Live data from Hacker News

Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

dynomight.net

191–200 of 202 posts

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#191
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one makes more money There's this joke about a man in his 40s. He goes to the gym and asks the instructor which machine he should use to look more attractive to young ladies. The instructor looks at him and says "you'd do well by using the ATM outside".

It's an entertaining joke, but I think most people wouldn't want a partner that mainly chose them because they have money. (Certainly there's a baseline: most people want a partner with at least the financial resources to take care of themselves.)

> wouldn't want a partner that mainly chose them because they have money

That type of partner is commonly referred to as a gold digger. It's very rare that gold digger will tell you the honest reason why they're with you.

It does happen though. There's an extremely high profile couple in the US. She was asked in an TV interview if she'd be with him if he wasn't this rich. She responded "do you think he'd be with me if I wasn't this pretty?". Brutally honest I tell you.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#192
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I have nobody, and you introduce me to someone, then it's simple. They're absolutely worth pursuing. Not quite. No matter how badly you want a relationship, I guarantee there exist potential partners with whom a relationship would make your life worse, not better. And for most people, the set of absolutely disastrous potential partners is most people .

> And for most people, the set of absolutely disastrous potential partners is most people. Care to expand on why?

Let's start simple and say that the average person isn't bisexual, so we need to exclude half of people from the get-go. But maybe you're taking that as a given. So then we also need to consider that less than half the population is within your optimal age range. Maybe you're also taking that as a given. (But note that at this point we're already excluding 85% of humans.) Now consider that you also probably want them to speak your language. Again, maybe another gimme, but you're still down to less than 2% of humans. Of that, pick any ordinary dealbreaker; opinions on having children, political opinions, religious preferences, personal habits, and so on. Find the intersection of these. And don't forget to consider that a not-insignificant proportion of the population are simply high-functioning maniacs who you're better off never coming into contact with. And now consider mutual attractiveness.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#193
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've asked friends before, but the photos they took were uniformly terrible.

Ask women (ideally an Asian woman) and they will take pictures in the top 10% or better of what an average person can take. The only more reliable group are professional photographers - and consider that zoomers prefer iPhone or even Kodak style of photos vs a Sony or canon ultra realistic style

Where would you place Nikon, Panasonic, and Olympus on the spectrum of Kodak to Sony?

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#194
post #184
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't use HN for ideological battle like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Anyone can decide a statement is "ideological" just by disagreeing with it. The statement "the government can and should provide services to its people if those services are important to its future and the free market is incapable of providing them" should not, and did not used to be, ideological. The fact that such a statement is far outside of the current Overton Window is the result of a decades-long propaganda campaign to destroy everyone's faith in government so it can be looted, and everyone who parrots "government bad" is (knowingly or not) playing a part in this propaganda campaign. I assume the issue you have with my comment is that I knew 95% of readers would immediately regurgitate "but government bad!", but of course I was right that that happened.

When the Overton Window shifts to the point where saying "people should be decent to one another" becomes a radical ideological statement, make sure you flag every comment that says that too. We can't have radical ideologues on HN, after all.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#195

From the article: > (…) pictures also give lots of information about important non-superficial things, like your personality, values, social class, and lifestyle. This is the one thing that puzzles me most about dating apps: where do all these pictures come from? People seem to have pictures of them doing all kinds of activities. When I’m out with friends doing whatever, no one is taking pictures. Even if they did, i…

You’re weird. The vast majority of instagram using women take so many photos that the joke is that “the camera eats first”. I’m actively exhausted when I go out with my partner because I know that I’m going to take lots of photos. I’d love to be in a world where this is so rare that people can’t even explain where the photos go: but unfortunately I ask the opposite question, which is “where do these people get the ti…

If you think this is weird, then whatever culture you're immersed in, I want no part of it.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#196
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By far absolutely _not_ true: - i have worked in the space for some years for two of the biggest platforms in my country - dating sites track a lot KPI and discuss them and test them thoroughly - the KPI "do-more-users-leave-our-platform-earlier-if-our-matching-algo-is-just-too-good" - I promise: In alle the years, this question WAS NEVER - NEVER!!!!!!! - raised, regardless wich Manager or which Exec. This metric isn…

Well, what kind of KPI do you track then?

