There are plenty of cases where something is known to work in a majority of cases, but only a minority of people are doing them.
Wait, what? If the majority is not doing it, how is it known to work for them? It works for the majority of the minority who does it? But there is a huge statistical bias there how that minority self-selects. For example if something is hard, and only a minority of people who have high willpower are doing it, then we can only say it only works for high-willpower people. It wouldn’t work for the majority because they would not have the willpower to follow it.
On the object level, I suspect he is not having a large circle of friends and not having the kind of personality that would attract / hang out comfortably with a large circle of friends, and probably it would feel hard and awkward for him—or else he would be doing it already because it is a common, mainstream, popular thing to do, because everybody who has the right kind of personality for this is already doing it. If people have a large circle of friends, they at least are getting indicators of interest. If they don’t have a large circle, it is likely they are asocial or have social anxiety or are introverts or something, and thus making a large circle would not work for them because it would be hard and painful.
7, 3, oh… I see. You are probably looks focused as such numbers usually mean that i.e. an interest in “conventional attractiveness”. Online dating is working very bad for straight men who are looks focused, I agree with that, it is not for people who are into all that conventional attractiveness thing. I fixed that by filtering for women without pictures as I was far more interested in having interesting conversations in my relationship than nice tits. There are also platforms that focus on downplaying looks—such as Willow.
To estimate this, you simply take a randomized sample of people irregardless of their preferences and have half of them act one way and half act the other way. There are a bunch of other methods. In many cases, there’s no reason to believe there are any unique differences between the majority and the minority.
About half of all college students bring laptops to class at least some of the time even though hand written notes are generally more effective. Granted, a lot of these students aren’t using their laptop to take notes.
Most men buy dress shoes with glued on soles and top-grain leather even though full-grain leather welted shoes will last 5-10 times as long for 2-3 times the price and often less than that. A good $200 shoe brand is a much better value than most of the $130 shoe brands.
I fixed that by filtering for women without pictures as I was far more interested in having interesting conversations in my relationship than nice tits.
Are you able to disregard looks completely when it comes to dating? Please read this in a completely neutral tone, I’m genuinely curious. If not, within picture-less women have you found an acceptable rate of not-repulsiveness?
Of course not—most importantly, I cannot deal with obese, big curves are fine, folds not. However I can deal with almost everything else—no heels, hair, no make-up, so being “plain” is totally OK for me. On the whole “plain” women make good partners, because they tend to take things easy and comfortable, not stressing.
The thing is, from the profile text and messages exchanged, I heavily filtered for intelligence / compatible personalities, and those who passed it about 30% had acceptable looks.
My point is here that I don’t understand why people think looks are some kind of a birth lottery thing. They are 90% made—weight, clothes, hair and all, they are a series of decisions where intelligence and personality plays an important role, and people who are compatible on that department have a decent chance of being compatible in looks.
I mean, look at me. OK I have a belly. I am also fairly strong, I was always better at exercising than not overeating. I dress a bit professorish, comfortable but kinda elegant, suit jacket with simpler pants and never a tie etc. My hair is short but cut only about once a month. What kind of a personality does it suggest? Intellectual interests with somewhat contradictory masculine values, and some akrasia. And that is perfectly correct. So if any woman likes my personality type, “the hobby philosopher who likes to box and is not very well organized” type, she can pretty much predict my looks from it and will accept those too. And more or less it works the same way for women. For example I am pretty sure any woman whose personality I like will not sport short blue hair.
(However a potential bias here: maybe one reason I don’t see looks as birth lottery is that I am tall and have a deep voice, so everything that is not so attractive about me is my own damn fault. I guess a short man with a chirping voice would have an entirely different view about looks being made, not born.)
Of course looks is to a certain extent a birth lottery: as much as I would try, I could not change my height, the depth of my voice, the symmetry of my face, the color of my skin, my genetic potential for muscle developement, etc.
Part is also upbringing: if I’ve lived my whole life in a family where everyone is obese, I would find a lot harder to shape my body thinner, and it will probably take years to accomplish. So even if some things are mutable, they could change in a timeframe so long that for dating it’s normally useless.
Part of what you can change, also, is stacked against fat/ugly men and women: a fit men will probably be good enough with almost any dress, while a fat/short guy will have to make a very careful selection of dresses, limited also by the available budget. And I suspect that for women it’s even worse, at least psychologically.
So no, as someone who has not won the genetic/upbringing lottery in almost any sense, I would revise the percentage of what you can consciously and significantly improve in your looks at 15%.
those who passed it about 30% had acceptable looks
This is a very promising percentage. Did you selected them before meeting them in person, say asking for a photo, or you met them and judged after?
