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Domain 16

Dating and Attraction

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A matching market with severe information asymmetry, where costly signals do the work talk cannot.

It is a matching market with unusually bad information, so the standard structures appear in strength. Costly signals separate types where talk cannot. Low-cost approach channels attract volume rather than quality, which is adverse selection and not a comment on anybody's character. And the whole thing is a search problem with an option value to waiting, which means the real question is rarely whether this person is good but whether continuing to look is worth what it costs.

Two coffee cups on a small round table, one chair pushed back.
The player this field leaves off the list

Everyone else in the market, whose choices set what each person's alternatives actually are. Nobody's options are a fact about them alone, and treating them that way produces most of the bad advice in this domain.

What to look for

  • Is this claim costly to make? If not, it is not evidence.
  • Does the channel make approaching cheap? Then expect volume, not fit.
  • What is the cost of continuing to look, versus of stopping?
  • Who else is in this market, and how does that change what is available?

The shapes that run this field

Shape 12

Costly Signalling

A costly, observable action that reveals private information because faking it would not pay.

Shape 13

Screening and Adverse Selection

Hidden information before the deal. The uninformed side designs the offer so that different types choose differently.

Shape 20

Bargaining

Both parties do better with a deal than without one; the negotiation is over the division of that surplus.

Shape 04

Pure Coordination

Multiple equilibria, no conflict of interest — the whole problem is agreeing which one.

Shape 07

The Repeated Game

Repetition creates a future cost to defecting today, which can make cooperation individually rational without changing anyone's character.

In practice

Costly Signalling

Effort, inconvenience and forgone options read as sincerity, because they are the only costly part.

Screening and Adverse Selection

A channel where approaching costs nothing, attracting volume and selecting badly.

Pure Coordination

Two people each waiting for the other to make it explicit, and both reading the delay as disinterest.

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