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This is a great read. I'm especially surprised about what it means to be an "Average Person". "Average" or an "Average Person" now (at least amongst my social
by arfar 11y ago
This is a great read. I'm especially surprised about what it means to be an "Average Person".
"Average" or an "Average Person" now (at least amongst my social circle) is actually a bad thing, something that people will put effort into _not_ being. Describing something as "average" (or just "av" in conversation) is a way to describe something as disappointing.
So strange how the meaning has pretty much completely flipped on its head.
- rdancer 11y agoThese are two different effects of the same quality. "Average" means undistinguished, interchangeable; depending on the distribution and context it may mean, with examples: * normal distribution (IQ): "worse than half of the others" * distribution with a long positive tail (wealth): "way worse than the best" * distribution with a compressed left tail (IQ in college-educated adults): "amongst of the worst" * 20/80 cut-off (female mating strategy): "swipe left" "Average" also means safe, solid, ideal, normal. This happens when avoiding risk: * probabilistic estimate of future risk (there is evidence that averaging multiple faces renders a face more beautiful than the rest): average mate => higher probability of average (viable) offspring * 80/20 cut-off (male mating strategy): "gentlemen prefer blondes — but marry brunettes" * [too tired to think of other meanings] Often the same product is both average-good and average-bad, and this is why we have Internet flame wars!
- pluma 11y ago> 80/20 cut-off (male mating strategy) Where do you get that number? All the statistics I've seen from dating sites indicate that while women have an 80% cut off men have a 50% cut off (i.e. truly average). In other words, while women consider any men below the 80th percentile "below average", men's opinions reflect the actual average (i.e. considering any women below the 50th percentile "below average" and above it "above average") rather than (as you seem to say) considering any woman above the 20th percentile "above average".
- rdancer 11y agoThis applies to all sexually-reproducing species, not just humans. The male strategy is optimized for low cost, so males prefer to mate with a fit female, but will settle for "anything with a pulse". In humans, this is evidenced by virtually all women having babies. I don't know what the actual ratio is, and it will probably be different depending on the fitness of the male and how near the bar's closing time. The salient aspects are that the division is asymmetric, the strategy complements the female strategy, and that there is a hard cutoff (some of the females are so unfit they will never be considered).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pluma 11y agoSure, but the interesting part is that we like to think such animalistic traits are beneath us. We're not rational creatures, we're just ordinary creatures that happen to be capable of ratio sometimes. A lot of the social discussions we are currently having in tech likes to portray humans as entirely rational and intentional when in fact the problems we're trying to solve are engrained in our biology, not part of our culture. Doesn't mean we can't (or shouldn't) work around them but it means you need to do more than just pin all the problems on the majority and assume that once the power dynamics shift the problems will go away.
- mkrfox 11y agoI wonder if this is any different for gay/bi guys. If what I've seen on Grindr is any clue, we'll probably look even pickier than straight women.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- IsaacL 11y agoAnother interesting bit of etymology: the article mentions the field of statistics arising with the need for governments to manage information on their citizens. The word "statistics" literally comes from "state", a fun factoid for anti-statists to chew on.