Maybe some EAs would only want to be married to a person until it no longer maximizes utility, but feel more is expected in a marriage, and donāt want to commit to more. I donāt expect this accounts for much of the difference, though.
[Disclaimer: I notice that I felt weird about your comment to an extent that may not be reasonable, so my own comment here may be odd/āhave an odd tone. Also, Iām recently married, so maybe somehow Iām feeling defensive, but I really donāt know why thatād be.]
My knee-jerk reaction is that that mindset, at least as phrased, would be quite naive consequentialism, for two main reasons:
Getting married may itself change how much happiness a relationship provides and how long one wants to stay in it.
One part of what I have in mind is analogous to āburning oneās boatsā, and the related notion in game theory that one can sometimes improve oneās payoffs by cutting off some of oneās own options.
Regularly running the decision procedure āexplicitly try to work out what personal life decisions would maximise utilityā will not necessarily be the best way to actually maximise utility.
Relatedly, Askell writes: āAs many utilitarians have pointed out, the act utilitarian claim that you should āact such that you maximize the aggregate wellbeingā is best thought of as a criterion of rightness and not as a decision procedure. In fact, trying to use this criterion as a decision procedure will often fail to maximize the aggregate wellbeing. In such cases, utilitarianism will actually say that agents are forbidden to use the utilitarian criterion when they make decisions.ā
That said, whether to get married is a large decision that doesnāt arise often, so itās plausible that thatās the sort of case where it is worth thinking as a consequentialist explicitly and in detail.
(That said, even if this way of thinking would indeed be quite naive consequentialism, that doesnāt rule out the possibility that many EAs think this way, so your comment could still be onto something.)
I think these are all good points, and I agree that these are good reasons for marriage. I didnāt intend my comment as a good reason to not get married.
One thing I had in mind is that if someone feels that thereās a good chance theyāll divorce their partner (and the base rate is high, so on an outside view, this seems true), then marriage vows (ātill death do us partā) might feel like lying or making a promise they know thereās a good chance they wonāt keep, and they might have a strong aversion to this. Personally, I feel this way. If I make a promise that I expect to only keep with ~50% probability, then this feels like lying. 90% probability feels like lying to me, too. Iām not sure where it stops feeling like lying.
However, this doesnāt mean they shouldnāt get married anyway; interpreting or rewriting the vows as slightly less demanding (but still fairly demanding) is better and not necessarily lying. I had this thread (click āSee in contextā for more) in mind about the GWWC pledge.
I donāt know whatās normally expected, but Iād rather be somewhat explicit that we can get divorced for any reason, as long as we make an honest effort to work through it (say for a year, with counselling, etc.), with exceptions allowing immediate divorce for abuse or one of us acting very harmful to the other or others.
That all sounds reasonable. And yeah, I wasnāt interpreting your comment as actually intended as an argument against marriage (just a hypothesis as to why EAs may tend to be less inclined to get married).
One thing Iād note is that Iām not sure ātill death do us partā is actually required or default. The celebrant for our wedding just said:
I am to remind you of the solemn and binding nature of the relationship into which you are about to enter. Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of a two people to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.
(And this was just her default; we didnāt have to request a move away from ātill death do us partā. Note that this was a non-religious ceremony and celebrant.)
Maybe that has the same literal meaning as ātill death do us partā; Iām not sure. But I feel like Iād naturally interpret the phrasing my celebrant used as meaning that the two parties have thought really seriously about this, and do presently intend for this to last for lifeāwithout it necessarily meaning they totally commit to sticking with it till death or that they predict a 100% chance of that.
(My partner and I also had more explicit conversations about this sort of thing.)
I think thatās reasonable. Hereās one example to illustrate what might be making my intuitions differ a bit; I feel like you could say āHe has spent his life working to end malariaā when someone is alive and fairly young, and also that you could say āHe spent his life working to end malariaā even if really he worked on that from 30-60 and then retired. (Whereas I donāt think this is true if you explicitly say āHe worked to end malaria till the day he diedā.) In a similar way, I have a weak sense we can āenter into a union for lifeā without this literally extending for 100% of the rest of our lives.
