This and some of the examples in the comments seem to deviate from the pattern. Attraction comes after the nearest-neighbor algorithm has run (even if I buy this claim), not what the algorithm feels like from the inside.
I was thinking of the strength of attraction (or kinship, although that’s a lot more static), being the continuous updating of a person’s perceived distance from us along multiple salient axes.
I would propose that kinship and sexual attraction are two mostly distinct cases of how a nearest-neighbour algorithm feels from the inside.
resisting attraction to neighbor jokes...
This and some of the examples in the comments seem to deviate from the pattern. Attraction comes after the nearest-neighbor algorithm has run (even if I buy this claim), not what the algorithm feels like from the inside.
I was thinking of the strength of attraction (or kinship, although that’s a lot more static), being the continuous updating of a person’s perceived distance from us along multiple salient axes.