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I think it's actually very simple... the paradox of choice.

You introduce somebody to your attractive single friend there's a real chance they hit it off and form a relationship. You introduce them to 100 attractive friends, one makes more money, one has a more stable job, one is flirtier, etc then it's both exhausting and none of them seem like a great opportunity.

I think there are certain basic psychological facts that are anti-standard-economics that nerds (and therefore tech companies) almost always tend to be completely blind to. This is one of them.

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> one makes more money

There's this joke about a man in his 40s. He goes to the gym and asks the instructor which machine he should use to look more attractive to young ladies. The instructor looks at him and says "you'd do well by using the ATM outside".

When I ask myself who in my friends circles has had the happiest, longest lasting relationships it almost never were the guys with the money.

Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean the inverse is true and you score big time if you are an ugly bum. It just means other qualities matter often more than men think. Being a kind guy, having humor, being emotionally reliable (meaning you're emotionally stable and not easily provoked, angered), being fun to be around, things like that.

I was one of those guys who always had more female friends than the average dude and I can assure you the stuff girls talk about when they consider partners are more often about how a guy is, than what he has.

Not that there aren't women who decide based perceived wealth, of course they exist. But why on earth would you consider catering to those? Got nothing else going for you except money?

Money (or access to money) is often a proxy for a certain kind of stability and access to leisure, two things that many people strive for.

But the joke wasn't about long term, successful relationships. The guy was interested in looking attractive. That could have any kind of relationship goal, from one night stands to marriage, or even meeting someone who could introduce them to even more people.

Being attractive can be helpful to get to know people. But it can also be a curse. If you know really attractive women (like international fashion model types) you will learn that it can be very hard for them at times to find friends that don't just chose them for their looks.

Now if all you want are short hook ups, sure. But I'd suspect most people are looking for a lasting partnership where the other side likes them for who they are and both people have a good time being together. And widely desirable traits can paradoxically make it harder to find that, also because the other side has incentives to fool you.

> When I ask myself who in my friends circles has had the happiest, longest lasting relationships it almost never were the guys with the money.

But that's also consistent with money being the ticket of entry, the thing you need to have to be considered as a partner in the first place (much of the time). Especially in the context of dating apps where there are so many to choose from, you might not even get the chance to show yourself as a kind, emotionally stable, fun guy to be around.

The parable, the story, is to teach that what brings people running to your doorstep will not always secure your happiness, desired life.

It's an entertaining joke, but I think most people wouldn't want a partner that mainly chose them because they have money.

(Certainly there's a baseline: most people want a partner with at least the financial resources to take care of themselves.)

> wouldn't want a partner that mainly chose them because they have money

That type of partner is commonly referred to as a gold digger. It's very rare that gold digger will tell you the honest reason why they're with you.

It does happen though. There's an extremely high profile couple in the US. She was asked in an TV interview if she'd be with him if he wasn't this rich. She responded "do you think he'd be with me if I wasn't this pretty?". Brutally honest I tell you.

Of course they wouldn't, but compared to not having no partner at all?

How about a partner who chose you because you had money, but stayed because less superficial things?

It's maybe sad, but it's not so surprising.

Commonly called “analysis paralysis”. For most people, I believe, once you have more than a small number of options it’s basically impossible (or feels so) to analyze and compare all options to make what seems like a rational and logical decision. So some people will just get frustrated and pick one arbitrarily, or give up and pick none. A small number of people will make a spreadsheet and devote way too much time to over-analyzing the situation, and maybe never come to a satisfactory conclusion.

This applies to almost anything, even “which restaurant should we go to tonight?”

> ...once you have more than a small number of options it’s basically impossible (or feels so) to analyze and compare all options to make what seems like a rational and logical decision.So some people will just get frustrated and pick one arbitrarily, or give up and pick none.

In this context (non-work related decisions) I find the “analysis paralysis” stems from a person not knowing themselves well enough or knowing themselves but not sure how to assert it without coming off in an off-putting way.

For the latter, “which restaurant should we go to tonight?” I take that as whatever I pick is it so I pick what I want (as long as I know the other people dont have allergies to the place or something) and that's it. When people ask for a place to pick they usually mean it (from my experience), and they are happy to tag along whereever -- otherwise they will suggest something and ask others opinion, I take that to mean they want to go there but don't want to seem bossy or some other weirdness, and so we go there unless I have a problem with it that I'll voice and suggests something similar.

