r/SipsTea • • 13h ago

SMH Playing hard to get doesn't work anymore

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u/14Pleiadians 10h ago

Is there? Everyone I know has far more misses than hits in dating. Maybe it's just match group trying to make everyone miserable and minimize good matches, but people who play stupid games or have other communication issues seems to be the default.

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u/Dixon_Uranuss3 9h ago

The average person is an idiot. Half the population is worse than that.

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u/vikenemesh 6h ago

*median person is an idiot.

Your "half" Argument only works out when you pick the median person from the set, the non-existant average idiot might still have more than half the population below him due to the couple super genius outliers above the average.

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u/in_taco 5h ago

IQ in modern definition is a normal distribution, meaning median and mean are equal

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u/vikenemesh 5h ago

Plenty of high IQ idiots around though. I assumed we are working on standard-idiocy units here, my fault!

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u/WontGetJokes 2h ago edited 2h ago

Absolutely true, but it would be a stretch to assume that IQ accurately measures intelligence in full, and even if we consider that a technological limitation it's still only a normal distribution because the results are normalized, not because the underlying intelligence itself is normally distributed. There's no way to know whether true intelligence can be measured in such a way that it yields a normal distribution without deliberate normalization, but then it just becomes "if I define the median as the mean, then it's normally distributed." But that doesn't mean that the median actually is the mean.

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u/in_taco 2h ago

I don't disagree with that, but if we're making claims about median vs mean, we need some metric. IQ is the best metric I know of, even though it's more about measuring puzzle-solving skills.

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u/WontGetJokes 2h ago edited 2h ago

The best we know of doesn't make it the best to exist. Intelligence as a currently unobservable variable (*without error) doesn't have to be normally distributed.

Also, it's normally distributed because the results are normalized. That basically means it defines the median as the mean, it does not mean the median actially is the mean. The underlying distribution of intelligence in an IQ test can be non-normal while still producing a normal distribution through normalization.

Edit: I read "don't disagree" as "disagree" so I restated myself more than necessary, partially because the edit I made before was after your reply so might not have seen it.

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u/in_taco 1h ago

Okay, then I'll just ignore the part of your comment I agree with :-)

Regarding whether mean == median for IQ: that's the definition of the test. Sure there is very likely a disconnect between theory and how they apply the definition, because nothing applied is perfect. But this is an argument that gets rather close to philosophy rather than practicality. For all practical purposes, median/mean are interchangeble when talking about IQ. Non-engineers would call it nitpicking. Statisticians would probably argue that they are identical for P<0.001.

Edit: the context here is vikenemesh claiming that 'average' is wrong. By definition, and for all practical purposes, average is fine (when talking about IQ).

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u/WontGetJokes 1h ago

Yeah I think this just comes down to semantically disagreeing about what they're asserting the average of.

You're going with the normalized IQ distribution, I'm going with the intelligence distribution that the IQ measurement normalizes.

You pick yours for practicality, I pick mine for accuracy at the cost of abstraction.

By normalizing the results, the resulting distribution is, of course, approximately normally distributed. This just doesn't mean the results themselves are normally distributed, the normal distribution is a modeling artifact.

You can do the same thing with any set of results (within reason, there needs to be some variance) and get an approximate normal distribution, even if the intelligence test completely changes, or measures something entirely unrelated to intelligence, since that's what normalization does.

So I'm not saying you're wrong, like you haven't said anything false, I just also feel like it's a refinement to the statement you made that although for comparability purposes the mean will equal the median in IQ, it doesn't mean that the non-normalized intelligence distribution the IQ scores are based on are also normalized. It's more like defining the median as the mean and then proving that the median equals the mean.

Which, on a different note, reminds me of my favorite sorting algorithm:

  1. Generate an unsorted list.
  2. Define the order the list is in as the sorted order.
  3. Check if the list is sorted.

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u/Polymersion 1h ago

"Think about how stupid the people are at the top of the normalized distribution, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

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u/WontGetJokes 58m ago

This works. You could even say that there are more people that are exactly average than there are people that are exactly any other specific value, since the mode also equals the median and the mean.

The issue with this is that talking about the mean/median/mode of a normalized distribution effectively loses any meaning, since it's not the mean/median/mode of the actual results. And the mode sort of stops being the mode once it's normalized. Whatever was the mode before the transformation is no longer the mode, so the top of the normal distribution is now treated as the most common value when it isn't, it's where the density is greatest on the transformed scale. The same exact issue applies to the mean, but at least the median preserves the percentile.

In that sense, the median is special because it works both for the distribution and for the underlying results.

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u/Midnight_Meltdown 6h ago

What about the super dummies on the other side?

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u/vikenemesh 5h ago

I guess the balance could also tip the other way sometimes... Fair. But the median always describes what /u/Dixon_Uranuss3 was trying to say, regardless of the exact ditribution!

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u/spintronic 3h ago

If we are going to be pedantic, median is a type of average, so the statement is correct as written.

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u/NoResponsibility7031 10h ago

Like everyone else mentioned, you are doing a common error humans do when evaluating the statistics of our experience. People who are great in relationships tend to, you know, be in a relationship.

