Very cool. Hadn't heard this. A new and encouraging angle on the whole "don't just take the opportunities life gives you, create your own" kind of thing.
Thanks for reminding me of this, I had forgotten it. It's a fun problem.
The takeaway that asking is often advantageous seems correct to me, and most people should probably ask for things more than they do. I had to learn this even in platonic social life. I used to be terrified of organizing events, but I realized that people usually say yes if you go to the trouble of organizing something.
That said, I think real-life is way more complicated (I'm sure you'd agree), and there are situations where being an asker may be suboptimal all things considered!
Something I've seen a lot of women report is that asking men out often leads to men saying 'yes' because being asked out is flattering and novel for them, but they don't put in much effort because they're not super interested, and often lose interested completely fairly quickly. They wouldn't have asked her out on their own. Of course, this comes with the cost of starting to get invested in someone for weeks or months only for them to bail. Given social norms on who asks whom out, I think "if he was interested, he would" is correct most of the time for straight women, unfortunately*. Not 100% of the time, but often enough that asking out men all the time might not have enough likelihood of success to be worth the downsides.
Another downside of being an asker, not just in a dating context, is you risk exposing yourself to much more rejection. Now yes, this isn't rational to care about in spherical cow land because being explicitly rejected after asking has the same outcome as being passively rejected. But it's psychologically much more difficult to face explicit rejection after asking, and if it happens often enough it's probably not great for your mental health. And poor mental health negatively impacts your ability to achieve your goal. This is the experience of most men on the dating apps.
(I know you talked about this in point 12, but I think you underrate it honestly. I think people can become more resilient to rejection to a point, but I think most will still be hurt by it. I'm also not sure not caring about rejection as much is an autistic thing, it seems orthogonal to that to me. Neurodivergence often is paired with social anxiety in practice.)
Finally, I think a big downside of being an asker is you're always wondering if you could have done better or missed an opportunity. When you're more passive, you simply pick the best option offered to you, and then that's that. I think many people find that position more comfortable and easier to cope with.
*I think this is less true in social circles with lots of shy and/or neurodivergent nerds, where many men might nervous or unsure how to express interest, but that's not most people's circles!
The game theory of stable matching is also very interesting.
On the asker side, there is no game to be played. You will never scheme yourself into a better outcome by pretending lower choices are higher, or trying to “settle” and lock down a worse choice early. This is a pleasant situation to be in, you don’t have to think.
On the askee side, there is room for gaming the system. There are many different effective ways to do this. However, one way that always works is to pretend certain matches are unacceptable, worse even than going unmatched, in other words preemptively reject them. This can cascade through the system and cause a better choice to free up for you later, although it’s quite risky.
I’m not quite sure how one can make a parable out of this, though.
Thanks for this great article! I might add that a “stable marriage” and all of the arrangements it represents (jobs, friendships, etc) does not necessarily mean both parties are happy, even for the asker. I think an interesting condition to add to the algorithm might be something like the askee’s first choice cannot be X ranks above their match’s rank. Because in reality nobody will be happy if their job/partner/friend is with them only because they literally cannot find anyone else, especially if this entire system is based on comparison against the group. I really enjoyed your writing thank you!
Seems like it should be true of publishing, friendships, and even decisions within friendships (asking for your preferred restaurant, to give a trite example).
Wow, this is pretty incredible. I can’t believe I haven’t heard of this result before. It seems like it’s up there with things like opportunity cost in terms of BIG concepts.
The implications are vast. Firstly, there’s mathematical proof of an idiom I’ve been living by for aeons? Stupendous! (Just ask. They say no, you’re no less worse off. As long as you keep your ego out of it, there’s no harm in asking.)
I’m also thinking about the UK’s matching system for surgical registrars with training posts. I wonder if that process maps perfectly to The Stable Marriage Problem. I believe it might.
And then there’s the job market. Speak to anyone who’s hunted for a new gig in the last 3 years and they’ll tell you it’s absolutely horrific. Thousands of applications to eventually receive one offer, *maybe*. I wish those in the trenches knew that higher agency pretty much always puts you in a better position.
What a neat thing to learn on a random Thursday morning. Thank you for sharing this!
The way my brain aches at attempting to read this at 10pm, but that this is such an awesome way to consider whole premise that the asker wins out is undeniable. I don’t think I’m looking at life in the same way again that’s for sure
I love this framing of Gale-Shapley so much!! It also beautifully connects my undergrad CS education to my later-in-life romantic education…
My approach to coming out as bisexual was asking out the most beautiful/interesting/intelligent/charming woman I was friends with. Agency works! Especially for women dating women. We had a beautiful five-year relationship…
This was after years of mostly dating guys who pursued me and largely thinking, yes, this is fine I guess, but surely there’s more to love?
(My apologies for any exes reading the comments of this particular Substack post…)
Very cool. Hadn't heard this. A new and encouraging angle on the whole "don't just take the opportunities life gives you, create your own" kind of thing.
Thanks for reminding me of this, I had forgotten it. It's a fun problem.
