Progress on romance essay

Author: colah

posts/romance-cause-area/bibliography.bib

@@ -111,3 +111,21 @@ @article{drefahl2010does
   year={2010},
   publisher={Springer}
 }
+
+@article{stevenson2006bargaining,
+  title={Bargaining in the shadow of the law: Divorce laws and family distress},
+  author={Stevenson, Betsey and Wolfers, Justin},
+  journal={The Quarterly Journal of Economics},
+  volume={121},
+  number={1},
+  pages={267--288},
+  year={2006},
+  publisher={MIT Press}
+}
+
+@article{langeslag2017down,
+  title={Down-regulation of love feelings after a romantic break-up: Self-report and electrophysiological data.},
+  author={Langeslag, Sandra JE and Sanchez, Michelle E},
+  year={2017},
+  publisher={American Psychological Association}
+}

posts/romance-cause-area/img/ImportanceOverview.png

@@ -192,13 +192,13 @@ <h3 class="section"><a href="#neglectedness">Neglectedness</a></h3>
           <li><a href="#neglectedness-baseline">Relevant Baseline</a></li>
           <li><a href="#neglectedness-new-opportunities">New Opportunities</a></li>
           <li><a href="#neglectedness-market-failure">Reasons for Market Failure</a></li>
-          <li class="sub"><a href="">Stigmatization</a></li>
-          <li class="sub"><a href="">Oligopolies</a></li>
-          <li class="sub"><a href="">Perverse Incentives</a></li>
+          <li class="sub"><a href="#neglectedness-market-failure-stigma">Stigmatization</a></li>
+          <li class="sub"><a href="#neglectedness-market-failure-oligopoly">Oligopolies</a></li>
+          <li class="sub"><a href="#neglectedness-market-failure-incentives">Perverse Incentives</a></li>
           <li><a href="#neglectedness-dating-sites">Dating Sites</a></li>
-          <li class="sub"><a href="">Hookup Attractor</a></li>
-          <li class="sub"><a href="">Unsophisticated</a></li>
-          <li class="sub"><a href="">"Really Trying"</a></li>
+          <li class="sub"><a href="neglectedness-dating-sites-hookup">Hookup Attractor</a></li>
+          <li class="sub"><a href="neglectedness-dating-sites-unsophisticated">Unsophisticated</a></li>
+          <li class="sub"><a href="neglectedness-dating-sites-trying">"Really Trying"</a></li>
           <li><a href="">Other Actors</a></li>
         </ul>
       </div>
@@ -305,6 +305,13 @@ <h3>Aside: Units</h3>
       This seems like a more human-scale unit than the total sum of DALYs lost over the human population.
     </p>
 
+    <p>
+      (To be really technical: strictly, my units are not DALYs, since DALYs are shortfall from an idealized healthy life,
+      and my units are shortfall from a romantically optimal life.
+      The more general "Quality Adjusted Life-Year Unit" (QALY) would probably make more sense.
+      But several of my experiments are calibrated against research that is quantified in DALYs.
+      Rather than adding extra confusion by switching units back and forth, I decided to stick with DALYs.)
+    </p>
 
 
 
@@ -619,6 +626,13 @@ <h2 id="importance-bad">Bad Relationships <span style="float: right; font-size:
       but are accounted to "absence of good relationship."
     </p>
 
+    <p>
+      (I suspect that other methods of estimating this would come out with larger estimates.
+      All experiments I've done trying to elicit preferences for good relationships come out much expressing stronger preferences than GSOEP,
+      and I expect the same thing would be true for bad ones.
+      I ran out of time to explore this, but I think trying to understand the distribution of relationship quality would be really interesting.)
+    </p>
+
 
     <h2 id="importance-breakups">Breakups <span style="float: right; font-size: 70%; color:#888; margin-top: 4px;">0.17 DALY PC</span></h2>
 
@@ -1036,16 +1050,102 @@ <h3 id="tractability-change-augment">Social Augmentation</h3>
 
