These imply a course of action which starts with elimination. If building an online dating profile? Your goal is not to attract as many suitable people as possible. Your goal is to -reject- as many unsuitable people as possible; this is the entry point for people looking for you, and there are far, far more unsuitable people than suitable people.
So, I agree with the premises behind this prediction, but:
I know someone who scraped okCupid for information which he used to eliminate women he wouldn't want to date from the pool. I read an article about someone else who scraped okCupid for information which he used to appear as acceptable as possible to women, and then would go on dates to find out if they were acceptable to him. The second person was considerably more effective, both at figuring out what actually led to a good date and getting good dates.
Consider this like prices. If you are having too many dates, your prices are too low, and you should raise them (i.e. exclude more people / look less presentable and more authentic). If you are having too few dates, your prices are too high, and you should lower them (i.e. appear more presentable so you don't get excluded as much).
I think of it more as a Type 1 versus Type 2 error tradeoff; there's a point at which you are excluding too many people, true, but I'd treat it less a function of raw dates, and more a function of the number of obviously unacceptable dates you have. You can relax exclusion criteria if you're not getting enough dates, but if in relaxing it, the number of unacceptable people rises without a commensurate rise in acceptable people, you went too far.
(The criteria will differ wildly according to the population you're searching. The style of profile I had livin...
Speaking from personal experience, finding the right relationship can be HARD. I recently came across a rational take on finding relationship partners, much of which really resonated with my experiences:
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner-part-2.html
(I'm still working my way through the Sequences, and lw has more than eight thousand articles with "relationship" in them. I'm not promising the linked articles include unique information)