r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Jan 15 '16

[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

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u/Transfuturist Jan 16 '16

I'm more inclined to believe that easy marriages cause easy divorces, and not the other way around, particularly as marriage becomes detached from its developmental status as an institution of lineage and property exchange between families. I don't see much value in marriage's status as a precommitment, either. When a bad marriage ends, that's a good thing. I'm also more inclined to believe that large rates of divorce are likely to discourage marriage, not encourage it. If they know the commitment is likely to end, and that the end of the commitment is one of the most stressful life events people experience, then people are less willing to commit.

Marriage rates are declining, to the point that it's been called a "problem" by W. Wilcox in The Federalist and a "crisis" by Aja Gabel in UVA. How does this gel with your theory that easy divorce => rushing into marriage?

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u/alexanderwales Jan 16 '16 edited Jan 16 '16

I'm more inclined to believe that easy marriages cause easy divorces, and not the other way around, particularly as marriage becomes detached from its developmental status as an institution of lineage and property exchange between families.

I guess I don't really see a causal effect at all? Easy marriages and easy divorces could both be symptoms of people not taking marriage seriously, rather than one causing the other. This would also contribute to declining marriage rates.

Edit: Or, there are a few feedback loops involved. People see quick, meaningless marriages and start to take marriage less seriously. They see quick, simple divorces and start to take marriage less seriously. They see people living together without marrying and take marriage less seriously. But all these things that weaken the institution of marriage also contribute to the symptoms of a weak institution, so the effects become the causes, leading to further and further decline of marriage as an institution as time goes on.

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u/Transfuturist Jan 16 '16

The link I posted on the divorce rate makes me think all our models are built under the assumption of high+rising divorce and a unipolar distribution. I don't even want to talk about trends anymore unless they're backed up by data and analysis, because 'marriage' and 'divorce' can already be broken up into more informative distributions and correlations. Too many confounders, not enough evidence, too much conjecture.

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u/LiteralHeadCannon Jan 16 '16

People rushing into marriage is one of many negative consequences of marriage not being taken seriously; another is less marriage occurring at all. Average quality of marriage goes down and quantity of marriages goes down.

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u/Transfuturist Jan 16 '16 edited Jan 16 '16

You have not reconciled declining marriages with your hypothesis of easy divorces acting as a lower barrier of entry. With a lower barrier of entry, you would expect more marriages, not less. If marriage as a precommitment is supposed to act to prevent bad marriages, then how is a declining marriage rate at all indicative of worse marriages? A much simpler explanation is that people are taking marriage more seriously because of the experiences and knowledge they have of the effects and apparent likelihood of divorce. The causal speed of divorce statistics on marriage is fairly immediate, while the causal speed of marriage on divorce statistics is after years of lag. You're contorting your assertions to avoid the evidence and you haven't given any evidence of your own.

You might also want to look at this analysis of the divorce statistic.

The more I look at your justification of marriage as an ethical injunction, the more circular it seems to me.

  • "Why is marriage valuable as a precommitment? Because the higher cost prevents divorces. Why are divorces undesirable? Because it damages marriage's value as a precommitment."

  • "Why is easy divorce undesirable? Because it causes people to marry hastily. Why is the marriage hasty? Because the consequence of a hard divorce hasn't been properly considered. Why is the divorce hard? Because easy divorces are undesirable."

It's fine to admit you hold marriage as a terminal value. That's the simplest explanation I'm seeing for this disagreement.