But maybe my intuition is being driven more by it being a present-tense matter of us currently voluntarily entering into this union. Analogously, I think people would usually feel itās reasonable for promises to not always be upheld if unusual and hard-to-foresee circumstances arose, the foreseeing of which wouldāve made the promise-maker decide not to make the promise to begin with. (But this does get complicated if reference class forecasting suggests an e.g. 50% chance of some relevant circumstance arising, and itās just that any particular circumstance arising is hard to foresee, as it was in many of those 50% of cases.)
In any case, I guess I really think that whether and how partners explicitly discussed their respective understandings of their arrangement, in advance, probably matters more than the precise words the celebrant said.
Again, a reasonable question. I donāt think we disagree substantially.
Also, again, I think my views are actually less driven by a perceived distinction between āfor lifeā vs ātill death do us partā, and more driven by:
the idea that it seems ok to make promises even if thereās some chance that unforeseen circumstances will make fulfilling them impossible/āunwiseāas long as the promise really was ātaken seriouslyā, and ideally the promise-receiver has the same understanding of how ābindingā the promise is
having had many explicit conversations on these matters with my partner
Finally, Iād also guess that Iām far from alone in simultaneously (a) being aware that a large portion of marriages end in divorce, (b) being aware that many of those divorces probably began with the couple feeling very confident their marriage wouldnāt end in divorce, and (c) having a wedding in which a phrase like āfor lifeā or ātill death do us partā was used.
And I think it would be odd to see all such people as having behaving poorly by making a promise they may well not keep and know in advance they may not keep, at least if the partners had discussed their shared understanding of what they were promising. (Iām not necessarily saying youāre saying we should see those people that way.) One reason for this view is that people extremely often meansomething other than exact the literal meaning of what theyāve said, and this seems ok in most contexts, as long as people mutually understand whatās actually meant.
(I think a reasonable argument can be made that marriages arenāt among those āmost contextsā, given their unusually serious and legal nature. But it also seems worth noting that this is about what the celebrant said, not our vows or what we signed.)
Direct response, which is sort-of getting in the weeds on something I havenāt really thought about in detail before, to be honest
What do you think the āfor lifeā adds to the pledge if not āfor the rest of your livesā?
One could likewise ask what āHe spent his life working to end malariaā means thatās different from āHe spent some time working to end malariaā. There, Iād say it adds the idea that this was a very major focus for perhaps at least 2 decades, probably more than 3 decades. Whereas āsome timeā could mean it wasnāt a major priority for him at any point, or only for e.g. 10 years.
It seems to me perhaps reasonable to think of āentered into for lifeā as meaning āentered into as at one of the core parts of oneās life for at least a few decades, and perhaps/āideally till the very end of oneās lifeā. Whereas ātill death do us partā is very explicitly until the very end of oneās life.
Out of curiosity, Iāve now looked up what dictionaries say āfor lifeā means. The first two results I found said āfor the whole of oneās life : for the rest of oneās lifeā (source) and āfor the rest of a personās lifeā (source). This pushes against my (tentative) view, and in favour of your view.
However, Iād tentatively argue that 2 of the 5 of the examples those dictionaries give actually seem to me to at least arguably fit my (tentative) view:
āShe may have been scarred for life.ā
Obviously, people can say this as an exaggeration. But I think they can also say it in a more serious way, that people wouldnāt perceive as an exaggeration, even if they actually just mean something like āscarred in a substantial way that resurfaces semi-regularly for at least 2 decadesā. (Thatās still a lot more than just āscarredā or āscarred for a whileā.)
āThere can be no jobs for life.ā
Another dictionary tells me ājob for lifeā means (as Iād expect) āa job that you can stay in all your working lifeā; not till the actual end of your life.
Two of the other examples are about being sentenced to prison for life; I think that also arguably fits my view, given how life sentences actually tend to work (as far as Iām aware). The fifth exampleāāThey met in college and have remained friends for lifeā -could go either way.
(And again, I think itās common for people to not actually mean the dictionary definitions of what they say, and that this can be ok, as long as they understand each other.)