     <h2 id="tractability-structure">Online Dating - Structural Improvements</h2>
     <h3 id="tractability-structure-incentives">Incentive Design</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      I worry many dating websites may operate on business models that leave them
+      <a href="#neglectedness-market-failure-incentives">unaligned with their users</a>.
+      This is a tricky problem, because the websites are effectively selling an
+      <i>increased chance</i> at people find a partner.
+      The consumer has little way to evaluate if they're really getting that.
+      (Many users are also in a slightly emotionally vulnerable state.)
+      Meanwhile, the dating website makes money if the user stays engaged with the platform.
+      Of course, the long-term enlightened interest of the website might be more aligned with the user due to reputational effects,
+      but companies often struggle to follow their really long-term interest when their short-term incentives pull them in another direction.
+    </p>
+
+    <p>
+      The obvious solution is to do a non-profit structure.
+      I think this would be a really interesting approach,
+      and there's a chance it might also help really distinguish a new platform from existing ones and gain market share.
+    </p>
+
+    <p>
+      I think you could also use more exotic business models that do align incentives.
+      For example, the user could place money in escrow, and then chose whether the platform or a charity gets it tens years later.
+      I also think an approach where people could put up a bounty for other people to matchmake them (paid out if they get married)
+      could be interesting if it could be framed in a way that didn't make people feel uncomfortable.
+      (It would pair well with the open platform approach, discussed next.)
+    </p>
+
+    <p>
+      One interesting approach that fuses the non-profit and exotic business models would be try
+      to make it popular for people on your platform to make joint donations when they get married instead of buying diamond rings.
+      (Personally, I'd find that way more emotionally impactful!)
+      If it was successful, it would create externalize the importance of matchmaking to any altruistic actor,
+      and would make a non-profit dating website justified purely on fund raising grounds.
+    </p>
+
     <h3 id="tractability-structure-open">Open Platforms</h3>
+
+    <p>
+      Another problem with dating websites may be <a href="#neglectedness-market-failure-oligopoly">oligopolies</a> arising due to network effects.
+      This is basically the expected outcome -- if a large dating website can make better matches than a small one, oligopolies will emerge.
+    </p>
+
+    <p>
+      Open Platforms allow many different parties can share an underlying resource, such as the Internet, that would have otherwise caused a natural monopoly.
+      It's possible that something similar could be done for dating websites, allowing more rapid competition and innovation.
+    </p>
+
+
+    <p>
+      An Open Platform approach could also help external researchers get access to dating website data.
+      This seems both important for allowing independent evaluation of whether users are actually being helped,<d-footnote>
+      Dating website self evaluations are sometimes kind of dubious, but it's hard for researchers to actually evaluate them <d-cite key=""></d-cite>(Finkel et al, 2012).
+    </d-footnote>
+      and also because it could be a really valuable data asset for social science research.
+    </p>
+
     <h3 id="tractability-structure-bad">Avoiding Bad Actors</h3>
 
+    <p>
+      It only takes a relatively small fraction of users acting spammy or abusive to damage a platform.
+      It seems likely modern machine learning can help a lot with this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Honestly, I think there's some chance dating websites should get proof of identity to avoid duplicated accounts, if this is a major concern.
+      Some other platforms that facilitate interactions between people, such as AirBnB, do this.
+      Of course, there's major equities weighing against this -- for example, it would likely make the platform unusable LGBT people in unsafe regimes --
+      but for websites focused on countries that don't have these issues, the benefits may outweigh those costs.
+      People may be a lot more hesitant to act poorly if it can lead to actually losing access to the website.
+    </p>
 
     <h2 id="tractability-policy">Public Policy Interventions</h2>
 
     <p>
-      I think there's a few plausible public policy interventions:
+      Jumping out the dating website focus, I think there's a few plausible public policy interventions that could help with romantic suboptimality:
     </p>
 
+    <ul>
+
+      <li><b>No-fault Divorce</b>: It seems pretty likely that making it easier to divorce disproportionately ends bad relationships.
+        Some research (which I haven't looked at closely) suggests that female suicide rates significantly fall after states implement no-fault divorce <d-cite key="stevenson2006bargaining"></d-cite>
+      </li>
+
+      <li><b>Tracking Romantic Suboptimality</b>:
+        This is speculative, but I think it might be pretty impactful for states to track romantic suboptimality, just like we do burden of disease.
+        Tracking things brings attention to them, and helps us know if we're getting traction.
+        This might be an interesting lens for other problems, too: how much value is lost to bad work environments, mass incarceration, the Bay Area housing crisis, etc.
+        It would be really cool to live in a world where these could all be discussed in similar units.
+      </li>
+
+      <li><b>Education</b>: If we had highly actionable advice on how to deal with romantic situations,
+        and there was expert consensus, it might be pretty exciting to try and get it integrated into sex education curriculum.
+        The closest thing I'm aware of is negative reappraisal for coping with breakups <d-cite key="langeslag2017down"></d-cite>, which doesn't seem sufficiently vetted
+        (and I worry might undermine future friendship with your ex).
+      </li>
+    </ul>
+
     <h2 id="tractability-personal">Personal Scale Interventions</h2>
 
