Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's nothing ironic about people not embracing your misapprehension of the idea.
What is my misapprehension exactly?
That genuine belief in the concept necessitates any action.
The Decline of Marriage
81–90 of 114 posts
Re: The Decline of Marriage
#82Monogamy isn't dead as the author seems to imply by the falling marriage rates. Many people I know are not married but are in 10+ year long-term monogamous relationships (myself included). We don't ever plan to get married because I don't like the government telling me what to do and how our assets must be split in the case we decide to break up (though we never plan to). We also are vehemently anti-religious and wou…
If you all did split and there was a dispute between you too, the government (courts) are still how things would get settled, no? Marriage I believe is just a form of contract. I believe you can write you own binding legal marriage contract that can specify whatever you would like. As a nonreligious married person, that's what I consider marriage to be. A legal framework for deciding these things. Not having one just…
marriage in a legal context is a very specific type of contract with terms that are not negotiable.
Re: The Decline of Marriage
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Our civilization -- the actual web of relationships and institutions that keep the lights on -- is clearly doing fine. Given even a passing look at just the last 2 decades, and the serious prospects for massive social unrest going forward both in the States and in Europe, which often get discussed here, how in the world can you say that. "The World" (since you apparently are one of those who think the term "Western…
> Given even a passing look at just the last 2 decades In the last two decades, the share of humans living in extreme poverty fell from 30% to 10%. And child deaths under age five were cut in half . So where's your data? I will add that I don't think "western civilization" is racist, even though the term gets coopted often by racists. I happen to be proud to be part of a scientific civilization and want to see it flo…
>But I recognize that has nothing to do with which people are allowed to live and work on which side of imaginary lines.
I'm so tired of these sorts of facile statements. They're so smugly wrong-headed.
Is real estate comprised of nothing more than imaginary lines? No, it isn't. It has massive social and economic value.
Territory matters, access rights to said territory matters matters, to literally every living thing on Earth. Even tree roots are constantly fighting and competing for finite resources and territory on time-lapse.
What do you think an invasive species is? Are those imaginary?
The idea of boundaries isn't some new thing. It's essentially the reason we developed laws and civilization in the first place, to manage territory in a rational way. Territorial delineations aren't just "imaginary lines."
Are laws just imaginary words to you? Are title agencies imaginary businesses? Does money only have imaginary value? Why not give it all away then.
Your perspective seems absurdly detached to me.
Re: The Decline of Marriage
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm almost certain widespread polyamory will degenerate into polygamy approximately instantaneously.
Most modern polyamorous relations end up with the women having more partners than the men. Women have a far easier time finding sex partners than men do, on average.
But this is only a recent trend because of the advent of birth control technologies, which shifted the balance of risk in having multiple partners. Prior to this, high status males had consistently high partners than females.
Re: The Decline of Marriage
#85Re: The Decline of Marriage
#86> If people are voluntarily opting out of marriage and family I'm not married, I'm in a long term committed relationship, I have kids. The article seems to think that being married and having kids is somehow the same. It's not.
I'd say the article is actually inferring that marriage is what makes a family happy and stable. That and their use of the term "illegitimate" left me unable to finish the article. I'm sure some of it is my strong anti-marriage bias but it reads like being bound by contract and law is what makes a relationship and a family stable.
> their use of the term "illegitimate" left me unable to finish the article
That's a well established definition of the word; if you Google 'define illegitimate' you'll get:
1. not authorized by the law; not in accordance with accepted standards or rules.
2. (of a child) born of parents not lawfully married to each other.
Re: The Decline of Marriage
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Women would make the choice for who the father would be and would choose only top tier traits. Is the implication here that this is not already the case? I think you are marginalizing the many variable preferences that people have when choosing partners. There is no general set of optimal human traits. >...leaving out a vast majority of males. Men would either have no reason to be productive members of society or wo…
>Is the implication here that this is not already the case? I think you are marginalizing the many variable preferences that people have when choosing partners. There is no general set of optimal human traits. Marriage limits a man to one women, IVF would allow one man to impregnate essentially infinite women and other factors like personality wouldn't factor into the OPs nearly anonymous genetic propositioning. >Thi…
Im not sure there's any correlation between young men who are sitting idle and what I was referring to.
There are men who do not have children, some gay men for example, who are highly productive members of society.
The selection bias that you indirectly refer to is already happening. And with the availability of ivf, what I am referring to is already happening as well amongst lesbian and gay couples and single educated women who haven't met the right person yet. And what's to stop it? If people who are smart, successful, but haven't found the right mate or don't want to get married, go gamete shopping and find the ideal set of genes, and produce the ideal child - how do other children without these advantages compete against them? My guess is that other potential parents then start going the same route, especially if marriage is on the decline anyhow.
I don't think it leads to violence and truthfully it's not something I even condone without further thought.
Re: The Decline of Marriage
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you all did split and there was a dispute between you too, the government (courts) are still how things would get settled, no? Marriage I believe is just a form of contract. I believe you can write you own binding legal marriage contract that can specify whatever you would like. As a nonreligious married person, that's what I consider marriage to be. A legal framework for deciding these things. Not having one just…
marriage in a legal context is a very specific type of contract with terms that are not negotiable.
regarding property, the addition of a prenuptial or postnuptial rider to the main marriage contract makes it quite flexible and negotiable. I guess without you using more words, I won't understand what the actual specific concern is.
Without the contract of some sort in place, its not so different than operating a business without a contract. You may think you know the outcome of an interaction, but without a contract its completely unknown in actuality.
Re: The Decline of Marriage
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, China is already investing massively in research on intelligence and they won't be afraid to use it. Chinese culture combined with super-intelligence will be unstoppable. >such denial of the biological realities around intelligence and reproduction I've always thought it was funny how people are perfectly fine saying height is genetic but saying intelligence is genetic is unthinkable. Research shows intellig…
>I've always thought it was funny how people are perfectly fine saying height is genetic but saying intelligence is genetic is unthinkable. Or behavior, and then purchase a specific dog because of that breed's selected behavioral characteristics.
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Re: The Decline of Marriage
#90Natural selection will take care of this eventually, either genetically or memeticly. I suspect the outcome will not be as happy as what the traditions we flouted provided. The birth rate is likely the most telling critique of western society. Our revealed preference is our civilization is not worth perpetuating. As of now only those who deliberately desire children and those unable to follow the instructions on the…
There's a fundamental flaw hiding under arguments like yours: the "civilization" you're circumscribing is an imaginary and arbitrary boundary. An ahistorical retcon. It's as unsupported as discredited racial theories that all humans fit into three tidy buckets ("caucasoid", "mongoloid", "negroid"). For example, maybe you're talking about "Christendom". But then it's not actually in decline -- hispanics are part of Ch…
> What it boils down to is, people use "western civilization" as a cover for "white people just like me". But there's no non-racist way to equate that with "civilization".
Do you recognize that your argument can be applied to literally any culture that wants to ethnically preserve itself (just replace "white" with "Japanese" or "Chinese" or "Nigerian" or whatever)? You are arguing that any civilization that wants to preserve its ethnic character is fundamentally illegitimate, which is ironic because that view is at root a direct outgrowth of the European universalist enlightenment tradition. You think you are better than other cultures, and you are using that to self-righteously argue for their destruction.
My argument is contingent on the idea that behavior/personality is somewhat heritable, and that culture and ethnicity co-evolve to a certain extent - statistically, people are more likely to be better suited to their own culture. Finns are better at being Finns than they are at being Italians, and vice versa.