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A link between polygamy and war

economist.com

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Re: A link between polygamy and war

#81

Post by svantana »

zajd wrote: post #21
svantana wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You consider Saudi Arabia "stable"? They just had a coup d'etat this month, and have been involved in plenty of wars in the region, most recently in Yemen.

I'm not sure "being involved in war" has anything to do with being stable, seeing as the US has been "involved in war" for the past 250 years. Also, Saudi Arabia did not have a coup d'etat by any reasonable definition. MBS "purging" his political opinions does not a coup make.

I only mentioned wars since the article was about wars.

Re: A link between polygamy and war

#82

Post by pbhjpbhj »

okintheory wrote: post #53
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW sometimes I'll do an emdash -- which allows a conceptual aside -- by using two hyphens, but always with spacing so as not to confuse the usage with word-joining.

When an em dash is used to indicate a pause, it's most often used without spacing between words and the em dash—except in newspapers [1]. [1] http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

Yes, my usage would normally be with endash in traditional media AFAIAA. Punctuation, like grammar, serves the user in my mode of writing.

Re: A link between polygamy and war

#83

Post by golergka »

kazagistar wrote: post #58
golergka wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it literally pins the blame for everything bad that non-white people do on the one thing white people ... have criticized others for for two millennia While I don't think that polygamy is the root of all evil, it is a fact that "white people" countries don't have these bad things happening. Wouldn't it be logical to suggest that some difference in behaviour might be the reason for it?

No. Correlations implying causation are not logical, and there might be numerous possible other factors causing either or both.

Not implying.

But if you see correlation, it is logical to investigate for a possible causation.

Re: A link between polygamy and war

#84

Post by woodandsteel »

antientropic wrote: post #13
mrleiter wrote: post #5

> Wherever it is widely practised, polygamy (specifically polygyny, the taking of multiple wives) destabilises society, largely because it is a form of inequality which creates an urgent distress in the hearts, and loins, of young men. I expected that the sentence ends with "...of young women", because they are obviously seen as objects of a man's wealth and not as individual beings. It is an inequality not only of r…

Polygyny may actually be advantageous to most women, while being bad for most men: https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200707/ten-politica... . This is because it allows many women to have a more desirable mate than they would otherwise have, while many men end up with no mate at all. From that perspective, it's no wonder that many patriarchal cultures outlawed polygyny.

But don't forget that these women who are in polygamous marriages will have sons, and most of them won't be able to get married, which presumably will make their mothers unhappy. It's a cruel system.

Re: A link between polygamy and war

#85

Post by user5994461 »

debacle wrote: post #57
sudhirj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also an expectation that women will marry ‘up’, even in first world countries, I think. It’s very ironic that women who develop themselves have a smaller option pool of mates.

It's not really an expectation. There have been studies on this, and women do tend to prefer mates at or above their social status (whether that means educationally, professionally, economically, etc). It makes finding a spouse late in life for successful women incredibly difficult.

Correction: Finding a spouse [of higher status] late in life is incredibly difficult for successful women [who have insane requirements and won't settle for less].

Re: A link between polygamy and war

#86

Post by user5994461 »

geodel wrote: post #60
sudhirj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also an expectation that women will marry ‘up’, even in first world countries, I think. It’s very ironic that women who develop themselves have a smaller option pool of mates.

Why is it ironic? Isn't it simple default that there are fewer successful people in most commonly used metrics like financially, socially, culturally etc? So if a women is successful they will have less mates to choose from.

No, it's not a default. The default is that successful women have a bigger pool to choose from and they really do.

What happen in practice is that they refuse to consider anyone who is not more than themselves, effectively ignoring the vast majority of the pool. The more successful and pretty, the bigger the pool, which they balance by being even more selective.

Re: A link between polygamy and war

#87

Post by woodandsteel »

kazagistar wrote: post #58
golergka wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it literally pins the blame for everything bad that non-white people do on the one thing white people ... have criticized others for for two millennia While I don't think that polygamy is the root of all evil, it is a fact that "white people" countries don't have these bad things happening. Wouldn't it be logical to suggest that some difference in behaviour might be the reason for it?

No. Correlations implying causation are not logical, and there might be numerous possible other factors causing either or both.

You're right, correlations are absolutely useless for helping determine causation. That's why scientists never do correlational studies.

It's interesting, though, that you have nothing specific to say about how one should go about determining causality.

Re: A link between polygamy and war

#89

Post by user5994461 »

a2tech wrote: post #39
sethammons wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete aside, and I looked in your profile for a way to pm you instead of making this comment where I am sure to burn karma. I noticed in two separate comments that you are improperly using hyphens. > ... no interest-like people the world ... Hyphens join two words. This sentence was hard to parse and was nonsensical until I realized the hyphen was intended as a separator. Consider spaces around hyphens when joinin…

Thank you for the info I’m aware that the hyphen used that way is a personal quirk. But I’m always looking to improve my written communication so I’ll use them correctly going forward.

Agree with the comment. That sentence made no sense whatsoever. Had to re read 10 times to figure out that the hyphen was probably wrong. Then still not sure whether it was a failed copy/paste or multiple words missing.

If you have troubles with using hyphens, I'd recommend to not use any, ever. There are barely any English word requiring one and noone will care if it's missing.

Re: A link between polygamy and war

#90

Post by user5994461 »

watwut wrote: post #66
a2tech wrote: post #24

A neat (for lack of a better word) thing to look at is bride prices-this article briefly touches on it but it was something I discussed a lot with our exchange student from Turkmenistan last year. Prior to our conversation I had never spent much time thinking about how buying a bride would work in practice, but it turns out that it ends up being a fine (although horrible) example of capitalist endeavor. So in Turkmen…

The wishes and actions of the sister somehow don't enter this analysis at all. Reading this, it is not even her hard work and effort that got her education and job - the emphasis is on her parents efforts. And I mean, they contributed, just like all parents contribute to offsprings success or failure. But, we don't talk about it that way normally - especially people in HN like to frame themselves as self-taught or at…

The "self-taught" is just a gentle way to say that they didn't attend college. The outside world would jump to the conclusion of being too broke or not capable.
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