cupholder comments on Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous? - Less Wrong

48 Post author: WrongBot 26 June 2010 02:50AM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 26 June 2010 04:06:31AM *  12 points [-]

If one defines a graph with each individual representing a node, and an edge connecting two individuals who have had sexual contact, then the large majority are part of a huge connected cluster.

Here is a paper which observes this in a high school. Here is just the graph. An animated gif of the development over time. One thing that disturbs me about the paper is that they make no mention of asymmetric claims by the students. (ETA: actually, they did, see cupholder)

Comment author: cupholder 26 June 2010 05:44:35AM 7 points [-]

Well, there is a brief mention tucked away in a footnote:

In fig. 2, and in all discussions presented here, all romantic and sexual relationship nominations linking students are included, whether or not the nomination from i to j was reciprocated with a nomination from j to i.

Not that it's very reassuring; I didn't see any data on how many/what proportion of claimed relationships were asymmetric.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 26 June 2010 06:05:57AM 1 point [-]

Thanks!