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Thinking about it more, the most unrealistic part isn't just that you only care about the top 1. (Even if you were willing to accept top 2, top 3, etc, the decision rule would still be to reject the first X% of applicants).
Bigger culprits are:
- Caring only about ranking, and not the actual quality level. Most people would be perfectly happy to marry their first partner if the relationship quality is good enough, without worrying about whether there's a better match out there.
- Assuming you know N. One reason you should be happy to marry your first partner if the relationship is good enough is because you just don't know when another opportunity will come along.
For dating in particular, there's another problematic assumption that you didn't state: the quality of future relationships needs to not be impacted by how many failed relationships you've had.
indeed, and the effect is asymmetric depending on gender: men want to be a woman's first and women want to be a man's last HAHA
To the gulag with you
I recently learned that gulag is actually an acronym
what is it with authoritarian bureaucrats and their penchant for acronyms
I had no idea. I wonder when that started. It doesn't seem like everything was acronyms way back in history times.
the Fedbop Archipelago
AAAHAAH amaaazing!
I sort of just said that as a throw-away.... very happy you took it to heart!!
As for the assumptions, for most things (houses, dating, profession), #1 and #2 seem reasonable enough. Significant lock-in, difficulty going backwards/do-overs/moving or career shifting are messy and costly
but #3 for sure, I understand... optimization sort of implies always peak instead of the more human/reasonable "somewhere in that neighborhood." Can you loosen this assumption a little and say, for instance, "get me the top-2% of dates/houses/jobs" I could get instead of the absolutely best?
YES!! That's always been my go-to... 37% of what?! How am I supposed to know how many potential relationships/houses/job offers will come my way throughout life?! If there's no way of telling where I am on the map, informing me that it's optimal to reject first 37% is useless