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Comment by purple_ferret | Hacker News Reader

It's clear people are attracted to others with similar physical features so...

Dating app idea: Matching you with a genetically similar person (of your preferred partner sex).

That's an interesting idea. Would there be safety checks to ensure the matched couples are not related to one another and that they do not both have the same genetic defects that increase the chances of the offspring inheriting said defects? I ask because sometimes people end up meeting and dating a half sibling that the parent did not tell them about for reasons that were not supposed to ever be known.

Isn't the aversion towards consanguinity more about taboo than science these days?

I'm guessing modern genetic tests can predict the safety of having children even between siblings (because most of the issues are with recessive genes).

Im probably going to get a lot of flack for this, but I'd say it's the taboo part.

It wasn't that long ago that gay marriage was illegal with, as far as I know, the only real argument being the opinion of "That's gross". With the tests you describe, or permanent sterilization, the only real thing in the way of incestuous marriage is "That's gross". I'm guessing we won't see any court decisions that truly dive into the reasoning for a long time, if ever (in our lifetimes). It is an interesting thought experiment.

Isn't the aversion towards consanguinity more about taboo than science these days?

I honestly don't know. I suppose if the system could at least run tests for the recessive genes maybe that is sufficient. Even if the issues are strictly taboo it could possibly make for very awkward family gatherings as people start to put together who knew who.

Doctor: "Tests came back negative my man, have at your sister!!"

High fives all around

You seem a little overexcited about this…

That’s actually not clear to me. Anecdotally I have often experienced the saying “opposite attract” to be true. I have had discussions with friends who hold your point of view. Of course it could also depend on how we define similarity (e.g in terms of race, ethnicity, personality type, etc.). I wonder if there’s some percentage of the population that’s wired to look outside of itself.

> “opposite attract”

This is neither right nor wrong. As is usually the case, it's quite a bit more complicated than that.

Most people who enter a relationship with someone else prefer a partner with a significant overlap in their demographic. Especially attributes like age, race, class, culture, height, hobbies, ambitions, etc. This is not universal, of course, but it is far and away the most common case, and is supported by both research and casual observation.

The most robust romantic relationships seem to be when the two people are largely similar but whose more minor differences complement one another in a positive way. One way to summarize it: A strong team of two is more than twice as effective as a single individual. Relationships that don't last tend to be because the individuals cannot find enough common ground to be happy in the present and don't see a positive future (the most common case), or because they are _too_ similar, grow bored of the relationship and feel like they are missing out on some critical piece.

There are outlier couples who seem to do just fine despite apparently massive difference differences in personality, culture, and so forth, but they are just that: outliers.

I mostly agree with your post. I’m just curious about which variables people care about most and how accurate your “far and away” statement is. For example, a quick google search suggests that if we take race/ethnicity, the following study shows that 17% of newlywed couples in the US are intermarried.[1] A minority to be sure, but a substantial one. Of course this is just one variable. It could be that such couples would be very similar wrt other factors. And this says nothing about the long-term potential of such relationships.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/1-trend...

Not too similar though…

twin brother what are you doing?

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