ooh so exciting

the class blog so many posts i like. i feel like joining in the fun.

first up, joanne why are u so angsty om gggg gg?! u sound disillusioned with love and life lol! (as far as i know u havent been dumped recently so be more optimistic!!!!)

well to be fair joanne's posts are quite interesting, and i agree with the logic. however i cant agree that love isnt glamorous based on that argument (even though i have yet to have a gf hahahahaha)...

modeling the process of falling love and creating a function for it is cool and all... and while the function makes the process of falling love seem unglamorous, it doesnt change the fact that the experience is indeed beautiful.

an analogy would be a music maestro playing some hardcore beethoven piece (or in my case MIKA PERFORMING LIVE). the music will wow audiences, but to a physicist who doesnt appreciate music, he could view beethoven's symphony simply as sound waves and wave equations. he may even go as far as to say he knows the symphony far better than beethoven since he can quantify each note with an equation.

perhaps the beauty is not in understanding love fully by modeling it (even if u can get all the correlations and factors right, modeling it fully is a stretch), but rather in experiencing it.

i am going to be trained as an economist and i think the subject is immensely fascinating and useful, but i believe that humanity is far more than just walking "lightning calculator(s) of pleasures and pain". modeling intangible things like falling in love requires one to quantify attraction and chemistry which i think is not possible currently. even then, perhaps there are correlations between factors such as convenience/self-interest and level of attraction that we are unaware of.

so MORAL OF THE STORY IS...................................






i'll see u guys nxt year with a hot gf










AND I'LL BE LOVING IT.

What do you live for?

Just some food for thought from someone who doesn't feel like working...

Isn't it ironic how little choice we have over the more important things in life? if you think about it, the one most fundamental basic decision over whether to be born into this world is not something you and i have any say ove. Your parents had, but not you.

Sure, we have a choice over whether we want to continue living, but that's not quite the same, is it?

it's just like how some people have no qualms of killing a zygote or embryo but not a human. Somehow, it's harder to say i dont want to live any more than to say i dont want to be born.

i'm struggling to find a suitable economic analogy for this but the only one i've found, thus far, is in phyics. Life is kinda like a very high-speed object, once it starts, it is self-sustaining - moving off in the same straight line with no force directing it at all. But to stop it, a very large force is required. And not everyone is able to muster such a force, unless in dire situations.

So the great qns now is: if you had a choice, would you choose to be born? Why or why not? Would you have wanted your life to be any different?

If no, then what is it that keeps you going? Why do you even bother climbing out of bed every morning?

Ok back to constructing quizzes for freshies like nic. I promise to make it challenging. =D

PS: found the econs analogy! The concept of equilibrium. Omg. I cant believe i forgot it.

Another one from the cynic

Pardon this belated rebuttal. I was trying to sound less critical or harsh if i could.

But working in an environment that is ill-tolerant of flaws, i've grown pretty used to identifying them and being told off about them.

i considered not posting this but there has been calls from other cynics to balance the perspective a bit.

So just a couple of points:

Firstly, your post is titled Economics of the Dating Game, but there wasn't any economics involved. So that's a misnomer there.

Secondly, notice i did not say that convenience is the only factor accounting for relationships. It is balanced by the mutual attraction and commitment as well. Perhaps a better way to counter my claims would be to base it on the relative importance of each factor.

Finally, I noticed that your argument centres a lot on the effort requried in sustaining a relationship. (which deviates quite a bit from my original post on how love hapens, but no matter, i think i can rebutt that point) Did it ever occur to you that staying in the relationship may just be the more convenient option?

Convenience not just in the more common sense of time and space dimensions, but also in terms of the effort saved in looking for a new partner, of getting over emotional hurt, and other intangibles.

Being practical-minded beings, I believe there is an unconscious Cost Benefit Analysis behind every decision - even if this process may be horribly skewed by subjectivity when it comes to a woolly topic like relationships. Pardon the economics analogy again.

So say if i were to remain in a relationship, the costs to me are: the money and effort spent on nurturing the relationship, the opportunity cost of the time wasted, the emotional ups and downs, and the lost opportunities of freer interactions wtih the opposite sex. On the other hand, the benefits will be that warm fuzzy feeling i get from him, the companionship, mutual support and what-nots.

Simply put, benefits outweigh costs, relationship wins. Otherwise, break-up wins.

This CBA is also the reason why many couples who still lvoe each other don't stay together - the costs are starting to extract an unbearable toll on two people in love.

Throwing aside economic technicalities, convenience may also account for the reason why many people stray and newer and more convenient relationships are formed at the expense of less convenient ones.

Let me recount the story of 4 guys who have - through varying means - tried to express interest in this gir. Barring the one pr whose advances smack of a booty call, convenience underlie the motivations of the other three, two of whom are already attached.

Sicne the focus here is on sustaining relationship let's just talk about the two attached dudes. There is no easy conclusion flowing from a comparison fo the usual basics - looks, personality, wits and what-nots. But what is interesting is that both the bfs are in the same Exco as the girl in qns and both their gfs have been complaining that they were spending a lot more time with the Exco than with them (note here that they have just raised the costs of staying in a relationship by subjecting the relationship to stress and pressrue). So i guess in both their cases, break-up woulod have become an easier way out if they could just secur a more convenient alternative to their existing gfs.

That said, i do believe that convenience may not be the only fctor at work in a relationship. And i must concede too, that the emphasis placed on convenience varies for individual to individual - which is why i still make an effort to screen people.

At the end of the day, i believe that the smaller role convenience plays in starting the relationship, the more likely the relaitonship will last. But once the relationship gets going, i think convenience matetrs mroe than ever to sustain it.

i hope no one has been offended by my post. Certainly, i wish all happily attached and happily single people happiness in relationships and singlehood. Neither am i completely convinced by my own arguments too - i think there are many loopholes that one can still capitalise on to deflate it. I'm just, like i explained, pointing out a couple of points.