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Comment by glitchc | Hacker News Reader

This is the danger of anecdotes, they can lead to bias. I have a PhD and I had my first child at 28. Almost all of my colleagues have families and children, except for the one person who was unable to attract a suitable mate (and not for lack of trying). Sometimes very bright people have trouble attracting an equivalent person. The pool is that much smaller and other factors (socioeconomic, culture) still play a role as per other relationships.

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To be fair the person above recognised the short comings of anecdotes and said " I’d love to see a study on that."

I'm not sure your own single point anecdote is enough to counter their own experience and indeed comes with all the same "danger" that you warn about.

> This is the danger of anecdotes, they can lead to bias.

Your own story is also a dangerous anecdote. Without the context, it's pointless to talk about how amazing your Ph.D. experience was. Study engineering or quantitative marketing? Most likely miserable. Study humanities? Probably happier.

It's as latexr said, my counterfactual anecdote holds as much water as the OP's. That's the point. Neither forms a verifiable statement of fact.

Regarding happiness or a Ph.D. being an amazing experience, I didn't say a word about any of that. Those seem to be some very strong assumptions around marriage/kids = happiness or engineering/marketing = misery that you're making.

> Your own story is also a dangerous anecdote.

I don’t think the person you’re replying to is implying their anecdotes are more valid, but that all anecdotes can be contradicted by opposing anecdotes and thus aren’t enough to make sweeping statements.

What’s your wisened prognosis on studying Geophysics or Genetic Immunology?

> Sometimes very bright people have trouble attracting an equivalent person.

That does not sound very bright. Valuing equivalence over other attributes makes the math work against success.

It is indeed incredibly stupid if the reason why you didn't find a suitable partner is because you didn't want to lower your PhD standard (or academic requirements as if that has anything to do with stable love). Having a PhD doesn't mean you're generally bright, it just means you can do research in some narrow field.

>I’d love to see a study on that.

Seems like the relevant quote here.

If everyone had a requirement for marriage that you marry someone as smart as you, exactly no one would be married.

I think it's implied that there is some fuzziness in the matching, not precision to the 7th decimal of some objective test or something. That said I agree it certainly isn't a requirement to be similar in specific attributes to get married. Perhaps somewhat common though.

I left it ambiguous on purpose, as equivalent could mean many things, someone at least as accomplished, at least as wealthy, or at least as considerate... the list it goes on. It all depends on what that person is looking for. Seems silly to judge which attributes are important for what is a deeply personal choice with serious life implications.

that makes sense but it still seems like there is an imbalance on expectations.

It reads as they're great and there's not a lot of people as great as they are when in reality it's probably more like the overlap between the set of people they desire and the set of people that desires them is impossibly narrow. This sounds like a tough personal problem that they can 100% work through by looking in the mirror and working on themselves.

I'm too great to ever find someone as great as me is frankly a piss poor attitude and outlook on life and I feel really bad for them to be stuck like that.

Statistically speaking, you're right, but it's still possible (especially in our brave new world) to have standards that can't suffer anymore compromise before losing the meaning of "standard" itself.

You could also simply have bad luck compounding the issue. Stuff any amount of effort or masquerade won't fix, like being a short man (inb4 "I know this small guy that...").

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