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Notes -
Somewhat Contra Scott Alexander on Dating
Astral Codex Ten: "In Defense Of Describable Dating Preferences"
I say "somewhat contra" because there is a bit of a disguised Motte and Bailey here. The Motte is that describable preferences like age, race, culture, politics, relationship style, and desire for children have strong predictive and filtering power. This is obviously true. The implied Bailey is that modern dating apps suck, long-form dating profiles like old OKCupid and "Date-me" docs are much better, and the nerdy rationalist coke-bottle glasses waifu you've always dreamed about is just around the corner. This is false.
In the old days, dating sites were based around writing a profile and answering questions about yourself. In current year, online dating programs have converged around the "swipe" model. Why? One common theory I see is that users (customers) finding high-quality long-term relationships is bad for the app, because it causes users to leave and decreases the userbase. This sounds plausible, but if it were true we would expect to see a "two models" system. One mass-commercialized model where people looking for casual fun can swipe to find hookups, and a second non-profit or premium model where people can write long-form profiles to find high-quality partners. What we observe instead is convergence around the "swipe" model. Some would blame Match Group for buying OKCupid and monopolizing the market:
But Match Group isn't a monopoly anymore. In fact, their main competitor, Bumble, is also a swipe app. Sounds more like revealed preferences than evil capitalism to me.
Suppose OKCupid, being an early iteration of online dating, was an inefficient market. Whom would we expect this market inefficiency to benefit? People who are good at writing long-form engaging content for their profile of course. Who are the people currently telling you OKCupid was the greatest thing since sliced bread? Really makes you go "hmmm".
You already know.
Yes, age, race, culture, politics, relationship style, and desire for children are all vital filtering tools. The dirty little secret is that you can tell all of this quite reliably from only a few photographs. A picture is worth a thousand words. Photos are also harder to fake, thus making them a more credible signal of social information. If any doubt remains, it takes literally two seconds to scroll down and see her info.
Far from being the cause of our modern romanceless society, Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge are simply lenses into the inherent nature of the sexual market at the margins. Those who are both in demand and willing to partner up are long since unavailable. There is no law of nature, nor any other reason to believe that every person has a "soulmate". Some people just suck.
What has changed in the modern world is the quality of single life. In the past, before internet porn, before women could reliably hold down careers, people had to pair up. It was socially demanded, it was the only way to obtain sexual gratification if you were a man, and it was the only way to provide for yourself economically if you were a woman. The positive externality of these "sad" marriages was that they generally produced children.
It's not the sexual market -- or well, it may be, but the crappiness of dating apps doesn't show it. The problem with dating apps as a category is the incentives are all wrong. To keep making money you want to keep people paying, not pair them up.
Wouldn’t this be like saying the incentives for a physical therapist is to keep you injured and thus coming back for treatment? Doesn’t make sense to me, and I think the incentives for online dating is to dominate the dating landscape to the point where it’s the de facto way people meet. Successfully pairing up couples who then speak highly of online dating lines up with that incentive.
This is a perennial accusation against chiropractors.
The difference is chiropractors can't cure you, so they can't produce evidence that they're trying to help.
Whereas real doctors generally do cure people when physically possible.
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