Scott Alexander got married! Congratulations to the happy couple. And true to form, Scott takes a rationalist approach to the whole experience, starting with details on his search algorithm:
[M] recommendation for those of you in the same place I was ten years ago is: accrue micromarriages.
Micromarriages come from this post by Chris Olah. They’re a riff on micromorts, a one-in-a-million chance of dying. Risk analysts use micromorts to compare how dangerous different things are: scuba diving is 5 micromorts per dive; COVID is 2,500 micromorts per infection; climbing Mt. Everest is 30,000 micromorts per attempt. So by analogy, micromarriages are a one in a million chance of getting married. Maybe going to a party gets you 500 micromarriages, and signing up for a really good dating site gives you 10,000. If there’s a Mt. Everest equivalent, I don’t know about it.
Chris thinks of micromarriages as a motivational tool. If you go to a party, and you don’t meet anyone interesting there, it’s tempting to get discouraged. If you try again and again, with identical results, it’s tempting to give up. Chris says: instead, think of yourself as getting 500 micromarriages each time (or whatever you decide the real number is, with the understanding that you should update your estimate at some rate conditional on success or failure). All you need to do is go to a thousand parties and you have a 50-50 chance of meeting the right person! Maybe that number would sound more encouraging if it was lower – but it took me twenty years of trying, so I couldn’t have been getting more than a few hundred micromarriages a day, and I wasn’t slacking off.
[…]
Twenty years and exactly one million micromarriages later, I have yet to find any better advice. Gather your micromarriages while ye may, for time is still a-flying. Do annoying things, expect them to fail, and increment a little counter in your head each time, to prevent yourself from going insane.
This is the best popularization of search theory known to me. And once the search process finally worked out, Scott moved on to the economics of optimal contracts:
Marriage is a contract, no different in theory than an airline’s contract with an airplane manufacturer. The airline says they’ll buy X planes over the next ten years; the manufacturer says they’ll provide them at such-and-such a price. At the moment of signing, both parties think it’s a good idea. If they both knew it would stay a good idea, a contract would be unnecessary. But something might change. The air travel market might crash, and then the airline would regret having ordered more planes, and want to back out. The price of raw materials might go up, and then the manufacturer would regret offering such a low price, and want to back out themselves. But it would be unfair for the airline to make the airline manufacturer commit to a complicated course of action – building new factories, hiring lots of workers – and then change their mind, leaving them in a worse position than when they started. And it would be unfair for the manufacturer to make the airline commit to a complicated course of action – opening new routes, signing contracts with more airports – and then pull the rug out from under them and demand a higher price. So if you’re committing to a mutual enterprise where both sides are going to make big irreversible changes to satisfy the other, you want a contract where they both agree not to back out, and agree to suffer heavy social and financial sanctions if they do.
Details on Scott’s optimal contract:
We’re getting married, and doing a prenup, and we’ve worked out some more complicated edge cases just between the two of us. Will it be enough? I don’t know; I’m not sure anyone can know at this point.
No snark intended, but Scott’s write-up is a big wedding present from him to me. Why? Well, some years ago, Scott almost entirely denied the broad applicability of basic economics:
I propose that the preference/budget distinction is a bad way of dealing with anything more complicated than which brand of shampoo to buy. We intuitively talk about our choices as if there were some kind of “mental energy” that allows one to pursue difficult preferences, and I discuss some ways this confuses our intuitive notion of budgeting in Parts II and III here. You don’t have to accept any particular framing of this, but to sweep the entire problem under the rug is to ignore reality because you’re trying to squeeze all of human experience into a theory about shampoo.
To which I replied:
This paragraph is quite a leap. It’s sometimes hard to distinguish between preferences and constraints, so it’s “a bad way of dealing with anything more complicated than which brand of shampoo to buy”? How about choosing a career? Or a house? Or how many kids to have? Or what religion to join? These are all major life decisions, but we readily conceptualize them in terms of preferences and constraints. And contrary to Scott, this is good philosophy, psychology, economics, and common sense.
So what? Years ago, Scott told us that the “preference/budget distinction is a bad way of dealing with anything more complicated than which brand of shampoo to buy.” Yet he used this standard economic framework to deal with something vastly more complicated: his quest for a life partner.
The preference/budget distinction pervades Scott’s diction. “If you try again and again, with identical results, it’s tempting to give up.” “[I]t took me twenty years of trying, so I couldn’t have been getting more than a few hundred micromarriages a day, and I wasn’t slacking off.” “Gather your micromarriages while ye may, for time is still a-flying. Do annoying things, expect them to fail, and increment a little counter in your head each time…” Instead of telling people that there’s only one possible outcome because everything is “like a constraint,” Scott acknowledges that all of us have a vast array of choices – and must strategize to make the most of them. For shampoo and marriage alike.
