The above analysis neglects IQ. One of my girlfriends was definitely above one standard deviation above the mean in IQ and the other 2 were probably above that line. The math of the normal distribution is such that only 16% of the population is above one s.d. above the mean. (The mean IQ in Marin County is probably higher than the national mean, but I am using the population here, not the national population, as my standard of reference for thinking about IQ.) One s.d. above the mean BTW is defined as an IQ of 115.
So multiply the .5 figure in my original comment by .16 or so, pushing us down to 1⁄12 of the women in the set defined above. And since it took me several hours to realize I had overlooked such a crucial factor (.16 -- that’s 2.6 bits of entropy!) there are probably other factors I’ve overlooked, so push the figure down some more.
The reason IQ has 2.6 bits or so of “importance” is that (again) the usefulness of the girlfriend is roughly the ability of the girlfriend to achieve goals and make good decisions in her own life multiplied by “caring”, and that first factor is very heavily reliant on IQ—more so than for example income is reliant on IQ IMHO.
And now my attention is caught by that second factor in the equation usefulness_to_me == rationality * caring: how much she really cares about me relative to how much she cares about herself. One of my girlfriend was above .5 on that measure, another probably above it or approaching it. (The third was below .1 -- definitely below .15 -- and I only got involved with her because she was very nearby and conveniently at hand during a time in my life when for me to have to travel even a few miles to get together probably would have been a dealbreaker. And she was spontaneous and childlike and fun and pretty.)
Knowing that prospective girlfriends who pull above .5 on the caring measure are available, I probably will not settle for one who does not (unless there is some countervailing consideration, but let us forget about that possibility and hope it all comes out in the wash). So that adds another requirement for my next girlfriend, and I would say that out the set of women defined above, .25 meet this latest requirement given of course that I could win the women, which in most case I cannot. (It would be higher if I were pursuing a more conventional life path. For certain life paths that women identify with or approve of, like doctoring, say, that number might go as high as .4. Nonremunerative blogging about the far future, not so much.) (“Win the woman” by the way is polite language for “persuade the woman to have sex with me and to keep having sex with me or at the very least spending a large fraction of her time with me and promising not to have sex or even seriously discuss having sex with anyone else. The reason it is defined that way is that those condition are almost always necessary for the caring factor to approach anything like .5) OK, so now the figure—the “compatability quotient” we might call it—is down to 1⁄48, and (like I said above) there are probably factors I have not taken into account yet.
In all this multiplying (.5 times .16 times .25) by the way I have been remembering to search my model of reality for reasons to expect a significant conditional dependence of one factor on a different one, but I have not found anything really worth reporting or taking into account.
The above analysis neglects IQ. One of my girlfriends was definitely above one standard deviation above the mean in IQ and the other 2 were probably above that line. The math of the normal distribution is such that only 16% of the population is above one s.d. above the mean. (The mean IQ in Marin County is probably higher than the national mean, but I am using the population here, not the national population, as my standard of reference for thinking about IQ.) One s.d. above the mean BTW is defined as an IQ of 115.
So multiply the .5 figure in my original comment by .16 or so, pushing us down to 1⁄12 of the women in the set defined above. And since it took me several hours to realize I had overlooked such a crucial factor (.16 -- that’s 2.6 bits of entropy!) there are probably other factors I’ve overlooked, so push the figure down some more.
The reason IQ has 2.6 bits or so of “importance” is that (again) the usefulness of the girlfriend is roughly the ability of the girlfriend to achieve goals and make good decisions in her own life multiplied by “caring”, and that first factor is very heavily reliant on IQ—more so than for example income is reliant on IQ IMHO.
And now my attention is caught by that second factor in the equation usefulness_to_me == rationality * caring: how much she really cares about me relative to how much she cares about herself. One of my girlfriend was above .5 on that measure, another probably above it or approaching it. (The third was below .1 -- definitely below .15 -- and I only got involved with her because she was very nearby and conveniently at hand during a time in my life when for me to have to travel even a few miles to get together probably would have been a dealbreaker. And she was spontaneous and childlike and fun and pretty.)
Knowing that prospective girlfriends who pull above .5 on the caring measure are available, I probably will not settle for one who does not (unless there is some countervailing consideration, but let us forget about that possibility and hope it all comes out in the wash). So that adds another requirement for my next girlfriend, and I would say that out the set of women defined above, .25 meet this latest requirement given of course that I could win the women, which in most case I cannot. (It would be higher if I were pursuing a more conventional life path. For certain life paths that women identify with or approve of, like doctoring, say, that number might go as high as .4. Nonremunerative blogging about the far future, not so much.) (“Win the woman” by the way is polite language for “persuade the woman to have sex with me and to keep having sex with me or at the very least spending a large fraction of her time with me and promising not to have sex or even seriously discuss having sex with anyone else. The reason it is defined that way is that those condition are almost always necessary for the caring factor to approach anything like .5) OK, so now the figure—the “compatability quotient” we might call it—is down to 1⁄48, and (like I said above) there are probably factors I have not taken into account yet.
In all this multiplying (.5 times .16 times .25) by the way I have been remembering to search my model of reality for reasons to expect a significant conditional dependence of one factor on a different one, but I have not found anything really worth reporting or taking into account.