Scott Alexander disagrees:
> https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-describable-d...
(see also the follow-up article https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comment...).
Important quote from this article concerning your point:
"Here are some things that are so obvious they sound like cheating:
Unless you’re bisexual, you probably care if someone is a man or a woman
Many people care whether their partner prefers polyamorous or monogamous relationships.
Many people want a partner of the same religion and level of religiosity.
Many people want a partner who matches their preference about whether to have children, and how many to have.
…because in practice, people end up very closely matched on some criteria
Only about 4% of marriages are between Democrats and Republicans
Only about 3% of high school dropouts marry a spouse with a college degree, compared to more than 80% of PhDs.
90% of whites marry other whites; 80% of blacks marry other blacks.
Husbands and wives’ social classes correlate at about 0.8
If 96% of Democrats are marrying non-Republicans, it seems like Democrats must have a strong preference against marrying Republicans, and ought to value having information about someone’s politics before they date them. Realistically, this underestimates the level of political sorting; I don’t think I’d be a good match for an extremely woke person, even if we were both technically “Democrats”."
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> Specifically, interests, hobbies, daily routines, objectives, etc. have nothing to do with compatibility.
Of course your claim "'We like the same things!' is the compatibility signal of a naive 22-yr old…" is correct, but I am very certain that there exist quite a lot of interests, hobbies and objectives that require a partner that is "compatible" with these (and in most cases, people who have such interests, hobbies and objectives know this very well). This obviously does not mean that the partner has to have the same hobbies and interests. :-)
For example,
- there do exist good reasons why in university time, sports climbing was basically a dating market
- a person who has hobbies that are associated with semi-legal activities (which clearly does not mean that he/she does anything illegal!) like hacking in the classical sense will likely not be a good fit for a spouse who works in law enforcement
- a person who is a climate activist will likely be a bad fit for a spouse who works in the oil/gas industry
- a person who is very into internet privacy topics (think cypherpunk) will likely not be compatible with a social media influencer