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This is well-put, more elegantly expressed than I could have done! I think yes, this. Possibly with a side helping of "consumer thinking makes bad lovers and weak families" and "properly directed, serial oneitis could be good actually."
It's great that both you and @urquan seem to at least think it's plausible that nonvisual features could be relevant in a partner! As we introduce more complex qualitative features and opportunities for idiosyncratic preference (for instance, maybe an extroverted guy would actually prefer a quieter partner who calms things down?), though, doesn't that move things closer to the matching-market framework from that lesswrong post, where classic price discovery and supply/demand dynamics don't necessarily apply?
If current SMV frameworks do try to factor in relevant features like personality, vibe, moral character, cultural values, even niche erotic qualities like individual body features or particular bedroom skills/tastes, I'm kind of curious as to how that works on a single-axis scale that's meant for public discussion. How far do people in practice actually bother with all that complicated math, versus defaulting to the simpler "SMV means how good you look," as has been asserted by others here? It does seem like when I've seen SMV in the wild, it's getting used as a Freakonomics-style cynical hot take generator to justify focusing more on conventional appearance metrics of the Onlyfans variety (maybe "fertility" for women, where fertility seems to mean, well, teen-to-22 appearance, not actually "I want fourteen kids so I need a wife aged =(42-14*1.5)") and less on anything else except maybe wealth. Even in your initial post, you appeared to be also advocating for more focus along these lines- but was that a misread on my part?
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