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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   5657 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 13, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Why would that be a problem?

Wouldnt optimization benefit the sole point of sexual selection? Continued procreation?

Or is there some long term short term tradeoff. All in all interesting theory but I dont think evolution is that smart.

Goodheart's law. You would optomize for the cheapest way to appear to have what women want, which may have little to no overlap with what they want/need, but would confuse their ability to detect the real deal.

Yeah, it's kind of glib, but I think there's something there.

It's not like women are shy about saying what women want, but it seems clear that they're wrong about that. So we need to explain this somehow. I can think of at least a few explanations, and one of them is that they don't actually know what they want.

This could be beneficial because who really wants to know what women want? Men. We already know that women are at least willing to pretend to tell the truth about what they want (of course they could be lying, etc.), but what if they actually knew and told men the Truth? And what if that Truth made it clear that a lot of men aren't wanted by women? That might be bad for civilization.

It might be better for civilization that men and women are both in a constant state of confusion about women's desires, and instead of everything being out in the open and clear, men are forced to try a variety of things to win women's favor. There are too many variables to control for, so no one can ever make any progress on the problem, and so it goes on being a mystery.

I think they know what they want but their filters are like the proverbial fish trying to describe water, and they don't realize that their statements are only true for guys who pass. When a woman describes her ideal mate it's so obvious it goes without saying that he would be attractive to her peers, she's describing characteristics she wants in addition to that, not the exclusive list of things she wants.

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