A million years ago, when computers were slow, internal memory was "ferrite-core" and data was stored on reels of tape, I had a job where one of my responsibilities involved analyzing "warranty data" generated by a large automobile manufacturer. It was not uncommon for a single family or product to sell over a million units a year.
It only took a little while to realize that LARGE data pulls took a long time to process. The up-side was that the results showed better stability.
Another thing I learned was to front-end-load the most aggressive filter. You see, our software was extremely primitive. It simply wrote selected records to another file as each criteria was sorted.
Suppose I was looking at warranty work on the interior door-panel for the front-left doors on specific colors of 1980-through-1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme sedans.
Using the specific warranty codes for interior door-panels as the first filter might eliminate 97% of all of the claims while choosing "Oldsmobile" as the first filter might only eliminate 75% of the claims while sorting first on interior colors might only eliminate 60% of the claims.
In the first case, the second "pass" would only have to process 3% of the original population while filtering first by "color" would result in the second pass having to process 40% of the original population.
That philosophy guides this discussion of "Efficient algorithms to find quality women"
Is the woman looking for a guy?
A quality woman who is actively looking for a guy is like a ripe banana on the grocery shelf. She won't be there for long.
If she has a guy and is looking for another, then she is a trader-upper and you are just a stepping-stone to greener pastures. If that is what you want...well, OK. But she doesn't meet my definition of a quality woman.
If she is a quality woman and recently ended a relationship, she might not be in the market...yet. Offer empathy. Be kind. It costs nothing. Don't push. You might have found your one-and-only before she is ready. Or maybe you will still be available.
It is likely that only 3% of the women you encounter are "actively looking" for a man at any one time. But don't fret if there is nobody in that 3% that tickles your fancy because that 3% has a high turn-over rate.
OK, I can already hear some of you grousing that the number is much, much higher than 3%, but how many of those girls are looking for a place-holder or an accessory and not a life-mate? They think they need a guy because all of their girlfriends seem to have one? Really, they are just another form of a trader-upper.
Those kinds of relationships do have a function. They give us a test-bed to convert hypotheticals to actual. How pretty does she actually have to be? Can you stand a younger brother who is a mooch? Do you really want a clinging-vine or a woman who wants to be in-control? Those "practice" relationships help us define the boundaries of the universe where the choices are acceptable.
Is she "Results Oriented" or "Process Oriented"?
Most of my readers are Results Oriented but I am not going to assume all of you are.
Some professions that are primarily RO are nurses, waitresses/cooks, business owners who make a profit, teachers who are pro-testing, cops, fire-fighters.
Some professions that are primarily PO are office workers, Human Resources, Social Workers, teachers who are anti-testing, public sector and businesses that are subsidized by outside funding (trust-fund babies).
It is worth noting that Results Oriented/Process Oriented is a spectrum. Even cops and nurses have standard processes and procedures (lists of questions to be asked in a specific order, flow-charts). The difference between an RO and a PO is that the RO OWNS the situation when it goes off-script. Arterial bleeding? The RO is not thinking about CYA. They are responding to the situation.
Hobbies that are RO are gardening, sports, running, hiking, fishing, fiber-arts, baking.
Hobbies that are PO are social media, social activism...
If you are strongly Results Oriented and your mate is strongly Process Oriented, there will be conflict. The primary motivator of the Results Oriented person is satisfying needs and what the job-site looks like after you clean up. The primary motivator of the Process Oriented person is to deflect potential responsibility blame. Those are two very different mindsets.
Attitudes about money
Most divorces are triggered by money, family priorities and sex in roughly that order.
All three are surrogates for control/dominance. All three share the characteristic that they are limited resources with many potential claims on them. Knowing a girl's attitudes about money gives you a pretty good handle on how they are likely to handle family and intimacy conflicts.
One way to get a feel for another person's attitudes about money is to ask "What would you do if you bought a lottery ticket and won a million dollars?"
If she isn't honest in her answer, then you are done with her.
If she says she will throw a huge party and post it on social media to impress people...you can do what you want but I would take a hard-pass.
If she is sophisticated enough to talk about splitting up the million dollars and putting a little here and a little there and maybe squirreling a little bit away just-in-case, then you probably have a keeper.
Summary:
Sort with most aggressive criteria first and I recommend "Is she looking for a long-term man" as the first sort.
Use "practice" relationships to learn your own, internal value map.
Results oriented/Process oriented is another early-sort.