Wait, what? If the majority is not doing it, how is it known to work for them? It works for the majority of the minority who does it? But there is a huge statistical bias there how that minority self-selects. For example if something is hard, and only a minority of people who have high willpower are doing it, then we can only say it only works for high-willpower people. It wouldn’t work for the majority because they would not have the willpower to follow it.
On the object level, I suspect he is not having a large circle of friends and not having the kind of personality that would attract / hang out comfortably with a large circle of friends, and probably it would feel hard and awkward for him—or else he would be doing it already because it is a common, mainstream, popular thing to do, because everybody who has the right kind of personality for this is already doing it. If people have a large circle of friends, they at least are getting indicators of interest. If they don’t have a large circle, it is likely they are asocial or have social anxiety or are introverts or something, and thus making a large circle would not work for them because it would be hard and painful.
7, 3, oh… I see. You are probably looks focused as such numbers usually mean that i.e. an interest in “conventional attractiveness”. Online dating is working very bad for straight men who are looks focused, I agree with that, it is not for people who are into all that conventional attractiveness thing. I fixed that by filtering for women without pictures as I was far more interested in having interesting conversations in my relationship than nice tits. There are also platforms that focus on downplaying looks—such as Willow.
To estimate this, you simply take a randomized sample of people irregardless of their preferences and have half of them act one way and half act the other way. There are a bunch of other methods. In many cases, there’s no reason to believe there are any unique differences between the majority and the minority.
To name some examples:
Professors still most rely on the lecture format even though active learning is more effective.
About half of all college students bring laptops to class at least some of the time even though hand written notes are generally more effective. Granted, a lot of these students aren’t using their laptop to take notes.
Most men buy dress shoes with glued on soles and top-grain leather even though full-grain leather welted shoes will last 5-10 times as long for 2-3 times the price and often less than that. A good $200 shoe brand is a much better value than most of the $130 shoe brands.
Most companies still conduct interviews when hiring employees; unstructured interviews to boot if the person hiring isn’t from HR, but the best evidence suggests interviews are mostly useless.
Are you able to disregard looks completely when it comes to dating? Please read this in a completely neutral tone, I’m genuinely curious.
If not, within picture-less women have you found an acceptable rate of not-repulsiveness?
Of course not—most importantly, I cannot deal with obese, big curves are fine, folds not. However I can deal with almost everything else—no heels, hair, no make-up, so being “plain” is totally OK for me. On the whole “plain” women make good partners, because they tend to take things easy and comfortable, not stressing.
The thing is, from the profile text and messages exchanged, I heavily filtered for intelligence / compatible personalities, and those who passed it about 30% had acceptable looks.
My point is here that I don’t understand why people think looks are some kind of a birth lottery thing. They are 90% made—weight, clothes, hair and all, they are a series of decisions where intelligence and personality plays an important role, and people who are compatible on that department have a decent chance of being compatible in looks.
I mean, look at me. OK I have a belly. I am also fairly strong, I was always better at exercising than not overeating. I dress a bit professorish, comfortable but kinda elegant, suit jacket with simpler pants and never a tie etc. My hair is short but cut only about once a month. What kind of a personality does it suggest? Intellectual interests with somewhat contradictory masculine values, and some akrasia. And that is perfectly correct. So if any woman likes my personality type, “the hobby philosopher who likes to box and is not very well organized” type, she can pretty much predict my looks from it and will accept those too. And more or less it works the same way for women. For example I am pretty sure any woman whose personality I like will not sport short blue hair.
(However a potential bias here: maybe one reason I don’t see looks as birth lottery is that I am tall and have a deep voice, so everything that is not so attractive about me is my own damn fault. I guess a short man with a chirping voice would have an entirely different view about looks being made, not born.)
Of course looks is to a certain extent a birth lottery: as much as I would try, I could not change my height, the depth of my voice, the symmetry of my face, the color of my skin, my genetic potential for muscle developement, etc.
Part is also upbringing: if I’ve lived my whole life in a family where everyone is obese, I would find a lot harder to shape my body thinner, and it will probably take years to accomplish. So even if some things are mutable, they could change in a timeframe so long that for dating it’s normally useless.
Part of what you can change, also, is stacked against fat/ugly men and women: a fit men will probably be good enough with almost any dress, while a fat/short guy will have to make a very careful selection of dresses, limited also by the available budget.
And I suspect that for women it’s even worse, at least psychologically.
So no, as someone who has not won the genetic/upbringing lottery in almost any sense, I would revise the percentage of what you can consciously and significantly improve in your looks at 15%.
This is a very promising percentage. Did you selected them before meeting them in person, say asking for a photo, or you met them and judged after?