Maybe some EAs would only want to be married to a person until it no longer maximizes utility, but feel more is expected in a marriage, and donāt want to commit to more. I donāt expect this accounts for much of the difference, though.
[Disclaimer: I notice that I felt weird about your comment to an extent that may not be reasonable, so my own comment here may be odd/āhave an odd tone. Also, Iām recently married, so maybe somehow Iām feeling defensive, but I really donāt know why thatād be.]
My knee-jerk reaction is that that mindset, at least as phrased, would be quite naive consequentialism, for two main reasons:
Getting married may itself change how much happiness a relationship provides and how long one wants to stay in it.
One part of what I have in mind is analogous to āburning oneās boatsā, and the related notion in game theory that one can sometimes improve oneās payoffs by cutting off some of oneās own options.
Regularly running the decision procedure āexplicitly try to work out what personal life decisions would maximise utilityā will not necessarily be the best way to actually maximise utility.
Relatedly, Askell writes: āAs many utilitarians have pointed out, the act utilitarian claim that you should āact such that you maximize the aggregate wellbeingā is best thought of as a criterion of rightness and not as a decision procedure. In fact, trying to use this criterion as a decision procedure will often fail to maximize the aggregate wellbeing. In such cases, utilitarianism will actually say that agents are forbidden to use the utilitarian criterion when they make decisions.ā
That said, whether to get married is a large decision that doesnāt arise often, so itās plausible that thatās the sort of case where it is worth thinking as a consequentialist explicitly and in detail.
(That said, even if this way of thinking would indeed be quite naive consequentialism, that doesnāt rule out the possibility that many EAs think this way, so your comment could still be onto something.)
I think these are all good points, and I agree that these are good reasons for marriage. I didnāt intend my comment as a good reason to not get married.
One thing I had in mind is that if someone feels that thereās a good chance theyāll divorce their partner (and the base rate is high, so on an outside view, this seems true), then marriage vows (ātill death do us partā) might feel like lying or making a promise they know thereās a good chance they wonāt keep, and they might have a strong aversion to this. Personally, I feel this way. If I make a promise that I expect to only keep with ~50% probability, then this feels like lying. 90% probability feels like lying to me, too. Iām not sure where it stops feeling like lying.
However, this doesnāt mean they shouldnāt get married anyway; interpreting or rewriting the vows as slightly less demanding (but still fairly demanding) is better and not necessarily lying. I had this thread (click āSee in contextā for more) in mind about the GWWC pledge.
I donāt know whatās normally expected, but Iād rather be somewhat explicit that we can get divorced for any reason, as long as we make an honest effort to work through it (say for a year, with counselling, etc.), with exceptions allowing immediate divorce for abuse or one of us acting very harmful to the other or others.
That all sounds reasonable. And yeah, I wasnāt interpreting your comment as actually intended as an argument against marriage (just a hypothesis as to why EAs may tend to be less inclined to get married).
One thing Iād note is that Iām not sure ātill death do us partā is actually required or default. The celebrant for our wedding just said:
(And this was just her default; we didnāt have to request a move away from ātill death do us partā. Note that this was a non-religious ceremony and celebrant.)
Maybe that has the same literal meaning as ātill death do us partā; Iām not sure. But I feel like Iād naturally interpret the phrasing my celebrant used as meaning that the two parties have thought really seriously about this, and do presently intend for this to last for lifeāwithout it necessarily meaning they totally commit to sticking with it till death or that they predict a 100% chance of that.
(My partner and I also had more explicit conversations about this sort of thing.)
āfor lifeā sounds just as permanent to me, if less morbid, than ātill death do us partā
I think thatās reasonable. Hereās one example to illustrate what might be making my intuitions differ a bit; I feel like you could say āHe has spent his life working to end malariaā when someone is alive and fairly young, and also that you could say āHe spent his life working to end malariaā even if really he worked on that from 30-60 and then retired. (Whereas I donāt think this is true if you explicitly say āHe worked to end malaria till the day he diedā.) In a similar way, I have a weak sense we can āenter into a union for lifeā without this literally extending for 100% of the rest of our lives.
