Comment by impish9208
1 month ago
My favorite Darwin fun fact is his detailed pros and cons list on whether to get married.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/08/14/darwin-list-pros-a...
1 month ago
My favorite Darwin fun fact is his detailed pros and cons list on whether to get married.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/08/14/darwin-list-pros-a...
For such a giant of the scientific community, he was after all human.
My two favorite journal entries:
"But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything."
"I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids and today I hate them worse than everything."
He had chronic nausea (possibly abdominal migraine), so I'm not surprised he was feeling poorly.
"I cannot brain today, I have the dumb"
Me too Charles, me too.
Huh, I feel much closer to Darwin now
"I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before"
Well, this hit harder than I thought it would
I try to remember Vonnegut: "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."
An older lady friend used to say, "People like to spend their lives screaming around. When they don't want to wake others, they quietly fart around."
Vonnegut truly nailed it
Amen.
I had to look up the article to figure out if this was the intolerable downside of having kids (all this work raising them, and then they just fly out of the nest) or _not_ having them (with your scientific work the only great project of your life). I believe he meant the latter :)
Yeah it's in the marriage pros section, so I assume it's the latter. And worker bees can't reproduce.
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In those those days though I'm not sure the calculus of working for the sake of the children was quite the same.
You might have kids, and then they work the farm, then you manage the farm and slowly the children take over the manual labor and hard work of it. In old age the investment in the children pays off and a reciprocal relationship is formed where you take care of the grandchildren and your own children take care of you.
Now that is flipped on its head. The parent makes the lions share of the investment in the child, but the benefits of the child is largely socialized. Want daycare, food, recreational, extra-cirricular activities -- basically anything other than public schooling you pay taxes for already? Go fuck yourself.
But once the children is grown up, well well well we are a society here! Tax the shit out of the kid, spread the social security benefits around to everyone including people that didn't raise any children. And if you directly want a piece of the investment from the children, as people got in the old days, well then go fuck yourself you greedy selfish bastard -- it is only morally right when all of society does the exact same thing to the kid.
There is every possible incentive in today's society to encourage others to have kids, ensuring your own retirement, but to reneg on doing it yourself because some other poor bastard can front most the costs and then you can tax the shit out of the kid for your retirement / social benefits. I think children were a rational decision in Darwin's day, now they are definitely not, because you are on the sucker end of a tragedy of the commons deal.
Another interesting cultural development here is that the scope of parental responsibility has started to extend into what is conventionally considered adulthood, obligating parents to pay for their child’s post-secondary education. By contrast, children have effectively no legal obligations to their parents in old age. This privileges those who invest in financial instruments in lieu of having children, since the instruments will (at least in theory) provide the investor with the resources necessary to hire help in their old age.
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None of this applies to Darwin though, he was wealthy and didn't need to think about "working the farm".
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You can see the consequences of this playing out in highly developed countries
> And if you directly want a piece of the investment from the children, as people got in the old days, well then go fuck yourself you greedy selfish bastard
consider the following: if your children don't care about you, the societal structure of capitalism may not be the primary reason.
To put it in words close to finance: it is not an early cash investment in daycare and food, but lifelong kin work, that is rewarded with emotional bonds and long term dividends.
Living together in multi-generational homes facilitates kin work, there i agree, but it is not a strictly necessary requirement.
There are also other effects at work, especially psychological. Many adults don't grasp that their elders have increased demands, because they are used to see them in a providing role. They understand it on a abstract and logical level, it is so obvious and well known, but to truly understand it on a personal level is far more difficult. In the same way people growing older often try to stay in this providing role as long as possible, as they for many years defined themselves through it.
There comes a time in life when easter invitations switch direction. If you live together on a farm, this changes gradually.
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A farm, in the middle of 19th century London ?
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> Tax the shit out of the kid, spread the social security benefits around to everyone including people that didn't raise any children.
You lost me here. I don’t have children but I pay into Social Security. Why shouldn’t I get something back in retirement?
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On marriage and partner - "These things good for one’s health."
Proven by modern science now. At least longer life.
The Natural state of Man -- at least, according to Ben Franklin.
Children — (if it Please God) — Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, — object to be beloved & played with. — better than a dog anyhow.– Home, & someone to take care of house — Charms of music & female chit-chat. — These things good for one’s health. —
"""but terrible loss of time. —""" !!!!
So ruthless in his calculus. One wonders if he was on the spectrum?
> calculus
It is calculus, it is performed like calculus - it has to.
“better than a dog anyhow”
Darwin was a real catch.
It always blows my mind how many people, historically, married their cousins. I guess smaller towns had shallower gene pools.
Everyone who marries marries their cousin, it's just a matter of degree. Before the advent of the automobile, people traveled a lot less. Even more so as you go further back. Combine that with families having a lot more kids (you might have 36-64 surviving first cousins), and you've got a situation where nearly everyone you interact with might well be only a couple degrees of separation by blood. Marriage between first cousins has historically been a bit taboo, but so called third and fourth degree (aunts and uncles, first cousins) marriages were still pretty common. It wasn't really until the rise of the eugenics movement that the modern taboos and legal prohibitions were established.
I've been doing a fair bit of genealogy lately, and you can see on the family tree pretty clearly when people moved from from smaller, insulated communities to larger cities. Above that point, the tree fans out a lot less.
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Also royalty. The instability of some European monarchs has been attributed to inbreeding.
Brits are well-known romantics even today but 19th century society was on a whole different level.
I could have sworn that was Ben Franklin that wrote that
Both Charles Darwin and Benjamin Franklin are quoted in informal Decision Theory. Both used pro-vs-cons tables to orient decision; Franklin also used weights.
> When those difficult cases occur, they are difficult, chiefly because while we have them under consideration, all the reasons pro and con are not present to the mind at the same time; but sometimes some set present themselves, and at other times another, the first being out of sight. Hence the various purposes or inclinations that alternately prevail, and the uncertainty that perplexes us. // To get over this, my way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one pro, and over the other con. Then during three or four days consideration, I put down under the different heads short hits of the different motives, that at different times occur to me, for or against the measure. // When I have thus got them all together in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out. If I find a reason pro equal to two reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two reasons con, equal to some three reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the balance lies, and if, after a day or two of further consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly