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mattnewport comments on Love and Rationality: Less Wrongers on OKCupid - Less Wrong
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The prevalence of different personality types in the population is very relevant here and you seem to be glossing over it. If the number of women attracted to your personality type is relatively low (and especially if it is low relative to the number of other men similar to you) it will still be an obstacle you need to overcome in finding a partner even if you believe that there are women out there who would be attracted to you. Internet dating has probably helped with this a bit by making it easier to find potential matches but it can't overcome seriously unfavourable relative numbers.
I'd compare this with employment. Every now and then, you see a media story about some company with a highly unusual internal culture that uses all sorts of unconventional practices in hiring, organization, and management. Yet unless you luckily stumble onto some such employer and happen to be an exceptionally good candidate by their standards, you would be well-advised to stick to the standard conventional advice on how to look and behave in job interviews and, subsequently, in the workplace. In fact, doing anything else would mean sabotaging your employment and career prospects, and expecting that your unconventional behavior will surely be rewarded with a dream job with an unconventional employer is a delusional pipe-dream.
The main flaw of this analogy, of course, is that the conventional wisdom on seeking and maintaining employment is largely correct, whereas the conventional wisdom on dating has fatal points of disconnect from reality. Also, while conforming to optimal workplace behavior is truly painful for many people, fixing the problems in one's approach to dating and relationships typically doesn't require any such painful and loathsome adjustment. (Even though people often rationalize their unwillingness to do it by convincing themselves in the opposite.)
You're probably right but ironically I've ignored much of the standard advice on employment and it's worked out just fine for me so this example doesn't resonate very well for me. I've never worn a suit to a job interview for example.
Certainly! If he'd said "women who might like me tend to also like ..." I'd have understood. My confusion was because there was no such qualification, or anything else limiting the population under discussion beyond "women," but the commenter seemed to expect consistency within that population.
This is what I thought I was saying. :)
I assumed he was saying something like "the majority of women prefer a man more 'masculine' than the median man". By analogy, if it is true that "the majority of men prefer a woman who is slimmer than the median woman" it should be obvious that being overweight will make it harder for a woman to find a match even if there are men who prefer less slim women. Saying "men prefer slim women" is a slightly sloppy generalization but not an unreasonable one in this example.
We might be looking at different parts of the comment under discussion, because I've completely lost the correlation between what we're talking about and what I actually read. At this point I'd rather just drop it.