As if that weren’t enough, Scott explicitly declares that, “Marriage is a contract, no different in theory than an airline’s contract with an airplane manufacturer.” Once again, he’s embracing the standard economic framework of preferences and constraints for life-defining decisions. Shampoo indeed.
Scott Alexander is a great guy. Other than the New York Times, everyone agrees. Part of what makes him great is that he teaches us how to make smarter choices. And a big part of making smarter choices is applying simple principles broadly. Don’t say, “That works for shampoo, but not dating” or “That works for airplanes, but not marriage.” Look at Scott: He’s living proof.
Update: I didn’t realize that Scott responded to my previous reply.
READER COMMENTS
Michael Stack
Jan 17 2022 at 11:59am
“Hey baby you satisfy my search algorithm in a way nobody else can, at least at currently forecasted search costs, and assuming certain types of tree pruning – wanna get married?”
David Henderson
Jan 17 2022 at 1:19pm
LOL.
Kamran
Jan 17 2022 at 11:28pm
— “and assuming certain types of tree pruning” —
If this looks like a joke, I can assure you it is quite literal.
MarkW
Jan 17 2022 at 3:57pm
I thought Robert Frank nailed the problem with rational approaches to finding a mate. But not many seemed to notice. It’s in Passions Within Reason, but it was published during paleolithic era of 1988, and there’s no ebook and no way to link to it. Steven Pinker did cite Frank in How the Mind Works, and Google Books does have snippets, so below is the best I could do. Scott’s not wrong about keeping at it and widening your search, but choosing a mate is NOT a decision like other big life decisions, it is sui generis. If you’re choosing your spouse rationally because they ‘tick all the boxes’, that’s sad, and you’re starting out with a strike against. Here’s the Frank section from How the Mind Works.
robc
Jan 17 2022 at 5:35pm
I disagree.
I have always said that love is a choice you make. If marriage is based on a love that you fall into and out of, it won’t last. And many don’t.
But if it is a conscious choice you make, you can choose to make it every day.
To be fair, I got married even later than Scott Alexander, I was 44 when I got married. So maybe I should be ignored.
As a Christian, I have biblical teachings to back up my view. There are many verses implying that love is a choice. There are orders to love your neighbor. There are orders to love your wife. If it was something you couldn’t control, you couldn’t be ordered to do it.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jan 18 2022 at 7:20am
Well said and thought.
MarkW
Jan 18 2022 at 9:53am
There’s no doubt that ‘falling in love’ is a powerful, universal part of human nature. The whole point of the mechanism is that A) It’s very hard to fake, and B) It’s very hard (sometimes impossible, even over a lifetime) to escape even when it is no longer wanted. It wouldn’t be a good commitment mechanism if it were easy to fake <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGBVcw6S1IM”>or to quit</a>. I also suspect that the ‘temporary insanity’ that is romantic love also evolved in part to enable young lovers to resist family and social pressures to marry strategically.
That’s said, obviously many people do marry without it (especially in non WEIRD cultures), and choose a spouse like buying a car or making a business deal (or their family does), and obviously it can work. But I can’t imagine advising people to try to avoid passion and instead choose rationally, substituting pre-nups and contracts as a commitment mechanism in place of strength of feeling. Ugh.
BC
Jan 17 2022 at 6:24pm
“Committed by what? Committed by an emotion. An emotion that the person did not decide to have, and so cannot decide not to have.”
What happens if the emotion fades? It’s a strange take to claim that emotion creates stronger commitments than reason. For example, I would think that a rational person would more reliably commit to a diet than an emotional one. The rational person diets because he understands the connection between caloric intake and weight. The emotional person quits his diet because he feels hungry. I can believe that evolution has naturally selected humans that feel deep, lasting emotional connections to mates and offspring. However, that’s different from a claim that, when searching for someone that will reliably honor a contract before laws recognizing that contract exist, one should favor individuals that are driven by emotion rather than reason. Evolution may select for some emotions that are long lasting. Many emotions, however, are clearly flighty.
Infovores
Jan 17 2022 at 9:19pm
I’m not so sure you’re right BC. Married people who have “positive illusions” about their partner (i.e. irrationally high opinion of spouse) have more successful marriages for example.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/close-encounters/201408/is-the-best-way-deal-your-partner-s-faults
MarkW
Jan 18 2022 at 12:59pm
What happens if the emotion fades? It’s a strange take to claim that emotion creates stronger commitments than reason.
Really? People make major life decisions (jobs, houses, automobiles, business arrangements) and then re-visit them and change them naturally when circumstances change or better opportunities arise. And yes, some people do seem to handle relationships the same way, going through a series of partners that offer a good fit for particular periods in their lives.
