Mate Selection for Modernity | Hacker News Reader

Mate Selection for Modernity

quillette.com

23 pointsmgh210 comments

> It is imperative that we, as a society, think carefully about solutions to this burgeoning crisis.

I'm not sure what a solution would even look like. After all, "Hypergamy is an evolutionary fixture. Hating it is tantamount to hating thermodynamic laws or Archimedean axioms. It simply is."

Encourage young men to be more successful? Redefine male attractiveness? Turn everyone gay?

It's one way to look at the increase in men picking up body-building as a hobby if they are competing with other men for the attention of women.

Is there an increase in body-building? I had not heard.

I had seen it even before Instagram took hold. People, especially younger people, are shifting to a bimodal distribution where they are either extremely in-shape and enthusiastic about the gym lifestyle, or very out-of-shape. It seems the bell curve is flattening a bit. That's my personal observation from observing life in a couple of coastal cities in the US.

> Morgan Stanley forecasts that 45 percent of working women between the ages of 25 and 44 will be single and childless by 2030, the largest share in history

2.1 / (1 - 0.45) = 3.82 children per remaining woman, at equilibrium.

This only happens if you marry at, like, 22.

It's entirely reasonable though:

(38 - 22) / 3.8 = 4.2 years between children.

How much would that cost, though? To house them? To send them to college? Therein lies the difficulty.

Perhaps the solution is to simply accept that you will not have the money or the lifestyle you were raised to expect and desire. You will not have a big house, or a new kitchen, and you will not live in California. Your children will share a bedroom and have bunk beds. Your weekend plan will be to barbeque at the park.

It's doable, if you can find someone who wants to do that with you.

Mmmm, most houses in California are two bedrooms. If you live outside of there in a cheaper area you can get 5 bedrooms if you want!

I tune out anybody who uses the words alpha and beta even semi-seriously.

Hard same. I was none too impressed with seeing "Chad" for that matter. They just needed a "Stacy" or "supreme gentleman" to get the incel trifecta.

Really gave me a different perspective to "increasing access to education for women is the best birth control"

There is no way Malthus could have predicted this.

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