- You can’t tickle yourself but someone can hold your hand and tickle you with it. (Try it)
- Syncopated rhythms trigger an automatic response where you bob your head or tap your feet because your brain demands that the missing beats be counted. In a strong sense, the music causes you to dance to it.
- Even though it would take you several minutes to list all 50 States, you know right away that there is no state that begins with E.
- If you are eloping, it is easier to back out at the last minute because there aren’t hordes of guests coming from all over expecting a wedding. Therefore marriages that begin with elopement will tend to last longer.
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October 30, 2011 at 10:01 pm
twicker
Definitely like #4. Very cool.
Not as sure about #3, though.
I’ll have to try #1 the next time I have someone to help me with it. 🙂
October 31, 2011 at 1:20 am
Anonymous
You can tickle the roof of your mouth with your tongue.
October 31, 2011 at 5:45 am
Pete
I’m not so sure about #4. After all, there is a much stronger pre-commitment to weddings with hordes of guests than there is to an elopement. So my narrative says that marriages that begin with hordes of guests tend to last longer. Where’s the data?
October 31, 2011 at 10:29 am
Brittany
Selection bias on #4. The cost of leaving the groom at the altar is not in the guests’ travel (which is sunk) but in the guests’ perceptions of the bride- ie guests will not like it if they travel only to find out that the bride didn’t have her ducks in a row.
The bride who elopes, however, probably doesn’t care about her family’s perception of her, otherwise she would’ve wanted to include them in her special day.
So we need a 2-stage heckman correction where the first stage estimates the likelihood of eloping.
October 31, 2011 at 10:54 am
twicker
@Brittany: note that the groom also faces the same constraints re: cost of leaving the betrothed at the altar (why does everyone assume that it’s all about the bride?).
However, as to the groom not caring about his family’s perception of him (or, as you say, the bride’s not caring her), I tend to doubt that this is zero for most elopers, or even substantially less than for non-elopers. In fact, there’s a strong chance that they care *more* about their families’ perceptions, given that they are willing to violate strong social norms in order to elope. That’s a pretty high level of action-taking, which would indicate a great deal of caring. As to respecting or desiring to accede to his/her family’s wishes, well … that’s a very different thing that caring about them (though “caring about” X is a squidgy concept to begin with).
Further, most of the people that I’ve known who’ve eloped had the blessings of their families – because it drastically cut down on the planning and expense related to the wedding. The people who tended to be disappointed were the more-distant friends and family (not the immediate family), who would otherwise have expected to be invited to the party.
BTW, the guests’ perceptions of the groom and bride result from the fact that they spent the time and money on gifts/travel/schedule rearranging/etc., as Jeff rightly pointed out. You’re correct that the proximal cause is the approbation from the guests; Jeff is correct about a large factor in the ultimate cause of that approbation. People get upset at you if you tell them to plan for X and then suddenly back out.
Overall, I still suspect Jeff is right on this one. That said, the points you and Pete make are valid; there’s an open question about whether the planned, large weddings would make them stronger, due to the greater social forces that come from making that commitment in front of all those people. Hence the reason that I and my fiancee are planning to both “elope” (i.e., have a very, very small wedding, saving the expense of a large one) and then have larger public parties in each of our hometowns, whereat we will make public vows.
As Pete says: we need the data.
November 2, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Hordes of People « Cheap Talk
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November 7, 2011 at 7:08 am
VV
#1 Some insights about tickling. Very interesting!