I knew a couple once who used to jokingly say to each other — “Oh, honey, you’re the best!!” and then, under their breath “(I can do)”. For a ‘reasonable’ couple, that wouldn’t be a joke but a simple statement of fact, and they might make it even more rational by adding “for now”.
There’s a wonderful comic bit in Pride and Prejudice, where the absurd clergyman, Mr Collins comes to visit, decides which of the Bennet girls he ought to pursue (like car shopping), and when he’s made his choice, he proposes to Elizabeth by listing all the (perfectly rational) reasons why he has chosen to marry and why she is an ideal candidate. Of course she rejects him. But her friend, who knows full well the man’s a fool, steps in and takes the deal (rationally — it’s the best offer she’s likely to get) and then, after marriage, contrives to spend as little time with her husband as possible.
Mactoul
Jan 18 2022 at 10:20pm
Marriage is unlike job, automobile etc. It is for keeps per the marriage vows. Even in the Pride and Prejudice incident, there is no question of divorce. Indeed, all characters behave rationally and none of them rely principally on emotions. So i don’t see how it supports your idea of romantic love being the bedrock of marriage.
MarkW
Jan 19 2022 at 7:17am
Indeed, all characters behave rationally and none of them rely principally on emotions.
No. Darcy’s proposal is the fun-house mirror image of Mr Collins’. He explains the rational reasons why Elizabeth is a bad match (little money, her mother is an idiot, she has low-connections). He’s only come to the point of asking because he can’t help himself — because of an emotional attachment he did not want and can’t overcome despite his best efforts (which he moronically tells her). It’s the complete opposite of rational — he’s driven entirely by emotion.
Glenn Reynolds
Jan 17 2022 at 9:00pm
Frank’s book is a tremendous piece of work, and I found it very helpful both in my personal life and in my scholarship. It really never got the attention it deserved.
Mactoul
Jan 18 2022 at 2:14am
Emotions are fluctuating things and thus poor basis for enduring commitment.
Romantic love leads to commitment and marriage. That is its role but it isn’t suited for the long haul of the married life.
Marriage isn’t like a contract in that it can’t be broken. The parties to a marriage are supposed to vow this Irrevocablity and the society is supposed to support them in keeping their vows.
Infovores
Jan 17 2022 at 5:07pm
In the original post I was struck by how important marriage and children were to Scott—I wouldn’t have guessed from the many other posts I’ve read on his blog. Insofar as others conceal the extent of such preferences, how should we reassess the social costs of policies and norms that reduce family formation?
Phil H
Jan 17 2022 at 8:48pm
I like the idea of holding Scott A to his reasoning, and I’m sure he does, too. But I don’t think this successfully addresses the distinction that Scott made in that post.
My reading was: he acknowledged that in many cases a person makes choices. They make those choices in an imperfect world, so the choices may not be “ideal” in some sense, but they are the best choices that the person can make in the world that exists (given their budget of time/money/whatever). This is what he means by the “theory about shampoo.”
But he claimed that sometimes when people make choices, there is an imperfection not in the world, but actually inside the person. This leads to imperfect outcomes caused *not* by imperfections in the world, but by imperfections in the person; or, alternatively, it leads to outcomes that are worse than the person would otherwise have achieved. When that happens, Scott said the person is constrained.
In his search for a mate, Scott was not constrained. He was not held back by an imperfection in himself. So the shampoo theory could apply (I’m not sure that’s exactly what he’s doing in this post, but I agree that he could).
Peter Gerdes
Jan 17 2022 at 11:30pm
Huh? The only claim being made my Scott in the original article you cite is simply that it’s overly simple to think of our MENTAL LIMITATIONS neatly fall into either the category of preferences or budget constraints. He isn’t denying that if you literally don’t have money to buy something that can’t be treated as a budgetary constraint nor that econ has nothing to say about our interactions with others.
The critique in the piece you cite was about how you dvide up things that limit what you do but can’t be traced to an obvious physical inability. He’s attacking the attempt to suggest that there is a sharp line with the need to sleep on one side and skizophrenia on the other. None of it is about the applicability of economics to interpersonal situations.
I’m suspect Scott would say something like: well of course when it comes to figuring out how to deal with the external world it can be useful to idealized some things as constraints and others as preferences but those aren’t objective facts about the world but useful idealizations. When you make the decision about how to try and meet someone during the year you might choose to treat your fear of parties as a preference but, when deciding if you want to take medication to treat that you might treat that as an undesired constraint that medication can remove.
Peter Gerdes
Jan 17 2022 at 11:43pm
More broadly this whole argument that mental illness should really be thought of as a kind of preference seems like it couldn’t even in theory prove anything. Ultimately, what we call something is a matter of choice. Yes, practically we tend to treat things that we label together similarly but that just means the game is to choose definitions so that we end up grouping together things that should be treated the same way.