     <p>
@@ -1070,12 +1170,6 @@ <h2 id="tractability-personal">Personal Scale Interventions</h2>
 
 
 
-
-
-
-
-
-
     <!--
     ============================================================================
     ============================================================================
@@ -1106,7 +1200,7 @@ <h1>Part 3: Neglectedness</h1>
       </p>
 
       <p>
-        I think the answer is very much so.
+        I think the answer is probably yes.
       </p>
 
       <h2 id="neglectedness-baseline">Relevant Baseline</h2>
@@ -1156,7 +1250,7 @@ <h2 id="neglectedness-market-failure">Reasons for Market Failure</h2>
       </p>
 
 
-      <h3>Stigmatization</h3>
+      <h3 id="neglectedness-market-failure-stigma">Stigmatization</h3>
 
       <p>
         If romance is as important to people as our importance results suggest, it seems like,
@@ -1181,7 +1275,7 @@ <h3>Stigmatization</h3>
       </p>
 
 
-      <h3>Oligopolies</h3>
+      <h3 id="neglectedness-market-failure-oligopoly">Oligopolies</h3>
 
       <p>
         Dating websites are a very strong example of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect">network effects</a>.
@@ -1206,7 +1300,7 @@ <h3>Oligopolies</h3>
         (See discussion of open platform approaches earlier for strategies on undermining the oligopoly phenomenon.)
       </p>
 
-      <h3>Perverse Incentives</h3>
+      <h3 id="neglectedness-market-failure-incentives">Perverse Incentives</h3>
 
       <p>
         Before OkCupid was acquired by match, they had a wonderful essay titled
@@ -1264,7 +1358,7 @@ <h2 id="neglectedness-dating-sites">Dating Sites</h2>
 
 
 
-      <h3>Unsophisticated</h3>
+      <h3 id="neglectedness-dating-sites-unsophisticated">Unsophisticated</h3>
 
       <p>
         A major part of OkCupid's historical branding was that they were doing math and statistics.
@@ -1290,7 +1384,7 @@ <h3>Unsophisticated</h3>
 
 
 
-      <h3>Hookup Attractor</h3>
+      <h3 id="neglectedness-dating-sites-hookup">Hookup Attractor</h3>
 
       <p>
         It seems like most dating websites have been drifting towards facilitating casual relationships and hookups.
@@ -1300,7 +1394,7 @@ <h3>Hookup Attractor</h3>
         And there's no shortage of writing by sad users who feel pulled into participating in hookups as a path finding long-term partners by this shift.
       </p>
 
-      <h3>"Really Trying"</h3>
+      <h3 id="neglectedness-dating-sites-trying">"Really Trying"</h3>
 
       <p>
         This critique of dating websites seems like the most subjective and least fair,
@@ -1319,8 +1413,13 @@ <h3>"Really Trying"</h3>
 
 
       <h2>Other Actors</h2>
-      <h3>Academics</h3>
-      <h3>Mathchmakers</h3>
+
+      <p>
+        <b>Academics:</b>
+        I'm really grateful to academics working in this space, but I think they're trying to understand romance,
+        not to implement solutions to romantic suboptimality.
+      </p>
+
       <p>
         <b>Matchmakers:</b>
         I don't have much of a sense for the efficacy of professional matchmakers, but it seems like they can only help a relatively small number of people.
@@ -1332,11 +1431,23 @@ <h3>Mathchmakers</h3>
       <hr>
       <br>
 
+      <h1>Future Work</h1>
+
       <h1>Appendices</h1>
       <p><a href="mechanical-turk.html">Appendix A: Mechanical Turk Surveys</a></p>
       <p><a href="calculations.html">Appendix B: Annoying Calculations and Estimates</a></p>
 
 
+      <h1>Acknowledgments</h1>
+
+      <p>
+        I've spoken to way to many people about this over the years to have any hope of capturing everyone.
+        I'll make an attempt, but
+      </p>
+
+      <p>
+        Please know that I'm very grateful to everyone who's taken time to talk to me, even if I forgot to list you here, and just reach out if you'd like to be added.
+      </p>
 
 </d-article>