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Notes -
The issue of modern divorce was discussed here last week in the context of yet another round of wider discussion about the Sexual Revolution. (It's pretty much becoming tiresome at this point, but anyway.) Everyone who bothered to chime in seemed to agree with the notion that divorce is usually a net negative for the wife, both romantically and economically. It appeared to me that there's mostly a consensus about that here.
Fair enough. However, I've seen online data indicating that a) roughly 40% of all marriages end in divorce b) roughly 80% of divorces are initiated by the wives c) in cases where the wife is college-educated, that figure is 90%. In other words, in cases of marriages that fail, modern women are more likely than not to voluntarily put themselves in a disadvantageous life situation.
So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?
If one values harm inflicted onto some other person, equally or more, than the same harm suffered, than one is either indifferent or prefers to inflict such harm.
But even if the one is considers suffering a loss 1 util to inflict the loss of 2 util onto a hated person to be not worth it, if one is able to inflict the loss of 4 util at the same cost, one may prefer to engage in mutually destructive activity.
Worth pointing out that there's a difference between having a term in your utility function for wanting someone to suffer, vs a term for carrying out implied social threats in order to confirm their initial validity.
Which is to say, a lot of people do things that seem irrational when they are in bad situations, because those behaviors are either evolved or socially engineered (or generally, both) as credible threats intended to avoid those bad situations in the first place. The reason we get so jealous and angry at being cheated on that we might just kill you (or otherwise cause huge harms) is not because the jealous reaction makes sense, it's a threat to avoid cheating in the first place. Same thing for lots of suicide threats/attempts, many types of vengeance and respect-based posturing, etc.
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