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Comment by dkarl | Hacker News Reader

The study makes a very incorrect assumption, which is that a person's report of their own tastes and habits will be more reliable than their partner's. Living in stable circumstances, settling into a mindless routine, a person's self-image diverges from reality. The person lives in the fantasy; the partner sees the reality.

For instance, even in just a four-year relationship, I ended up getting in arguments with my girlfriend about whether she liked eating Chinese food, watching new movies, going kayaking, or seeing a certain kind of music. I'd say she didn't. She'd disagree, saying, "Of course I like that, I've always liked that," and I'd counter, "It's been two years since we last did it and a year since I gave up suggesting it."

I would say in that case that I knew my partner, and she was ignorant of herself.

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Honestly, the world isn't black and white like that. And I can see why you argued about it; that would drive anyone mad being told what they do and don't like based on a histogram of time spent in the last 2 years.

There are many explanations for not spending time doing things you like; competing priorities is the main one (i.e. I like other things more than them) and also environment (perhaps you enjoy kayaking but hate the drive to get there, or don't want to go with johnny and max because you don't like max).

Just because you don't do something doesn't mean you don't like it. It's a false dichotomy.

But, at the same time, claiming to like something doesn't (for sure) mean that you do like doing that something. We can be lying to our partners, to the world, to ourselves.

Especially bittersweet are the times you predict your partner's taste in something, they deny it, and a few months later it turns out you were right after all.

When the inconveniences of normal daily life stop you from doing the things you like to do, that's a sign of depression, not normal behavior.

I never said anything to the contrary. I said that it's a false dichotomy; just because you don't spend time doing something doesn't mean you don't like it, just that you may not like doing it as much as other activities.

I love playing games, but never do because I like other things (learning mainly) far better. I also love kayaking, but would much prefer to go to the gym because of convenience. That doesn't mean I don't like playing games or kayaking; I really enjoy doing both. Get it?

Hmmm...It strikes me that her liking something is her internal mental association that you are not privy to, and any attempt you make to indirectly observe it using her choices as a proxy is problematic. I like the artist formerly known as Prince — Let's Go Crazy is a phenomenal track — but I haven't wanted him on my turntable for ages because he is in competition with other things I like more. I absolutely love The Beatles but i refuse to own or play their music because it has been so ubiquitous that there's no point in playing it more. (It's all in my head.) I think you may be deluding yourself about your superior knowledge of her likes.

"Actions speak louder than words."

Granted there can be different definitions of "like" in play here ("It does not cause me revulsion" or "I prefer to eat it vs. almost anything else"). But still, actions speak louder than words. When looking for the truth always choose the actions.

Nice platitude, but I don't buy it here. There is a finite amount of time in my life, and a multitude of things to enjoy. If our culture has overplayed the Beatles to the point where I know their material so well that my ability to extract value from listening has passed the point of diminishing returns it does not mean that I did not enjoy them, or no longer like them. It might simply mean that I think I'd gain more from my own private habit of over-playing Steve Morse.

I've had a great time on every occasion that I've ever gone bowling. It still wouldn't be in the top 100 choices of how to spend an evening, though. Yet I like bowling. Maybe we are using different definitions of 'like'.

It's not a platitude, it's a metric for finding truth that successfully compensates for what appears to be an inborn weakness in the human brain for overvaluing words.

It would be a great metric in a controlled scenario between two choices. The more choices you add, the less meaningful it becomes. I would say it has negligible value in determining that your girlfriend is mistaken about liking to skii.

It was like this: "You pick what we're doing tonight. I don't care."

"Cool, let's go to this Chinese place/this club downtown/this movie you haven't seen."

"Ehhh, well, not that, not tonight, okay?"

"Okay. How about Indian food/this coffeeshop/this movie you've seen a million times?"

"Yeah, sounds great!"

Multiply that by enough repetitions that I felt it would be obnoxious of me to keep suggesting the given activity. Sometimes I'd push because I really felt like doing something, but it still wouldn't happen. So eventually I'd give up and stop suggesting the things that she was never willing to do, because I'm not perverse or passive-aggressive. I didn't want to be a dick and keep suggesting something again and again after she'd turned it down twenty times in a row. That's how I knew she didn't really like something. But she was convinced it was just a huge coincidence that every time I'd suggested, say, Chinese food in the last twelve months she wasn't in the mood for it.

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