Comment by rkachowski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rkachowski | Hacker News Reader

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Implicit here is the idea that couplehood and family life were more stable and somehow more resistent to damage before technology came along and made it easier for humans to interact.

An alternate theory is that Tinder actually reenforces the "basic subfloor of couplehood and family life" by enabling and normalising ephemeral sexual and romantic interaction, instead of requiring the individual to succumb to social pressure and enter marriage for reasons other than personal. This would be supported by the fact that divorce rates have been decreasing in the USA since the 90s.[1]

I agree that more attention needs to be directed towards the ill effects that technology can have on societal values, but the technology exposes and works upon impulses already within us. The things we value are incredibly relative and the ideas + images of friendship and family life we have now are drastically different from even 40 years ago.

(that is to say, views are always changing and the idea that "this new thing will destroy what we value" works in the exact same way that fm radio / home taping / digital piracy killed the musician + music industry so many years ago (i.e. it did not))

1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/divorce-united-states...

> This would be supported by the fact that divorce rates have been decreasing in the USA since the 90s.

Divorce rates are decreasing because marriage rates are decreasing. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_in_the_United_States#/...

There's a lot of evidence that we are less satisfied with the choices we make the more options we have. When you can compare your current partner to 1000 other options every day you're very likely to have some buyers remorse.

I certainly can compare my partner to 1000 other options and I don’t need an app to do so. The takeaway isn’t “options are bad while you are on the market.” The take away is “Stop measuring your partner against others while you’re not on the market.” And, of course, you don’t actually know those others so you’re comparing your partner against some combination of others and your own imagination. No partner can compare to your imagination. If you’re doing this you might as well bail out of the relationship because you’re not ready. No amount of banning apps is going to protect someone’s relationship from themselves. A committed relationship takes... commitment; in both thought and deed.

Sure, there are a lot of things that anyone can do. The fact is that the harder you make things, the fewer people will do them, the easier you make things, the more people will do them. You can avoid processed junk food and stay healthy but the availability of cheap junk food is what causes rampant obesity and its societal costs.

> Implicit here is the idea that couplehood and family life were more stable

It doesn't necessarily imply that. What I took from the GP is that people are giving away control of their dating behaviour to large commercial entities with unknown implications.

It's not about technology making it easier for humans to interact, but about changing the nature of the interaction.

In a way it's similar to advertising. If you glance at an advertisement online now, it looks very much the same as looking at an advertisement in a magazine in the 90s, but to everyone on here it should be clear that behind an online ad today, there is a gigantic empire of data-collection and analytics that most people aren't even aware of.

An easy example here is that a commercial entity that matches people has no direct interest in people engaging in long-term romantic relationships, since it might prevent them from coming back. It's best to optimise their matching algorithms on other areas.

That might not matter too much if people were aware of these skewed algorithms, but it's also in the best interest of commerce that people are not aware of it.

It's dangerous to equate normal "behaviour X" with "behaviour X, but digital", especially if the difference provides space for a commercial entity to set themselves up as a middle man who has no incentive to be neutral.

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