people who are annoyed by people who are annoyed by Kony.)

/rant

Okay, can we continue with posting funny cat pictures and just acknowledge that we all get it now and do what we can other than piss into the wind on the internet over this?

The (Un)Happy Marriage

Here’s the entry I’ve been sitting on.  I figure it’s sufficiently worthy of posting now.

Relatively recently, I read an article enumerating 15 points that help predict if a marriage will end in divorce. We all know the stats: about half of marriages end in divorce.  This is, of course, on average.  Certain things make a couple more likely to get divorced, and if a couple doesn’t fall into a category with strong correlations to an unhappy ending then they’re obviously much less likely to get divorced.  I’d like to provide some commentary and a follow up analysis on something not mentioned on the list.  In the process of writing, I’ll explain several (more of my) unusual perspectives on relationships and marriage.

Anyway, I found these unsurprising:

• 2. If you live in a red state, you’re 27 percent more likely to get divorced than if you live in a blue state.

Suck it, conservatives. 

• 3. If you argue with your spouse about finances once a week, your marriage is 30 percent more likely to end in divorce than if you argue with your spouse about finances less frequently.

I’m willing to bet it’s more than just fighting over finances.  Unless someone has crossed wiring in their head, I don’t imagine they find living in perpetual conflict pleasant.

• 4. If your parents were divorced, you’re at least 40 percent more likely to get divorced than if they weren’t. If your parents married others after divorcing, you’re 91 percent more likely to get divorced.

I don’t find this surprising, but I also don’t find this to really be a problem in every case, per se.  Society at large tends to make a big deal about marriage.  Why, exactly, is rather lost on me. If you love someone, you love them. If you’re with someone, you’re with them.  The idea that one needs a piece of paper and a ceremony to initiate a new phase of life to me seems silly, vis a vis my first blog post.  It was said best in Out of Africa: ”I won’t be closer to you and I won’t love you more because of a piece of paper.”  Sure, the pomp is nice, but to me it just amounts to “Well, we’re stable and in love, so we might as well tell the world. Also, decreased taxes and medical visitation rights - woo!” According to my recently married friends, there’s not much of a real transition anyway - routines are the same, they feel the same, and the only difference is that the government now gives a shit and they can use the terms “hubby” and “the lady.”  It’s a huge hassle to get divorced, legally speaking, but emotionally I don’t imagine it should be worse than going through a breakup with someone you’ve grown deeply attached to.  To this end, I don’t really see a problem with demonstrating to children that marriage isn’t and shouldn’t be a magical, unbreakable bond (again, vis a vis my first blog post).  So there seem to be two categories I imagine these kids could fall into: 1) those who develop attachment issues because they witnessed the destruction of their parents’ bonds, those for whom I have great sympathy, and 2) those who realize that it’s okay to say “fuck this shit” if things are going terribly in their marriage because the magic, child-like, bulletproof perception of marriage was shattered (the effect I just finished discussing).

• 8. If you live in Wayne County, Indiana, and are over 15 years old, there’s a 19.2 percent chance that you’ve been divorced.

Let’s face it, even if you’re a conservative fundamentalist, those sexual urges aren’t going away.  Unfortunately, that demographic also concurrently battles a strong, self-imposed marriage requirement before bumping uglies.  The upshot: while most teenagers would get into a perfunctory “relationship” to do the deed, those really committed to their brand of Kool-Aid probably get into perfunctory marriages to do the deed.  Remind me again how exactly the vast majority teenage relationships end, please.  This just makes for a funny-sounding statistic, but vis a vis (man, I love that phrase in this post) my comments above, who cares?

• 9. If both you and your partner have had previous marriages, you’re 90 percent more likely to get divorced than if this had been the first marriage for both of you.
• 14. If you’re a female serial cohabiter—a woman who has lived with more than one partner before your first marriage—then you’re 40 percent more likely to get divorced than women who have never done so.

Feel like I’ve actually already explained why I’m not surprised by this: shatter the illusion.

• 11. If you’re of “below average” intelligence, you’re 50 percent more likely to be divorced than those of “above average” intelligence.

