Cut To the Truth with Ockham’s Razor
My friend Dave called me with the latest dating updates. He had experienced Hurry Date, which is a popular singles service. The program introduces men and women to each other on 7-minute intervals in a well-organized, clockwork pattern. The first thirty minutes of the timed event is spent sizing up the competition, scoping out romantic targets, and slamming down liquor drinks. Slight inebriation helps the hunter hone his love interest in his crosshairs.
An informal version of Hurry Date has long existed in Buckhead bars near closing time and at meat market as fitness centers. Gay Hurry Date is coming soon to Atlanta. But Blake’s in Midtown is where the real homosexual hurry dates take place. As was the discrete lesbian lounge, The Otherside on Piedmont, before the bombing brought it notoriety.
Here’s amore accurate schedule of who’s at Informal Hurry Dates and where.
• Old Divorced Dude hurry dates take place at Johnny’s Hideaway in Sandy Springs, supplanting the closed Otto’s notorious for its draw of smarmy Arabs to desperate women capitalizing on lost looks. Both are intown haunts for lonely folks willing to drive into town since 'winning' the suburban family home in Divorce Court.
• Gold Digger hurry dates take place every Tuesday at BluePoint in the business district of Buckhead in the better part of Atlanta. Exclusive restaurants in financial districts draw the women who can least afford to patronize these places and who most need the men they meet there to pay for the privilege of their inebriated babble.
• Jewish Guy Looking For Goyim Girl hurry dates happen at Rock Bottom Brewery once a month on Thursday nights. This is the kind of place where men seem to far outnumber the women, so the women tend not to be very attractive or at all friendly. A classic study of supply and demand, a plethora of preening men dance around a dearth of disinterested women. Buying your score a beer is the only way to lock in her time long enough to fail to dazzle her. Not to worry, the beers arrive in big glasses, buying you more time to crash to terra firma.
• Lonely Lute Player Seeking Granola Girl is an every night occurrence at East Atlanta and Five Points eateries. These places are populated by pretentious people buying distressed properties to flip for a high ROI while simultaneously declaring their disdain for the capitalist plunderers from better ZIP Codes. So poor guy with a funky scent strikes up a conversation with impoverished girl wearing ill-fitting second-hand garb as he imagines her without clothing and she wishes he would bathe. Pheromones masked by Patchouli, love is in the air.
• Urban Pioneers meet up at Tacoria Del Sol and exchange home-improvement-horror-stories in the “No Mo Ghetto” region between Howell Mill and Northside Drive. Not being able to afford homes in upscale adjacent neighborhoods, these young professionals improve the dregs available to them in the fringes of acceptable areas of town. That they've spent the day toiling and tilling the soil goes undetected in the fine fibers and high style of their metamorphosis attire. Dirt by day, diva by night. Tip: any man can score with a single female homeowner if he's willing to install decorative lighting. Wink, wink, nudge nudge.
• Pretentious Young Professional hurry dates are the bread and butter of down and out Moe’s in the Highlands. Dressing down is haute couture for the "I Don't Care" Crowd who strive to fit into psuedo poverty, finally gentrified, ethnic dinner region of intown life. Spending top dollar for a wee bungalow and a lavish wedding, newly married couples wear yesterday's fashions to sip on days old beer from unwashed taps. They drink in droves with other cash-poor home owners, overly educated unemployed, and fraternity buds of old.
As for the official Hurry Date, after thirty minutes of mingling the timed event begins. When the clock starts, women sit at assigned tables as men rotate from woman to woman, table to table. Men focus on one woman at a time, moving on to the next in a romantic relay race. At the end of the serial introduction, you fill out a score card where you indicate whom you want to get better acquainted. If someone also selects you, Hurray Date exchanges contact information.
It’s so much like sorority rush centering on a highly selective, angst-ridden bid list among the best houses known for mounds of boobs and blond hair. You want so much to be chosen by the best, to be the winner of social supremacy. An invitation extended by the second best is simply defeat.
Extreme concentration and a core of confidence are needed to date, especially if one is to Hurry Date. Dave has both. He has long since shrugged off the humiliation of a Starter Marriage and is ready for another pre-divorce, legal union. He wants to be married. Many men long for marriage – much more so than do women, by my estimation.
