[post_from_work]

Consider the opposite characteristics.

As a guy, I don't make time to hang out with other guys who are woefully out of shape / hideously ugly, broke, and with no Game(tm). Those people are not Force Multipliers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication ), so why would I allocate my most precious resource, my time, to them?

[antisthenes]

There's a difference between what people describe their ideal friends as and who they actually have as friends.

It's not like the study actually brought in their friends and examined whether those preferences have anything to do with reality.

[fallingfrog]

If your friends abandon you because you gained weight, or lost your job, or burned your face- those people were never your friends.

[post_from_work]

You are shooting at strawmen. No one is discussing severing existing relationship bonds due to evolving life circumstances. There are undoubtedly far more variables in such an equation, with complex mitigating factors.

The article is about ideal preferences. Exercising those preferences, often towards objectively-superior utility characteristics, is not misanthropic.

That line of thought would make about as much sense as saying "all lesbians are inherently misandrist". Choosing A over B does not imply any hatred of {B}, or of {A+B} in general.