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How to Pick a Mate (1946)

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Re: How to Pick a Mate (1946)

#121

Post by ForestCritter »

sandworm101 wrote: post #36

>> By marrying, a man becomes a better employment risk. Married men usually are regarded as more steady, more trustworthy employees than single men. This is logical. Marriage exerts a stabilizing influence on most men. Oh wow has that changed. Kids and families = time away from the office. Marriage is also the leading cause of divorce, which tends to reduce productivity across a few years, especially if child custody…

Marriage is the leading cause of divorce?....without marriage, there is no divorce.

Re: How to Pick a Mate (1946)

#122

Post by ForestCritter »

kelipso wrote: post #90
sandworm101 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a sociologist, but I do have a number of subordinates. I have people with domestic violence issues, people who cannot work late due to child custody handover times and even restraining orders between divorcing partners who both work at the same company. The single people seem to be more stable, the confirmed bachelors even more so.

You work in the military though, so not exactly the same culture as the average white collar worker.

When it comes to retail and factories, singles are much less reliable than parents. From my e xperience at least.

Re: How to Pick a Mate (1946)

#123

Post by ForestCritter »

lukas099 wrote: post #56
revscat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by how you feel it necessary to even ask such a ridiculous question, I strongly doubt you would accept any answer but that which supports your anachronistic views.

I'm totally open to being wrong. But take the girls' college thing for instance. Many, many people I know met their spouses through college. There simply aren't as many chances to socialize and meet people after you graduate. I think it stands to reason that if you are a straight woman, you are less likely to find a spouse if you go to a college with only women.

women's colleges routinely mixed socially, had dances etc. with men's colleges. To the point that alot of girls went to college to meet eligible men of upper echelons.

Re: How to Pick a Mate (1946)

#124

Post by lukas099 »

ForestCritter wrote: post #123
lukas099 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm totally open to being wrong. But take the girls' college thing for instance. Many, many people I know met their spouses through college. There simply aren't as many chances to socialize and meet people after you graduate. I think it stands to reason that if you are a straight woman, you are less likely to find a spouse if you go to a college with only women.

women's colleges routinely mixed socially, had dances etc. with men's colleges. To the point that alot of girls went to college to meet eligible men of upper echelons.

I don't think GP's point was that women's colleges have mixers

Re: How to Pick a Mate (1946)

#125

Post by tarboreus »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #6

There obvious historical issues with this book that make it hard to apply to today, but I was still surprised at how well written this was for it’s time. This also shows the importance of birth control in women’s lives. In 1946, sex was a roll of the dice to being pregnant. The odds are now massively improved to avoid pregnancy by using modern birth control methods.

You figure people were just bad writers back then? If anything, I'd say they were better writers, though probably only marginally. Read a couple scientific papers from 1945 and you'll more than likely actually enjoy yourself, for example. There's a kind of frankness to a lot of mid-century writing that a lot of cutesy modern writing lacks.

Re: How to Pick a Mate (1946)

#126

Post by tarboreus »

jedberg wrote: post #67
irrational wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I did meet my wife in college. If she had gone to a girls’ college (which I assume means girls-only, do they even still have those?) then I wouldn’t have met her. Frankly, that probably would not have reduced her chances of marriage, but I think it would have reduced mine ;-)

Wellesley College is a well known women's only college. Hillary Clinton went there, and it's still women only today (although they have partnerships with nearby schools like Harvard and MIT and Boston College for the women to take classes there if they want (and experience classes with mixed genders)). They also have planned social activities with those nearby mixed gender colleges. (My friend went there and told me…

They have planned mixers to remediate a known lack. Obviously the occasional gathering isn't going to replicate the experience of a coed college where you're interacting closely with people every day.

Re: How to Pick a Mate (1946)

#127

Post by matheusmoreira »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #120
matheusmoreira wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the way cultures and people have changed since time immemorial. Yeah, because some empire came and killed your people off and conquered your lands and enslaved your survivors and erased your culture so they could replace it their own. Not because people wiped themselves off the map because they wouldn't have children.

