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I have a sort of ongoing dialogue with Dave Evans of Online Dating Insider.

To a recent blog post of his….

Synthetic Validity: a mathematical theory that attempts to bridge the gap between individuals’ personalities and abilities. Synthetic Validity, while being touted as the next big thing in Human Resources, may also be a good fit for the online dating industry.

I think pheromones are better for compatibility testing but what do I know?

Here’s what Mr. Steel has to say:

Originally designed for industry and their stricter requirements (e.g., able to withstand legal challenges), synthetic validity is a methodology to create a fully automatic selection system. By changing the metric from job performance to relationship satisfaction, you can use it to select romantic partners as well. In fact, it is much easier to use it for dating. It is simply putting “soul mate�? selection on a firm measurement and scientific foundation, taking advantage of 100 years of selection research….more

I responded…

Whether you will be heartened or discouraged by developments such as this depends on whether you presume that the Web’s greater service to human relationships will be as *medium* or as *tool*. This is clearly a tool. It is intended (or purports) to afford people insight into an area of human activity where we would all wish to be more insightful… more

SYNTHETIC VALIDITY | SYNTHETIC VALIDITY | MATHEMATICS OF LOVE

I have written previously about the relationship between the Web and Human Sexuality. I have also explained how the mounting complexity of our societies has had a cumulatively suppressive effect on Human Sex. In spite of the seemingly greater “publicness” of sex, people find themselves somehow less able to manifest their true, individual, unique sexuality. Why is that? Simply because one of the basic requirements of mass socialization is the adoption of easy identifiers, of labels. There is less time to deliberate over subtlety than earlier in our history. What breeds a feeling of contentment in human beings is the same today as it ever was: to feel one’s self a part of a group, and for that, to feel less anxiety for the unknown.

Because modern societies are so large, bringing together people from widely varied backgrounds, value sets, beliefs and customs, they have given rise to universally subscribable cooperative systems for defining what things are. Labels, in other words. To participate in a society is to understand its labeling systems. And because large, modern societies have to accommodate such a broad spectrum of people, the labeling and identification systems such societies create necessarily demand that nearly everyone has to compromise some aspect of themselves in order to be accepted, and that some smaller number of people have to compromise significant aspects of themselves in order to be accepted. It is a bell curve…more