So Dave and I talk about his bid list. He’s a delusional romantic who believes in soul mates. He requires electroshock therapy at first sight and psychosexual chemistry within three seconds to identify his elusive Other Half. She also has to look just like his mother and to love him like one, without being too matronly or emotionally needy.
I believe you that you found your soul mate only after achieving forty years of marriage, paying off a thirty-year mortgage, and producing independent twenty-year-old children. And if you don’t look alike early in marriage, you surely will in middle marriage. Though in old age, you resemble your three-year-old self no matter who you marry.
After debating ideologies, we put the women he met into three categories. Cat 1: Hell No. Cat 2: Why The Hell Not. Cat 3: God Please, Say Yes.
To be in category one means there was a lack of chemistry. Lacking chemistry is due to many factors. You many not have the right look: blond hair, blue eyes, petite – good; anything else – bad. You many not have the right education: liberal arts degree from private four year college – good; vocational degree from community college – bad. You may not have the right background: upper middle class from respectable smaller southern city – good; across the tracks from who cares where – bad. You may not have the right breeding: slow southern drawl – good; hayseed hillbilly twang – bad. You may not be geographically desirable: inhabiting an intown enclave – good; living in a suburban “ville” “etta” or outlying county – bad. You get the idea. To be put in category one means you fulfill criteria that, seemingly superficial, is really quite significant to the suitor.
To be in category two means you weren’t ruled out, but you weren’t ruled in either. In football parlance, going for the last minute touchdown is called a Hail Mary Pass. Filler, if you please. Putting women who are not that impressive on your bid list helps round out the numbers, increases the chance for a hook-up, and makes you look less like an impossible to please, self-centered jerk. Assume that you’re filler for many other people’s bid list.
Remind yourself that dating is really a numbers game. Apply Gaming Theory to your romantic pursuits and you increase your chances for scoring mate. The point is, you got to play, and play often, to win at all. This is called The Hawk-Dove Game of Gaming Theory. Let’s say a socially passive man is a dove and a sexually aggressive man is a hawk. As explained by SparkNotes.com, here are the odds when choosing to be either a hawk or dove in competition over reproductive strategies:
The Hawk-Dove Game is a classic example of game theory used in animal behavior. In this model, we have two animals (not necessarily birds) that are capable of choosing from two strategies when in conflict with one another. The animal can choose to be a "hawk" and escalate to a fight or the animal can choose to be a "dove" and peacefully back down. Hawks are always willing to fight, and so if two hawks meet, there will always be a fight. Winners receive the benefit, while losers face the cost of the fight. Doves flee, and so are never involved in a fight. There is no cost to be a dove, only the possibility of receiving no payoff.
From a pool of twenty-five women, Dave selected ten to check on his bid list. He’s more a hawk than a dove in the competition with men over women. Fifteen didn’t meet his needs at first sight or within the first five seconds of conversation. Seven were passable enough to meet his standards for ‘what the hell’ criteria. Three women really interested him, so he hoped they were as interested in return, making the "God, please" category of interest.
We talked next about his expectations on the outcome. Certainly he hoped that the women he liked also like him. As to not have unrealistic expectations that lead to heartbreak of disappointment due to misconstrued rejection, we speculated about why someone would not reciprocate interest. He started with his usual list of insecurities. He’s skinny, implying a lack of sexual prowess. He’s divorced, portending social and personal failure. He’s broke, suggesting poor judgement in his investments in high tech. Dave was certain that women would take a quick glance at him and know that he was impotent, incompetent, and insolvent.
We all possess a list of insecurities, a scroll of personal shame brought on by stupid youth or dumb luck. Youth is a brief exercise to develop lifelong wisdom. If you don’t pick up baggage in your twenties you haven’t lived fully, you haven’t learned enough, or you just haven’t loved anyone. The purpose of baggage is to teach you how to handle a heavy load on your own, how to distribute the gravity of its weight, and how to travel lightly by giving up the guilt.
I told Dave to quit projecting his fears. With most people who have personal problems, you can’t tell by looking. And that people who have something to hide, learn to hide it. Quit anticipating a loss or failure will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then dating will have no more meaning than buying losing lottery tickets.
