[burgers]

The spookiest thing is not the data or the experiments, but the off the cuff conclusions.

For example: > As a group, for instance, Latino men rated Latinas as 13 percent more attractive than the average for the site, while they rated African-American women 25 percent less attractive.

That is an insane generalization going on.

What metric are we using to determine this? Is it possible that people who tend to participate in the rating of the looks of potential mates are more inclined to align with race? Not purely Latino men. Which is an enormous initial generalization to be making at the outset.

> Witness the actions of 35-year-old heterosexual men on OkCupid. These men typically search for women between the ages of 24 and 40, Mr. Rudder reports, yet in practice they rarely contact anyone over 29.

Again on this one, was age the only possible metric that caused the under 30 to be contacted more by 35 year old men? There isn't anything else that might be different about an under 30 profile that causes more communication to occur?

This is the actual scary stuff to be publicly releasing as real science. Just as the general public is ill informed about the experiments going on, they are also not aware of what metrics are used to determine these results. In my experience, many of these metrics are not as concrete as the appear and full of pushing the data to fit a narrative etc.

Combine that with the fact that most of this data is proprietary and private with no way to be peer reviewed. Dangerous stuff.

[beachstartup]

> That is an insane generalization going on.

yes, it can be shocking to be presented with plainly spoken, cold hard facts when you grow up in and are surrounded by a sterile bubble of non-fact-based discourse. especially in a topic as taboo as dating, sex, race, and marriage. this is called cognitive dissonance.

trust me, as an asian american male, none of the cold facts of reality were ever hidden from me behind a facade of soothing lies. when i was much younger, i couldn't get laid, and i had to face reality head-on, and seriously work on myself to get ahead of the curve during my 20s.

> In my experience, many of these metrics are not as concrete as the appear and full of pushing the data to fit a narrative etc.

in my experience the okcupid blog's conclusions fit the narrative of reality when it comes to sexual market value, race, and attraction, whereas you're espousing a more politically correct kind of conclusion that fits an artificial narrative of egalitarian bullshit that in no way, shape, or form applies to the modern sexual marketplace (online dating and the hookup scene). there are winners, and there are losers, period. if you're not getting laid, you are losing. there is no long courtship period anymore. chivalry is dead.

how is it so radical and "dangerous" to conclude that men generally prefer younger, more fertile women, or that latino men generally prefer latino women? i mean are you even being serious?

[burgers]

So while its fun to play around with data, these are not real insights. The very idea that they can think some metric you've gathered via an online app can determine whether someone finds someone else attractive is goofy. But then publicly publishing that narrative, which is straight up pseudo science, is dangerous as people in the general public will use this kind of thing to say stuff like, "I read online that they did this study about Latino men and it said that they all think black women are ugly".

Grow up and take some responsibility for the world around you.

[istjohn]

You accuse them of making off the cuff conclusions, but the example you cited is basically raw data. And this is not "dangerous stuff." Yes statistics can be used by some people to justify stereotypes, but the correct response is to see people as individuals and not simply in terms of race, sex, culture, class, etc. We do not need to suppress or be exceedingly cautious about data. The impulse to suppress data comes from a belief that some statistic if demonstrated could justify racism or bigotry. But this is not true. Suppose it was a fact that 90% of people over 6 feet tall never wash their hands after using the restroom and this was discovered by researchers. Those inclined to bigotry would conclude that tall people are dirty and should be avoided. More fair-minded folks would refrain from assuming every tall person they meet is one of the 90% who doesn't wash their hands. Instead, they might wonder if there is a reason tall people aren't washing their hands. Maybe bathroom sinks are too low. Bigotry and racism are dangerous, not statistics.

[Hermel]

They report correlation, not causation. What you ask for, is that they should put much more effort into researching cause and effect or not publish the data at all. But I for one prefer having data in this form than none at all. Anyone who is reading hackernews every now and then should know about "correlation != causation" by now.

[burgers]

No, I think if they are going to make the generalizations, they need to publish the data they used to make those generalizations. Its the fact that okCupids data is private and proprietary combined with the publishing of correlations that is unethical.

[scottlocklin]

People publish (and make policy on) bad statistics all the time; peer reviewed and otherwise. Compared to the idiocy that's been promulgated in economics or, say, nutrition, this hardly seems to qualify for the word "dangerous."

[yarou]

Drawing conclusions from data is "dangerous" because it doesn't fit into your world view? I'm seriously done with this site.

[fiatmoney]

Why is it "dangerous"?

[beachstartup]

because it doesn't subscribe to his fantasyland world where all people are equal in the sexual marketplace.