Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

FIXING MARRIAGE – AND NAXALT VS DISTRIBUTIONS
There is a common cognitive bias called NAXALT, predominant among women, but still present in some men, to fail to comprehend descriptions of the probability of a bell curve, by overweighting the outliers in a distribution. The reason? There is a deep and inescapable tendency of the feminine mind to seek magical thinking rather than self regulation, and the subjugation of impluse intuition and emotion to deliberate reason.

Now, it’s almost impossible to know if you are going to be part of the nearly sixty percent of marriages that fail, and the additional ten to twenty percent that fail but do not divorce, in the hope that you might be part of the twenty percent that do not fail and do not end in divorce.

The point being that the legal interference in marriage and mating has been catastrophic, and destroyed the institution – an institution whose original purpose was 1) to prevent retaliation cycles since men will kill over mates more so than for any other reason; 2) to protect the community from single motherhood and externalization of costs, or burden of the return of the mother and her offspring to her parents, by the community guarranteeing non-interference and punishment for interference; 3) third to maintain capital (property, assets, livestock) within the family and inheritance for it’s collective survival over time.

So the point is that (a) we could follow Quebec and essentially abandon marriage. It works just fine. (b) We could restore marriage as an institution with the defenses and punishments. (c) We could create a three tiered market of 1) unattached cohabitation, 2) voluntary contractual partnerships consisting of reciprocal power of attorney and a required prenup that stated the division of assets upon termination of that power, and 3) restore the institution of marriage as one which parties internal to and external to the marriage are liable for interference in that marriage. And otherwise end all common property, alimony and child support.
That would provide a set of options that reflect the incentives of the age of women’s economic and reproductive independence where single motherhood is not only common but the emergent norm.
The solution to the marriage question is rather obvious. We could enact it with one legislative use of the pen. What I expect would happen is that couples would start with contractual partnerships

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