Most peoples "social circle" is very, very small. Think about the number of eligible women (or men) within your circle - it can probably be counted on 2 hands. Are you sure you want to limit your selection of something as important as a forever partner?

Network, not circle. The term 'social circle' isn't really well defined, so I'll define it as "people with whom you have social interaction with on a regular or semi-regular basis". A social network is anyone they are connected to, and them to them, etc. Your social network is much larger than a social circle. Think six degrees of kevin bacon.

In order to dramatically grow a social network you might only need to make friends with 1 person who is outside your normal social network. For example, if you joined a gym and made friends with one person whom you then played squash with every week, and that person is otherwise unconnected to anyone else you know, now there is at least a plausible chance to meet any of the people in their social network. I'm no expert here, but surely someone at Facebook can give an example of how adding a new friend who isn't in your normal group of friends can drastically increase your connections.

If you can use this social network effectively, you have (I think) a much better chance of finding a lifetime partner than using a dating site, both because of how difficult it is to identify an appealing personality online, and because social network connections are (I think) much better paths to a potential match.

My first response here was to explain in this circumstance a person with "strong social skills" would have a number large groups they interacted with. For example religious groups, exercise groups, charity groups, etc.. All of which could provide a handful of potential mates through casual encounters. So easily a few dozen opportunities given a reasonable sized city.

But... that really implies there is something wrong with people who don't have the time, or inclination to involve themselves in such activities, or simply aren't the kind of people who can successfully get a date from a casual encounter (heck I've known people who get get dates from 30 second interactions in the grocery store) like this.

So, while I'm far from an expert on this, I suspect this is just more of our modern sickness. The idea that not only does a person have to fit a long list of criteria to be eligible, but they also have to have honed their social skills to the point of being able to woo someone into a date with just a casual encounter. And frankly, the people I know who could accomplish this were also some of the "worst" people I knew (lets start with the idea that they were completely unreliable lairs).

So, I return to the idea that traditional human society weren't these huge cities, but rather smaller villages where it was possible to have such a limited pool as to generally grow up with your spouse, and be aware that a large part of bringing up children/etc was spending time on those lower rungs of the ladder working out issues. To keep going with the idea that someday in the future it would be possible to climb back up those stairs to happiness. But this also means that such modern conveniences as birth control are actually harmful to society because its possible for a couple to fall into/out of love without the traditional responsibility of raising the children that were the result of a few weeks of biological romance (and lets face it the lusty rutting of 20 somethings is little more than biology having its way).

>: the author presents one view of how to pick your life partner, from one way of life

Yeah that's often a very genuine way of writting, from your own perspective. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Sure it might not fit your life but it might be interesting to or help a few.

There's a implicit, insipid value judgement in your first thesis. That someone's social network is small does not make it "poor", nor does it mean that they're bad at socializing. That a stigma exists for some reason you can identify does not make it a good reason.

> There is currently no online service that can correctly predict if someone will enjoy your physical presence.

I mean, no shit? That's why you go on dates and try people out just like meeting them any other way.

> If online dating really worked you would only have to go on three dates before you met a perfect partner.

Perhaps I'm missing something but I'm not really sure why that should be true at all.

You are right - a small network does not make it poor. But a person with poor social networking skills will tend to end up with a poor social network, in terms of having a number of available potential partners from which to choose. I shouldn't have said the network itself was poor. Merely its use in finding a life partner would be poor.

You're right again, that online dating shouldn't necessarily work out in just three dates. But given a social network similar to your own, along with tools to filter and sort for the most ideal match, and a bigger pool of potential matches, it should result in immediately presenting you with the person that you would normally have found in a version of your social network that was bigger than normal and then meeting them in person. With a bigger social network, in theory, you should have to go on fewer dates in order to find a good partner, because there is a larger pool from which to find the best candidate. Of course, it doesn't work out this way.

> And so, after eliminating all choices from one's existing in-person social network, people with bad social networking skills look for dates on the internet.

What, no. That's not the kind of people using online dating.

There's people who intentionally want to meet people outside their friends' group (for obvious reasons).

Then there's people who use Uber despite the fact they have a friend who has a car. It's easier.

My bad. I meant to say "look for a lifetime partner", not just "look for dates".