The people you personally know have a statistical skew towards being more popular compared to the background population, because more-popular people know more people.
Therefore, do not underestimate the STD risk of a single one-night stand. Your special friend likely has a larger body count than the background population.
Another thing this reminds me of: some years ago, I sometimes wondered about how many people out there would be forever alone, never finding a partner/marriage/starting a family even though they’d want to. Reassuringly, I got the impression that practically every “older” person I encountered (say people in their 40s and 50s) was married. So, even though closer to my age range there were many people who were unhappily single, it certainly looked as if life would find a way to get everyone a partner over time.
At some point I then had the unfortunate realization that lonely people may just have fewer social contacts in general[1], and a bias towards the types of social contacts that make them invisible to some random young guy like me. So now I feel less hopeful about society, knowing/assuming that there must be some not so small percentage of people in any age range who just never found anyone to spend their life with.
where I assume causality goes in both directions, 1) people with less social exposure are less likely to find a partner to begin with, and 2) having a partner naturally exposes you to more opportunities to go out and spend time with people, as you’ll do many things as a couple rather than individually. And there may well be an effect of being alone for a long time against your will reducing your motivation to go out to begin with.
I hope you find someone! Remember not to just mindlessly write “I’m lonely and don’t make connections” into your self-image. Write it if you want to write it, of course, but don’t do it mindlessly. Alternatively, write “I’m personable and I do make connections” instead, or “I’m exploring and I’m keeping my eyes peeled for connections”. And remember to be appropriately skeptical of this “knowing/assuming” business… those are really two very different verbs, and it’d be silly to write anything unhappy into your self image on the basis of a proposition that you didn’t even decide whether you know it or assume it. Good luck!
Yep. And this turns out to be a fact about graph theory, not narrowly about human psychology or social behavior.
The friendship paradox is the phenomenon first observed by the sociologist Scott L. Feld in 1991 that typically, an individual’s friends have more friends than that individual.[1] It can be explained as a form of sampling bias in which people with more friends are more likely to be in one’s own friend group. In other words, one is less likely to be friends with someone who has very few friends. In contradiction to this, most people believe that they have more friends than their friends have.
The same observation was also applied more generally to social networks defined by other relations than friendship: for instance, most people’s sexual partners have had (on the average) a greater number of sexual partners than they have.[6][7]
The friendship paradox is an example of how network structure can significantly distort an individual’s local observations.[8][9]
Somewhat similarly, when you have some recurring meetup, then the experience of most attendees of how many people attend the meetup on average will exceed the actual average.
Nah, I already know that the people I personally know are not more popular than usual. It is still an observation that makes sense for a randomly selected person though.
The people you personally know have a statistical skew towards being more popular compared to the background population, because more-popular people know more people.
Therefore, do not underestimate the STD risk of a single one-night stand. Your special friend likely has a larger body count than the background population.
Assuming you want to have one-night stands, should you only choose strangers who seem unpopular?
Another thing this reminds me of: some years ago, I sometimes wondered about how many people out there would be forever alone, never finding a partner/marriage/starting a family even though they’d want to. Reassuringly, I got the impression that practically every “older” person I encountered (say people in their 40s and 50s) was married. So, even though closer to my age range there were many people who were unhappily single, it certainly looked as if life would find a way to get everyone a partner over time.
At some point I then had the unfortunate realization that lonely people may just have fewer social contacts in general[1], and a bias towards the types of social contacts that make them invisible to some random young guy like me. So now I feel less hopeful about society, knowing/assuming that there must be some not so small percentage of people in any age range who just never found anyone to spend their life with.
where I assume causality goes in both directions, 1) people with less social exposure are less likely to find a partner to begin with, and 2) having a partner naturally exposes you to more opportunities to go out and spend time with people, as you’ll do many things as a couple rather than individually. And there may well be an effect of being alone for a long time against your will reducing your motivation to go out to begin with.
I hope you find someone! Remember not to just mindlessly write “I’m lonely and don’t make connections” into your self-image. Write it if you want to write it, of course, but don’t do it mindlessly. Alternatively, write “I’m personable and I do make connections” instead, or “I’m exploring and I’m keeping my eyes peeled for connections”. And remember to be appropriately skeptical of this “knowing/assuming” business… those are really two very different verbs, and it’d be silly to write anything unhappy into your self image on the basis of a proposition that you didn’t even decide whether you know it or assume it. Good luck!
Yep. And this turns out to be a fact about graph theory, not narrowly about human psychology or social behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox
I figured! That’s what I was trying to say.
Another example I thought of was that thing about how most flights are relatively empty, but it turns out that’s not really true.
“Emptier than your average flight would have you naively believe” should be true I reckon.
Yes I think so. But even the average flight is mostly full.
Somewhat similarly, when you have some recurring meetup, then the experience of most attendees of how many people attend the meetup on average will exceed the actual average.
Nah, I already know that the people I personally know are not more popular than usual. It is still an observation that makes sense for a randomly selected person though.