Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Does Technology Affect Which Men Women Choose?

selonomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 76 posts

Re: How Does Technology Affect Which Men Women Choose?

#21

Post by nailer »

wolfgke wrote: post #15

I am very skeptical when there is a claim of some "objective status [of a person]" (in this case in the model assumption "In the simulation, men make their mate selection decisions by minimizing over the age of their prospective partners, whereas women maximize over the status of the men in their accessible vicinity." - which requires that there is some "objective" status hierarchy of men). My counterclaim is that th…

Yes, in order to paint a picture, one must draw the odd brush stroke. I'm a privacy-conscious, non-car owning urbanite programmer, but I accept and am comfortable with that most people (particularly in the US for car ownership) regard having a Facebook account and owning a car as indicators of some minimum amount of social status.

I love not having a car, and think Facebook is for people with lots of spare time, but this doesn't invalidate at all the results of the survey.

Re: How Does Technology Affect Which Men Women Choose?

#22

Post by osullivj »

aceofspad4s wrote: post #16
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[delete]

>Or could it be because the traits one needs to cultivate in order to achieve high status have an overlap with the traits that are desirable in romantic partners (e.g. empathy, integrity, being an active listener, knowing when and how to compromise)? You do not need those traits to be high status.

IMHO those traits may well be a handicap to becoming high status. Especially in an organisation like an investment bank that selects for promotion by perceived characteristics like driven, goal oriented, focused...

Re: How Does Technology Affect Which Men Women Choose?

#23

Post by nailer »

wheelie_boy wrote: post #7
notyourday wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/dating/19-scienc-men... But yeah, lets blame MRA

That's not a great source. It also tells men to wear red and eat garlic.

It's a left wing source (which are regarded as more reputable on HN [see edit]) reporting a study from the University of Wales, specifically:

> A 2010 study from the University of Wales Institute found that men pictured with a Silver Bentley Continental GT were perceived as way more attractive than those pictures with a Red Ford Fiesta ST.

What is your issue with The Independent and/or The University of Wales?

[edit]: noting the moderation on this fairly objective comment, I'll add that I'm not stating this is good or bad, but just that this is what I've observed after being here 10 years.

Re: How Does Technology Affect Which Men Women Choose?

#24

Post by nailer »

nindalf wrote: post #14
notyourday wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) it has links. Use them. b) one should have an intellectual capacity of appreciating that Kerr did not get together with Evan for his stunning personality.

> it has links. Use them. If you're trying to prove something, its better to say nothing at all than to post a shitty source. And please don't ask someone else to do research that should be done by you.

Not the OP, but the article is full of citations to academic reearch and .gov sites. What else would you like?

Clicking a few random links:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19302732

http://akademiai.com/doi/abs/10.1556/JEP.12.2014.1.1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22947829

It's fairly obvious to see why notyourday may be frustrated with you saying its a 'a shitty source' and asking them to provide you with research when they just have.

Re: How Does Technology Affect Which Men Women Choose?

#25

Post by debacle »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #8

Hypergamy, then, is ever present. The only thing that changes whether it is realized or not is the extent to which women are free to act on it. Hypergamy doesn’t necessarily guarantee an inequality in actual sexual encounters, but the more free that women are to act on it (and this is personal speculation) the more likely are there to be social norms and institutions favoring women, i.e. fault-free divorce, preferent…

Could you explain the leap from hypergamy to a female dominated society? If women seek out socially "superior" men, one would think that men would hold much of the power in society.

Divorce and child custody laws aren't preferential by intent. They're simply archaic and/or very sticky. While I'm very much in favor of men's domestic rights, there are a lot of minefields when it comes to these issues which is I believe why a lot of the inequalities haven't been remedied.

Slut shaming is a bad thing for men. Men, especially men of lower social status (or "attractiveness"), benefit from a glut of promiscuous women. Also, prostitution is a market like any other. It's not women's fault that there is a high demand.

It's easy to get angry about things like this, and while you should strive for positive change (e.g. healthier self-image for women, regardless of sexual appetite), you should also act based on the reality of today where necessary.

Re: How Does Technology Affect Which Men Women Choose?

#27

Post by debacle »

hashkb wrote: post #20
wolfgke wrote: post #15

I am very skeptical when there is a claim of some "objective status [of a person]" (in this case in the model assumption "In the simulation, men make their mate selection decisions by minimizing over the age of their prospective partners, whereas women maximize over the status of the men in their accessible vicinity." - which requires that there is some "objective" status hierarchy of men). My counterclaim is that th…

"objective status" is usually "net worth" (aka "life score") which has many readily evident indicators like clothes, car, house, jet, private island, etc.

I think the parent's point is that, for example, having a nice car is going to attract a specific demographic of mate, while speaking at a conference on marine ecology might be highly desirable to a different demographic.

Re: How Does Technology Affect Which Men Women Choose?

#28

Post by BearGoesChirp »

wolfgke wrote: post #15

I am very skeptical when there is a claim of some "objective status [of a person]" (in this case in the model assumption "In the simulation, men make their mate selection decisions by minimizing over the age of their prospective partners, whereas women maximize over the status of the men in their accessible vicinity." - which requires that there is some "objective" status hierarchy of men). My counterclaim is that th…

While many cultures are different, I think we can talk about average culture, especially given certain selections. Average culture of people who use a dating app is likely different than average culture of people who scorn dating apps, and we can talk about what happens in each. There will be exceptions, but this seems true of any psychological/sociological statements. When we are talking about cultural norms, we are talking about averages recognizing there are sub-cultures and counter-cultures which can be quite different.

Take doing interviews (since I think that will be less controversial of a median to talk in). There is general advice on what one should do for an interview. It may be that you will be interviewing with someone whose opinion of you will go up when the see you in a t-shirt and flip flops, but when asked advice on what to wear to an interview we still tend to give advice based on the averages of wearing somewhere between business casual to business formal. We even stereotype different types of business culture (mobile startup vs international bank), and rarely do people point out a lack of peer reviewed studies or that there will be exceptions (or if they point out exceptions, they do it in addition to, instead of as a counter of, the standard advice).

>Before it was paid very well, being a "computer science programming nerd" had a very low status in general society.

Being very stereotypical and based on anecdotal evidence, but it still seems pretty low status (in the overall culture) despite the money to be made.

Re: How Does Technology Affect Which Men Women Choose?

#29

Post by debacle »

Men with a higher social status tend to also have a relative high level of social exposure, meaning they meet many people either as a result of networking, sycophantry, etc.

The curious case would be attractive women with a low social status, and how technology has drastically changed the playing field for these women. A woman who previously couldn't afford to travel or mingle in higher status social circles often would find herself "settling" for a local mate.

In the Internet age, that same woman can gain exposure on the Internet via multiple mediums to orders of magnitude more potential mates, creating a huge shift in pairing for both high-status low-attractiveness women and low-status high-attractiveness women.

Re: How Does Technology Affect Which Men Women Choose?

#30

Post by BearGoesChirp »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #13
J-dawg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is evidence from OKCupid etc (and, y'know, the real world) that the two assertions you quoted are true, broadly speaking. What has this got to do with "putting on his MRA hat"? Does this invalidate the assertions somehow?

[delete]

>If that is true, why is it true? I think that's a far more interesting question.

Almost any scientific finding should be ended 'but more research is needed to be certain'. Perhaps the question to ask is why isn't this getting more research, given just how important the topic is to the lives of so many people. All of the questions you raise can be tested with further research, so why aren't they? Why is some of the best data (best is not to be confused with good, as best is relative) from dating web sites?

Post reply on HN