I don’t even care if it sounds elitist: dumb people suck at analyzing things and are going to make stupid choices.  Metacognizance isn’t easy to come by, it seems; neither is external awareness.  If you’re going to commit to something for forever, you better have the where-with-all to know you’re making a good decision.  Of course, it’s still super easy to make a wrong decision, regardless of intelligence. Oh well, c’est la vie.

Things that did surprise me:

• 6. If you have a daughter, you’re nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than if you have a son.

If the study’s explanation is actually true, then guys are dicks.

• 10. If you’re a woman two or more years older than your husband, your marriage is 53 percent more likely to end in divorce than if he was one year younger to three years older.

Wait…why? Okay, so the article states that wide age gaps can screw up sexual compatibility timing.  That’s cute, but makes no sense given that women hit their ‘sexual prime’ after men (I’d post a link to this, but it’s impossible to find again among all the p.c. forum posts and editorials saying “It’s different for everyone” - yes, of course it is, but statistics are meaningful, people, and exactly what I’m talking about anyway.).  To that end, I would expect exactly the reverse.

• 12. If you’ve been diagnosed with cervical cancer, your likelihood of getting divorced is 40 percent higher than standard rates; it’s 20 percent higher if you’ve been diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Really?  The explanation is as ridiculous as the above one: it affects sexual health for now, ipso facto we have to get divorced for forever. Derp.

• 15. If you’re in a male same-sex marriage, it’s 50 percent more likely to end in divorce than a heterosexual marriage. If you’re in a female same-sex marriage, this figure soars to 167 percent.

Okay, so I actually have to admit I’m only slightly surprised by this, and mostly it comes from the female same-sex marriage statistic.  Since I’m already taking an irreverent tone in this post, I might as well go all the way: homosexual communities tend to reject monogamy more often (or rather I should say embrace non-monogamy).  Disagree all you like, but just look up a few of the sources in the Wiki on polyamory (example).  (Incidentally, one of my bisexual friends attempted entering the LBGT community for social endeavors and romantic encounters and laments this very statistic - he’s very pro-monogamy, you see.  Yes, yes: anecdotal evidence. Note this is a follow up to actual studies.) From that same set of articles, one can find

Additionally, participants in a polyamorous relationship may not have, nor expect their partners to have, preconceptions as to the duration of the relationship, in contrast to monogamous marriages where a life-long union is generally the goal.

1) Homosexuals are more likely to engage in nonmonogamy + 2) polyamorous relationships tend to emphasize duration of relationships less => a statistically larger subdemographic is more likely to get divorced. Sure, this obviously isn’t universal, but this entire blog entry is about distributions and averages.  Of course, I haven’t done the actual statistical research on this to determine how the size of the group of polyamorous couples with ambiguous goals regarding the duration of a relationship within the homosexual community compares to the heterosexual community, but this is certainly a plausibility argument.  I wouldn’t imagine the effect would be huge though, and thus this particular point in the article (specifically just how much more likely one in this demographic is to get divorced) did, in fact, surprise me.

Something this article doesn’t discuss though is the effect of general marital happiness and children on divorce. I think these topics deserve their own blog entry.  Thus, coming in the near future:

Children and Marital Satisfaction

“I disagree” is not a complete argument

My oh my.  I find it remarkable that people can be so opposed to points raised without good motivation.  ”I disagree” cannot begin and end a counter-point.  It doesn’t work that way.  Unfortunately, a great many people seem to think it does, even if it’s only subconscious.  Evidently, not even the ‘proof-is-in-the-pudding’ science is impervious to this blight on human psychology and reasoning.

What makes it worse is that many of us are programmed to accept principals (and principles for that matter) as long there’s a consensus among the public - regardless of the origin of a society’s perspectives, people matriculating into or being born into the society will tend to align their views with that society’s.  Sheep.  Describing people as that is trite, but it’s incredibly true.  It’s disheartening to see people willing to ignore valid points and engage in confirmation bias just to maintain the status quo.  It’s even more disheartening when the only confirmation is itself the status quo: “Certainly all of these people can’t be wrong, right?  I mean especially when their perspectives are consistent with my predisposed notions of things I’ve never investigated thoroughly. Someone must have at some point considered the points carefully and concluded what I suspected all along. Man, I must be smart or something.”

