Experimentation of Different Visualisation Software (Flourish)

Interesting statistics about divorce rates

Today a conversation was struck up regarding divorces and it got me thinking, how do people actually calculate divorce rates? Does the "almost 50% of marriages end in divorce" argument actually hold up? Or was it just a faulty statistic that was taken way out of proportion? What I came across was the complexity of calculating divorce rates and where this "almost 50%" statistic comes from. We can start with the simplest method and the problems it causes and how these problems are overcome.

Crude Divorce Rate

This is the number of divorces per 1,000 persons. From the onset, you can already see the problems that this might cause, namely; the number of persons includes everybody, including children and singles who are not at risk of divorce. Although it is some measure of divorce rates, it doesn't really give you much because the denominator is not standardized.

Example

Imagine 2 states, both with a population of 1,000, but State 1 has 200 married persons (100 married couples) whilst State 2 has 500 (250 married couples). Both states recorded 50 divorces last year. Under the crude divorce rate, both states would technically be considered to have the same divorce rate, regardless of the composition of family structure. This is not accurate. Then, 15 years later, as State 2 ends up with more children given the higher proportion of married couples, the composition of divorces, again, changes (and possibly switches) between the two states. Hence, anything that changes the composition of the family structure will distort the crude divorce rate.

Refined Divorce Rate

This is the number of divorces per 1,000 married women. This improves on the crude divorce rate because it only includes married persons, hence taking into account the family structure. This definitely helps answer some questions, but does not answer the question of how many marriages actually end in divorce? The refined divorce rate measures divorce at a certain period in time and does not consider the proportion of individuals who have been married a certain amount of time. (i.e. what if people married for 10 years are less likely to divorce than people married for 5 years?) This, again, would still be influenced by the age structure of a given population (i.e. younger people, on average, would be married for less years than older people, given that they are still married). Hence, again, this measure would not necessarily be effective in calculating the proportion of marriages that would actually end in divorce.

Cohort Divorce Rate

The cohort divorce rate considers a cohort and calculates the proportion of marriages that end in divorce (i.e. how many people who married in 1980 are still married 40 years later, in 2020). This gives you a divorce rate of a cohort, accounting, to an extent, the time factor of marriage. The problem with this, however, is that it is not forward-looking. Just because certain people are not divorced now does not mean they won't be divorced in the future. This is especially considering the lack of data of younger cohorts (i.e. there is not enough data for people who have only been married for one year, as they may be divorced in year 2, or year 3, or year 50, or year 60).

Life Table Method

To account for the limitation of the cohort divorce rate, we finally come to the life table method. This takes into account the proportion of individuals and how long they have been married. Basically, they consider the proportion of couples who have been married for one year ended up divorced in the last year, then the proportion of couples married for 2 years, and how many of them divorced in the last year, then the proportion of couples married for 3 years and so on and so forth. After this, the final number is aggregated to finally determine a 'duration specific' divorce rate  (i.e. how long a couple was married and how many divorced within that time). This measure, however, assumes that the proportion of divorces in each cohort remains the same over time, but still provides a decent estimate of the current divorce rate.

Now, taking all of this into consideration and using a refined life table method, does the 'almost 50% of marriages end in divorce' stack up?

Yes. Yes it does.

NB

It's important to note here that the divorce rate under the life table method is NOT the number of divorces divided by the number of marriages. 2 couples getting married and 1 couple (already married) getting divorced is NOT the same as 1 couple getting divorced of the 2 couples currently married.

This is Important

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/decline-extreme-poverty-perspective/

Truth.

"For thousands of years, philosophers, thinkers and prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil. Be that as it may, money is also the apogee of human tolerance. Money is more open-minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation. Thanks to money, even people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively." - Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Random Thoughts on God (which probably only make sense to me)

In The Big Think Book, on the section of religion, Cave introduces many puzzles regarding the paradox of the "existence" of God (or devil). For example, the paradox of the irresistible force, Newcomb's paradox, or that of atheists more likely to go to heaven than believers*.

Although these puzzles raise many questions about what we conceive as God, are we really looking at these issues through the right lens?

What if we were an experiment performed by an extraterrestrial being?

