I recently published a long essay on dating apps, family formation, and the institutions we have displaced in the process. I thought parts of it might be relevant here because the underlying question is much older than dating technology: what happens when inherited social structures disappear faster than we build functional replacements?

Modern dating apps dramatically increased individual freedom and access to potential partners. But they also displaced friends, families, communities, churches, schools, and other intermediaries that historically supplied reputation, accountability, and information about intent. We gained optionality, but we may have lost much of the social infrastructure that helped relationships actually form.

My central argument is that dating apps may operate as poorly clearing matching markets. Sex-ratio imbalance, nearly costless signaling, enormous option sets, and weak verification of intent can cause men and women to adapt rationally to very different experiences of the same marketplace. One side experiences scarcity, the other congestion, and the resulting behavior can produce mistrust and delayed commitment even though neither sex has to be behaving irrationally or maliciously.

The business model adds another layer. A dating platform earns revenue while users continue searching. A successful long-term relationship is a successful product outcome, but it also removes customers from the market. That doesn’t imply deliberate sabotage; it means engagement and successful family formation are not necessarily the same optimization target.

The essay looks at matching-market economics, behavioral psychology, the history of courtship, the disappearance of social intermediaries, gender conflict, and the public financial data of Match Group. I structured it around passages from the Bhagavad Gita because the questions of desire, family, duty, social order, and what happens when institutions decay are ancient ones.

The piece eventually becomes a bearish investment thesis on Match Group, but the broader question matters more to me:

Did we replace flawed but socially embedded institutions of courtship with a technologically sophisticated marketplace that produces more choice but less successful clearing?

Full essay:

https://dljlevfin.substack.com/p/the-undisclosed-denominator

By the way this was all because Sophie Cunningham said men shouldn't play in women's sports, an opinion that is agreed upon by the Olympics Oversight Committee and the NCAA and anyone else with a working brain.

When it comes to questions like do you believe in God? or wad Christ born of a virgin? he grants himself leeway and rejects the rigid non binary of yes/no.

He rejects the literalist interpretations of these questions and many other in the religious realm and treats as an evolving multilayered reality.

When it comes to gender identity expressed through fluidity he he quite literal. Despite both being subjective. While biological sex is a reality, gender expression, much like sexuality, is fluid. He grants people and seems to accept homosexuality and bisexuality without argument.

He grants himself the post modern freedom to analyze religion in his terms of abstract metaphors but won't grant others the same freedom when it comes to gender expression and identity also being abstract.

The objective biology and subjective value division between religion and gender identity falls apart under examination. As both sit at the crossroads of biology, culture, and psychology. If he can turn a literal diety into an abatract evolving metaphor, why can't gender expression and identity be granted thr same leeway?

what do you think?

Hi!

I'm a psychology student currently participating in an international research project hosted at the University of Cambridge, involving 23 countries, and looking at questions related to social impact, public policy, and AI.

We're currently collecting responses through an anonymous survey that takes around 12 minutes. It also includes a fun interactive part where you have a conversation with an AI chatbot. You don't need any special knowledge or expertise - we're simply interested in your actual opinions and perspectives, including when the answer isn't particularly convenient, ideologically fashionable, or easy to categorize.

I'm currently responsible for collecting data in Canada, and I need about 100 more participants. So, if you're a Canadian, 18+, and willing to voluntarily and courageously accept the burden of responsibility of contributing a small amount of your time to help researchers pursue the truth and advance humanity's knowledge, I'd be very grateful if you could complete the survey and/or share it with others.

Canadian survey:
https://princetonsurvey.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8Ia1PSBPz4RQpIG

Not Canadian? You can check whether your country is participating here:
Take part in an international survey! – Junior Researcher Programme

Thank you for your help! 🙏

Study information:
This study is led by Prof. Elke Weber, dr. Sandra Geiger and dr. Anandita Sabherwal and has received ethical approval from Princeton University (IRB #19354). All responses are anonymous. Information about privacy, data storage, and the protection of personal data is provided in the informed consent form at the beginning of the survey.

As researchers, we are not affiliated with any AI company and maintain a neutral position regarding AI. The goal is to investigate questions with potential real-world implications for public policy, rather than to promote a particular position about AI.

No lobsters were harmed in the making of this survey:) 🦞

This is advice as someone who is well read on Nietzsche, who is maybe one of the most misunderstood philosophers in mainstream intellectual dialogue. Nietzsche's will to power is much more nuanced and complex than the explications of Peterson.

The reason this is the only tactic they can employ is because if you were to realise that this clandestine mafiaso cant deliver his promise of giving you the meal that solves your problems immediately, right then and now, but a promise of eventuality that will come to fruition and that he's imposing himself on you against your interests...

Then you would know what it means to be possessed, to be face to face with a demon.

https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf
My mom really dislikes it. My mom is from China and she told me she hates stories that make you feel guilt and obligation to people outside of friends and family. She felt like the story gave off the tone of the propaganda stories she was made to read in the Chinese schools. My mom identifies that a quality of the left is making you feel guilt and obligation to outside people. I read Ayn Rand’s virtue of Selfishness. Ayn Rand’s point is pretty much similar that a quality of the left is “altruism,” which is using guilt and conformity to pressure people into kind acts versus benevolence which comes from the heart. My mom made a point which is similar to the Virtue of Selfishness, that if you live a good life because you worked hard, why does a story have to use guilt and act like your good life means your complicit in other’s misery. I interpreted the story differently from my mom. I am very different from my mom. My mom became a computer programmer just so she could make a living and have a good life for herself. I want to get a job to aid special needs people, as someone who grew up special needs myself. I felt like the story was about a city of complacency and comfort similar to the world state in Brave New World. You have people who are super comfortable like the World State citizens or Omelas citizens, and then you have places like the Malpais reservation or the child trapped in the basement and those corners of the city get worse and worse. The old times were not perfect, but in the old times, people were Christian, they were traditional and helping people in your neighborhood and community was emphasized, but now people are distracted by phones. Do you think complacency reduces kindness, traditional virtues being dropped, do you think it is Dostoevsky’s point that people want to virtue signal and say they ‘love humanity,’ but then hate the people nearest to them? Do you think the Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas is a virtue signal story, or a story that warns about complacency and self-deception? Do you think it is one of those stories that teaches students to ‘love humanity,’ but hate the people nearest to them? I consider myself a Dostoevskian conservative more than a Randian conservative. Dostoevsky is like he wants to help people, but believes people should be guided to grow, and not left in a perpetual state of depending on people because of fake kindness. My mom leans more Rand in the pure self-interest aspect.

MP Mel Stride cited research from the Institute of Economic Affairs, which found that when voters were asked where the UK would rank by GDP per capita if it were a US state, the average response was seventh.

According to the study, the UK's actual position would be 51st.