I encounter this mentality everywhere.  Clear cut cases of it can be found in the disturbing lack of cognitive dissonance in spite of objective philosophical self-inconsistencies within religious groups and in the unusual recent boom in replies/reblogs to my first (ever-controversial) blog post. The best thing you can do to improve yourself is to question everything yourself.  Something “feeling correct” doesn’t mean it is, even if everyone else thinks it too.  Hence the motto on my blog:

Just because something is generally accepted does not mean that it is acceptable. Question everything.

Be creative, but be logical.

If you’re going to disagree with an objection or point, simply saying “no, it’s this other way” does not cut it.  At the very least, one needs to argue for the validity of the counter-point; ideally, one would dismantle the contested point and then argue for the counter-point.  I refuse to acknowledge anyone in a debate who does not do these things.  I will either a) refuse to engage in any discussion or b) openly mock the opposition if I’m feeling particularly mean-spirited and have the free time.

Pro-life? Well this should be ironic.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted to this blog.  I’m currently sitting on a draft of one but want to first find some sources that originally inspired the exposition that managed to fall into obscurity. Meanwhile, here’s a topic and story that involves anecdotal evidence. I was inspired to touch on this controversial topic after a discussion with a few people about it and seeing a sign saying, “Smile, your mom chose life,” over the weekend. I’ll be blunt and cut to the chase:

I wouldn’t be alive if abortion were not an option.

Contemplate that for a second.  If you’re pro-life, contemplate that for a few more seconds. How could this possibly make sense?  Abortion is something that, in the eyes of pro-lifers, is only capable of destroying life (the life of the child bearer notwithstanding).

I’ll spare the details since they involve rather personal and tragic events for my parents, but the gist of the backstory is: I was a high-risk child at conception and it was possible (indeed likely) that being aborted was the lesser of two evils that I could have faced.  There was an order ~80% chance that I would have, among other afflictions, been born with a hole in my diaphragm.  This defect would manifest within the first legal trimester (I say ‘legal’ because the trimester system is purely legislative and was not backed by medicine), and despite the early onset of the condition, no amount of hoping, or praying, or miracles that many pro-lifers appeal to in these circumstances could have spared my life under these circumstances if I were birthed.

I would have been born, gasped for air, and died ~an hour after coming into this world; I would not have known life’s pleasures; I would have suffered.

Abortions are performed before the nervous system develops - before any perception of bliss or misery, pleasure or pain could be felt.  What would have been the more humane option when my fate would have been inevitable: being born into a short life with pain or being denied its experience?  Facing this, my parents only attempt to conceive because the lesser of two evils was actually an option.

Did you notice how I said “lesser of two evils?”  I don’t think abortion is something to be taken lightly, but I think it should absolutely be an option.

I will leave this up here only under the consent of my parents.  I’m risking their privacy and, if they read this, reminding them of painful times.  I just figured this is an unusual and particularly powerful pro-choice argument that counters the universal pro-life perception that there is “always a better alternative to abortion.”

The Future of Mobile Tech: Where is it going?

With the exception of the older, curmudgeonly demographics with a hatred for technological advancement (there’s an SMBC comic relating to this, but I can’t seem to find it), virtually everyone has heard of the bit of revolutionary, disruptive technology dubbed ‘the smartphone.’  2010 was the first year smartphones outsold PCs and 2011 was the first year smartphones outsold ‘feature phones.’  They’re rapidly becoming ubiquitous.  I use mine for virtually everything computer-oriented: checking the arXiv, reading papers and books, trading stocks, gchat, news, LaTexing, streaming music, managing and creating files and documents, and even for RDPing into my computer (was very handy after injuring my back and not feeling like toting my MacBook into the office).  This is truly the dawning of a new, mobility-focused era of personal computing.

