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I'm dragging up the gender, dating, and fertility discourse for one last rodeo.
The below analysis is a possible infohazard for young single males. It contains analysis done by LLMs, but I solemnly swear I drafted this through my own brainpower, using AI only for the analysis I was too lazy to do myself.
I'm following upon a comment I made about a year ago that pulled out some raw numbers on the quality of women in the U.S., and how this might impact the desire of men to actually develop themselves and find one of those women and settle down.
At the time I didn't bother doing the work to produce an actual estimate of how many women would match the basic crtieria, given that these are NOT independent variables. The though occurred to me that AIs are the perfect solution for exactly this type of laziness, and now have the capability to do this task without completely making up numbers.
So, based on my old post, I chose 9 particular criteria that I think would ‘fairly’ qualify a woman as ‘marriageable.':
Single and looking (of course).
Cishet, and thus not LGBT identified.
Not ‘obese.’
Not a mother already.
No ‘acute’ mental illness.
No STI.
Less than $50,000 in student loan debt.
5 or fewer sex partners (‘bodies’).
Under age 30.
And ask both ChatGPT and Grok to attempt to estimate the actual population of women in the U.S. that pass all these filters, accounting for how highly correlated each of the variables are.
Notable criteria I omitted:
Religious affiliation
Race
Political affiliation
Career
Drug use
Sex work/Onlyfans
I argue that a reasonable man would NOT want to ‘compromise’ on any of the original criteria, whereas the omitted ones are comparatively negotiable, or alternatively, are already captured in one of the original criteria.
Would you accept a woman who was carrying $50k in student loan debt into the relationship? I guess maybe if she was a doctor or lawyer or made enough money to justify it. Much higher than that and it starts to suggest financial recklessness.
5 as a body count is definitely an ‘arbitrary’ number, but again, you get much above that and it implies more bad decision-making. Ditto for being STI positive.
The age one is probably the most ‘unfair,’ but if having kids is a goal then this is pretty close to the ‘reasonable’ cutoff given the ticking fertility clock. Adjust upward if needed, I guess.
Here is the ChatGPT conversation. I used o3 in this case.
Here is Grok, specifically Grok 3.
In each case I used the “Deep Research” mode for the main query. I used identical prompts to start them off, they each seemingly did slightly different interpretations of the prompt. I was not using any fancy, complex prompt engineering to try and force it to think like a statistician or avoid hallucinations.
ChatGPT Gives this conclusion:
Grok comes to quite the similar conclusion:
Then I asked the truly cursed followup question: “how many men in the U.S. might be seeking these eligible women and thus how much competition is there for this population? How many are likely to ‘fail.’"
ChatGPT:
Emphasis Mine.
Grok:
Then the followup, when I tell it to extend the age range:
The error bars are pretty large on this one... the 9-out-of-10 number doesn't quite pass the smell test... but I think the point speaks for itself.
I don’t want to say that this is bleak, per se. I mean, 1 million or so women in the U.S. with some decent marriageable bonafides. That’s not a small pool! The problem stems from noticing that said women will have somewhere upwards of 5 men, possibly near 27 who will be competing for their affections, or more if they’re near the absolute peak of physical attractiveness.
Hence my increasing annoyance with the bog standard advice proffered to young males “become worthy and put in some effort and you will find a good woman” as it becomes increasingly divorced from the actual reality on the ground.
It’s not wrong. It is incomplete. Insufficient. If we increase the number of “worthy” men, that’s just intensifying the competition for the desirable women… while ALSO ensuring that more of those ‘worthy’ men will lose and go unfulfilled, DESPITE applying their efforts towards “worthiness.”
You CAN’T tell young men both “be better, improve, you have to DESERVE a good woman before you get one!” and then, when he improves:
“oh, you have to lower your standards, just because you thought you deserved a stable, chaste(ish), physically fit partner doesn’t mean you’re entitled to one, world ain’t fair.”
That dog won’t hunt.
Thems the numbers. I’m not making this up wholesale or whining about advice because I find it uncomfortable. No. The math is directly belying the platitudes. I’m too autistic NOT to notice.