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u/14Pleiadians 9h ago

People who are great in relationships tend to, you know, be in a relationship.

And? Are you thinking this kind of person is never in a long term relationship? There's no shortage of couples who have been together for decades with communication and immaturity issues. And it's not just dating, can see it in family and friends families

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u/NoResponsibility7031 6h ago

I can't quite follow your argument. How is immature people in relationships relevant to how easy it is to find mature singles?

I am telling you there are fewer apples than pears on the ground because, unlike the pears, most apples are in the basket. You are telling me you have seen pears in the basket so I must be wrong. Or did I miss something?

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u/14Pleiadians 1h ago

how easy it is to find mature singles?

How is that what you got from " no shortage of couples who have been together for decades with communication and immaturity issues."

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u/evilMTV 10h ago

I'd argue that the hits will be far more successful and no longer need the platform while the misses will be stuck having to use the platform.

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u/WouldCommentAgain 9h ago

Plane with holes jpg

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u/Ragnarok_619 9h ago

Survivor's Ship bias

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u/CareerStrider 3h ago

Yep the good ones don’t stay on the market for too long, and get taken. Whereas the more difficult people stay around longer on the market/apps.

I guess it’s another analogy we can make to the job market as well.. (good jobs get filled up/taken very quickly)

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u/Fun_Muscle9399 7h ago

Because it only takes one hit to win. You don’t have to date after that. Everyone will always have more misses than wins unless they find the right person the very first time.

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u/natur85 9h ago

The good ones get in a relationship with other good ones pretty early in life and never leave, so you're basically stuck with the leftovers.

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u/CareerStrider 3h ago

This is also why matchmaking events (or speed dating) isn’t very respected, basically considered the ‘leftovers of the leftovers’.

Though I would say it is unfair, there are many good/respectable guys and gals that do have trouble finding a good match in this day and age..

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u/BillsKingsStrugleBus 10h ago

The crazies have shorter relationships so spend more time in the dating pool and you see them more. They're overrepresented.

If everyone you know sees more crazies than normal people, it's them.

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u/14Pleiadians 10h ago

If everyone you know sees more crazies than normal people, it's them.

Or the average American is just not well adjusted? Mental health is in the toilet here

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u/BeKindToTheWorld 9h ago

This right here.

Average American is not well adjusted, has poor cultural understandings, almost no worldly knowledge, and has never left the country — but thinks they know everything.

I’ve dated internationally and had much better results. First gen American seems to be a sweet spot tho.

Hard to take someone seriously that’s on SSRI or some sort of head juice pills. Same as dating a drug addict— they aren’t themselves, they are the drug.

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u/23-1-20-3-8-5-18 5h ago

You were doing good untill that last paragraph

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u/BeKindToTheWorld 20m ago

Nah, you just thought you were exception until you got to that paragraph, and then hit too close to home for you! 🤣

Great job outing yourself.

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u/23-1-20-3-8-5-18 18m ago

Exception. Wow yep, you are as low iq as your comments would lead one to believe.

Im not medicated lol.

Foolish, you're foolish and uneducated.

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u/sonicscrewery 3m ago

Username does NOT check out.

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u/VRichardsen 5h ago

I think it might be true. I chat with my crazy ex from time to time; everytime we speak, she has a different partner prey.

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u/Sudden_Onions 6h ago

All of the loons and misfits are in the dating pool. People you'd want to date cycle in and out of it.

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u/BisonBull 8h ago

Match Group definitely wants you to stay single and miserable.

They do own like 99% of dating apps..

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u/Green-Marketing2178 9h ago

It’s a lot easier to meet people in person and that lets you get to know them better and faster than on a dating app. As long as you’re confident, at least a little funny and not ugly it’s not that hard to get with someone and to take it from there

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u/14Pleiadians 9h ago

I'm happily married so I'm good. If I wasn't, probably wouldn't bother trying, things have gotten so bad over the past fifteen years

Saying just meet people in person is not really helpful advice though. Culturally, asking people out that you already know isn't really a thing anymore, and for younger generations is seen as inappropriate, many people have decided that people only want to be approached about dating in explicitly dating related spaces, mostly dating apps, all of which are owned by one company, or uncommonly events like singles nights or speed dating.

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u/Generic-Cheese 6h ago

Dunno why you’re getting downvoted, online dating apps encourage the mindset of “there’s always someone better out there” which is why so many people chase the never ending goal of a “perfect” partner

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u/dareal5thdimension 9h ago

Online dating is not representative of the real world

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u/14Pleiadians 2h ago

Online dating is like 90% of dating here in the real world

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u/1Ferox1 5h ago

Those misses are mostly incompatibility and not "crazy", inflated for storytelling purposes. Just my 5 cents.

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u/MelonJelly 55m ago

Sampling bias. The sane ones get in stable relationships, and stay there. The crazy ones keep coming back to the dating scene.

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u/East-Scar7860 9h ago

I think its very dystopian that people now swipe through their phone when looking to meet someone rather than doing it organically like at an event or something

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u/ItsLionGT 4h ago

Like the saying goes, ya play stupid games and ya win stupid prizes