Thread

1. purplepatrick · 1790817358 · focus · HN ↗

   Cute. Of course, beyond basic deal breakers, neither do people know their preferences (but they think they do), nor do the majority of preference categories actually matter.

   This is a common problem with all dating apps. Specifically, interests, hobbies, daily routines, objectives, etc. have nothing to do with compatibility.

   “We like the same things!” is the compatibility signal of a naive 22-yr old…

   1. wbillingsley · 1790832637 · focus · HN ↗

      Just removing the "another five'll be along tomorrow" effect of the way most dating apps work might help.

      25 years married, so pardon my knowledge of modern dating being what I've heard on social media (which is always from people complaining about it, of either gender) as I'm not on any!

      As I understand it, for a lot of young men, one of their preferences for settling down is that their partner's list of ex-partners is not longer than their own. (If so, there's is no point debating the gender-political rights or wrongs of their preferences because you're not going to be able to argue someone into falling in love or wanting to marry someone.) On swipe-dating apps, that creates an incentive for neither party to settle down. One party is so successful that the app keeps signalling they should keep their options open (here's more matches, why settle for this one). The other finds that matches pass their visible preferences for dating but not their invisible preferences for settling down with (because not being too successful at the dating game was one of their hidden preferences). The vitality of the market for dating kills the market for marriage.

      1. Gareth321 · 1790842803 · focus · HN ↗

         I have met very few men for whom prospective partners' body counts is a red line. It might be a preference, but it's always in context of the larger picture.

         I think there has been much topical research on this now, and from what I can glean, there are at least two forces working at the same time.

         1. Gendered preferences didn't change, but society did. Women still prefer men who earn more than them (by a very wide margin). This would be okay if we still lived in the 1940s, but childless women outearn men now in most metro cities. Sometimes by a wide margin. Women are graduating in high-paying professions at ratios of 60:40, 70:30, and even higher, meaning this problem is getting much worse. Increasingly, the majority of women are focused on the top 10-20% of men who outearn them, to the exclusion of all other men. This is compounded because incomes are just one of many selectors. There is also height (which remains a surprisingly strong preference for women), attractiveness, many personality traits, social standing, wealth, political affiliation, etc.

         2. Dating apps have made the above exponentially worse. It's very easy for a woman of average attractiveness (I say this in a academic sense, not derogatorily) to only swipe right on the most attractive men. Those men are perfectly happy to have a lot of casual sex with said women, but would never consider them for marriage. This has warped the perception of their "league." Many of these women end up 40 and alone and deeply unhappy. Or they "settle" for a man of average attractiveness and income and resent him.

         This is almost impossible to untangle. We don't want women to be less educated, or earn less. We don't want them to feel like they're "settling." At the same time, there are many amazing men out there in their league, and they could have a happy marriage. I applaud Singapore trying something, because the future of the West looks like a lot of angry, bitter, single, childless, lonely people.

         1. logicchains · 1790857876 · focus · HN ↗

            >the future of the West looks like a lot of angry, bitter, single, childless, lonely people

            In the short term; longer term that culture will die out and the future will be evangelicals, ultra-orthodox Jews, the Amish and whatever other high-fertility subgroups migrate in in large enough number. Natural selection applies to culture just like it applies to genes, and cultures that don't produce enough children will be replaced by those that do.

            1. someonebaggy · 1790858815 · focus · HN ↗

               You assume culture is unchangeable, like race. Right now their higher fertility seems to be balanced out by people leaving them, and this has been true for a while.

               1. logicchains · 1790865049 · focus · HN ↗

                  Religiosity is around 30-50% heritable (compared to 50-80% for IQ), and social conservatism is around 40-60% heritable. If the leaver culture remains low fertility, the personality traits that encourage leaving will be selected against.

                  1. tptacek · 1790913289 · focus · HN ↗

                     This comment doesn't really respond to the parent; heritability says nothing at all about mutability or whether transmission is cultural.

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