I’m not sure usefulness has anything to do with the results of romantic priming. The simplest explanation seems to be that STEM careers are associated in our culture with unsexy attitudes and groups: aesthetically uninspiring, analytical as opposed to emotional, attractive to socially clumsy people, etc. If you’ve got romance on your mind, you’re likely to find those associations at least mildly aversive without needing to go into cost/benefit analysis—and indeed I predict that the results of a cost/benefit analysis, even limited to romantic opportunities, would be a lot less favorable to the humanities.
If you’ve got romance on your mind, you’re likely to find those associations at least mildly aversive without needing to go into cost/benefit analysis --
This happens as a cost-benefit-like calculation anyway, somewhere in some part of the human brain not selection-pruned to be used for this at all.
After this, it becomes a struggle of definitions and lines drawn in the air to delimit one Thingspace cluster from another. Is it a cost-benefit analysis if it’s run by the “Instinct” sub-processes in the brain? Is it a good cost-benefit analysis if it takes this parameter into account instead of that one? What if it ignores this other parameter? We know we won’t get all of the parameters, not enough cycles for that. And we don’t actually know which parameters are relevant and to what extent, let alone being able to calculate second- and n-order effects.
In function and practice, I agree. It’s about their sexy vs unsexy appeal in some biased way, and good analysis would probably favor things the other way around.
I’m not sure usefulness has anything to do with the results of romantic priming. The simplest explanation seems to be that STEM careers are associated in our culture with unsexy attitudes and groups: aesthetically uninspiring, analytical as opposed to emotional, attractive to socially clumsy people, etc. If you’ve got romance on your mind, you’re likely to find those associations at least mildly aversive without needing to go into cost/benefit analysis—and indeed I predict that the results of a cost/benefit analysis, even limited to romantic opportunities, would be a lot less favorable to the humanities.
This happens as a cost-benefit-like calculation anyway, somewhere in some part of the human brain not selection-pruned to be used for this at all.
After this, it becomes a struggle of definitions and lines drawn in the air to delimit one Thingspace cluster from another. Is it a cost-benefit analysis if it’s run by the “Instinct” sub-processes in the brain? Is it a good cost-benefit analysis if it takes this parameter into account instead of that one? What if it ignores this other parameter? We know we won’t get all of the parameters, not enough cycles for that. And we don’t actually know which parameters are relevant and to what extent, let alone being able to calculate second- and n-order effects.
In function and practice, I agree. It’s about their sexy vs unsexy appeal in some biased way, and good analysis would probably favor things the other way around.