If someone is going to reject you, make them work for it! Have them fall in love with you by asking them questions about themselves. Find out something interesting about them that you couldn’t know by appearances. Mostly, determine how good a person they are. To the untrained eye, goodness is not apparent. It’s only the clues from conversation that allow you to believe you may have met a good match. Before dismissing a soul mate in under sixty seconds, ask yourself first: how good are you for them and will you be good to them.
After reassuring him, we speculated about the ten women he checked on his list and whether he was on their list. I asked him why he thinks the women with whom he had a spark would not follow up on their initial attraction. He repeated his Secret Satans to me – the killer three I’s: impotence, incompetence, and insolvency. If he didn’t unleash his personal demons on the pre-date, then why wouldn’t women want him? How could he not take it as personal rejection?
When making sense of dating, use Ockham’s Razor as a reasoning tool. The principal is best explained by the phrase, “When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.” Used by medical doctors to diagnose an illness, they determine that coughing can be caused by exposure to the bubonic plague, it is probably just a cold. Used by social singles to explain rejection, being blown off is a problem that lies with them and not with you. Simply, people have their reasons why they don't want you and you'll likely never know why.
Let’s say ten of the women Dave selected on his bid list didn’t select him. There are potentially ten different reasons why each of the women didn’t choose him. Every reason is personal to the woman and has nothing to do with the quality of the man.
1. She may have broken an engagement, so she wants attention from numerous men to validate that she’s attractive and interesting, proving to herself that her fiancé really was a good-for-nothing bastard she can’t help but love, and hate, and love, and hate.
2. All of her best friends are newly married, so she may be trying to make new friends with other women who aren’t shrews berating her for not settling already or she may be trying to find a man who’ll attend the proliferation of ‘married only’ parties she’s becoming excluded from.
3. Her best friend may have begged her to go and paid her way so that she wouldn’t have to show up alone, therefore she may be trying to show moral support by not walking away with more interested men than her less attractive friend could muster.
4. She may be divorced and feels ashamed, so she is testing the waters for social acceptance as she adjusts to her new marital status that can no longer be checked ‘single’ again in that God forsaken box on all applications – rubbing salt into the wounds of marital dissolution.
5. She may be treating a social disease or healing from an abortion, so she’s making herself social in order not to hate humanity for imposing on her a lifelong stigma while quelling the overwhelming urge to commit homicide as she struggles to remember the name of that one night stand.
6. She may be recovering from an addiction, so she’s trying to throw the monkey from her back while making idle chat with a perfect stranger and praying for serenity to control the things she can, acceptance for what she can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.
7. She may be filing for bankruptcy, so she’s mentally calculating the costs of being single while at the same time figuring out just much of a mess she’s made of her life.
8. She may have an undying crush on her best friend, so she’s sizing up every good man against an impossible image in order to justify her holding out for never, which is the time it will take for him to love her back.
9. She may have recently relocated and made the mistake of renting an apartment near where she works that’s too far away from attractive single people or decent employment, so she’s devastated over what may be the worst decision of her life as she faces getting laid off.
10. She may not like men. Not her unloving, distant, divorced father. Not her mentally abusive string of ex-boyfriends. Not the priest, who wouldn’t even molest her but, preferred her brother instead. Not the college professors who courted her until the quarter ends – every quarter. Not the phantom coworkers who leer at her oddly shaped body. Not the men at the bar who overlook her altogether, despite her desperate attempts for attention. Not her friends’ husbands who try to placate her just to shut the noise of endless man bashing. Not the strangers on the street whom she’s convinced wants her, wants her bad.
So you see – you can never know why the person with whom you had pleasant chat doesn’t want to continue the conversation. You’ll never find out why you didn’t get that second date. Or why a fantastic kiss didn’t lead to steamy sex. People have personal reasons not to pursue a romance that, like the list of secret sources of shame, remains locked in a closet until the skeleton is ready for light.
I would like to try Hurry Date sometime soon. But not until after I lose those dreaded twenty pounds, become gainfully employed at long last, and get over the death rattle of a love affair. Kidding, really. I’m signing up next month so I can take all my great advice on getting utterly and publicly dumped.