The last year has been particularly noteworthy regarding mobile progress.  Among a long list of milestones, the LG Optimus 2X debuted as the world’s first dual core smartphone; LTE and HSPA+ networks have been set up to handle up to ~40 Mbps down over wireless networks; and Apple retina displays now pack ~330 pixels per inch, which sits at the edge of the limit of human vision (no, seriously, that’s hitting the diffraction limit for the visual spectrum - these displays are literally as good resolution as real life for all intents and purposes).  Nvidia announced the Tegra 3, the first quad-core mobile chip with a fifth single-core processor to run in low-demand situations; and Asus announced the Transformer Prime, a tablet sporting the Tegra 3.  Ziilabs has even announced a ridiculous-sounding 100-core chip to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) (a primary quad-core and 96 other cores to quickly handle low-demand processing in order to save battery).  1 gig of RAM has even become standard for premium phones.

The ‘tl;dr’ version of that last paragraph: premium mobile chipsets are now as good as the laptop I used as an undergrad*, and we carry them in our back pockets.

*lower power consumption, but the hardware is basically just as good and can be made on-par with the right custom kernel and some tweaking.

So that’s fantastic! …Now what?

Good question…with mobile performance saturation in sight, to keep the market new and interesting, developers need to turn somewhere to crank out the next “must have” product.  Aside from incrementally improving chipset clockspeeds, RAM, and power demands, the development in coming years (likely starting in 2013) will probably focus on:

• Battery life
• New interfaces

Some analysts argue the focus will basically be in software.  Maybe so.  One could argue that falls into the “interface” category, but I imagine Google’s massive changes to Android in ICS and demand to standardize the platform will be the biggest shift in UI for a while (while I know less about iOS updates, it still seems to me the interface is left largely unchanged between updates).  I think taking this perspective on the development of mobile tech is a bit naive, though, as it seems to construct an artificial parallel between PC and mobile tech.  Aside from Apple’s interest in redefining the laptop form factor with their MacBook Air (which, as an aside, I think is terrible), form factors and peripheral interfaces haven’t really changed that much in a few years.  PC hardware development seems stagnant, much like how I imagine mobile hardware development will shortly be unless something is done.  So the shining element in the PC game seems to be software UI.  Apple revamped OS X in its Lion release; Windows tried becoming more OS X-like with Windows 7 and promises to do something spectacular in Windows 8; even Ubuntu revamped its interface.  Mobile tech is not PC tech.  We’re not constrained by power outlets; we’re not constrained by desk space; we’re not constrained by weight.  While I’m certain software and OS UI will be further developed, I think the most interesting developments will come in the form of hardware interfaces and battery life.

• Battery Life

Look at the above graphic… Isn’t Moore’s Law incredible?  Just look at the storage space, processor speed, and RAM size.  That trend has kept up through the years, too!  But wait, what’s that? Wow, battery energy density has remained abysmal.  As the performance of the processor increased, so did the power demand.  This has resulted in short smartphone battery life.  Anecdotal evidence suggests most smartphones last for 8-12 hours with medium-heavy usage.  I’ve tried out a few different kernels myself and eked out 5 hours of straight usage on the ‘power-efficient’ incarnation of the Trinity kernel (best kernel I’ve used stability- and performance-wise), 12 hours with faux123’s OC/UV kernel with the wonky battery readings, and ~10 hours on the CM7/stock G2x kernel.  Daily charging is absolutely required. I recall the days of yore when my ‘dumbphone’ only needed charging every other day.

So why hasn’t battery energy density improved?  It isn’t because we’ve hit a physical limit.  Every few months there will be some new research team to announce a breakthrough in battery technology.  Everything from seaweed+silicon nanoparticle remedies, to silicon layer solutions, to ultra-capacitors replacing chemical batteries has been proposed.  Why don’t we see these solutions in the marketplace?  Maybe it has to do with battery startups failing left and right.  But even if they fail, with all this publicity, why hasn’t a big manufacturer, like LG, Toshiba, or Apple, recognized the need for improved batteries and either licensed the technologies or just bought the patents?  I imagine this will change sooner rather than later given the absolute necessity to keep the mobile market growing.  Apple is a huge fan of power management and it was speculated that they held off on an LTE device until they could get power costs down.  Given the demand for LTE and the growing demand for mobile performance, there’s nowhere to turn but alternative battery tech and I imagine the pioneering giant may snatch a startup or two to get the ball rolling.

• Interface

Touch screens have proved to be a phenomenal success in the smartphone world, utterly destroying RIM’s predominantly non-touch screen Blackberry share of the smartphone market.  They’re small, they offer versatile interfaces, and they free up screen real estate.  Where does the interface go from here?

