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Notes -
Excuse me for fixating on a pet peeve but- hey this is half for fun anyway right?
Social Contagion... is 100% real and also a phrase that I find deeply annoying. Every cultural norm spreads socially. It just feels like a deepity. Or a Motte and Baily. The Baily is that your behavior wasn't rational or that it is problematic, the Motte is that your behavior was learned from other actors.
To be clear in this instance I agree that a high divorce rate is not a good thing. At the very least, I'd like people to be cultivating mutually beneficial, flourishing relationships that do not merit breaking up.
But I still think "It spreads socially." and "Current policy on this issue can be improved and here is how." should be argued separately.
I'm less interested in litigating what to call the social factors of divorce, than establishing as a data point that people can be influenced to divorce, so I can move onto other data points that assume that. It sounds like we agree on that.
I think so. I think its worth questioning how much of the issue is premature marriage to the wrong person and how much is detrimentally weak commitment to the right person. Depending on your priors, you might think that a given divorce is the result of either failure state or a combination. And they merit different sorts of solutions. Better matchmaking, vs better relationship norms and counseling. I'm in the both camp.
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This reminds me that as a minister I have something of a responsibility to the couples I marry.
It seems I'm reading your linked articles now.
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