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.
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.