Well, there have been some interesting recent developments that add a spin to the touchscreen interface.  Apple recently gained patent rights on a touchscreen technology that allows touch sensing without actually touching, offering a form of ‘pressure-sensitive’ interfacing.  Senseg offers what can only be described as touchscreen magic (or textured touchscreens, I suppose…but magic is better).  The latter seems particularly intriguing and I imagine it will find its way into the smartphone world before too long.

Aside from offering the sensual experience of textured feedback, the touchscreen just seems like an interface that’s there because it’s good and versatile; it seems like something that would be replaced if an even more versatile interface were developed.  If we really want versatile, I can’t imagine anything better than what’s portrayed in Minority Report: augmented reality HUD displays with virtual interfaces.  Google smart cars already intend to use augmented reality in HUDs to assist with driving (while the human driver is in charge, I suppose) and providing GPS services, so why not implement similar tech in mobile computers?  Imagine being able to text and watch YouTube videos while walking and avoiding traffic, pedestrian or otherwise, and poles. Vuzix and Lumus are already pioneers in developing this kind of interface.  If it seems too bulky and like a fashion faux-pas, the future may hold even more interesting results. I predicted this as a viable interface development and hoped one of the big giants (Apple or Google) would think so too.  One did.  It seems Vuzix and Nokia also currently have a special thing going on with licensing.  If Google’s ‘Goggle’ variant pans out, the HUD tech could follow hand gestures and allow for a virtual interface.

I look forward to seeing how this disruptive technology continues to evolve.  It’s a very exciting time (and also a wonderful time to invest).  I hope to see my predictions pan out - hopefully there’s more to it than where I would simply like to see technology go.

But I was drunk!

That excuse has never flown with me.  I always figured on some level that anything someone did, they wanted to do anyway, and anything someone said, they thought anyway.  When we’re sober, we’re regulated by external factors: “My friends would think poorly of me,” “Things might go wrong and I’ll have to clean them up later,” “I was told this would harm me,” “I really want to punch them or say something nasty, but that would be unfair and could have bad repercussions for me” (particularly for the latter since clearly social perception affects many people’s verbal restraint).  I can’t think of an excuse to not do something that doesn’t come from an external factor other than “I don’t want to do it.”  Hell, many people are willing to even step beyond the boundaries of their own sense of morality to do the bidding of authority figures. In short, I’ve always thought drinking brings out, in some sense, people’s true thoughts and desires.

I’ve met a lot of resistance to my claims.  No one wants to feel responsible for bad decisions we make when we’re drunk.  Many feel cheating (in certain capacities) is excusable if alcohol is involved; the law states one cannot even legally consent to sex if under the influence; and there are even songs about not meaning something when drunk.

Fortunately, science backs me up. Excerpt:

The authors argue that disinhibition can lead behavior to be more consistent with one’s true underlying motives or dispositions.

To this end, I don’t feel I can justify giving a pass to someone being offensive when they’re drunk but not when they’re sober.  I like it when people are honest and upfront about their feelings.  If someone says something I feel is hurtful or rude or nasty, I don’t get upset that they said it - after all, they’re just being honest and I greatly value honesty.  I will get upset that they thought it to begin with, of course.  People have apologized for saying something offensive to me before, but it’s not the act of saying it that gets me. Unless they have a change of heart or opinion, I couldn’t care less about whether or not they said it to me.  I am far more upset about something if I find out how they feel without them actually telling me.  Hrmm, I feel like I’m summarizing every conflict in every romantic comedy/sitcom ever.

Macroeconomic responses MAKE NO SENSE; market analysis makes even less sense

Short blog entry.

I’m always amazed at how absurd investors’ responses to macroeconomic stimuli and how stupid postdicting microeconomic analyses are.

E.g.: On November 17, 2011, Boeing closed a record-setting $21.7B deal.  That’s pretty big!  Surely speculators will be excited to see earnings close higher than anticipated and start investing!  Nope, the stock fell 8% over the next week, preceding the macroeconomic flop in response to the European debt crisis.  It then proceded to rise 21% (a total gain of ~8%) while most other stocks fell due to the debt crisis.  That’s sort of strange considering 59% of Boeing’s revenue is derived from Europe.

