Don't follow the crowd...

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by Seattle, Dec 13, 2019.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That doesn't follow. The delay in marriage is apparently economic - so apparently people have about the same resources when they marry as they always have, it just took them longer to accumulate. Also, the biological pressures on those wanting children may be causing some people to marry after postponing as long as they reasonably can - with less in the way of financial resources, not more.
    They won't necessarily live longer, in consequence (humans already live far longer past fertility than any other organism I can think of - that's a big cushion). At any rate, that will take thousands of years to show up.
    And a fourth: poorer physical outcomes, as measured in the health of the mother and the child (including the age-related detriments of an older father).

    And a fifth: the wealthy - who have the greatest impact on the environment - will produce a higher proportion of the children than otherwise (via concubines etc, as well as marriage, since they can afford to. ). Yet another advantage of wealth made more influential.

    And a sixth: older, less capable grandparents - recognized now as an important factor in human child raising.
     
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  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    If everyone was the result of the wealthy reproducing that might solve a lot of problems. Everyone would be taken care of.

    People who wait longer to marry, until after their careers are more established and after they have gotten the traveling/playing bug out of their systems do generally have more money.

    Marriages tend to be more stable when they occur later in life as well. The people are more mature and it's a more considered decision.
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Not quite. Economics is definitely a reason, but that works in both directions - men no longer need a woman as soon as they leave home to do dishes, wash clothes, manage the house etc. because machines do that for them now. From Andrew Zuppann, professor of economics at the University of Houston: “There a couple of reasons why people choose to get married. One is to have two people in the household to share the housework and finances. A big change between 2016 and 1950 is that a lot less people rely on this and have opportunities to afford to be on their own. . . . Contraceptives and abortion are letting women put off pregnancy and marriage longer. In general, the reasons why marriage age is much later now are: birth control, technology, abortion, changes in female pay and household technology, like appliances.”
    It will take exactly one generation for an initial selection to happen; people who don't live to (say) 35 won't reproduce. That will be spread out because later marriage (and later childbearing) are an average; some will still have kids at 18 no matter what. But there is no stronger evolutionary force than reproductive success.
    Health of the parents? Agreed. Older people are generally less healthy. However, they will have the same quality of life overall when looked at over their lifespan; their time as parents simply happens later. And over time they will get healthier as evolution gets involved.
    That's a good thing, not a bad thing. There's a cycle of poverty that involves poorly educated kids having children at age 16 (due to lack of agency brought about by lack of education, planning, good family influences etc) who then raise the next generation of teen parents. Moving average age higher will tend to have an effect even on that segment of society, and help them break that cycle.
     
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  7. river

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    To your last statement , isn't this what people are doing now , I think so .

    Wether this is a good thing or not depends on the consequences of " act in their own interests " .
     
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I think wise people do, yes.

    I'm pointing out the naivete of the original question - the supposition that people actively 'follow the crowd'.

    'Lots of people independently coming to the same conclusion' does not mean they are 'following the crowd'.

    When a thousand people get off a plane and head to the exit, they are not following the crowd; they are all independently choosing to leave the airport to go home - the fact that this leads them all to take the same actions does not mean they are exhibiting 'group think'. The exit is how you get home.

    The same thing can be said about marriage - as raised in the OP.
     
  9. river

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    I think though there is a balance between following the crowd and disagreeing with crowd . Which both the crowd and those that disagree with the crowd , understand and respect .
     
  10. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    the koan...
     
  11. river

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    The koan ? Explain
     
  12. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    To explain would confuse...
     
  13. river

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    Explain anyway .
     
  14. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    We wouldn't want that...
     
  15. river

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    I want to know what would be confusing
     
  16. river

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    To reiterate

     
  17. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    It's just an older 'crowd'.
    Yes, we have long-established cultural mores for the ceremonies of life phases - birth, coming of age, marriage, death - and most people do desire to be accepted/welcomed/celebrated by their social group on those occasions. I find it rather sad that the rites ofr passage have largely fallen into oblivion, in the pretense that childhood lasts 20 years, so the celebration of surviving to adulthood is rolled into the graduation or wedding ritual.
    According to some excellent traditions, when a couple pledges their life-bond, the family and/or community provides them with a home and its basic necessities. Seems a more practical contribution than a splashy wedding or expensive honeymoon, which the parents are supposed to pay for.
    Of course, for late or second marriages, where both parties are mature, they make their own arrangements, and these weddings tend to be far more varied in venue, style and cost than the 'fairy-tale' weddings of the young.
     
  18. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Tra·di·tion: n.
    1. peer pressure from dead people.
     
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  19. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Just to be annoyingly pedantic: How are dead people the peers of live people?
     
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  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    And likely much longer to take measurable genetic effect - thousands of years easily, forever if the pressure toward older marriage has little or no directly influential genetic component , which apparently is the case.
    Either that or make having children before one can afford them a societal norm even in wealthy countries, while simultaneously increasing the proportion of physically unhealthy and genetically damaged people- including the next generation of parents - in the human population, who nevertheless impose the environmentsl costs of wealth.
    Childbirth and child raising imposes heavy physical demands, which damage older people's health more than they do younger people's. That will likely remain significant essentially forever.
    None of those correlate nearly as well as the economic pressures. At most they provide means, but not motive. At the least they actually encourage earlier marriage, by lowering the cost of leaving one's parent's home and care as well as that of married life itself.
    ? How does that happen? It looks like a diminished quality of life, by appearance - at least for those who want a civilization complete with healthy children in healthy nuclear families as a major constituent.
     
  21. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Measurable genetic effect will take exactly one generation, since any dominant genetic trait that selects for short lifetimes will be selected against _very_ strongly. As with any strong selection pressure, it will indeed take thousands of years until the recessive traits disappear as well.
    Moving average age of first child higher will move average age lower? No, that doesn't follow.
    Not once you get evolution involved. If people who give birth later die during childbirth (or even suffer significant injury that prevents them from having more children) then that trait will also be selected against. Even today, there are plenty of women who have children with no serious damage to their health well into their 40's. Those genotypes would simply begin to dominate; no new traits required.
    One of them WAS an economic pressure.
    No, having children when you are older does not diminish your quality of life. (Unless you are one of those people who are of the opinion that children are horrors that are simply to be endured, like eczema or diabetes. But even then, doing that later rather than earlier doesn't change the percentage of one's life spent in that living hell; just changes the time within one's life it occurs.)
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Already has been.
    ? Do try to read more carefully.

    Only discipline and care will delay pregnancy past the physically optimal and hormonally pressured time - moving the average age higher, or even the median, is unlikely in itself to have much effect on the careless and presumptuous.
    Meanwhile, if the normal first child is one essentially forced upon an economically underprepared but biologically deadlined mother, the society is likely to adjust - so that the new norm will be children born to the economically underprepared. That will include the undisciplined and careless.

    And that's what we are seeing, unless I miss my guess.
    It often does if you are poor. The physical strain is significant, and without money to cushion the effects it will be felt.
    Uh, n0 - the physical damage from childbirth and infant care is routinely serious, and few escape the consequences. Without a money cushion, it will degrade one's quality of life.
    More likely the traits of prudence and discipline will be selected against - especially among the demographics in which delay is less likely to abet wealth accumulation.

    Postponing childbirth is a gamble for anyone who does it. For the lower classes, it's less likely to pay off.
     
  23. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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