[extropy-chat] Effective relationships

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Anders Sandberg wrote:
> Can't quote my paper right now (still in internet cafe mode), but most
> evidence suggests that humans form metastable, fairly monogamous dyads in
> all societies. In societies where polygamy is accepted it is still less
> than 20% of the men who do it. Adultery occurs in monogamous relations,
> but it seems to be less than 20% of people who do it. Incidence of
> children genetically unrelated to their official fathers appears to be
> relatively low, on the order of 3%. The romantic love system appears to be
> geared towards exclusivity; the lust and attachment systems allow multiple
> partners, but not the mate selection system.
> 
> If another form of organisation was more stable or produced more happiness
> it would likely be fairly prevalent. Since triads or tetrads do not occur
> that often I would conclude that they are not stable in general.

Second paragraph does not follow logically from first paragraph.  Since 
when is "happiness" a primary optimization target of the patterning 
processes in question?

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence