Polygamy

[Byzantine Prince]

I think most men fantasize of having 5 or 6 *beautiful* women as wives, but that will statistically not be the case at all. So there are no real pros here.

No I don't support polygamy. It's wrong in essence.

[Duke of Gloucester]

Multiple emotions to contend with, the group empowering effect some women have, the shopping sprees. Pretty expensive and emotionally taxing.

A little bit of gender stereotyping here DA.

For example, household responsibilities are divided so women actually have to do less work over all.

I can't help but think that it would be better for the woman to divide household responsibilities with her husband and children!

But so long as the guy doesn't play favorites and the family only includes as many wives as can be loved (maybe only two).

I think for most men, "playing favourites" would be inevitable.

Also, it seems that nature has kind of supported this concept. The menstrual cycles of women living in close quarters all quickly adjust to a common time. This seems to favor procreation in that the man is able to avoid non-stop PMS; he only has to worry about a few days each month. The common cycle also means that the women will be fertile at the same time, thus creating an atmosphere of...erm..excitement, thus encouraging intercourse.

I think if nature was supporting the idea, there would be significantly more girl babies than boy babies born and women's menstrual cycles would not synchronise. In fact human sexuality argues that monogamy is more natural; sex when not fertile is unusual and this can be seen as increasing bonding between sexual partners. I am not being idealistic here - adultery is natural too.

Secondly, the gene pool of humanity is changed for the better because the most capable men will be the ones able to take in multiple wives. The genetically inferior men are left unable to procreate and pass along their deficiencies.

Capable in this context only means capable of attracting multiple mates. I don't think this necessarily means better citizens. Also, don't forget the women carry genes and selection pressures for them is reduced in this system.

[Watchman]

Stuff the genetics anyway. Homo Sapiens Sapiens has undergone no meaningful biological changes since its developement. It's cultural evolution all the way these days, bay-bee. 'Sides, "the genetically inferior men are left unable to procreate and pass along their deficiencies" falls foul of the empirical fact of to my knowledge the amount of herediatry diseases, birth defects etc. being quite proportionally stable as long as you filter out things like environmental effects or interbreeding (comparatively historically isolated and small populations, such as the Finns, tend to develop their own curious set of genetical quirks; heredity researchers are apparently finding us a bit of a boon...). In other words, if that claim had any real basis it would follow that the overall human gene pool was improving and the proportional number of assorted biological flaws that now pop up should be slowly going down. But at least I'm entirely unaware of any factual proof of this.

And at the rate it's going with research into genetic engineering, natural evolution just might go obsolete one day too...

Polygamy is highly immoral in essence.

So you support it?

For some reason this quip amuses me to no end.

Kaiser gets a brownie point.

[Papewaio]

[QUOTE=Watchman]Stuff the genetics anyway. Homo Sapiens Sapiens has undergone no meaningful biological changes since its developement.QUOTE]

Isn't that a tautology?

After all if it had gone through meaningful biological changes it would not be the same species...

[Watchman]

*shrug* All I know is we're apparently still essentially the same as our first ancestors identifiable as H.S.S., with no real differences beyond the cosmetic.

But then, some other species have not besides the odd environmentally adapted spin-off undergone any fundamental changes in millions of years...

[Avicenna]

Everyone has genetical deficiencies, with the way humans have managed to keep so many alive for so long, every one of us is bound to have some, too late for that now.

The stars are not infinite. The universe is finite, so therefore the stars must be as well.

[Watchman]

A good part of those "deficiencies" are probably unsuccesful mutations anyway. The process is constantly experimenting with subtly new combinations, most of which fall flat or through.

Introducing the enzyme (or whatever) to digest lactose was a pretty useful one, though. Too bad it's not universal, and deficiencies pop up even in populations that normally have it.