Polyamory is not coming to the first world

Some online have adopted the “Heartiste view” of sexual modernity, that a small number of men are slowly monopolizing access to most of the women. Heartiste himself was a great talent, but the people who imitate him are not; this was one of his blind spots. Statistically¹, sexual inequality in the United States is rising:

from here. The rise in virginity is US-specific; it doesn’t replicate in Japan, Australia, Italy, UK, France or Scandinavia.

…Within both sexes. But 100% of this effect is explained by the rise in virginity:

from here

Height and attractiveness are very poor predictors of # of sexual partners in both sexes. Not because being tall and hot isn’t good, but because most tall and hot people would rather find one higher quality mate than multiple low quality ones.

Besides the Heartiste view, some think that polygamy is adaptive in the current environment. Regardless of whether this is the case, the West has been overhwelmingly monogamous for a long time, at least 2,000 years. This preference survived religious changes, massive economic shocks, the black death, wars, population increases, and changes in political systems. The only European religions who embraced polygamy are the Mormons and Muslims in the Balkans; both of which abandoned the practice. The only people left standing are FLDS deviants.

The elephant in the room here is genes. People’s sex drives and personalities determine how they interact with the opposite sex, traits with a substantial genetic component.

There are two ways that polygamy could be adopted in the first world. One is religious change: Christianity starts encouraging polygamy, or a new religion becomes popular which encourages polygamy. Something tells me that’s not going to happen.

The other is if the “polygamous phenotype” is genetically selected for and culture accordingly adapts. I see no evidence for polygamous behaviour being selected for:

• Extraverted, agreeable, unconscientious, emotionally stable, and closed-minded individuals² have higher fertility in the USA. Higher extraversion should lead to more polygamy, but this is balanced out by the increase in agreeableness and emotional stability.

• On a genetic level, ADHD, smoking, BMI, and extraversion are being selected for in the UK; educational attainment, cognitive ability, height, and autism are being selected against. Higher rates of ADHD should lead to more polygamy, but this is balanced out by the fact that every psychiatric disorder except for ADHD is associated with lower levels of fertility:

  

  from here

1. Self-reported sexual activity is of decent quality. Sometimes you have problems, like teenagers claiming to have a body count of 50, but usually people tell the truth.

2. The abstract is wrong. Check Table 4:

also, there is no need to adjust for confounders or mediators here that aren’t age or cohort effects.