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Who Americans spend their time with, by age

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Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#101

Post by burlesona »

wbl wrote: post #82
burlesona wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very true. Unfortunately such places are almost all very expensive these days. So if you’re not already into late retirement age (and you moved there 40 years ago when it was affordable), then it’s not economically feasible for most people to get in now.

Places can change. There's nothing stopping suburbia from becoming more walkable and friendly to the elderly other than choices we made.

There's actually a lot stopping it. First and foremost, reams of zoning and other regulations that are not easy to repeal. Second, the entire physical environment poured in concrete which is expensive and difficult to retrofit well. The street patterns of suburbia are hostile to walkability because they intentionally increase the distance between points with poor connectivity and dendritic routing. This is why the majority of suburban areas decline after the first generation of development and never revitalize.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#102

Post by watwut »

dcolkitt wrote: post #73
_qulr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defending the nuclear family, but I don't think our primitive past says anything about what's "optimal". For example, human life expectancy is much longer now. I'd much rather be a modern person with modern technology and medicine than a hunter-gatherer. Evolution != good. It's just history, and history is often ugly.

I agree and disagree. I'm certainly not arguing that industrialization isn't miraculous. Even from a parenting perspective, I think most would rather raise their kids in a stressful nuclear family than watch half of them die from preventable diseases. If you read about the anthropology of childrearing it's filled with endless heartbreaking accounts of parents having to make choices about letting one kid die to focus…

However, we have not been hunter gatherers for thousands of years. And we also live healthier and longer lives then they did.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#104

Post by watwut »

danenania wrote: post #77
_qulr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not fighting against the way that our bodies and minds were designed Our minds and bodies were not designed. They evolved — slowly — under conditions of relatively harshness and scarcity that to a large extent no longer exist. The human "habitat" has changed radically in the past several hundred years. One might argue that we're no longer adapted to our environment. Evolution doesn't work quickly enough for that. I…

They were in a sense designed by an impersonal process--but I agree "design" isn't the best word since it implies intention. I would agree that we are no longer adapted to our environment, and this seems to be the cause of many "modern" forms of suffering that are unrelated to scarcity, like mental illness and diseases of over-consumption. To me this implies that we have done a bad job in creating an environment for…

Hunter gatherers did had mental illness and diseases. Takes something like schizophrenia or being bipolar. That is not something that is purely result of modern life. I dont think there is evidence hunter gatherers could not suffer from PTSD or abuse.

They did not had diseases of over-consumption, but they had diseases from under-consumption.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#105

Post by watwut »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #74
dcolkitt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Western nuclear family is a very unnatural social arrangement. Anthropologists have found that in most hunter-gatherers, the average infant is held at one point or another by 30+ people in a typical day. The nuclear family has the twin downsides of putting tons of stress on parents of young kids, who shoulder the entire childcare burden, and deprives a lot of grandparents, aunts, cousins, and others of meaningful…

The western nuclear family is exactly what you get in agrarian societies of the past. It wasn't just some random thing the people of the 1950s made up on the spot. When 4/6 of your sons grow to adulthood you can't live in the same household as all of them. You live with one of them (probably the most or least functional one). 2 of the others have their own farms (one probably gets yours, maybe you split your farm bet…

Multi generational households were the norm for much of the history.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#107

Post by stronglikedan »

br_hue wrote: post #106

Sad data. In my opinion this is the result of a culture that optimizes for the wrong things in life. "Happiness is only real when shared.".

No way. I've demonstrably proven to myself that I'm happiest when I'm by myself. Social interactions are tedious, and draining, so I prefer to keep them to a minimum. I optimize for the right things in my life.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#108

Post by watwut »

grumple wrote: post #61

Interesting. Totally anecdotal here, but here are my thoughts: As I get older, I see less value in friendships, mostly because I realize that many of my friendships didn't serve me and added a lot of stress to my life (and distracted from time that could have been spent on career / legacy). Meanwhile, time invested in my personal life, hobbies, and career pays off in spades - spending a few months getting better at a…

Older people do complain about loneliness and isolation. Stay at home moms complain about loneliness and isolation a lot.

By that I want to say that neither is young person issues. It is much easier for younger people to get enough socialization in school, work or whatever. It gets harder when people get older and have family obligations.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#109

Post by throwaway2245 »

gen220 wrote: post #71

The underlying data here is, of course, a distribution (each with its own distinct shape). In this case, I suspect that the "average" statistic is not the best representative of that distribution. For instance, "children" is definitely a bimodal distribution. There are many people in life who never have children, and therefore drag down the average for all those who do have children. I suspect that, in reality, there…

Yes - I also didn't found the averages hard to interpret and not super full of insight.

Presumably a lot of people spend 6-10 hours with their coworkers, and a lot of people spend 0 hours; a lot of people spend 8+ hours with their children, and a lot of people spend 0 hours, and pretty much the same for all of those categories.

I'd have found a few 'typical' people in each age group more interesting. This is harder to calculate but maybe k-means clustering would be a good solution.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#110

Post by br_hue »

stronglikedan wrote: post #107
br_hue wrote: post #106

Sad data. In my opinion this is the result of a culture that optimizes for the wrong things in life. "Happiness is only real when shared.".

No way. I've demonstrably proven to myself that I'm happiest when I'm by myself. Social interactions are tedious, and draining, so I prefer to keep them to a minimum. I optimize for the right things in my life.

It's my perspective, but yeah, I shouldn't have generalized. Different people have different preferences, needs and opinions.
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