FrameBenignly comments on The application of the secretary problem to real life dating - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Elo 29 September 2015 10:28PM

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Comment author: FrameBenignly 30 September 2015 06:33:43AM 1 point [-]

As someone with experience will know - we probably test and rule out bad partners in a single conversation, where we don't even get so far as a date. Or don't last more than a week. (I. E the experience set is growing through various means).

I consider this number to be much more useful than number of long-terms partners due to sample size. You should be able to evaluate most partners in a lot less than 6 months. I think if it takes more than 3 months to evaluate a relationship's potential for marriage, you're doing something wrong. For my part, I've never been in a relationship with someone I thought I might marry. I've only twice known someone I thought I might marry, and neither of those resulted in a relationship.

Comment author: Elo 30 September 2015 07:25:16AM 1 point [-]

You have raised some interesting alternative problems to applying this solution to real life. I suspect that most people don't think very hard about it; and they like to enjoy relationships/life/existence for the purpose of existing.

Trouble is that it's a lot harder to count; but yes - the candidate space grows when you start thinking that the shorter ones are fair attempts...


now that I think about it a bit harder; as long as you have a determining factor for how frequently you can process trials (i.e. how long a relationship is, or more specifically how many you can have in each year of your trial-time-period), you can still work out the 1/e time-point, and possibly use that for a heuristic of exploration/exploitation time-point...

Comment author: ChristianKl 30 September 2015 11:03:01AM 0 points [-]

You have raised some interesting alternative problems to applying this solution to real life. I suspect that most people don't think very hard about it; and they like to enjoy relationships/life/existence for the purpose of existing.

Apart from enjoyment a relationship also provides for personal growth.

Comment author: Elo 30 September 2015 12:03:43PM 0 points [-]

Yea; I had to skip all the other reasons to have relationships in order to specifically attack the reduced problem of the assumption of:

you plan to have children and you will probably be doing so like billions of humans have done so far in a monogamous relationship while married

There are certainly companionship values for having relationships that are worthwhile doing; but that's not what this post was about.

Comment author: ChristianKl 30 September 2015 01:08:30PM 0 points [-]

I don't think the plan to have children is simply about finding a suitable mate. It's also about developing the skill set of being a good parent and having an enduring relationship that doesn't break apart after a few years.

Comment author: Elo 30 September 2015 07:46:06PM 0 points [-]

I don't disagree with these points.

Can you clarify what you are suggesting by bringing them up?

Comment author: ChristianKl 30 September 2015 08:29:16PM 0 points [-]

I don't see a large extend of skill building in the post but it mainly being about effective ways of evaluating suitable mates.