Paul Eastwick

But the challenge is that when we try to study this topic experimentally, when we actually look at people's filters and whether or not they'd actually end up liking those folks more once they meet face to face, it kind of ends up being more or less of a coin flip.

So in general, the filter is not my favorite feature of what the apps are doing.

Yeah, we don't do all that well.

Now, look, if I were to ask you to draw up your perfect partner, you would certainly sit here and list some attributes and many of those would be positive attributes.

But the problem is that the attributes you're coming up with, it's not like they're uniquely special to you.

And the thought experiment that I like to describe, we have real experiments that fit this.

But the thought experiment here is, well, imagine what would happen if, you know, here you are using your filters and all of a sudden we have, you know, some sort of Freaky Friday situation where my filters get mapped on top of your filters and your filters get mapped on top of mine.

And now the women I'm seeing are the women that David would have liked.

Well, the thing is, ultimately, it probably wouldn't have mattered.

I would have been just as likely to like the women once I meet them face to face if I'd been using your filters rather than mine.

So, yeah, some of them are filtering for, quote unquote, good things, but they're not like idiosyncratically appealing to the user.

Yeah, it feels so intuitive that we should click with people when we have more rather than fewer things in common.

But I think what we underappreciate is that people, especially when they're having face-to-face conversations, we largely start with the assumption that we would like these conversations to go well.

We would like them to be pleasant rather than unpleasant.

We would like them to be smooth.

And what we're often trying to do, and this is even true on awkward first dates, is we're trying to find points of connection.

Now, it can be challenging if you don't find anything to talk about with somebody else.

But many times the things that we can find to chat about are very small.

They're not actually all that, like, central to who we are as a person.

Now, if we're thinking about then what cascades out into a long-term relationship, okay, fine.