Lloyds also has only 0.01% of its assets in Europe.  Several other linked banks and companies have similar asset and revenue compositions (e.g. Aixtron receives 95% of its revenue outside of Europe). One would expect their stocks to then be relatively insensitive to the European crisis.  In fact, if the market behaved logically, I would guess investors would pull funds from European markets since the falling Euro means they’d get less bang for the buck and invest it into companies and banks that should grow in spite of European nonsense, causing them to grow if anything. Instead, Barclays, Lloyds, and all the other companies followed almost exactly the S&P500 trends.

Economic analyses are almost entirely postdictive and are far too limited in their explanations of events (which makes them nigh worthless because the markets are so complicated that if a similar scenario is arrived at some time from now an opposite result could occur because of some other arbitrary factor).  For instance, recently Apple sued (which. they. love. to. do. - I wouldn’t complain so much if it weren’t over trivial things like case appearances, browser bounce-back features, and app store names) HTC in the US and won, banning certain HTC sales for some time.  To be honest, this helps Samsung much more than it does Apple.  People already ensconced in the Android ecosystem are more likely going to look for another Android phone than switch to iOS.  The upshot: Samsung’s already great phones and popularity just get boosted.  Any analyst worth his salt would conclude the same thing.  The next day, Apple’s stock rose 3%. Certain analysts attributed this to their “victory over HTC” after the fact. Funny, all of NASDAQ rose 2.7% that day too.  Yeah, Apple’s success the next day clearly had nothing to do with macroeconomic trends. /derp

The number of examples one could produce on the ridiculous arbitrariness of stocks’ responses to macroeconomic stimuli and terrible market analyses is exhausting.  Day trading is, very seriously, akin to playing with dice.  Something I’ve learned since investing: just stick to long-term speculation.  Then following things like tech blogs will benefit you much more than anything like marketwatch.com ever could.

Curious reflections on the common sense of monogamy

Have a crush on a coworker when away from your partner?  Get butterflies in your stomach when talking to that girl from the diner you frequent when your girlfriend isn’t around?  Relieve yourself to thoughts about Bradley Cooper when you’re in the shower while your husband gets ready to go shopping with you?  Think nothing is wrong with that picture? Think (sexual) monogamy makes sense to you if you answered affirmatively? Good news! You’d be considered completely normal, but I’d like to pose a perplexing quandary stemming from this perspective.

In Jim Carrey’s and Zooey Deschanel’s movie “Yes Man,” the protagonist, Carl, joins a cult that mandates that its members agree to engage in any activity that is suggested to them in order to expose them to opportunities they might otherwise not experience.  It sounds a bit absurd, but the underlying philosophy has become a linchpin of counselors’ and “open-minded” undergraduates’ mottos: don’t knock it until you try it.  This is often actually decent advice, particularly for ol’ Carl since, through a battery of comical events triggered by his newfound lifestyle, Carl eventually meets female lead Allison and falls for her.  Allison is initially intrigued by Carl, mutually falling for his occasional flippancy and frequent spontaneity, but becomes angry when she discovers that his proclivity to say “yes” to everything is derived from a cult mandate rather than from his own innate curiosity and sense of adventure.  That is to say: she is upset with Carl for the reason he does things, not with the things he does.

Do you feel Allison is justified in being upset? That is: do you agree that Carl’s doing things isn’t enough, but that part of the magic comes from his innate desire to do those things?

Especially if you’ve seen the movie and understand the context better, I’m inclined to guess you do agree.  Sure, there’s something to be said about occasionally putting one’s own interests aside to make someone else happy, but I cannot imagine anyone would want “to be with” someone who has no common interests and does everything only to humor their desires or is, effectively, a “poser.”

