Paul Eastwick

And I'm not gonna sit here and say like, oh, anybody can click with anybody if they get sufficiently lucky with their initial topics of conversation.

But I think sometimes we under appreciate

The extent to which the right moment and a little bit of luck, finding a few things to connect over, can really do a good job of bringing people together.

The question from there is, do you have the time and the wherewithal to be able to capitalize on it to build something over time?

Relationships and compatibility, so much of it is constructed and it takes time.

And I want to go back to a form of dating where people get to do that.

Yeah, I mean, I do think that to some extent the apps are making this metaphor more omnipresent and making dating harder for a lot of people.

And in many ways, the metaphor feels real when you are swiping on the apps.

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.