Friday, October 24, 2003In New York City, dogs matched to zip code by breed It appears you can tell alot about a person by the dog breed he/she owns and even reasonably predict where they live as a New York Times analysis of dog licensing data demonstrates. ...
These are the types of statistical studies I really dig on. They kind of sit at the edge of psychology and statistics. Sure most of them end up drawing false or untenable correlations, but the ones that do point out true links provide some real interesting insight. via [Dog News: weird, inspiring dog tales]Lap dogs are more often found in the lap of luxury. According to the city's statistics, more Shih Tzus live on the Upper East Side in the 10021 ZIP code than in any other neighborhood in the city. And those residents also have a penchant for naming their dogs Lucy, more so than New Yorkers in any other area... [NY Times]
2:07:59 PM #
Arley responds to my query on divorce history:
I agree with the idea that our relationships aren't as deep as they were
in ancient Rome, but I think our contact network is much more
prolific. The fact that I have hundreds if not thousands of
people that I keep in contact with on a regular basis (at least
semi-yearly) and they all have friends who I come in contact with, as
well as business associates, etc. makes my network of
"associates" much more extensive than the "average" person in Rome
during the Roman Empire. Also, the speed with which I can make
contact enhances the "currency" of the relationship, if not the
quality. Even if I haven't talked to my friends in Zurich in over
a year, I can be reasonably assured that I can discuss current events
with them and be assured that it is probably topical for them as
well. This breadth over depth in relationships was what I was
initially referring to. I should have made that clear.
Actually, you're right on the count that as little as a century ago we were
moving around quite a bit. But not as much as we are now. The average
person held 1-3 jobs in their lifetime and lived in what I
would guess to be about 1-3 locations in their lifetime. Now I
would venture to say it is at least double that. I wonder
if anyone can find statistics to back this up or disprove my
assumption? In addition, the further you go back in history
the less we moved. Sure, nomadic tribes wandered from location to
location, but it was a pretty rigidly defined and small migration.
Also, be sure not to confuse your family with the average family.
The Law of Small Numbers may lead you to erroneous conclusions.
As for families split apart by this immigration, I think it would be interesting to see how many of those families ended up in divorce or had affairs to deal with the split apart. My skewed perspective of hindsight (and this is probably mostly influenced by historical movies and books than anything else) leads me to believe that more men had mistresses, and more women had dalliances, especially in situations of migration to new areas that rendered family proximity.
Point taken. The psychological cost of the divorce itself is not
to be taken lightly. It does have a significant effect and it was
something I hadn't considered. However, I don't think it
invalidates my argument that the social costs of divorce have decreased
in the eyes of your peers. There are no long term repercussions
in terms of career or status within the tribe due to divorce anymore.
That was my original
point. In addition, the psychological effect of the divorce
itself is often little understood until you initiate the divorce. At
that point you have psychologically committed yourself to the
concept of divorce, you have already committed yourself to the idea
that it is your mate's flaws that are the reason for the divorce and
every amount of stress in the situation gets redirected back at them,
further commiting the parties involved to their course of action.
To put it another way, once you go down that road, there is no turning
back. At the very least there is no psychological incentive to
turn back.
In other words, until you go through it you don't know. If all your friends and family have gone through it, you are likely to reason it can't be worse than what you are currently experiencing in the relationship. I can't think of a good way to study this but some sort of comparison between people who have only one divorce in their life versus those who have had 2 or more would be appropriate. The problem would be the setup. You naturally expect some fall off in numbers between single divorce groups and multiple divorce groups since you have to go through one divorce to get to multiple divorces. So there is a selection bias inherent in the problem.
As for stress levels of divorce, were the studies tracking the pain of going through the divorce, or the long term effects of being divorced? If people were more stressed after the divorce then they were before then it would seem to negate my original conjecture of lowered social costs leading to higher divorces. If it was during the divorce then it would not necessarily support or refute it. As an analogy to illustrate my point, my parents just built a really nice custom home. They have lived in a smallish, cramped 4 bedroom home (especially when there were 5 of us living there, including 2 teenagers) for over 20 years. In the process of designing, financing, and building their new home they have incurred a significant amount of stress. Contractors have flaked out at times, schedules have slipped, mistakes in measurements have been made, moving arrangements have had to be coordinated and so on. It would be fair to say that their stress level was much higher in the process of building the house than it was before they started building it. However, the stress level after the move will be much lower than it was before they started building it, since they have more room, more relaxation options (pool, spa, etc.). I'm not trying to compare building a house to getting a divorce, nor am I trying to say that your assertion is necessarily wrong, simply that the study may be measuring something that is different from the conclusion that you are drawing from it.
