Jongo
4 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2018–2021
2:48 · 3.2M views · Jan 7, 2013
A short BBC Planet Earth clip from the Pole to Pole episode showing the courtship displays of birds of paradise.
HN references it as a vivid illustration of sexual selection and as a metaphor for competitive display.
4 comments from Hacker News
There's a pretty good book by one of the OKC founders that goes into a lot of this data. [LINK] There's a bunch of good graphs and analysis in there (which matched my anecdotal experience of online dating). The takeaway for me - if you're a man looking for a woman and you're not in the top 5% of attractiveness for men (really top 2%) then online dating is a waste of your time and you're better off doing pretty much anything else. This is doubly true in skewed dating markets like the bay area (less so in favorable markets like NYC, DC). There's a lot of 'what you can't say' [0] in that book, sexual selection is skewed in lots of ways people pretend it isn't. I think it'd be better to acknowledge some of these things and consider it in an intellectual way - not so you can leverage it in some sleazy/misogynistic pick-up-artist way, but because understanding how it works helps you know how to behave/show confidence etc. Helps for the aspie-er among us where this doesn't come naturally (and is more important for men seeking women where for better or worse we have to be the ones to figure it out [1]). On a somewhat related note, this Ted Chiang short story explores some of this and is just generally great: [LINK] [0]: [LINK] [1]: this video
I think they're fighting an uphill battle because these incentives are sexual selection incentives. There's not much you can do to 'fix' them. I think what happens is that both sexes go through it and come out the other side. If they were lucky enough not to pair off with a bad mate early they can then choose more wisely. For a lot of men this means being unhappy and lonely in their 20s, for women it means being unhappy while sleeping around a lot in their 20s. Eventually people figure out what they want. I'm not sure an app can do much to fix that. Sexual selection's affect on behavior is a powerful thing: this video
Up until now, I had assumed that BBS Planet Earth scene was just some enhanced photography at work. this video Even now, it still seems pretty unreal. I’m glad to learn it’s not manipulated footage, adjusted by what seemed like possibly the choice to film during overcast weather, with possibly some less-than-natural lighting and carefully selected camera angles.
I read your post, and am still trying to wrap my head around the content. The best metaphor I could come up with, given my potentially erroneous understanding of your thesis is thus: The purpose of life is a dance competition, the more novel the performance the better. The beautiful mating dances of exotic jungle birds comes to mind: this video