The takeaway that asking is often advantageous seems correct to me, and most people should probably ask for things more than they do. I had to learn this even in platonic social life. I used to be terrified of organizing events, but I realized that people usually say yes if you go to the trouble of organizing something.
That said, I think real-life is way more complicated (I'm sure you'd agree), and there are situations where being an asker may be suboptimal all things considered!
Something I've seen a lot of women report is that asking men out often leads to men saying 'yes' because being asked out is flattering and novel for them, but they don't put in much effort because they're not super interested, and often lose interested completely fairly quickly. They wouldn't have asked her out on their own. Of course, this comes with the cost of starting to get invested in someone for weeks or months only for them to bail. Given social norms on who asks whom out, I think "if he was interested, he would" is correct most of the time for straight women, unfortunately*. Not 100% of the time, but often enough that asking out men all the time might not have enough likelihood of success to be worth the downsides.
Another downside of being an asker, not just in a dating context, is you risk exposing yourself to much more rejection. Now yes, this isn't rational to care about in spherical cow land because being explicitly rejected after asking has the same outcome as being passively rejected. But it's psychologically much more difficult to face explicit rejection after asking, and if it happens often enough it's probably not great for your mental health. And poor mental health negatively impacts your ability to achieve your goal. This is the experience of most men on the dating apps.
(I know you talked about this in point 12, but I think you underrate it honestly. I think people can become more resilient to rejection to a point, but I think most will still be hurt by it. I'm also not sure not caring about rejection as much is an autistic thing, it seems orthogonal to that to me. Neurodivergence often is paired with social anxiety in practice.)
Finally, I think a big downside of being an asker is you're always wondering if you could have done better or missed an opportunity. When you're more passive, you simply pick the best option offered to you, and then that's that. I think many people find that position more comfortable and easier to cope with.
*I think this is less true in social circles with lots of shy and/or neurodivergent nerds, where many men might nervous or unsure how to express interest, but that's not most people's circles!
The best opportunities I've had in my business have come from writing friendly emails to people I genuinely wanted to work with.
This essay also made me nostalgic for my own days of having my mind blown by brilliant professors at Berkeley. 💙
i like this cool math
The game theory of stable matching is also very interesting.
On the asker side, there is no game to be played. You will never scheme yourself into a better outcome by pretending lower choices are higher, or trying to “settle” and lock down a worse choice early. This is a pleasant situation to be in, you don’t have to think.
On the askee side, there is room for gaming the system. There are many different effective ways to do this. However, one way that always works is to pretend certain matches are unacceptable, worse even than going unmatched, in other words preemptively reject them. This can cascade through the system and cause a better choice to free up for you later, although it’s quite risky.
I’m not quite sure how one can make a parable out of this, though.
There is a scene in A Beautiful Mind about game theory and matching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJS7Igvk6ZM
Thanks for this great article! I might add that a “stable marriage” and all of the arrangements it represents (jobs, friendships, etc) does not necessarily mean both parties are happy, even for the asker. I think an interesting condition to add to the algorithm might be something like the askee’s first choice cannot be X ranks above their match’s rank. Because in reality nobody will be happy if their job/partner/friend is with them only because they literally cannot find anyone else, especially if this entire system is based on comparison against the group. I really enjoyed your writing thank you!
Error in footnote 8: Dave must be with a guy he likes less than Carol.
Seems like it should be true of publishing, friendships, and even decisions within friendships (asking for your preferred restaurant, to give a trite example).
Wow, this is pretty incredible. I can’t believe I haven’t heard of this result before. It seems like it’s up there with things like opportunity cost in terms of BIG concepts.
Would you like to come on my podcast to discuss this? I don't have an angle or anything, I just find it interesting and funny.
The implications are vast. Firstly, there’s mathematical proof of an idiom I’ve been living by for aeons? Stupendous! (Just ask. They say no, you’re no less worse off. As long as you keep your ego out of it, there’s no harm in asking.)
I’m also thinking about the UK’s matching system for surgical registrars with training posts. I wonder if that process maps perfectly to The Stable Marriage Problem. I believe it might.
And then there’s the job market. Speak to anyone who’s hunted for a new gig in the last 3 years and they’ll tell you it’s absolutely horrific. Thousands of applications to eventually receive one offer, *maybe*. I wish those in the trenches knew that higher agency pretty much always puts you in a better position.
What a neat thing to learn on a random Thursday morning. Thank you for sharing this!
The way my brain aches at attempting to read this at 10pm, but that this is such an awesome way to consider whole premise that the asker wins out is undeniable. I don’t think I’m looking at life in the same way again that’s for sure
I love this framing of Gale-Shapley so much!! It also beautifully connects my undergrad CS education to my later-in-life romantic education…
My approach to coming out as bisexual was asking out the most beautiful/interesting/intelligent/charming woman I was friends with. Agency works! Especially for women dating women. We had a beautiful five-year relationship…
This was after years of mostly dating guys who pursued me and largely thinking, yes, this is fine I guess, but surely there’s more to love?
(My apologies for any exes reading the comments of this particular Substack post…)
What a great post. Thank you!
Awesome 👌
I absolutely loved this, especially how you paid attention to the frame of the problem, rather than just the problem itself. Thanks for sharing.