Asking about a hypothetical lottery ticket is a non-threatening way to sound-out how sophisticated her thinking about money is and to learn about her need for approval from social-media.
Note to readers:
This post was going to be smooth and well honed but rabbit-holes emerged by the hundreds. So take it for what it is. It is a discussion about efficient search algorithms that uses "looking for a soul-mate" as a light-hearted example.
The Divine humor is that just after we get the tiniest bit good at looking for a gal, we get permanently taken off the market.
The primary sort should be "Is she not crazy enough to bother sorting for the rest? There are a LOT of unmedicated (and properly medicated, but still "Hard Pass") psychotic women out there looking for a man. Run, do not walk, away from them.
ReplyDeleteTrust me, the older they get the crazier they are.
After that, then your sort criteria makes sense.
Correction accepted.
DeleteThat was very interesting. Well done.--jen
ReplyDeleteYes, interesting. I believe my wife was more RO when I met her. As she's aged, she appears to have become more PO. There's quite a bit of conflict now that wasn't there 25 years ago. I am at a loss on what to do... cutting bait is only easy in the dating stages.
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese are almost OCD about being process oriented. The difference between the Japanese and the American version of PO is that the Japanese continuously fine-tune their processes so they are not at-odds with reality. When there is a bad outcome, the process is reviewed and adjustments are made.
DeleteAmericans are arrogant and are SURE that reality is wrong.
Is your wife up-dating and fine-tuning the Process or is she working from generic templates? I am not sure being Process Oriented is a deal-breaker if it is the first case.
Maybe one way to pull the bacon out of the fire would be to suggest that you both work together to tweak the (her) process (if-then-else flows and standard questions, etc.) when a bad outcome happens.
Well played... Now more questions than answers...LOL
ReplyDeleteMrmmmm… All well thought out and flawlessly logical… and all provably false.
ReplyDeleteThink, Joe: most divorces are about money? So - the woman divorces her man, effectively cutting her income in half and doubling her bills? For most women, divorce is a one way ticket to poverty. Obviously something else other than finances are in play with this. 80% of all divorces are driven by women. 80% of all accusations of rape and spousal abuse are false.
One danger of statistics was famously summed up by the eccentric black powder geek, Dr. Sam Fadala: “we notice that Mary is sad and morose when it rains - so we conclude that rain makes Mary sad. But the REAL reason Mary is sad is because when it rains, she can’t work in her garden…” There are obviously other factors involved in the War Of The Sexes that seem to have everyone losing.
Also at work here is that you’re taking statistical analytic methodology and tools for defective workmanship - and applying it to a study on women? Oh, Joe…😔 Silly rabbit! Tricks are for kids!😜👍
To me this poost stinks to high heaven of survivorship bias. Another rabbit hole that I particularly enjoy:
https://www.deanyeong.com/article/survivorship-bias
We are focusing on female train wrecks for our study - and to a certain extent that’s valid. Your buddy in the last poast with “The 8 Traits Of Low Women” was an excellent example. I think we need to focus on successful marriage for any real meaningful analysis. We as society have been analyzing garbage females to death, while the best of the breed is routinely ignored.
Obviously we need to do a reset and start again because the situation is only getting worse.
With regard to your second-to-last paragraph:
DeleteCharles Hugh Smith wrote an essay but he looked at the opposite end. He observed that business writers interviewed and analyzed the founders of Apple and Amazon and other fantastically successful businesses and then tell other start-ups what they need to do to be successful.
Mr Smith notes that the list is all applehood-and-mother pie, basic blocking and tackling. Example "Start-ups need to be innovative and offer things that are unique".
Well, "Duh!".
The writers blithely ignore that there were over 10,000 start-ups (roughly) in Silicon Valley and only one became Apple. 9999 of those start-ups were not radically different than Apple EXCEPT for Job's magical luck and sense of timing.
That "sense-of-timing" was the point of focusing on women who are actually in that state-of-flux where she is "sticky" and is looking for a guy.
My first major filter for a mate is "is she Christian?". Not nominal, not because she was raised in a tradition, not one of the flood of self-saved decisionites. There, filtered 999 out of a thousand already. That filter probably also took out a bunch of other problems as well...
ReplyDeleteStefan v.
Cuts right to the chase, doesn't it.
DeleteI am currently observing my Brother in law's travails in the dating field. He has been looking for a decent woman for going on ten years now. He is kind, thoughtful and an all around decent guy and therefore either invisible or repellent to most modern women. This is actually a blessing, though he does not see it as such.
ReplyDelete