Now let me pose another scenario and associated question.  Suppose Allison and Carl (I’m using the same names for structural consistency, but I’m no longer referring to “Yes Man” at all in this scenario) are married.  Carl develops a crush on a coworker, Beth, but is committed to Allison, so he won’t physically act on those feelings. He can’t let go of how he feels, however, and so when he and Allison have sex he fantasizes about Beth; he masturbates while imagining Beth; and he still feels butterflies in his stomach when talking to Beth.  He wants to act on how he feels - he wants to ask Beth out and he would like to sleep with her - but he always denies himself because he feels cheating on Allison is disgusting - he could never hurt her like that.  Allison learns that he harbors these feelings and, like her named counter-part in the movie, becomes upset with Carl.  She feels that he isn’t with only her because he wants to be out of his own innate desires, but because he feels obligated to his commitment to her.

Do you feel Allison is justified in being upset? That is: do you agree that Carl being only with Allison isn’t enough, but that part of the magic comes from an innate desire to be only with her?

I imagine the readership has mixed answers to this question.  It seems so wrong in a way - he knows this woman and is dangerously close to straying; and yet it seems okay in a way - he knows cheating is reprehensible and forbids himself from acting on his desires.

Allow me to pose one more (at least for the time being) scenario and associated question.  Allison and Carl are again married.  This time Allison has a crush on a movie star.  She fantasizes about him when having sex with Carl; she fantasizes about him when masturbating; and she gets butterflies in her stomach (so to speak) when she watches his movies.  Carl discovers her feelings and is upset with her.  He feels this indicates that he isn’t adequate for her desires.

Do you feel Carl is justified in being upset?

Now I’m guessing most of the readership will agree that Carl is not justified.  After all, not only is Allison not acting on her desires, but, in all likelihood, she can’t act on her desires - the odds that she would find herself in a position to “stray” with this actor are rather slim.  ”Fantasies are just fantasies” after all.

I find it strange to receive the answers to the questions on the three scenarios in tandem.  Commiserating with Zooey Deschanel’s Allison seems to lend credence to the idea that there’s more to doing something than merely the act of doing it. Indeed, one will, for example, frequently hear about  how inauthentic it is of certain faux-religious apologetics to do good deeds and believe in a god simply to save a spot for themselves in heaven, how charity for selfish ambition (e.g. gaining social status - appearing to be altruistic for reputation - and tax write-offs) is ethically questionable, and how one should not stay married for the wrong reasons. This issue is even at the heart of various arguments in the subfield of philosophy on the ethics of belief - that is that just because the outcome of a decision based on a belief is positive doesn’t mean the belief was morally justified if the reasoning behind it was faulty, flawed, and liable to spur decisions with negative outcomes (in essence, it matters why you decide to do something). However, as the issue at hand deals more and more with fantasizing while maintaining a (sexually) monogamous relationship, intention begins fading from the picture.

So why is fantasizing about extra-relationship sexual activities so trivialized?  Similar to the case in “Yes Man,” isn’t being monogamous despite harboring feelings to the contrary inauthentic?  Why should Carl not be upset in the third scenario?  I’m usually told and hear, tautologically, that it’s because fantasies are harmless and don’t mean one’s partner cares about them any less and are possibly responsible for some excitement and creativity in the bedroom.  Fair enough, but how are they harmless?  Is it because they render no tangible damage to the interactions between a couple?  Is it because they’re private, thus putting fantasies in the category of “what they don’t know won’t hurt them?”  One could argue discrete affairs do the same. Neither by themselves causes harm to the relationship in so far as changing the interactions and interests between partners; both can be kept secret (with planning at least); both are reflections of desires and don’t necessarily change how one feels around and about the other; both could help one’s partner be “creative in the bedroom;” etc.  Why do people demonize affairs - some, however, don’t, arguing exactly the point above - while trivializing fantasies and crushes and relegating them to normalcy despite the fact both can have the same practical implications?  If any argument against caring about fantasies can also be applied to affairs, one can’t consistently care about one and not the other.

