If you’re running a business, conventional wisdom states that you’re a much more effective business owner if you study business in school, create well thought-out business plans, and analyze your business’s performance diligently. But if someone went to school to learn about how to pick a life partner and take part in a healthy relationship, if they charted out a detailed plan of action to find one, and if they kept their progress organized rigorously in a spreadsheet, society says they’re A) an over-rational robot, B) way too concerned about this, and C) a huge weirdo.
No, when it comes to dating, society frowns upon thinking too much about it, instead opting for things like relying on fate, going with your gut, and hoping for the best. The respectable way to meet a life partner is by dumb luck, by bumping into them randomly or being introduced to them from within your little pool.
As the article mentions later, it’s not just the society, it’s also biology. Well, in the ancient evolutionary environment “your little pool” is all humans that don’t try to kill you at the first sight, so it makes sense to find a mate there; and the pool does not change dramatically, so you can pick right now.
if we want to find a happy marriage, we need to think small—we need to look at marriage up close and see that it’s built not out of anything poetic, but out of 20,000 mundane Wednesdays.
No one wants to spend 50 years fake laughing. A life partner doubles as a career/life therapist, and if you don’t respect the way someone thinks, you’re not going to want to tell them your thoughts on work each day, or on anything else interesting that pops into your head, because you won’t really care that much what they have to say about it. Secrets are poison to a relationship, because they form an invisible wall inside the relationship, leaving both people somewhat alone in the world—and besides, who wants to spend 50 years lying or worrying about hiding something?
This is probably also a greater problem now than in the past, because the increasing inferential distances make communication more difficult.
While expanding your selection pool has obvious benefits, I think there is a good alternative route with regards to your tiny circle of friends and acquaintances.
Suppose you can easily quantify the partner-compatibility of a person, let’s say on a 0-10 scale, probably exponential distribution. The best you can find among your friends is a 6. That’s unsatisfactory, so you start searching, and after a while you find an 8, which is satisfactory, and you marry them.
However, this model is flawed: The grades can change over time—both the other person and you can change. These changes are more likely to happen earlier in life, such as during teen years or early twenties. Thus the model would have to be expanded to account for the potential compatibility, or even a function how the compatibility changes with time.
If we were to look at this model, that 6 from high school has a much better potential. In a long term relationship, people effect other people, slowly changing them towards themselves. This process works both ways, so you have two entities slowly pulling each other closer. What can easily happen is that in a few years time that it took to find the 8, you have created an 8. Furthermore, since you were also changed in the process, that 8 might no longer be an 8. It could be a 7, or a 9. It could also have a better rate of change, meaning a potential 10.
I would, however, assume the rate of change slows down as people grow older (I haven’t any data to confirm this assumption), meaning a change from a self-made 8 to a natural 8 wouldn’t yield much benefits.
To expand on the business metaphor: You are running a business, and you need someone to take the position of CTO. You can look for skilled CTOs, but your existing employees have the advantage of already knowing the company and the business process. No doubt, many external applicants, given two years would be better than any of the existing employees, but how many would be better than existing employee with two extra years of experience as CTO? Basically, you need to plot grade(time) for all applicants, see how long will it take for one of the external ones to beat the employee, and decide whether the loss is worth it.
Thought this article on relationships was well-written and enlightening: How to Pick Your Life Partner.
As the article mentions later, it’s not just the society, it’s also biology. Well, in the ancient evolutionary environment “your little pool” is all humans that don’t try to kill you at the first sight, so it makes sense to find a mate there; and the pool does not change dramatically, so you can pick right now.
This is probably also a greater problem now than in the past, because the increasing inferential distances make communication more difficult.
While expanding your selection pool has obvious benefits, I think there is a good alternative route with regards to your tiny circle of friends and acquaintances.
Suppose you can easily quantify the partner-compatibility of a person, let’s say on a 0-10 scale, probably exponential distribution. The best you can find among your friends is a 6. That’s unsatisfactory, so you start searching, and after a while you find an 8, which is satisfactory, and you marry them.
However, this model is flawed: The grades can change over time—both the other person and you can change. These changes are more likely to happen earlier in life, such as during teen years or early twenties. Thus the model would have to be expanded to account for the potential compatibility, or even a function how the compatibility changes with time.
If we were to look at this model, that 6 from high school has a much better potential. In a long term relationship, people effect other people, slowly changing them towards themselves. This process works both ways, so you have two entities slowly pulling each other closer. What can easily happen is that in a few years time that it took to find the 8, you have created an 8. Furthermore, since you were also changed in the process, that 8 might no longer be an 8. It could be a 7, or a 9. It could also have a better rate of change, meaning a potential 10.
I would, however, assume the rate of change slows down as people grow older (I haven’t any data to confirm this assumption), meaning a change from a self-made 8 to a natural 8 wouldn’t yield much benefits.
To expand on the business metaphor: You are running a business, and you need someone to take the position of CTO. You can look for skilled CTOs, but your existing employees have the advantage of already knowing the company and the business process. No doubt, many external applicants, given two years would be better than any of the existing employees, but how many would be better than existing employee with two extra years of experience as CTO? Basically, you need to plot grade(time) for all applicants, see how long will it take for one of the external ones to beat the employee, and decide whether the loss is worth it.
Gosh, that site is addictive.