The only question that matters for mental illness is whether there is more utility in the world if it is treated like a disease and ppl go get psychiatric meds when their prefs indicate a desire to eliminate a preference/constraint (whatever u want to call it) and skizophrenia get prescribed antipsychotics (sometimes, after getting picked up on the street perhaps unwillingly) or if we end up with more utility if they are treated like preferences and weren’t treated as defenses to legal charges etc. It might be even better if there was a third option in our society but that doesn’t seem like a live possibility.
But that’s an empirical question that simply can’t be answered a priori by talking about constraints and preferences. In other words there is a fact of the matter about what kind of social treatment is best but no fact (only definitional choice) about what we call it. But since others will change how they act based on our choice of definition (even if they shouldn’t) the empirical question should drive our choice of definition.
Rajat
Jan 18 2022 at 12:24am
I’m not sure I agree with Scott (or you). Is marriage like any other contract? It depends on the relevant counterfactual. Scott says about the airplane contract, “If they both knew it would stay a good idea, a contract would be unnecessary. But something might change.” That sounds to me like his counterfactual is a de facto relationship in which a couple acts as though they think living together and having children etc is a good idea, but they decide not to enter a contract (get married). But in many western places (like Australia, where I live), the financial implications of a split after a couple of years are virtually the same and many of the social implications converge as well. If the counterfactual is a non-cohabiting relationship, then marriage is not just about the contract because there is no option for both parties to continue to act as though living together, etc, is a good idea without entering into a contract (of sorts).
The other difference is that regular contracts have a term and their value diminishes over time, on average. If you have taken delivery of 9 out 10 aircraft and paid for them, then if the manufacturer fails to deliver the final plane, it’s a problem but not as big a problem as if they reneged at the outset because you can probably pick up that final plane somewhere else. But for most people, the value of a marriage increases over time because each side’s investments are cumulative. Having one’s spouse leave after 20 or 30 years of marriage is often more devastating than if s/he leaves after 1 year. And this is not just about the regret of incurring a sunk cost with no market value; it’s about the magnitude of the current and expected future loss.
Obviously you’ve been married for a while, Bryan. But with respect to Scott, he hasn’t. So while he might have some good advice for finding someone who’s willing to marry you at age 37, I don’t attach much value to his views on marriage!
mark
Jan 18 2022 at 2:52pm
Yes and No. No – Scott A. may be just unable to consider the pros and cons of marriage on any level. Here from an old post: “When I was much younger and more terrified of women, this was exactly the route I would take. I didn’t want to know if she was my fellow spy, I wanted to know if she liked me. I can’t just ask, or I might end up as the next Julius Rosenberg. So instead – maybe we’re sitting next to each other, so I move a little closer to her. If she moves a little closer to me, or does anything that could be interpreted in my feverishly optimistic brain as resembling this, then maybe I touch my leg against hers. If she touches her leg against me, maybe I rest my arm against her shoulder. If she rests her arm against my shoulder, I smile at her. If she smiles at me, then I ask for her hand in marriage. […]
(by the way, the one time this worked I was so flabbergasted and confused I completely forgot to ask for her hand in marriage. In case you haven’t figured it out from this latest series of blog posts, I’m kind of an idiot.)” – Sep. 17th, 2012 –
Yes, there is a market for everything and Scott’s redemption is that his wife appreciates a beautiful mind: “Our first date, we talked about Singapore’s child tax credits, which gave me advanced notice of where her mind was at. Our second date, we talked about category formation in borderline personality disorder, which later became this post. Our third date, we talked about why Inuit suicide rates were so high, which later became this post.”
I sincerely hope, Bryan makes it back to Scott’s blogroll. Sure, Prof. Caplan does not change his mind often (never in public?). But neither does Greg Cochran. And both are mostly right and untouched by SDB.
To end with Scott:
“I don’t usually talk about my personal life on here. But I feel like I owe you guys this one, because, well, some of you have been reading this blog a long time. And some of my earliest posts (eg) were me complaining about the dating world, and how tough it was to meet anybody or even to stay sane. And you guys were kind to me, and commiserated with me, and shared your own experiences. I feel an obligation to check in with the rest of you, to celebrate those of you who have also succeeded and empathize with those of you who haven’t yet.”
Philo
Feb 3 2022 at 1:25pm
Does Scott mention the costs of the search? He looked for a “life partner,” but every moment that went by without his having found her was a diminution of the value of the eventual find: he would have less life to share with the partner, once he had found her. Finding a pretty good partner at age 22 might have been much better for him than finding an excellent partner, but only at age 40.
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