Writers of all stripes enjoy engaging in the most cynical readings of human behavior because they think it makes them appear hyper-rational. But in fact here is a perfect example of how trying to achieve that makes you irrational. Human emotion is real. It is an observable phenomenon. It observably influences behavior. Therefore to fail to account for it when discussing coupling and relationships is the opposite of cold rationality; it is in fact a failure of empiricism.
This sounds good out of context, but I think it was actually confused. The context was a complaint that ‘”marriage market” theories leave love out of the equation’. But this is a false dichotomy. It could well be that people marry out of sincerely felt love, but fall in love with “older men with resources” and “younger women with adoring gazes”, as the original article had it. The cues that cause you to fall in love are not easily accessible to introspection.
More to the point, the original article was speculating about how a demographic shift that makes women wealthier than men would affect dating culture. What does it even mean to account for human emotion here? The way the problem is set up, the abstract model is the best we can hope for. In general, when discussing big trends or large groups, we don’t have detailed information about the emotions of everyone involved. In that case, leaving those out of the model is not a failure of empiricism, it’s just doing the best with what’s available.
I think there are different contexts where this same quote makes more sense: for example you probably won’t get a very good understanding of eBay auctions by assuming that everyone involved follows a simple economic model.
-L’Hote on Kate Bolick’s “All the Single Ladies”
This sounds good out of context, but I think it was actually confused. The context was a complaint that ‘”marriage market” theories leave love out of the equation’. But this is a false dichotomy. It could well be that people marry out of sincerely felt love, but fall in love with “older men with resources” and “younger women with adoring gazes”, as the original article had it. The cues that cause you to fall in love are not easily accessible to introspection.
More to the point, the original article was speculating about how a demographic shift that makes women wealthier than men would affect dating culture. What does it even mean to account for human emotion here? The way the problem is set up, the abstract model is the best we can hope for. In general, when discussing big trends or large groups, we don’t have detailed information about the emotions of everyone involved. In that case, leaving those out of the model is not a failure of empiricism, it’s just doing the best with what’s available.
I think there are different contexts where this same quote makes more sense: for example you probably won’t get a very good understanding of eBay auctions by assuming that everyone involved follows a simple economic model.