Brenda and Eddie were still going steady...

This post inspired was inspired by Billy Joel's Ballad of Brenda and Eddie and my general series of realizations that life is more often gray than black or white.

Many relationships struggle when conditions change. Suddenly there's less money, more money, less time, more time, more to worry about, less to worry about ... if the relationship can't adapt to new circumstances, it's no fun for anyone involved.

For a relationship to be successful, does it need to be able to survive any circumstance?

The obvious answer (to me, at least) has always been yes - "In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health." I took this point of view so seriously at one point that I would actually create conditions in my relationships that would 'stress test' them. My thought was that if the relationship wouldn't last, I wanted to know as soon as possible.

But does that actually make sense? Or at the very least, can it be taken too far? For instance, if you are 99% confident of a steady income, do you need an s.o. who can live on a tight budget? If you both have jobs you love in the same city, does it matter if you can handle long distance? If you're ambivalent about having pets, does it matter if your s.o. hates cats?

Furthermore, you might sacrifice something by demanding that the relationship can span all conditions. Which is more valuable: a relationship that is great under all conditions or one that is AWESOME as long as you don't stress it in one particular way?

So, I think in the end my answer is no. Yes, there are requirements, yes you need to be reasonably sure that your relationship will weather the storms of life. But there's also room to think about what makes sense.

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That is a really cool perspective. It fits in really well with the general life advice of paying attention to what is, not what could be. (see http://xkcd.com/974/)

Sampling Bias

I have been thinking a fair amount recently about ultimate goals in life, and how they effect people. A common misconception in the modern capitalistic society is that everyone's goal is to make money. This comes from the common knowledge that the definition of "business" is to make money, and everyone at some point in time needs to do "business" in order to survive. However, money itself is a really abstract concept. Even more common knowledge is that money itself has no intrinsic value. There is nothing special about the piece of paper or the digital bank counter that increases anybody's utility. Money is only valuable because it can be translated into things that people actually care about. So: what then is the meaning of life, if not money? I posit that there are three common pursuits.

1) Pleasure. Fun. Having pretty things. Going on awesome trips. Listening to funny people. Sitting in comfortable chairs. Eating good food. etc etc

2) Status. Being thought smart or beautiful. Being differed to in a conversation. Having the best things. Winning.

3) Power. Being able to change aspects of the world from what is to what should be (as determined by the individual). Having the ability to make the world react to one's own thoughts.

I listed the more cynical words to describe these life-pursuits, but give me a chance to defend them.

A common goal in academia is supposed to be the pursuit of knowledge, but I see this as a subset of pleasure. Mathematicians see math as pretty, and they give their lives in pursuit of that prettiness. French history majors think that the stories of the past are awesome, so they collect stories of the past. Status can also be a very important part of the academic world. People who spend their childhood competing for the top might see it as a natural progression to simply continue at the game they are winning at. Occasionally power-driven people are guided into academia as well, because they want the freedom to pursue their vision, but they are more rare. Acadamia does not have enough money for most power-driven people.

Another commonly cited goal is the love of family. However, that is a blend of power and status. Power, because concentrating your abilities on a smaller, tightly bonded subset of the population is often more effective than trying to change the whole world. Status, because the parent that most often expresses the priority of the family is one of the two most high ranking people in that family.

I can't think of any other commonly cited goals, or any underlying goals.

Anyway, this analysis leads to some interesting results when you think about the kinds of options that people have available to them. Specifically, I would like to argue that women who have a full time job are self-selecting for more power and status than pleasure driven goals. If you think about the kinds of options that most women have available to them, you will see that there is one job that is very difficult for men to break into: being a housewife. While the profession of stay-at-home dad is growing, it is not nearly as common as the stay-at-home mom, and women are much more likely to be childless support spouses than men. It turns out that this kind of a job provides a very high pleasure to work ratio, at least at the higher family income levels. You are expected to share the same living accommodations and budget as a person with very little accountability when it comes to the amount of societal good you are producing. Just don't get divorced. Or have a good lawyer if you do.

However, there are also plenty of women who want the status and power associated with high status, high-power occupations. However, these women, by self-selection, are disproportionately uninterested in salary. Consequentially, when they negotiate, they are going to concentrate more on elements that will lend them more status and power in the work place, not more take-home salary. The book "Women don't ask" has a lot of evidence that women don't negotiate as hard as they might for higher pay. It then concludes that this is because women have lower self-esteem and are less aggressive. While I have fewer data points, I suspect that an element contributing to these numbers is that the women who are in a position of negotiation are also disproportionately disinterested in money. We have more pressing things to worry about.

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Kim's Comments

Interesting! I am glad you posted.

Do you have an idea for how to test your theory at the end against the "Women don't ask" theory? Do you expect that the women are ensuring that they receive more status or power within the companies in some measurable way? Couldn't it also be (and I think this is the general theory) that women are generally not in as good of a position to negotiate in the first place, whether that be due to indicators (eg women generally aren't as good at X, you hiring you for X is riskier), training/social expectations, or natural inclinations?

One point I think is slightly unclear (though clearer to me, because we had a conversation about this aspect once) is the value you're claiming comes from being a family person or being a housewife. Near the beginning of your post, you mention status/power associated with promoting the family, but later you say that housewives disproportionately favor pleasure. It might be worth clarifying this.

Moral Codes and the Teeth of an Afterlife

Most religions emphasize an afterlife where the Good will be rewarded and the Wicked punished. Their practitioners worry that atheists have no incentive to be good. Atheists retort that they are worried about people who are only good due to a perceived threat from an omnipotent being. They claim that they can have a moral code outside of religion which serves them just as well.

It has always seemed to me that the atheists had the high ground on this argument - we shouldn't need external motivation to do the right thing. But a piece of me nagged that, as nice as that would be, I didn't see why people would want to be good by default if there was no motivator in the form of God. I figured this was due to some deficiency in my moral compass. It turns out, I was just being rational.

Moral codes, religious or non, guide our interaction with other humans and with the world.

The most basic is the Golden Rule Everything else builds up from there. Why?

Because life is a repeated game! The most basic motivator for people being nice to each other today is the prospect of retaliation tomorrow. At the root of our Golden Rule is "what goes around comes around." And, as un-noble as that motivator sounds, it makes sense.

The religious objection to the atheists' moral codes then, can be boiled down into this key difference:

A religious moral code guides humans through what is (perceived as) an Infinite Repeated Game.

A non-religious moral code guides humans through what is (perceived to be) a Finite Repeated Game.

This means that, technically speaking, a cooperative strategy should unravel for an atheist.

The key difference here is the belief in an afterlife. In cases where the God involved has the potential to become angry or retributive (Christianity versus Hinduism), I would expect the strength of the moral code to drive behavior to further increase.

Despite this, the Games could have similar results if
-The time-span is long enough, and the players' time horizons short enough
-There is some other motivator that lasts past death - e.g. concern for one's legacy
-There is another basic motivator involved - e.g. kinship
I don't know that these would apply universally. They seem to me to make a nonreligious moral code workable for some but not all of the population.

I should also note that I am not claiming here that just because the religious moral code may drive more cooperative results it is therefore preferable. My intent is simply to point out that the consideration of heaven and hell is quite similar to extending a repeated game to infinity, fundamentally changing the game theory behind moral decisions. And it makes sense to at least question the enforceability of moral codes which are based on a Finite Repeated Game model of life.

Thoughts?