For the former, I think people are too worried about coming off as "selfish" (and avoid learning themselves). It makes sense because some people really are, and being around them makes decent people really not want to be that. But knowing what you like and want especially when it's not what you have been told to like and want is the biggest hurdle to getting past the “analysis paralysis” here. If you know you and what you like and want than there is really not much to analysis, the analysis should be happening everyday of your life so when these big things come up you have a solid foundation to go on. Otherwise, a lot of it is trying to figure out what the best option is according to outside guidelines you've been given -- which is great for work, but not so much for oneself.

Of course, maybe there are people who can't do the above for whatever, but it's a skill to know what you like and want and a skill to put it into practice without being rude, just like talking to random people or programming. You get better with real world practice/exposure.

If you lived in an area with many restaurants offering the same favorite-cuisine/foods, and you were picking one to eat at indefinitely and exclusively… how would you choose?

That’s where the analysis paralysis would come in to play in dating.

> If you lived in an area with many restaurants offering the same favorite-cuisine/foods, and you were picking one to eat at indefinitely and exclusively… how would you choose?

[edit] I missed the indefinitely, read as definitely - so if you mean only one of them forever. The one I liked best, which really isnt far off from how I do thing now. I use to drive past multiple starbucks to go to the one I enjoyed most. It's not like they had better coffee than the others, I simply knew I liked going to that one the most.

I get this may sound trite, but by knowing myself. I've made it priority to know my mind (and feelings/emotions as best I can) and work on figuring out what is mine and what was given to me or told is suppose to be mine. From food to politics to values, I still find things ingrained that are not me. It's like keeping a workout/exercise routine and not get lazy with it.

How to choose? I will have already put them in order and know what foods I like where, then when asked the question I will know what I want to eat and the places to satisfy that -- from there its about other things too, do we have time to drive the the farthest one that I want? no? okay this other one is closer and it has this other thing I want so we go there. One has a long wait and we are both actually hungry? I hear there is one like it and my date is also adventurous so it'll be fun to try a new place together.

Honestly it's about knowing yourself, what your priorities are and what can be worked around. It's so much easier when you have a solid grasp on "knowing yourself". I know if this swank restaurant is going to take 30min drive and another 1.5 hour wait and I'm hungry, it doesn't matter how impressive the place is because I will be at my least impressive. If the date really wants to go there, I will have a snack before-hand so I wont be a stubborn-hangry-asshat (because I know I will be and instead of fighting it, own and manage it so everyone has a good time)

Paradox of Choice is a book by Barry Schwartz. It is not the same at all as analysis paralysis.

It is a much more pernicious idea. Barry gives the example of salad dressing. If you have the choice between 100 salad dressings, no matter what you pick you will like the salad dressing less than if you only had 3 choices because with a 100 you can't know how much better the others ones might be. It would be quite rational to suspect there is another that you would like more so you aren't going to be as happy with the choice you made relative to having less choice. That is the paradox.

It's wild how the brain taps out after like 5–7 options, but dating apps hand you an infinite scroll of possibilities and say "good luck"

I'm not sure if it's still like this (I've been off the market for a while now), but this was why I liked Coffee Meets Bagel way back when: you only got a small number of possible matches per day.

When I was a kid, I had one video game and played it all the way through. When the system was emulated and access to every single game ever created became available, I lost interest.

Part of my self-administered IT education in my early 20s was to feed my film nerdery through exquisite data hoarding. Automation, NASs, media servers, all of it.

Curiously, I found that the better I got, the less movies I actually watched. It became more about collecting than engaging.

I think this is a corollary to your point: vastly increasing access and reducing our objects of desire to a standardized neatly storable form can easily divert us into hoarding behavior, to the detriment of actual engagement with what’s being hoarded.

I found the way to square the circle of music hoarding is to place your player on full-library shuffle. Music is unique because you can enjoy it while doing other things, such as spamming Hacker News. Movies cannot be appreciated with such divided attention.

> Movies cannot be appreciated with such divided attention.

Have you considered setting up "Ersatz TV" and then configuring dozens of movie channels to never watch?

But maybe some prefer that? These rich guys who never seem to have long, fulfilling relationships, who's to say they seek long term relationships? (I wouldn't know, I'm not one of them!)

Ditto with the women who like them.

You can, after all, delete all the other games from your emulator, or your entire data hoard except one document etc. Somehow that doesn't seem appealing either, does it?

Ending a lot of sentences with a question here I know, but I honestly don't think I've got this figured out.

I think the secret is "clearly better than anyone I've got".