- new user sign up - new subscriptions - enlengthened subscriptions - mails send - overall interactions - testing of new marketing campaigns/channels (they do massive MVT, even fontsize&coloring)

just to make that clear: churn is tracked/written down for sure, but its not debated in a context of "is churn growing if more people are matching successful" - because in 99.9% of all cases people do not meet successful, so this metric is irrelevant

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#197
post #34
post #11

I think it's actually very simple... the paradox of choice. You introduce somebody to your attractive single friend there's a real chance they hit it off and form a relationship. You introduce them to 100 attractive friends, one makes more money, one has a more stable job, one is flirtier, etc then it's both exhausting and none of them seem like a great opportunity. I think there are certain basic psychological facts…

Commonly called “analysis paralysis”. For most people, I believe, once you have more than a small number of options it’s basically impossible (or feels so) to analyze and compare all options to make what seems like a rational and logical decision. So some people will just get frustrated and pick one arbitrarily, or give up and pick none. A small number of people will make a spreadsheet and devote way too much time to…

Paradox of Choice is a book by Barry Schwartz. It is not the same at all as analysis paralysis.

It is a much more pernicious idea. Barry gives the example of salad dressing. If you have the choice between 100 salad dressings, no matter what you pick you will like the salad dressing less than if you only had 3 choices because with a 100 you can't know how much better the others ones might be. It would be quite rational to suspect there is another that you would like more so you aren't going to be as happy with the choice you made relative to having less choice. That is the paradox.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#198
post #194
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use HN for ideological battle like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Anyone can decide a statement is "ideological" just by disagreeing with it. The statement "the government can and should provide services to its people if those services are important to its future and the free market is incapable of providing them" should not, and did not used to be, ideological. The fact that such a statement is far outside of the current Overton Window is the result of a decades-long propaganda ca…

The question of what goods and services should/shouldn't be provided by government is about as ideological as any question there is, given that the size/role of government has been one of the most central matters of most major ideologies for at least the past couple of centuries.

It's fine to discuss ideology on HN, but it needs to be done so in a spirit of curiosity and exploration, not battle and belligerence.

We've had to ask you to respect the site and observe the guidelines a few times before in the past couple of years. The HN guidelines and HN's intended purpose are the issue here, and sermonizing about ideology seems a deflection.

We just need you to observe the guidelines, no matter what point you're trying to make (and we really don't much care what point you're trying to make). Indeed this is in your interests to do this, because your point will carry more weight if you make it whilst keeping your discussion style within the site's guidelines and norms.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah radicalization is really bad I wasn't intending to victimize myself, I am not saying that its just me whose changed, but its rather the whole world which feels changed idk really That’s a sudden transition in about 1 year at the age of ~12 Yeah I was of 11 years in 6th grade, and since the sudden transition happened after covid in 7th-8th grade when I was in 12-13 years old, I assumed it was because of covid whe…

Yep, that’s the moral of the story: Keep trying, for both of us. PS: Don’t expect a girl to share programming as a hobby, it’s virtually nonexistent, even if it looks like this at school.

> PS: Don’t expect a girl to share programming as a hobby, it’s virtually nonexistent, even if it looks like this at school

Oh man, I don't know, I don't have any gaming hobbies or etc.

Whom am I gonna share how I fixed my disk using testdisk and show my dotfiles or any cool project that I found to?

Its a very big part of me and I want a girl to understand it. To embrace it if possible. I wouldn't say I am programming as much as I am tinkering and making shit work and I feel like I can do a lot of things which I am proud of, of which otherwise I would have given up but I persisted.

I do want someone to appreciate it, appreciate me wholly. Understand me.

Although maybe I am having too many expectations.

Would love to have a chat / continue this chat with ya if that's possible really.

Re: Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

#200
post #78
post #38

Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps dont suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? (A sad fact is that dating will just suck for some % of the population. Is it possible that if there were no apps the same % would be saying how IRL dating sucks?) I know many people in stable LTRs or married who met through dating…

> Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps don't suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? Yes. The reality is well known. PlentyOfFish used to publish statistics. About 10% of dating app users are "date bacon" and find matches they like. Everyone else is a dissatisfied loser. The losers provide the repeat business and…

Real question about those two women with over 1000 matches: Why don't top quality men approach them in public? It is weird they are on the apps. If you are a 7 or above, high quality men are constantly approaching you, to the point of annoyance. Or do they use the apps to find a simp/sugar daddy to pay for their dinner and lifestyle?
Post reply on HN