My friend Dave called me with the latest dating updates. He had experienced Hurry Date, which is a popular singles service. The program introduces men and women to each other on 7-minute intervals in a well-organized, clockwork pattern. The first thirty minutes of the timed event is spent sizing up the competition, scoping out romantic targets, and slamming down liquor drinks. Slight inebriation helps the hunter hone his love interest in his crosshairs.
An informal version of Hurry Date has long existed in Buckhead bars near closing time and at meat market as fitness centers. Gay Hurry Date is coming soon to Atlanta. But Blake’s in Midtown is where the real homosexual hurry dates take place. As was the discrete lesbian lounge, The Otherside on Piedmont, before the bombing brought it notoriety.
Here’s amore accurate schedule of who’s at Informal Hurry Dates and where.
• Old Divorced Dude hurry dates take place at Johnny’s Hideaway in Sandy Springs, supplanting the closed Otto’s notorious for its draw of smarmy Arabs to desperate women capitalizing on lost looks. Both are intown haunts for lonely folks willing to drive into town since 'winning' the suburban family home in Divorce Court.
• Gold Digger hurry dates take place every Tuesday at BluePoint in the business district of Buckhead in the better part of Atlanta. Exclusive restaurants in financial districts draw the women who can least afford to patronize these places and who most need the men they meet there to pay for the privilege of their inebriated babble.
• Jewish Guy Looking For Goyim Girl hurry dates happen at Rock Bottom Brewery once a month on Thursday nights. This is the kind of place where men seem to far outnumber the women, so the women tend not to be very attractive or at all friendly. A classic study of supply and demand, a plethora of preening men dance around a dearth of disinterested women. Buying your score a beer is the only way to lock in her time long enough to fail to dazzle her. Not to worry, the beers arrive in big glasses, buying you more time to crash to terra firma.
• Lonely Lute Player Seeking Granola Girl is an every night occurrence at East Atlanta and Five Points eateries. These places are populated by pretentious people buying distressed properties to flip for a high ROI while simultaneously declaring their disdain for the capitalist plunderers from better ZIP Codes. So poor guy with a funky scent strikes up a conversation with impoverished girl wearing ill-fitting second-hand garb as he imagines her without clothing and she wishes he would bathe. Pheromones masked by Patchouli, love is in the air.
• Urban Pioneers meet up at Tacoria Del Sol and exchange home-improvement-horror-stories in the “No Mo Ghetto” region between Howell Mill and Northside Drive. Not being able to afford homes in upscale adjacent neighborhoods, these young professionals improve the dregs available to them in the fringes of acceptable areas of town. That they've spent the day toiling and tilling the soil goes undetected in the fine fibers and high style of their metamorphosis attire. Dirt by day, diva by night. Tip: any man can score with a single female homeowner if he's willing to install decorative lighting. Wink, wink, nudge nudge.
• Pretentious Young Professional hurry dates are the bread and butter of down and out Moe’s in the Highlands. Dressing down is haute couture for the "I Don't Care" Crowd who strive to fit into psuedo poverty, finally gentrified, ethnic dinner region of intown life. Spending top dollar for a wee bungalow and a lavish wedding, newly married couples wear yesterday's fashions to sip on days old beer from unwashed taps. They drink in droves with other cash-poor home owners, overly educated unemployed, and fraternity buds of old.
As for the official Hurry Date, after thirty minutes of mingling the timed event begins. When the clock starts, women sit at assigned tables as men rotate from woman to woman, table to table. Men focus on one woman at a time, moving on to the next in a romantic relay race. At the end of the serial introduction, you fill out a score card where you indicate whom you want to get better acquainted. If someone also selects you, Hurray Date exchanges contact information.
It’s so much like sorority rush centering on a highly selective, angst-ridden bid list among the best houses known for mounds of boobs and blond hair. You want so much to be chosen by the best, to be the winner of social supremacy. An invitation extended by the second best is simply defeat.
Extreme concentration and a core of confidence are needed to date, especially if one is to Hurry Date. Dave has both. He has long since shrugged off the humiliation of a Starter Marriage and is ready for another pre-divorce, legal union. He wants to be married. Many men long for marriage – much more so than do women, by my estimation.