If I have nobody, and you introduce me to someone, then it's simple. They're absolutely worth pursuing.

If I have one or two "maybes", and you introduce me to someone, it's easy for them to be clearly better than anyone I've got, and therefore clearly "the one", at least the one to pursue right now.

But if you give me one hundred, then there probably isn't one of them that is clearly better than all the others. Hence, analysis paralysis.

> If I have nobody, and you introduce me to someone, then it's simple. They're absolutely worth pursuing.

Not quite. No matter how badly you want a relationship, I guarantee there exist potential partners with whom a relationship would make your life worse, not better. And for most people, the set of absolutely disastrous potential partners is most people.

The quoted section felt like a portrayal of the individual’s mentality from the example, more so than actual objective logic.

> And for most people, the set of absolutely disastrous potential partners is most people.

Care to expand on why?

Let's start simple and say that the average person isn't bisexual, so we need to exclude half of people from the get-go. But maybe you're taking that as a given. So then we also need to consider that less than half the population is within your optimal age range. Maybe you're also taking that as a given. (But note that at this point we're already excluding 85% of humans.) Now consider that you also probably want them to speak your language. Again, maybe another gimme, but you're still down to less than 2% of humans. Of that, pick any ordinary dealbreaker; opinions on having children, political opinions, religious preferences, personal habits, and so on. Find the intersection of these. And don't forget to consider that a not-insignificant proportion of the population are simply high-functioning maniacs who you're better off never coming into contact with. And now consider mutual attractiveness.

That makes me think of the Secretary Problem [0]... which apparently is also known as the Fussy Suitor problem, at that makes it extra apropos.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

I remember the book "Algorithms to Live By" actually also uses finding a life partner as a fun, if perhaps unrealistic, example of applying the secretary problem.

As far as I remember, it jokingly assumes that one's active dating period might be ages 20-40 and then applying the optimal solution from the secretary problem means that you should calibrate your expectations until age 27 (assuming regular dating of course) and then immediately marry the next best person that exceeds this threshold.

There are plenty of people you could be with that would be a strictly worse experience than being alone.

Make the shortest list of requirements, and hard-no traits, possible.

It’s the only way.

There's also something like a "market for lemons" effect where the best people (i.e. those most suitable for relationships and capable of sustaining them) tend to pair off and disappear from the market.

Isn’t market for lemons about a situation where consumers can not tell the difference between good and bad quality product so they only buy the cheapest assuming it’s bad.

Yes, and that also applies to dating apps. It’s easier to fake being attractive on an app than in real life. So the apps will be dominated by low cost fakes.

You’re right that the comment you replied to was describing a different effect (adverse selection?)

There is information asymmetry, it's just that it exists on both sides. Neither person really knows the other's history or intentions.

It's like making a spider web diagram for each person. Then calculating the area under the polygon to make a decision. With the vertices of diagram weighted by your preference vector. Under normal circumstances, majority can match with majority like a lock and key combintation. This could be the reason why arranged marriages work. I don't think evolution would care for 100% maximum compatibility as a target.

I would consider that arrange marriages work solely for evolution. Usually, arrange marriages / their families usually advocate the people who married to become parents. Thus for evolutionary purpose, maybe they can be good but at the same time, they might only be together later because of their chidren and that is a tough cycle for a children and some anti natalist points can be made in that regards.

I do think that we humans have such complex brains and hyper-specialization and the amount of intellect in the world when you look at it is ridiculous. So the ideas of arrange marriage working in favour of evolution, and not in favour of the person, while somebody does that is, very interesting...

I think cultures play a major impact in how one approaches dating.

> I think there are certain basic psychological facts that are anti-standard-economics that nerds (and therefore tech companies) almost always tend to be completely blind to. This is one of them.

I believe it's the opposite, they're exactly aware of this and have taken advantage of it to maximize engagement and profit, of course with the accompanying insanity, emotional burnout and further division/culture wars fuelling.

The paradox of choice feels like one of those concepts that sounds trivial until you live it. Dating apps amplify it to an absurd degree

It’s impressive to me how many people mistake relationships for a choice issue when it’s entirely a building in common thing. Obviously, having a shared vision or the ability to built one initially matter but the rest is very much work.

At this point in my life, I’m fairly convinced that some people would be able to build a successful relationship with nearly anyone while other are doomed to fail even with the "perfect" person.

The problem of dating is not so much dating. It’s expectations which are totally unaligned with the reality of life.