As for the issue of children; no I don't have any. And no I haven't studied the effects of divorce on children. That really has nothing to do with my conjecture. To be fair I really left children out of the equation entirely since not all divorces involve children (a good percentage don't). Having said that I wonder if the divorce rate is higher among married couples without children? If so, does that lend credence to my theory that it is declining social costs driving divorce rates? The presence of children would seem to drive up the social costs involved in a divorce. And I think it would be fair to say that having children does not make you more moral. Or does it?
While I think the "marriage and the parent/child relationship are the
strongest in humanity" part may be a little overblown (I think it is a
subset of survival instinct). I do agree that entering and
exiting these relationships are neither easy nor low-cost. They
are not. My original conjecture was that they they may be lower cost than they were historically and thus we have seen a rise in
the divorce rate. I am making no moral conjectures over whether
divorce is right or wrong or whether the rise in rates has led to an
unacceptable divorce rate. Like unemployment rates, or murder
rates, the divorce rate has no baseline "good" rate.
I do firmly stand behind the idea that true love requires a strong commitment, and the fear of looking over your shoulder to make sure your mate isn't walking out the door is counter-productive to that. I also believe that rising divorce rates portend major changes in our society over the long term. And I think I would stand with you in saying that most people I know rush into marriage and divorce way too quickly. The problem (which has plagued humanity throughout our history) is that we are incredibly short sighted. We are way better at putting duct tape around a problem than recognizing its early warning signs and halting the damage.
11:05:30 AM #
> Is the rising divorce rates
> among people today caused by a decline in morals or is it
> simply the fact that modern day humans are in contact
> with more people than at any other point in our history
Certainly a decline in morals. On a personal level we're not in
contact with any more people than, for instance, someone in ancient Rome.
Actually we're often in less contact because we're behind the TV or
steering wheel rather than out on the street talking to people.
> As little as a century ago, most of us would live in a
> village and never venture outside of it. Our family
> circle was extremely close knit and divorce would be a
> terribly socially rending activity.
I don't know where you're getting this warped view of history, but it
couldn't be farther from the truth. I know my ancestors certainly
didn't stay in the same place. Most of us in America wouldn't have been
here if they did. Travel within the country was frequent, especially in
certain occupations and after the advent of the railroads. Families
were often split apart by this immigration, not only to America but also
within it.
As for families split apart by this immigration, I think it would be interesting to see how many of those families ended up in divorce or had affairs to deal with the split apart. My skewed perspective of hindsight (and this is probably mostly influenced by historical movies and books than anything else) leads me to believe that more men had mistresses, and more women had dalliances, especially in situations of migration to new areas that rendered family proximity.
> Now with frequent moving, a lack of a social group
> exerting significant social pressure, and a family that
> is often far removed, I would argue that the cost of
> divorce is negligible.
I suppose you don't have children, or haven't studied the effects of
divorce on children. Otherwise you might know that the cost of divorce
is extremely high for children, especially young children. It's not
easy on adults either: a recent (secular) physchological indicator chart
used to predict stress levels had, as it's highest figure, divorce.
Such things as war, disease, poverty, death, all were less stressful than
divorce. I can also personally attest to this from people I know.
In other words, until you go through it you don't know. If all your friends and family have gone through it, you are likely to reason it can't be worse than what you are currently experiencing in the relationship. I can't think of a good way to study this but some sort of comparison between people who have only one divorce in their life versus those who have had 2 or more would be appropriate. The problem would be the setup. You naturally expect some fall off in numbers between single divorce groups and multiple divorce groups since you have to go through one divorce to get to multiple divorces. So there is a selection bias inherent in the problem.
