Real short re-analysis:
Most human beings of the same gender have very similar preferences.
Most of those preferences are NOT what we normally think of as distinctively human, but basically the same preferences as those of our monkey-ancestors.
Most of human sexuality can be explained usefully as a simple market, where we are offering our market value to the highest bidder.
The takeaway:
- Understand mating as an implicit market.
- Stop pretending that people aren't 98% monkey, 2% other.
- Though he never says this: If you have preferences that are NOT standard monkey preferences, you should be able to satisfy them very cheaply...almost without putting them in the discussion.
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4 comments:
I don't see the argument why non-standard preferences should be cheap to satisfy. OK, less demand, but similarly, less supply. Care to explain?
Anon,
1. The supply isn't necessarily any less.
2. The mating market is bidding largely on top-priority issues. Shape, symmetry, and femininity for women...Confidence and Wealth for men.
3. All the other traits are pretty cheap in the mating market because for most folks, a quarter-point difference in shape (for instance) isn't worth a 2-sigma difference in IQ (for instance).
4. If your TOP priority in women is, say, IQ...then because IQ isn't normally bid for at all...you could specifically look for women in your market rank...with high IQ.
OK, let's run with your hypothetical. Women know that most men don't care much about IQ. As a result that's not the attribute on which they compete with each other and signal for mates. So there's a very high cost of information. If you meet a girl in a bar or nightclub, how do you judge her IQ? You can't without making a large time investment which may well prove fruitless. Whereas if you care about her body shape, you can judge there and then. And OK, you could try meeting girls at the library instead, but that's not where girls go who are looking to meet men.
This doesn't even have to do with mating specifically, it's about market frictions. In a market with perfect competition and total information, you would be right. In real life, not so much. Suppose you want to buy the most environmentally-friendly products and most other people don't care. They are shopping on price and quality, so you should have an easy time, right? Wrong, because the information is hard to come by. You'll spend half your time doing research. If, on the other hand, there are lots of other environmental consumers, then the companies will make that information clear to attract them, and you will benefit.
In other words, having a minority taste is only an advantage when there is a critical mass of other bidders, or information is cheap, and there aren't supply issues.
Anon,
I agree that if the information is hard to come by, it would be problematic.
1. Do we have an empirical dispute over information mining? IQ, I think, is awful easy to id...and I think that in 5 minutes almost everyone can get a relative category-read on IQ: Compared to me, this person is dumb, a little dumber, about the same, smart, or very smart. I'm open to the notion that I overestimate others' skill, but I don't find a lot of disagreement between folks on who's super-smart...unless they're not, and can't distinguish between the medium smart and the brilliant.
2. There are even occasional counter-preferences: skinny guys or fat women.
3. I'll grant your general point that cheap information is necessasry to my hypothesis...I just haven't found much information about a person that doesn't leak in the course of a first decent conversation, maybe 2.
4. Bars suck as a way to find long-term relationships.
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