So Dave and I talk about his bid list. He’s a delusional romantic who believes in soul mates. He requires electroshock therapy at first sight and psychosexual chemistry within three seconds to identify his elusive Other Half. She also has to look just like his mother and to love him like one, without being too matronly or emotionally needy.
I believe you that you found your soul mate only after achieving forty years of marriage, paying off a thirty-year mortgage, and producing independent twenty-year-old children. And if you don’t look alike early in marriage, you surely will in middle marriage. Though in old age, you resemble your three-year-old self no matter who you marry.
After debating ideologies, we put the women he met into three categories. Cat 1: Hell No. Cat 2: Why The Hell Not. Cat 3: God Please, Say Yes.
To be in category one means there was a lack of chemistry. Lacking chemistry is due to many factors. You many not have the right look: blond hair, blue eyes, petite – good; anything else – bad. You many not have the right education: liberal arts degree from private four year college – good; vocational degree from community college – bad. You may not have the right background: upper middle class from respectable smaller southern city – good; across the tracks from who cares where – bad. You may not have the right breeding: slow southern drawl – good; hayseed hillbilly twang – bad. You may not be geographically desirable: inhabiting an intown enclave – good; living in a suburban “ville” “etta” or outlying county – bad. You get the idea. To be put in category one means you fulfill criteria that, seemingly superficial, is really quite significant to the suitor.
To be in category two means you weren’t ruled out, but you weren’t ruled in either. In football parlance, going for the last minute touchdown is called a Hail Mary Pass. Filler, if you please. Putting women who are not that impressive on your bid list helps round out the numbers, increases the chance for a hook-up, and makes you look less like an impossible to please, self-centered jerk. Assume that you’re filler for many other people’s bid list.
Remind yourself that dating is really a numbers game. Apply Gaming Theory to your romantic pursuits and you increase your chances for scoring mate. The point is, you got to play, and play often, to win at all. This is called The Hawk-Dove Game of Gaming Theory. Let’s say a socially passive man is a dove and a sexually aggressive man is a hawk. As explained by SparkNotes.com, here are the odds when choosing to be either a hawk or dove in competition over reproductive strategies:
The Hawk-Dove Game is a classic example of game theory used in animal behavior. In this model, we have two animals (not necessarily birds) that are capable of choosing from two strategies when in conflict with one another. The animal can choose to be a "hawk" and escalate to a fight or the animal can choose to be a "dove" and peacefully back down. Hawks are always willing to fight, and so if two hawks meet, there will always be a fight. Winners receive the benefit, while losers face the cost of the fight. Doves flee, and so are never involved in a fight. There is no cost to be a dove, only the possibility of receiving no payoff.
From a pool of twenty-five women, Dave selected ten to check on his bid list. He’s more a hawk than a dove in the competition with men over women. Fifteen didn’t meet his needs at first sight or within the first five seconds of conversation. Seven were passable enough to meet his standards for ‘what the hell’ criteria. Three women really interested him, so he hoped they were as interested in return, making the "God, please" category of interest.
We talked next about his expectations on the outcome. Certainly he hoped that the women he liked also like him. As to not have unrealistic expectations that lead to heartbreak of disappointment due to misconstrued rejection, we speculated about why someone would not reciprocate interest. He started with his usual list of insecurities. He’s skinny, implying a lack of sexual prowess. He’s divorced, portending social and personal failure. He’s broke, suggesting poor judgement in his investments in high tech. Dave was certain that women would take a quick glance at him and know that he was impotent, incompetent, and insolvent.
We all possess a list of insecurities, a scroll of personal shame brought on by stupid youth or dumb luck. Youth is a brief exercise to develop lifelong wisdom. If you don’t pick up baggage in your twenties you haven’t lived fully, you haven’t learned enough, or you just haven’t loved anyone. The purpose of baggage is to teach you how to handle a heavy load on your own, how to distribute the gravity of its weight, and how to travel lightly by giving up the guilt.
I told Dave to quit projecting his fears. With most people who have personal problems, you can’t tell by looking. And that people who have something to hide, learn to hide it. Quit anticipating a loss or failure will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then dating will have no more meaning than buying losing lottery tickets.
