Comment by abio on Why are people so bad at dating? · 2020-04-13T17:31:01.894Z · LW · GW

"2. Cases where decision-makers can’t reliably learn the information they need to make decisions, even though someone else has that information

Again, this isn’t compelling. PhotoFeeler clearly lets you know what other people think of your photos."

I do actually think this is a bigger instance. There are *a lot* of dating resources, websites, blogs, books, methods. Some of these conflict with each other. Sometimes, the specific advice or guideline that a person needs (a dating book might say "be more confident" but this would not help someone who comes off as too cocky on their dating profile or in person). All of this, what we could noise, adds an additional "cost", what we call in economics a "friction cost". Also, to the vast majority of people, picking up a book, admitting that they need to change their own methodology, or doing accurate self-critique (maybe it's not me who is unappealing, maybe my pictures are bad; maybe I'm not coming across well vs WOMEN/MEN's STANDARDS R 2 HIGHH) isn't a small transaction cost at all.