4 ms·

> I multiplied out the percentages for one friend, and their chances of finding someone that met all the easy requirements lead to a 1 in 10 billion chance of t

> I multiplied out the percentages for one friend, and their chances of finding someone that met all the easy requirements lead to a 1 in 10 billion chance of their perfect partner existing. You’ve got to be careful with this kind of naive statistical approach: many attributes are positively correlated. That one in 10B chance is more like one in 10K or 100K because of this. Moreover, people aren’t selecting partners from a random subset of the entire human population! They meet people in their own area, of their own age, etc… Especially important is that people tend to meet partners at school or work, which very strongly selects for like-minded people. Hence they don’t need to meet thousands or millions of potential partners: they’re meeting a good subset that is likely to be in that ideal group. I mean, sure, if you had completely arbitrary and unrelated requirements and you were on a series of random blind dates selected via lottery from the global population, then things would look bleak. For most normal people wanting normal things, dating feels oddly lucky.

robocat 3y ago
> many attributes are positively correlated. Most definitely. A relevant example here was income and good teeth. Controlling for correlations is well beyond a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Even explaining correlations is university level stuff that is hard to explain. I didn't add many other reasonable restrictions - in same city - finds them attractive - yadda yadda. Their restrictions were unreasonable - the point of the exercise was to show just how unreasonable. Fortunately it seems that when we meet someone we like, we turn out to be flexible and our restrictions are weak when faced with reality.
- em-bee 3y ago
  Fortunately it seems that when we meet someone we like, we turn out to be flexible and our restrictions are weak when faced with reality. unless those restrictions prevent you from liking someone in the first place. i think young people do tend to make this mistake. i certainly did.
  - robocat 3y ago
    One trait I most admire in my dearest friends is acceptance of others without harmful judgement. I am slowly learning! I think the trick is actually to see the less obvious value in others: e.g. smart but uneducated. The hard part is that it is most hard to recognise ability in others in domains where I am relatively stupid. Also I tend to try to have the less judgemental self-select towards me by giving myself traits that judgy plastic types (oooo ironic) don't like.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      i am old enough that i managed to reduce judgement to one metric: is nice to other people. everything else is irrelevant when it comes to accepting someone as a friend. for seeking a partner there are further questions related to compatibility of character and also goals, but that often is not what you look at when you are a teenager.

robocat 3y ago

> many attributes are positively correlated. Most definitely. A relevant example here was income and good teeth. Controlling for correlations is well beyond a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Even explaining correlations is university level stuff that is hard to explain. I didn't add many other reasonable restrictions - in same city - finds them attractive - yadda yadda. Their restrictions were unreasonable - the point of the exercise was to show just how unreasonable. Fortunately it seems that when we meet someone we like, we turn out to be flexible and our restrictions are weak when faced with reality.

em-bee 3y ago
Fortunately it seems that when we meet someone we like, we turn out to be flexible and our restrictions are weak when faced with reality. unless those restrictions prevent you from liking someone in the first place. i think young people do tend to make this mistake. i certainly did.
- robocat 3y ago
  One trait I most admire in my dearest friends is acceptance of others without harmful judgement. I am slowly learning! I think the trick is actually to see the less obvious value in others: e.g. smart but uneducated. The hard part is that it is most hard to recognise ability in others in domains where I am relatively stupid. Also I tend to try to have the less judgemental self-select towards me by giving myself traits that judgy plastic types (oooo ironic) don't like.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    i am old enough that i managed to reduce judgement to one metric: is nice to other people. everything else is irrelevant when it comes to accepting someone as a friend. for seeking a partner there are further questions related to compatibility of character and also goals, but that often is not what you look at when you are a teenager.