Consider this thought experiment:

Imagine what a worm thinks of human civilisation. I'll tell you what it thinks about everything we've invented and created. Nothing! It's absolutely inconceivable for a worm to understand human knowledge. Yet, if God is an infinite power, an almighty being, how are we to ever conceive the thoughts that run through God's mind (If a mind in God's realm actually exists)? Remember, our menial minds are limited by our 5 senses and essentially the whole universe (literally 95% of it). Any reasoning of imagining God through the limitations of our brain then becomes obsolete.

Side note: It does concern me, however, what if God was simply an alien species more intelligent than us running some sort of experiment and we're just in a zoo?

Eternity in the Multiverse

What if there are many other universes out there? Then it may be the case that other universes follow completely different laws of physics with completely different dimensions. If that were the case, then that would mean that space-time is a dimension limited to our universe. But we barely have the capability of understanding the laws of nature in our own universe, how are we to ever get around to understanding others without any observation? Consider this, if our laws of physics are limited to our universe, then that must mean what we consider space-time exists only in our universe. 

Now if God exists outside the realm of our dimensions of space and time,  then is it necessarily difficult for God to be an "eternal being?" where time is simply seen as a basic dimension? We say that God knows all and can see the past, present and future. If an observer witnesses our universe outside the realm of time, then it may be the case that the observer can experience the past, present and future all at once. We are limited in our ability because we live in the dimension of time

So maybe when we die, we do go on to "live" for eternity if it's the case that we leave the realm of space and time.

But this does lead to my next issue

God as an infinite power

If God is outside of the realm of space and time, then does such a being actually "exist"? The problem with this concept is that saying that God "exists" makes God a finite figure, just like saying infinity "exists" limits it to a finite thing. Or as Cave mentions "opening and closing a book at the same time". The statements become meaningless. So the idea of the irresistible force paradox similarly becomes obsolete.

Yet we still try to imagine and explain the world through God's "existence", not understanding that by actually doing so will cause our petty little brains to collapse into a black hole.

Side note:If it is the case of infinity and the lack of "existence", maybe God is simply the idea of mathematics?

Closing remarks

These arguments don't really have to be interpreted in support for there to be a "God". However, if God is outside our realm of understanding (or in the idea of mathematics), then our perspectives of morality, of right and wrong being determined by God becomes void. Should we then be living life without concern for the existence and non-existence of a God figure?

*This idea is based on the paradox that if being objectively moral gets you to heaven, then moral atheists also go to heaven. But if you are moral in order to get to heaven, then you're not necessarily moral for being moral, and thus won't be going to heaven.

In the words of Rusting Cohle from True Detective

-"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward then, brother, that person is a piece of s***. And I’d like to get as many of them out in the open as possible."

Update:

Maybe we're just in a simulation?

Find your niche

Update on reading books:

So I realised my problem wasn't so much about getting bored by reading too much, nor the issue of starting a new one. My issue was I was reading the wrong books!!

There hasn't been a single day since my last post where I didn't read a book. Reading books has jumped from "I wish I read books" to "I refuse to go to bed without reading at least a few pages of a book today" in the priority list. I don't know why this didn't occur to me before, but if you want to read books then read books you're interested in! The issue occured because I was simply asking the wrong people. People I was friends with but actually have very little in common.

It wasn't until my friend over at The Dimply Diary started me on a journey towards reading. However, it wasn't the first- nor the second-book he suggested, but the third. The issue was always the types of books I was reading not reading in general! (A classic case of correlation vs causation). The amount of knowledge contained in books is inexplicably vast- exposure I had never encountered before. Every book I have read since July has one way or another, changed the way I think about the world. Every Single Book! (I've read 8 since my last post, currently half way through my 9th and casually reading 4 others).

If I were to leave one piece of advice about reading, then I would say this- Don't EVER stop reading. Find your niche in books, find what interests you, ask specifically those people who have similar interests, attempt a trial and error on different genres. Whether this takes you a few days or a few years, do NOT stop reading. Seek and you shall find.

P.S. I'm still following the methodology outlined in my last post about reading and believe it to be quite effective in filling up my idle time and ensuring I have always have access to a book.

Every time you feel the stresses of everyday life, watch this video