It’s difficult to judge, but I doubt this would reduce healthy and compatable marriages and primary relationships. People who like each other within EA will still naturally spend time together. They will still become friends, and those friendships will still grow into more than platonic friendships. I don’t see how the recommendations above would stop that?
Perhaps there might be a (potentially healthy) time delay that would kick in before those positive romantic relationships got started but I doubt many potentially wonderful relationships would be stymied if we followed the OPs thoughts. Perhaps the cost of lost relationships would be very minor or even negligible.
Perhaps this is just the hopeless romantic inside of me coming out tho...
It’s a really difficult counterfactual—would the amazing relationship have happened if more people chose to follow the OP’s guidelines? I’m not sure what you mean by the marginal case exactly.
Sorry, I was too terse. There’s a thing that happens where people are trying to imagine the effect of a change where they think about how that change would affect a central example. For example, if you were trying to guess what sort of effect charging slightly more for bread would have you might reason that people who buy bread generally like it a lot and a few cents either way is unlikely to change whether it is worth it for them to make the purchase. This kind of thinking reliably gets the wrong answer, because instead of typical bread consumers the ones whose purchasing behavior is most likely to change are the ones who are most on the fence about whether to buy bread. These cases are called, at least in economics, “marginal”, and reasoning that explicitly focuses here is called “thinking on the margin”.
So we need to think about the kind of relationships that would be most affected. For example, ones where the people were initially only in the same place together for a short time (ex: at a conference) and without moving somewhat quickly through stages of intimacy would have gone off in different directions before realizing how good a fit they are for each other.
Your comment described how the typical couple would still get together, and I don’t disagree there. I’m not claiming that the rate would go to zero, just that it would decrease and we should think about how much it would go down and how bad that would be.
I think if more people followed the recommendations then the gender imbalance within the community would decrease. This might increase the number of primary relationships by more than the number of marginal relationships lost.
Thanks for the explanation @Jeff Kaufman. My inclination is that under the 3 criteria laid out above, I’m not sure marginal cases would be very many at all. Most relationships could still move on unhindered, even after a short conference meeting. But it’s quite a wild guess I could be way off in this estimation especially not having attended EA events to observe these things first hand. I’d probably trust your judgement above mine here.
I could be way off in this estimation especially not having attended EA events to observe these things first hand. I’d probably trust your judgement above mine here.
I wouldn’t recommend that ;) I haven’t been to an EAG since 2018 and don’t have much personal experience with people trying to get together at events.
It’s difficult to judge, but I doubt this would reduce healthy and compatable marriages and primary relationships. People who like each other within EA will still naturally spend time together. They will still become friends, and those friendships will still grow into more than platonic friendships. I don’t see how the recommendations above would stop that?
Perhaps there might be a (potentially healthy) time delay that would kick in before those positive romantic relationships got started but I doubt many potentially wonderful relationships would be stymied if we followed the OPs thoughts. Perhaps the cost of lost relationships would be very minor or even negligible.
Perhaps this is just the hopeless romantic inside of me coming out tho...
I think you might be thinking about the typical case instead of the marginal case?
It’s a really difficult counterfactual—would the amazing relationship have happened if more people chose to follow the OP’s guidelines? I’m not sure what you mean by the marginal case exactly.
Sorry, I was too terse. There’s a thing that happens where people are trying to imagine the effect of a change where they think about how that change would affect a central example. For example, if you were trying to guess what sort of effect charging slightly more for bread would have you might reason that people who buy bread generally like it a lot and a few cents either way is unlikely to change whether it is worth it for them to make the purchase. This kind of thinking reliably gets the wrong answer, because instead of typical bread consumers the ones whose purchasing behavior is most likely to change are the ones who are most on the fence about whether to buy bread. These cases are called, at least in economics, “marginal”, and reasoning that explicitly focuses here is called “thinking on the margin”.
So we need to think about the kind of relationships that would be most affected. For example, ones where the people were initially only in the same place together for a short time (ex: at a conference) and without moving somewhat quickly through stages of intimacy would have gone off in different directions before realizing how good a fit they are for each other.
Your comment described how the typical couple would still get together, and I don’t disagree there. I’m not claiming that the rate would go to zero, just that it would decrease and we should think about how much it would go down and how bad that would be.
I think if more people followed the recommendations then the gender imbalance within the community would decrease. This might increase the number of primary relationships by more than the number of marginal relationships lost.
Thanks for the explanation @Jeff Kaufman. My inclination is that under the 3 criteria laid out above, I’m not sure marginal cases would be very many at all. Most relationships could still move on unhindered, even after a short conference meeting. But it’s quite a wild guess I could be way off in this estimation especially not having attended EA events to observe these things first hand. I’d probably trust your judgement above mine here.
Also interesting point Patrick maybe!
I wouldn’t recommend that ;) I haven’t been to an EAG since 2018 and don’t have much personal experience with people trying to get together at events.