Paul Eastwick

Like if you're doing well, you know, you feel like your inbox is full and you feel like you're winning the marketplace.

And if you're not doing well, you feel like a loser on the marketplace.

The point that I've been trying to make is that this is not inevitable.

It does not have to be this way.

And furthermore, this actually does a very bad job of mimicking the environment in which we evolved.

It's very tempting to think, oh, there's something natural about having to compete for mates.

And, you know, if you're a six, you settle for the other sixes.

This actually, I think, is a pretty weak metaphor for thinking about the evolved nature of human attraction and relationship initiation.

I think I can.

I think I can do it.

So look,

When we look at how people behave when they're rating photographs and even when people are meeting other folks in person, there is some amount of agreement about who's desirable and who is not.

Now, I think the average person probably overestimates this.

the extent to which we agree about whether, for example, somebody's hot or not.

So let's say that you and I, like we had this guy in front of us and we had to make a simple hot or not judgment about this guy.

The odds that we're going to agree, that's about 65%.

That's higher than 50-50.

It's higher than random chance, but it's far from perfect.

And what that means is that, look, there's some amount of room there for idiosyncrasy.

You think some people are hot, and I don't think they're especially hot.