As for stress levels of divorce, were the studies tracking the pain of going through the divorce, or the long term effects of being divorced? If people were more stressed after the divorce then they were before then it would seem to negate my original conjecture of lowered social costs leading to higher divorces. If it was during the divorce then it would not necessarily support or refute it. As an analogy to illustrate my point, my parents just built a really nice custom home. They have lived in a smallish, cramped 4 bedroom home (especially when there were 5 of us living there, including 2 teenagers) for over 20 years. In the process of designing, financing, and building their new home they have incurred a significant amount of stress. Contractors have flaked out at times, schedules have slipped, mistakes in measurements have been made, moving arrangements have had to be coordinated and so on. It would be fair to say that their stress level was much higher in the process of building the house than it was before they started building it. However, the stress level after the move will be much lower than it was before they started building it, since they have more room, more relaxation options (pool, spa, etc.). I'm not trying to compare building a house to getting a divorce, nor am I trying to say that your assertion is necessarily wrong, simply that the study may be measuring something that is different from the conclusion that you are drawing from it.
As for the issue of children; no I don't have any. And no I haven't studied the effects of divorce on children. That really has nothing to do with my conjecture. To be fair I really left children out of the equation entirely since not all divorces involve children (a good percentage don't). Having said that I wonder if the divorce rate is higher among married couples without children? If so, does that lend credence to my theory that it is declining social costs driving divorce rates? The presence of children would seem to drive up the social costs involved in a divorce. And I think it would be fair to say that having children does not make you more moral. Or does it?
> it would seem that the
> ability to enter and exit relationships would be easier,
> and divorce could be a natural extension of that.
Marriage and the parent/child relationship are the strongest in
humanity. You can't convince me that either entering or exiting these are
either easy or low-cost. As you know from martial arts training, no pain
no gain. Likewise, loosing something of gain is pain. To overuse a
cliche, you can't have your cake and eat it too, you can't have true love
if it can be tossed to the wind at the earliest opportunity.
I do firmly stand behind the idea that true love requires a strong commitment, and the fear of looking over your shoulder to make sure your mate isn't walking out the door is counter-productive to that. I also believe that rising divorce rates portend major changes in our society over the long term. And I think I would stand with you in saying that most people I know rush into marriage and divorce way too quickly. The problem (which has plagued humanity throughout our history) is that we are incredibly short sighted. We are way better at putting duct tape around a problem than recognizing its early warning signs and halting the damage.
11:05:30 AM #
Everyone is talking about Creo's new Token system for file delivery.
It looks interesting. I don't really see how it solves the low
bandwidth problem though. It's my understanding that SMTP isn't
that much slower than FTP (correct me if I'm wrong since I have no
figures to back this up) and that the vast majority of users are still
using dial up.
What happens when Joe Public sends out a token to d/l a 50MB quicktime file to 20 of his closest friends and they all hammer on his PC on a DSL line at once? Instant suckage.
Now I understand the key point with this technology is "ease of use." You don't need to know FTP, you don't need to wait for your e-mail client to upload to your server, and you don't have to worry about your recipients mail server bouncing the file cuz it's too large. The problem of solving the ease of use problem without solving the bandwidth problem is that once it becomes easy everyone does it. And they do it all the time. You no longer send your most important 50-100 MB files, you send ALL of your 50-100 MB files. It's just too EASY to do, why go through the trouble of figuring out which ones are important enough to send.
I see this protocol breaking down under its own weight. The more popular the software, the more it will slow things down, especially at the weaker points on the network.
Maybe combining this with some sort of peer to peer protocol where recipients who have d/l the data also become server hosts would be the answer. via [joel on software]
9:53:39 AM #
What happens when Joe Public sends out a token to d/l a 50MB quicktime file to 20 of his closest friends and they all hammer on his PC on a DSL line at once? Instant suckage.
Now I understand the key point with this technology is "ease of use." You don't need to know FTP, you don't need to wait for your e-mail client to upload to your server, and you don't have to worry about your recipients mail server bouncing the file cuz it's too large. The problem of solving the ease of use problem without solving the bandwidth problem is that once it becomes easy everyone does it. And they do it all the time. You no longer send your most important 50-100 MB files, you send ALL of your 50-100 MB files. It's just too EASY to do, why go through the trouble of figuring out which ones are important enough to send.
I see this protocol breaking down under its own weight. The more popular the software, the more it will slow things down, especially at the weaker points on the network.
Maybe combining this with some sort of peer to peer protocol where recipients who have d/l the data also become server hosts would be the answer. via [joel on software]
9:53:39 AM #
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