So where am I going with this?
First, I’m hoping, praying someone can actually show me evidence that this is wrong. All of my personal experience, anecdotal observations, research, and my gut fucking instinct all points to this being an accurate model of reality. But I am fallible.
If I’m wrong I want to know!
I’m also not particularly worried about ME in general. I am in a good position to find a good woman, even though I’m sick of all the numerous frustrations and inanities one has to endure to do so. I get annoyed when someone, even in good faith, tries to suggest that my complaints are more mental than real. I can see the numbers, I've been in the trenches for years, this is a true phenomena, the competition is heavy, the prizes are... lacking.
And finally and most importantly, I genuinely feel the only way we keep the Ferris Wheel of organized civilization turning is if average women are willing to marry average men, and stay married, and help raise kids. I’m all for pushing the ‘average’ quality up, as long as actual relationships are forming.
Objectively, that is not happening. And so I’m worried because if society breaks down... well, I live here and I don't like what that implies for me, either.
(Yes, AGI is possibly/probably going to make this all a moot point before it all really collapses)
Do you think that the kind of improvements required to be within the top million young men in America are outside of the average man's control? Because using your definition of a Good Woman, we can easily backwards-prompt-engineer a Good Man, ie a man who is in the top million-or-so. And I think doing so can be illustrative of what people are talking about when they set men on the self-improvement track, right? "Do these things that are in your control and you will be a Good Man worthy of a Good Woman."
Playing with ChatGPT I came up with a set of seven criteria. Sticking only with actions that are more-or-less completely within a man's control, so no height and no race and no penis size. Trying to stay simple, so nothing specific or weird or regional or denominational. Sticking to things that most men can achieve with their own reasonable effort, so nothing luck based like having married parents or having athletic talent.
Here's what I came up with:
-- Under 40: We should give some age flexibility in here, I think "aim to get married before you are 40" is pretty reasonable advice, and more than ten years age-gap gets iffy in general (<10% of married couple have more than a ten year age gap
-- Single: Obvious, but also note that ChatGPT used data for single showing "not married or cohabiting" which is a little different from the colloquial use but probably works well enough.
-- Earning $65k/yr: Under the median salary for a police officer, achievable for a warehouse forklift operator who picks up some overtime or a backhoe or crane operator; or the median for a high school teacher. A level of income that any man can reasonably reach by their mid-30s without having any special blessings of intellect or skill.
-- No felony convictions: Not a criminal, and also likely captures most violent men.
-- Exercise at least once a week: Better than obesity for men IMHO, maybe just a bitter personal opinion because I am classified as overweight by BMI; but once a week is a pretty easy number to hit, go for a walk, play a beer-ball league of any kind, etc.
-- Attend Religious Services at least once a month: Rhymes with chastity, but more applicable to men, a woman with the values of being chaste is more likely to select for a man who is at least mildly religious. Most women in general will find a man who attends some religious service more attractive for an LTR than a man who doesn't. Very easy to do, as well!
-- No drugs other than Marijuana + Not an alcoholic: I'll spot you weed and ordinary beer consumption. Addicts are obviously worse than non-addicts.
That all seems very reasonable and achievable for your average man before marriage.
Now, are those factors actually the ones that the Good Women and Good Men are selecting on? Probably not, largely speaking, since we didn't include a lot of things they definitely do select on.
But that's a separate question from "Are there enough Good Women for all the Good Men?"
Add 'not addicted to porn and gambling' to your 'drugs' line. This probably weeds out a lot of men. Both of these are common, growing problems.
I'm trying to do as little as possible to get to a similar number of men as OP's good women.
Yes, that's the problem; you've decided the result in advance and you're trying to find a way to reach it. That way the onus can properly be left on men and no burden at all placed on women. Which is what we've been doing for the better part of a century at least and has led us here.
I have no interest in lecturing "men" here, advice when given is given to an individual man. And that man can quite surely make good decisions to achieve the goals set out in the post, and be among the top million marriageable men in America.
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