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Scott's most recent post had someone linking to an article in the Atlantic about debunking a study, I went and read it and got sucked into the Atlantic rabbit hole.
Link one: Don't avoid romance says more people are single nowadays and unhappier nowadays because more people have avoidant attachment styles in the past, with some (mostly circumstantial) evidence that the amount of avoidant attachment is increasing. Ends with an exhortation to not be avoidant but doesn't examine the question I would have thought would be of interest, which is why more and more people don't have healthy attachment styles. (Aftereffects of higher divorce rate? Internet usage? Weaker community institutions? Microplastics? I'm just spitballing ideas but wouldn't a marked societal-leve change in people's psychology be something you'd want to investigate the causes of?)
Link two: The Ozempic Flip Flop as someone who gets full very quickly and doesn't have a very strong appetite, I've never really had good mental image of what it's like for normal people with normal appetites let alone obese people with obese appetites. This article in particular presents people who lost weight, noticed immediate massive benefits in their life they're desperate to keep, and yet still can't keep the weight from coming back. It is just the satiety setpoint being set so high it's torture for them to not eat to the point of overeating? I'm trying to match it to my own points of reference for "willpower" struggles but failing. I force myself to go to the gym despite not enjoying exercise, but that's forcing myself to do something, not forcing myself not to do something, so generally speaking once I overcome the activation barrier of inertia the hard part is over. I intermittently (deliberately, as opposed to non-deliberately) fast and can be hungry and craving food but to a pretty easily overcome extent. But what makes someone — who for months now has been eating much less — be unable to maintain the amount they've been eating for months but instead be compelled to keep eating more even though it's actively physically hurting them (and costing them in other ways, like socially). How much stronger incentive can you get? It makes me feel like at some level for some people food is an addictive substance like drugs. (And also still trying to understand how this gets spread — is it really hyperpalatable foods? Something else? We can watch countries become more obese... Whatever the underlying thing that makes someone susceptible to this is, it does appear to be something a country can acquire)
Your achive link isn't the full article. This one seems better?
Once again, it's remarkable all the hoops the article, or the researchers, jump through to avoid the obvious answer. People have avoidant attachment styles because our culture almost universally portrays marriage and family as an existential horror. Women fear being "trapped" in a marriage. Women's media my entire life has bent over backwards feeding women's neuroticism that every marriage is a "bad" marriage.
And on men's side, every single man has witnessed half their friends and family cut in half by divorce. Lost the house, turned into an every other weekend "dad", and a court ordered pay pig. Probably seen friends, family and coworkers spend a weekend in jail on some trumped up charges. I had a coworker arrested because his ex said he broke into her place. On a night he was on security cameras working late in the office.
Marriage has been turned into something horrific unless you literally trust the other person with your life. A gun pointed at your head 24/7, trusting the other person not to pull the trigger, and everyone has seen it. They know someone who's been shot. Probably a lot of people. And one wonders why kids who've watched this happen to their parents (or lost a parent to it) have developed an "avoidant attachment style".
Yep. I'm obviously biased because I work in the system, but court is open to the public. Anyone can go hang out in misdemeanor court sometime and watch the DV cases flow through. They can watch some misdemeanor DV trials (where the defendant often does not get a jury trial, only a bench trial) where a conviction can result in all kinds of direct and collateral consequences and see what they think of the accusations and evidence. Also, they'd need to keep in mind that the trial might be many months down the road after an allegation was made, a temporary restraining order was granted on little-to-no evidence, and the man could already have been forced out of his house and kept away from his kids the whole time.
Watching in family court can also be instructive to see how many divorces have an opening salvo of vague claims of abuse and getting a temporary restraining order. 100%? Not even close, but it doesn't take long watching family court or talking to attorneys who handle divorces to Notice there's a trend there.
I have friends and family working in law enforcement and the general legal system so they talk about this stuff somewhat regularly.
Pretty unsettling, but on the other hand I don't know of anyone, at all, for whom this has happened IRL. It's like some sort of parallel horror world where people act like monsters as soon as there is a disagreement.
Perhaps it's a class thing or it's just that me and everyone around me has somehow filtered out the crazy.
That's the one. Its a class thing AND you've also filtered out crazies.
I worked as a public defender specifically on a domestic violence docket for about six months. EVERY single horror story you can think of, both in terms of loved ones beating on each other (not just spouses, mind!) and false accusations ruining lives are true, and indeed are happening daily.
Yet... I know of literally nobody in my personal circle of immediate friends and family who has had to deal with that situation.
The level of dysfunction required for someone to actually physically beat someone they care about, or to falsely accuse someone of same, is actually QUITE high. But, there's the bottom, lets call it quartile of the population in terms of impulse control who will absolutely pass that threshold at times.
So if you're drawing most of your social circle from the top two quartiles, with some dipping into the third quartile, then by sheer selection effects, you probably won't know anybody who actually ended up arrested and in court for DV-related reasons.
And be happy for that, in Florida at least the Court system is NOT optimized for helping ensure domestic tranquility, it is there to throw down barriers and inflict punishments and it is very heavy-handed when applying both, so it is a very unpleasant system to interact with whether or not you're guilty of what you've been accused of.
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