But maybe my intuition is being driven more by it being a present-tense matter of us currently voluntarily entering into this union. Analogously, I think people would usually feel itās reasonable for promises to not always be upheld if unusual and hard-to-foresee circumstances arose, the foreseeing of which wouldāve made the promise-maker decide not to make the promise to begin with. (But this does get complicated if reference class forecasting suggests an e.g. 50% chance of some relevant circumstance arising, and itās just that any particular circumstance arising is hard to foresee, as it was in many of those 50% of cases.)
In any case, I guess I really think that whether and how partners explicitly discussed their respective understandings of their arrangement, in advance, probably matters more than the precise words the celebrant said.
What do you think the āfor lifeā adds to the pledge if not āfor the rest of your livesā?
Backing up to clarify where Iām coming from
Again, a reasonable question. I donāt think we disagree substantially.
Also, again, I think my views are actually less driven by a perceived distinction between āfor lifeā vs ātill death do us partā, and more driven by:
the idea that it seems ok to make promises even if thereās some chance that unforeseen circumstances will make fulfilling them impossible/āunwiseāas long as the promise really was ātaken seriouslyā, and ideally the promise-receiver has the same understanding of how ābindingā the promise is
having had many explicit conversations on these matters with my partner
Finally, Iād also guess that Iām far from alone in simultaneously (a) being aware that a large portion of marriages end in divorce, (b) being aware that many of those divorces probably began with the couple feeling very confident their marriage wouldnāt end in divorce, and (c) having a wedding in which a phrase like āfor lifeā or ātill death do us partā was used.
And I think it would be odd to see all such people as having behaving poorly by making a promise they may well not keep and know in advance they may not keep, at least if the partners had discussed their shared understanding of what they were promising. (Iām not necessarily saying youāre saying we should see those people that way.) One reason for this view is that people extremely often mean something other than exact the literal meaning of what theyāve said, and this seems ok in most contexts, as long as people mutually understand whatās actually meant.
(I think a reasonable argument can be made that marriages arenāt among those āmost contextsā, given their unusually serious and legal nature. But it also seems worth noting that this is about what the celebrant said, not our vows or what we signed.)
Direct response, which is sort-of getting in the weeds on something I havenāt really thought about in detail before, to be honest
One could likewise ask what āHe spent his life working to end malariaā means thatās different from āHe spent some time working to end malariaā. There, Iād say it adds the idea that this was a very major focus for perhaps at least 2 decades, probably more than 3 decades. Whereas āsome timeā could mean it wasnāt a major priority for him at any point, or only for e.g. 10 years.
It seems to me perhaps reasonable to think of āentered into for lifeā as meaning āentered into as at one of the core parts of oneās life for at least a few decades, and perhaps/āideally till the very end of oneās lifeā. Whereas ātill death do us partā is very explicitly until the very end of oneās life.
Out of curiosity, Iāve now looked up what dictionaries say āfor lifeā means. The first two results I found said āfor the whole of oneās life : for the rest of oneās lifeā (source) and āfor the rest of a personās lifeā (source). This pushes against my (tentative) view, and in favour of your view.
However, Iād tentatively argue that 2 of the 5 of the examples those dictionaries give actually seem to me to at least arguably fit my (tentative) view:
āShe may have been scarred for life.ā
Obviously, people can say this as an exaggeration. But I think they can also say it in a more serious way, that people wouldnāt perceive as an exaggeration, even if they actually just mean something like āscarred in a substantial way that resurfaces semi-regularly for at least 2 decadesā. (Thatās still a lot more than just āscarredā or āscarred for a whileā.)
āThere can be no jobs for life.ā
Another dictionary tells me ājob for lifeā means (as Iād expect) āa job that you can stay in all your working lifeā; not till the actual end of your life.
Two of the other examples are about being sentenced to prison for life; I think that also arguably fits my view, given how life sentences actually tend to work (as far as Iām aware). The fifth exampleāāThey met in college and have remained friends for lifeā -could go either way.
(And again, I think itās common for people to not actually mean the dictionary definitions of what they say, and that this can be ok, as long as they understand each other.)