[mpr]

(11-23-2018 09:19 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

(11-23-2018 08:15 PM)mpr Wrote:  

I'm surprised at the amount of RVFer's saying things like: 'you shouldn't take the 80/20 rule literally'. According to the data we absolutely should take the 80/20 rule literally. Above is a graph from data collected by OkCupid where they ask female users to rate men according to their attractiveness. The results showed that the women using the site rated 81% of male users as less attractive than average. Which is mathematically impossible, and corresponds exactly to a gini distribution. Males on the other hand rated female attractiveness on a normal bell curve. With roughly have of the women being more attractive than average and half being less attractive than average.

According to all of the research data I've seen dating markets mimic unregulated financial markets. With the gini distribution (80/20) in full effect. If anyone has some reliable data (not personal anecdotes) to contradict this I'd be interested in seeing it.

No, we should not take the 80/20 rule seriously. And if we do, it definitely shouldn't be because of the professional propagandists and social engineers at OKCupid.

This survey is deeply flawed for reason I'll explain below. First off, it was commissioned by an online dating service, not the National Institutes of Health. Even professional groups are known to fudge numbers and OKC is far from professional.

The survey is flawed because it views people in a vacuum. It looks at one thing: How people view PHOTOS of the opposite sex. Not actual humans, mind you. But PHOTOS of humans.

When it comes to photography, the best subjects have always been women. People like to look at women. Look at all the magazine covers. Women's magazine covers feature women. So do men's mags. Ever wonder why? Also look at how Playboy set the standard for photography but Playgirl was a laughingstock.

Sociologically speaking, women look best while posed and men look best in-action (i.e. the "Mona Lisa" vs. classic Greek sculptures of men). This reflects our roles in real life. So, photos themselves are more forgiving to women. As were paintings.

Go a bit deeper into all this and you'll notice women take a lot of time with "staging" their pics. For that matter, women take more time staging their houses. Women (most of them, anyway) are more about presentation than men.

Conversely, men tend to be less discriminating about how they present themselves. Why? Because women know their being judged mostly on looks and men know they get judged on what they do. Men tend to think 1). "I'm successful! Why the hell do I need to get dolled up like a pretty boy?" or 2). If I do myself up too much I'll look gay.

So, when all is said and done: Photos lie and women are deceptive. Hence the results of this self-serving survey.

I'd like OKC to conduct a survey how their users viewed each other out in the real world when they finally meet. My guess is that the results would swing the opposite way.

From what I see, it's mostly the men who have the "OMG! NOOOO!" moments when they meet women in real life. I've read stories on blogs about going to meet "hot" chicks from OKC who turned out to be so fat they could barely get through the front door.

Something tells me you won't see OKC putting out survey results about that anytime soon.

That would be fine if the only data I was relying on was from okcupid. I've seen multiple other statistical analyses that all come to the same conclusion. I posted a link to one in my original post using data from tinder. There have been other studies done using photo's taken independently by researchers, and then rated by both sexes that come to the same conclusion.

I agree that women are more likely to be SIF's. Perhaps that does change the overall dating market. But I doubt it. Especially considering that almost all other unregulated markets seem to adhere to a Pareto distribution. In any case it seems most reasonable to base one's beliefs on the empirical findings that we have. Regardless of their potential shortcomings. Incomplete knowledge is better than no knowledge at all.