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Originally Posted by Rekna
did you make the assumption that half of the population is gay? That seems a bit of an overestimate.
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No I think
Seaver assumed that half the population is one sex, and half the other, which for heterosexuals, eliminates half the population (or actually, a little less, as 2% of that 50% is going to be homosexual). For homosexuals, this eliminates roughly 97-98% of the population which would seem to put us at a greater disadvantage, but because of the way the permutations work out, a group of homosexuals has twice the possible number of mating pairs as the same number of heterosexuals.
However, there is a flaw in the assumption of how people are eliminated. Some things are hard and fast. Sexual orientation is one of these--no matter how well he stacks up in every other category, no man is going to be an accepatable mate for me. I would venture that the same is true of heterosexuals. Bisexuals have it a little easier, as they have about 50% of the population available based on orientation.
The other percentages are iffy. For example, I think your age difference is much too low, and doesn't take into account that men of all ages tend to be most attracted to young women, while women tend to find men from their own age to quite a bit older acceptable. Men being 10 or even 15 years older doesn't usually cause problems, while the reverse often isn't true. This becomes more pronounced as you add in socioeconomic factors. The more financially successful a man is, the less important his age. A 50 year old millionaire can, and frequently will, have a girlfriend / wife 20-25 years younger.
The point is that a person who posesses high marks in one area can easily be forgiven for being lower in another.
Also, except with orientation and sometimes race, there's seldom a hard elimination level. It's more of a sliding scale, with people more attractive towards one end, and less attractive towards the other. I find tall girls more attractive, but there isn't a height, either too tall or too short, at which height would be an automatic deal breaker.
Most of the other factors work the same. Age is a sliding scale. I'd prefer a partner about my age give or take 3 or 4 years, and as she gets older than that, the age would make her marginally less attractive. But even at, say, 10 years older, it wouldn't be enough to eliminate a potential partner by itself. On the other hand, as you get younger, I think I'd be more tolerant of an age difference. I 'm not interested in dating an 18 year old, but in say, 10 years time I don't think I'd have much problem being with a 28 year old, or even a little younger than that.
Plus, there's the social grouping thing that someone mentioned earlier.
And then there's random chance. I met my SO at work, where threre were maybe 50 or 60 adults working, and neither of us was out at the time, so the odds of either of us finding another single, homosexual woman to date were very, very, low, yet it happened.
One more thing. If you think of it from the sociological perspective, the odds go up. Take a hypothetical party with 10 men and 10 women. For each individual man, there are 10 potential mates (let's assume everyone is heterosexual). If the odds of finding someone of acceptable dating quality work out to, say one in 100, there's a small chance, 1/10, that this man will hook up.
However, looking at the group as a whole, there are 100 possible matches, which means the odds of
someone hooking up are pretty good (about 64.4%).