Yeah, finding reliably good people is a problem in general.
But there is also this gender-specific part of problem... uhm, remember the OKCupid study about how women rated average men as "below average" on the attractivity scale? (Like an opposite of the Lake Wobegon effect.) So we have all the average women who believe they are looking for a correspondingly average man and can't find one, while in reality they are merely unwilling to settle in their own league.
Maybe Heartiste means something like this, from the opposite side. A woman who is in the man's league will believe she is better than him, and therefore will not put much effort into the commitment, because she is still waiting for the true prince to come for her. (It will take some hard lessons in life to learn what she can realistically expect, but those lessons take time, and Heartiste prefers young women.)
I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine, in which he said he didn't care about looking good for women or catering to them in general. Coupled with the fact that he often complained about not being able to get women, the whole situation seemed rather pathetic. Something about a lost license to complain, methinks.
When I look beyond my own grooming habits, the problem seems widespread. By contrast, and this is essential, there are industries upon industries dedicated to enhancing women's appearance, to which they are drawn irresistibly, often w...
Previous thread: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mnq/instrumental_rationality_questions_thread/
This thread is for asking the rationalist community for practical advice. It's inspired by the stupid questions series, but with an explicit focus on instrumental rationality.
Questions ranging from easy ("this is probably trivial for half the people on this site") to hard ("maybe someone here has a good answer, but probably not") are welcome. However, please stick to problems that you actually face or anticipate facing soon, not hypotheticals.
As with the stupid questions thread, don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better, and please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
(See also the Boring Advice Repository)