For the case of affairs, specifically, one would often hear that cheating violates the trust between a couple. I’ve always found it curious that everyone says cheating is a breach of “trust,” but never really explains what the trust is in. It leaves me feeling like I’m hanging on and waiting for the rest of the sentence, sort of like if someone says “He has good taste,” or “She likes good,” (“in what” and “good what” respectively). I always take it to mean “you can’t trust them to not cheat,” which is a tautology. Even if it’s taken to mean that a more general sense of trust has been broken, like the cheater cannot be trusted with important matters any longer, it still seems strange to me because not all violations of an agreement imply a total lack of character. For instance, if someone close to me violates an arbitrary agreement to not eat green jello and they then eat green jello, I would hardly care at all. So clearly the significance of the violation of the agreement has to do with the gravity of the agreement in the first place.  So why is this agreement so damn important to begin with?  It has to do with more than just the physical act: the meaning behind it the act clearly matters.  On a personal note, I feel committing to just the act of monogamy reduces the foundation of relationships to business-like principals in which monogamy is maintained out of a commitment to an agreement rather than out of an innate sense of desire “to be with” only one person.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that modern romantic relationships are formed out of emotional and sexual desires. We intertwine them in some sense, but their convolution is fundamentally inconsistent with how most of us perceive the role of sexual fantasy and ‘innocent’ crushes, i.e. that fantasy is just that and indicative of nothing in reality. In the context of relationships, if sex isn’t emotional, why do we care about its physical exclusivity; if it is emotional, why don’t we care about its mental exclusivity? We cannot rationally insist that a mental state and a physical act are simultaneously coupled and decoupled. And yet we’ve already discussed two conflicting and overlapping perspectives: 1) the act is all that matters as seems to be the perspective espoused in the common notion of monogamy and 2) the meaning behind the act matters as seems to also be espoused in some unreconciled form.  This is philosophically inconsistent. 

So this leads to the question: why are people monogamous? A literal, biological answer to the question would likely reference the famous study done on voles, suggesting in analogy that human monogamy may, in fact, be a form of addiction to a single person.  Perhaps that was a bad question.  Allow me to rephrase: why are people monogamous in spite of being attracted to, crushing on, and fantasizing about others (something that by nearly all accounts one can find is deemed normal, even - maybe even especially - in a healthy relationship)? (A certain friend would direct me here and promptly follow with a rather honest and accurate biological explanation about basically playing a mating game in which males convince females they can take care of them and the offspring…literal biological answers notwithstanding, what justification do we give ourselves?)

There should be two, more separated philosophical (and, strictly, practicing) camps.  I think that the fact the vast majority of couples feel that fantasies, celebrity crushes, porn, etc are necessary, “safe,” and acceptable outlets to satisfy a desire for sexual variety is itself indicative that monogamy, for them, is a bit of a self-imposed restriction. That said, there do actually exist a minority of people for whom I think (sexual) monogamy makes sense. They tend to additionally engage in a form of mental monogamy that one might describe as “having eyes only for their partner.”

Everyone is entitled to their own lifestyle, so if you have something that works for you, keep on keeping on.  Strictly, I suppose I haven’t shown that we are forced to conclude mental (sexual) monogamy is mandated by a desire for physical monogamy, but it is very clear it’s not ridiculous to take that stance and is indeed naturally consistent with the rest of the structure of monogamy (i.e. that mental exclusivity of emotional elements of a monogamous relationship such as love itself, affection, etc are valued, so it’s reasonable that if sex itself has emotional implications that its mental exclusivity too should be valued). Hopefully I’ve prompted a bit of contemplation about the issue anyway.  I doubt this will lead to many, if anyone, deciding “yep, actually a sexually open relationship is for me” or “good point, I’ll really try to just focus on my partner mentally and emotionally” (especially the latter since I feel attempting to do so is of tantamount difficulty - but not absurdity - to “thinking the gay away”), but one can always hope.

Edit: The point is: it seems silly to think your partner shouldn’t care about your crush and fantasies if he/she should also care that you remain physically monogamous.  Either you do or you don’t “mentally” stray as it were.  If you do, maybe you should more seriously consider having an open relationship. If it’s not for you, it’s your prerogative, but be aware that it seems like a strange position to take, even if it’s commonly consigned as normal (please note the description of my blog if that point seems lost).  I just hope this gets people to reflect on their perspective and resolve the issue beyond saying “I disagree.” That’s the point, not encouraging Big Brother indoctrination. 

Also note that I haven’t said anything about masturbating, fantasizing about one’s own partner, etc.  The issue in this blog was purely directed at “extra-relationship fantasy.”

Also^2 edited bits I was working on earlier and just now managed to finish up - how unprofessional to not have simply saved to drafts first. My bad.