If someone is going to reject you, make them work for it! Have them fall in love with you by asking them questions about themselves. Find out something interesting about them that you couldn’t know by appearances. Mostly, determine how good a person they are. To the untrained eye, goodness is not apparent. It’s only the clues from conversation that allow you to believe you may have met a good match. Before dismissing a soul mate in under sixty seconds, ask yourself first: how good are you for them and will you be good to them.
After reassuring him, we speculated about the ten women he checked on his list and whether he was on their list. I asked him why he thinks the women with whom he had a spark would not follow up on their initial attraction. He repeated his Secret Satans to me – the killer three I’s: impotence, incompetence, and insolvency. If he didn’t unleash his personal demons on the pre-date, then why wouldn’t women want him? How could he not take it as personal rejection?
When making sense of dating, use Ockham’s Razor as a reasoning tool. The principal is best explained by the phrase, “When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.” Used by medical doctors to diagnose an illness, they determine that coughing can be caused by exposure to the bubonic plague, it is probably just a cold. Used by social singles to explain rejection, being blown off is a problem that lies with them and not with you. Simply, people have their reasons why they don't want you and you'll likely never know why.
Let’s say ten of the women Dave selected on his bid list didn’t select him. There are potentially ten different reasons why each of the women didn’t choose him. Every reason is personal to the woman and has nothing to do with the quality of the man.
1. She may have broken an engagement, so she wants attention from numerous men to validate that she’s attractive and interesting, proving to herself that her fiancé really was a good-for-nothing bastard she can’t help but love, and hate, and love, and hate.
2. All of her best friends are newly married, so she may be trying to make new friends with other women who aren’t shrews berating her for not settling already or she may be trying to find a man who’ll attend the proliferation of ‘married only’ parties she’s becoming excluded from.
3. Her best friend may have begged her to go and paid her way so that she wouldn’t have to show up alone, therefore she may be trying to show moral support by not walking away with more interested men than her less attractive friend could muster.
4. She may be divorced and feels ashamed, so she is testing the waters for social acceptance as she adjusts to her new marital status that can no longer be checked ‘single’ again in that God forsaken box on all applications – rubbing salt into the wounds of marital dissolution.
5. She may be treating a social disease or healing from an abortion, so she’s making herself social in order not to hate humanity for imposing on her a lifelong stigma while quelling the overwhelming urge to commit homicide as she struggles to remember the name of that one night stand.
6. She may be recovering from an addiction, so she’s trying to throw the monkey from her back while making idle chat with a perfect stranger and praying for serenity to control the things she can, acceptance for what she can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.
7. She may be filing for bankruptcy, so she’s mentally calculating the costs of being single while at the same time figuring out just much of a mess she’s made of her life.
8. She may have an undying crush on her best friend, so she’s sizing up every good man against an impossible image in order to justify her holding out for never, which is the time it will take for him to love her back.
9. She may have recently relocated and made the mistake of renting an apartment near where she works that’s too far away from attractive single people or decent employment, so she’s devastated over what may be the worst decision of her life as she faces getting laid off.
10. She may not like men. Not her unloving, distant, divorced father. Not her mentally abusive string of ex-boyfriends. Not the priest, who wouldn’t even molest her but, preferred her brother instead. Not the college professors who courted her until the quarter ends – every quarter. Not the phantom coworkers who leer at her oddly shaped body. Not the men at the bar who overlook her altogether, despite her desperate attempts for attention. Not her friends’ husbands who try to placate her just to shut the noise of endless man bashing. Not the strangers on the street whom she’s convinced wants her, wants her bad.
So you see – you can never know why the person with whom you had pleasant chat doesn’t want to continue the conversation. You’ll never find out why you didn’t get that second date. Or why a fantastic kiss didn’t lead to steamy sex. People have personal reasons not to pursue a romance that, like the list of secret sources of shame, remains locked in a closet until the skeleton is ready for light.
I would like to try Hurry Date sometime soon. But not until after I lose those dreaded twenty pounds, become gainfully employed at long last, and get over the death rattle of a love affair. Kidding, really. I’m signing up next month so I can take all my great advice on getting utterly and publicly dumped.
posted by Alessandra at
12:53 PM
