Quote of the Day

Thirteen years ago, I wrote a blog post claiming that if someone in a monogamous relationship offers me sex, it’s not my responsibility to turn them down because they made a foolish promise to someone else. That’s between them, and I don’t think it’s my job to enforce their promises that had nothing to do with me. Predictably, I did not get a lot of support. Even in sex-positive communities, that sort of thing is frowned upon. Polyamorous communities, in particular, engage in a kind of respectability politics where everyone goes out of their way to talk about how great monogamy is and how we’re no threat to it at all, mostly as a bid for acceptance. So it was no surprise when, this morning, I asked the following question on Twitter:

A married couple has both agreed to strict monogamy. Idk why. Wife comes to me and asks me to give her oral sex, and not to tell Husband. I do it (and also encourage her to tell Husband). What I’ve done is:

The choices were very bad, kinda bad, not bad, and good. Over 80% said very or kinda bad. Less than 5% said good. When I’ve discussed this in the past, I’ve argued that people react this way because, even in nonmonogamous communities, we can’t shake the idea that monogamy is sacred. We give it a special privilege in our society, even though I think, for most couples, strict monogamy is outdated and harmful. A lot of people disagree with that as well, and claim that no no no, it’s not that monogamy is important, it’s that any agreements between couples are important, and we should respect and support all of them. I think that’s bullshit, so Last week, I asked Twitter the exact same question, but with one detail changed:

A married couple has both agreed that neither will give to charity. Idk why. Wife comes to me and hands me $1,000 cash, and says please send it to the Against Malaria Foundation, and not to tell Husband. I do it (and also encourage her to tell Husband).

The responses were reversed. Less than 30% said it was bad. 36% said it was actively good, and another 36% said not bad. These results strongly reinforce my view that most people’s discomfort with being, as they say, an “accomplice to cheating,” has little to do with holding all agreements sacred and everything to do with holding monogamy sacred.

Look, I have no problem with your monogamy agreement. Your kink is not my kind and that’s ok. I want you to make whatever agreements you want between yourself and any partners who are into it. But I am not in charge of enforcement. If you have a trad relationship and your wife isn’t supposed to be alone in a room with another man, I’m not going to leave the room if she walks in and strikes up a conversation. If you have a power exchange kink, and your wife isn’t allowed to earn money, I don’t recognize your authority to tell me I can’t hire her as my babysitter. So if your particular brand of power exchange involves giving each other control over your sexuality, that’s great for you! But I, personally, don’t value monogamy. I think it’s a mistake for most couples. And I think it’s a huge mistake to embrace it on a society-wide level. So I’m not going to take responsibility for enforcing an agreement that I don’t have positive feelings about.

If you disagree, that’s great, and I’m happy to talk about it. But I’m guessing your disagreement is about the value of monogamy, not about whether third parties should be expected to enforce relationship agreements in general. So let’s talk about the actual disagreement.

Wes, the Dadliest Catch @wfenza
Posted on X, July 15, 2025

I find this absolutely fascinating!

It points out a bias in people’s thinking that, for people with relatively similar world views, cannot see.

People cannot imagine they have a bias. But biases do exist. They are just blind to them. And it takes something akin to someone from an alternate reality to see them.

I have sort of a back log of alternate reality things I want to post about, and this is a perfect introduction to that. Here is a quick overview of what I have in mind.

For people who have been to Boomershoot, it is an alternate reality to anti-gun people living is a big city. Even most people who live in the city. Out in the middle of nowhere where the nearest stop sign is two miles away and the nearest stop light is 40 miles away there are bunch of people using KitchenAid mixers to create, literally, a ton of explosives. Then a bunch more people all start shooting at hundreds of boxes each filled with explosives.

A typical USPSA or other action shooting match is composed of dozens of people with guns strapped and tons of ammo on their belt running around and shooting at targets at insane speeds. The anti-gun people must have trouble even envisioning this in the abstract. And what are their thoughts on this? Do they imagine anything than these must be terrorists in training? Or perhaps next week’s active shooters?

Once you sort of have your mind around the concept, here is the twist. What can we do with this information?

In the cyber security world, we are constantly taught to beware of biases. What does some unusual network traffic mean? Is it just a year end upload of reports to the parent company? Or is it exfiltration of sensitive financial information to the dark web?

The fresh out of school analyst may have a bias toward hitting the big red button for the klaxon. After being on the job for a few months and being embarrassed a few time by the false alarms they may have a bias toward assuming it just something normal they have seen before.

When accounts payable gets an invoice, their natural instinct is to pay it just like the other thousand invoices they got in the last year. They have a bias toward normalcy.

The bad guys are aware of and exploit biases. The highly skilled good guys also are aware of and take advantage of biases in the bad guy thinking. I will not be giving examples of that.

Similar things happen in the engineering world. Something common place in one domain can be used to solve problems in a different domain because the people in the second domain have been doing things “the way we have always done them.” They cannot see what is blindingly obvious to someone from the first domain.

What about the photon versus wave properties of light? Only knowing one domain, how would you get your mind around the other property?

I have lots and lots of examples. I look forward to sharing them with you. Of course, you will probably end up thinking I’m even weirder and geekier than you already think I am.