More alarmist hyperbole. I know of several Japanese families in my hometown, come here to study, and they are doing fine.

So what? My hometown was literally built by the japanese. My parents worked with japanese their entire lives. Sometimes I go to a restaurant and I hear people speaking japanese nearby. They're all doing fine too.

Doesn't change the fact birth rates in Japan are below replacement. Am I missing something here?

Re: How to Pick a Mate (1946)

#128

Post by tarboreus »

FredPret wrote: post #84
medvezhenok wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is likely better off, but not everyone is vastly better off. Some people are likely a bit better off economically but way worse off socially (since the dating market is much more "efficient" and competitive than it was in 1946, which will be a win for some, and a major loss for others). And some people's/professions economic potential peaked in the early 1970s (truckers, for example, and some other blue coll…

Comments like these used to infuriate me. How can you look at the massive wave of prosperity that has been hitting humanity since the Industrial Revolution and complain? But now I realize that the infinite human capacity to find fault even with paradise is key to the infinite human capacity for growth and new solutions.

Aren't you kind of overstating this? Perhaps for countries like India, which have seen massive increases in real wages and a corresponding rise out of poverty. In the US, the generation after the Greatest Gen (targeted here) was the Boomers, who made a lot more money and had a lot more opportunities. Since then, we've seen a massive rise in inequality, a wipeout of civic life, political disenfrancisement and lack of trust, and wage stagnation. If you just look at one number going up, great. But a rising total, and a rising average, disguises a falling median. Of course people aren't happy with that.

Re: How to Pick a Mate (1946)

#129

Post by tarboreus »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #120
matheusmoreira wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the way cultures and people have changed since time immemorial. Yeah, because some empire came and killed your people off and conquered your lands and enslaved your survivors and erased your culture so they could replace it their own. Not because people wiped themselves off the map because they wouldn't have children.

More alarmist hyperbole. I know of several Japanese families in my hometown, come here to study, and they are doing fine.

I saw a Javan Rhinos the other day. He seemed to be doing pretty good.

Re: How to Pick a Mate (1946)

#130

Post by FredPret »

tarboreus wrote: post #128
FredPret wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like these used to infuriate me. How can you look at the massive wave of prosperity that has been hitting humanity since the Industrial Revolution and complain? But now I realize that the infinite human capacity to find fault even with paradise is key to the infinite human capacity for growth and new solutions.

Aren't you kind of overstating this? Perhaps for countries like India, which have seen massive increases in real wages and a corresponding rise out of poverty. In the US, the generation after the Greatest Gen (targeted here) was the Boomers, who made a lot more money and had a lot more opportunities. Since then, we've seen a massive rise in inequality, a wipeout of civic life, political disenfrancisement and lack of…

How has there been a wipeout of civic life? Since the time of the boomers, we've seen the end of colonialism in Africa and elsewhere, the civil rights movement in the states, equality for women, gay rights, overall a massive relaxation of rigid social norms. Just because old people remember halcyon times does not mean it was actually so.

We've seen massive decreases in disease and infant mortality. Poor people in third world countries live longer, are healthier, and even grow taller.

Communication and IT used to be horrendous, and horrendously expensive. Now even homeless people in Africa (where I'm from) have extremely connected supercomputers in their pockets.

Mean and median wealth and income has skyrocketed in real and nominal terms. There's no perspective on median income and wealth that is both bleak and based on facts. This is true for the human population and especially for the US.

And don't give me "inequality has gone up". It was very high, then it dipped, now it's going back up. What difference does it make - your life is much better, no matter who you are and where you live. Who cares if the richest person has ten yachts or twenty.

Pessimism is a procrastination tactic.

Sources:

ourworldindata.org

imf.org/en/Data

who.int/data

data.worldbank.org

tradingeconomics.com

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