If the Gale-Shapley algorithm is asker optimal, why don’t women ask men out? Are women just stupid? Lazy? Cowardly? Conformist? Unagentic? Or is the real world less asker-optimal for women?
> Men are more likely to want to date partners that they don’t want to marry than women are.
So what information does the woman gain when a man asks her out? This argument rests on the assumption that a man asking her out is more likely to marry her, when the article itself states that the act of being asked out is not evidence of wanting marriage.
If a relative stranger asks you out, are you going to assume it's because he's interested in marriage? Seems to me it's only a signal in very traditional cultures, like at church gatherings.
I was wondering about your information yield difference point as well. The tables from the experiment were not super clear, but seemed to suggest men are more likely to accept escalations of intimacy when initiated by women than when roles are reversed, but the information gained, especially on the first round, appears to be exactly the same in single instances. Specifically, both parties learn about the desires of the other party. But the initial interaction regardless of the initiating party doesn’t reveal the probable character of the other party. This seems validated by the counter factual that if he was the kind of person to ask you and he wants to he would, which means he either doesn’t want to or isn’t the kind to ask. If he answers honestly you get the same information as if the man had asked. It’s seems like your point regarding information yield hinges on the idea that some slice of men will say, ‘why not?’ Which admittedly adds cost to the ask. The mitigation I’d advocate here is scrutiny in the second round; the actual date. That said, maybe I just misread your point.
Really interesting article. Navigating by Moonlight was great read as well. Thanks for the reference!
The piece is great. I've always been suspicious of the Gale-Shapely algorithm's implications and I appreciate your thoughtful and thorough criticism of it. The point about low information gained by women from asking men out is especially valuable.
Also, the whole thing is great but I especially appreciate the capital letters exhorting people to move. You're top dead center. People ought to move way more aggressively for lots of reasons but especially that.
I get the sense, from some of the other capital letters, that dating has been hard at times. I'm right there with you. It's tough out there and I don't miss it.
I suspect asking out men worked well for Cotra because she's part of a very male-skewed subculture: the rationalist/Effective Altruist/Tech scene. In that kind of context, where men outnumber women 2 or 3 to 1, men are more likely to want to lock down a woman rather than play the field, because they simply have fewer options. That same imbalance means women also basically gets to have their pick of the litter. I doubt she often experienced romantic rejection, at least not to initial asks.
I really do feel like womenkind, despite trying to correct for it, still routinely overestimate the integrity of the male aggregate.
Off all of my male existence, I do predict that a sizable fraction of men would be turned off by a woman asking them out.
You could say such a man wouldn’t be a good match, but men are sinister! They’ll waste precious matchmaking months and years just for fun. Depending on their alternatives they would likely accept, mentally noting it wouldn’t be “long term”, while preparing to engage in their own hypergamous monkey branch.
Granted, I would *guess* that many women willing to ask a man out in current gender relation conditions, select inadvertently for the type of man who would not care.
But it sure does feel like the “just ask him out” advice is what is delivered unto women in a way that “just be yourself” is to men. I do wonder if the traditional strategy of simply loitering in the guy’s presence for a couple of weeks outperforms.
The traditional strategy of just showing up and waiting never worked for me at all (I would say it's the worst one), so I switched to the agentic strategy of asking men out. The results were mixed - it only worked wonderfully with introverted men who were already into me. I would say that an in-between strategy of initiating intense flirting with wild playfulness and then waiting for him to ask me out provided the best results so far.
There is a big internet dating company that was all about women asking men out, and it's had difficulty for a number of reasons. Does that mean the concept is wrong -- no, Bumble did what its name is: it bumbled along.
I interpreted the data shown of the two studies (small sample size, and that one dude in each study who is either OK with cheating or in a poly relationship) as showing that not all single men will accept a date when asked by a woman, but women will accept a much lower percentage of offers for a date. So men will accept a date when asked by a woman, but not all men.
Women are most vocally frustrated with dating that there aren't enough good men, and men complain that so few women accept their requests for dates, so I can't accept that a large number of men who CAN'T get a date WON'T accept a date when the traditional gender roles are reversed.
This is great, and also I think there's an important generalization. A generalization that is so obvious that you didn't bother pointing it out. And yet, something everyone loves to forget:
The optimal solution to any problem depends on the details of that specific problem.
That's it. That's the lesson! Tech people*, despite being very smart, seem especially prone to forgetting this. Maybe this is because they study problems in an extremely 'genericised' way, with as many specifics stripped out as possible.
*I actually don't know if they are any worse about this than any other group of people, tbh
Agree -- technology isn't solving the "find a match" issue. They're just picture depositories with secure chat functions. At the same time, it's a human issue -- I have faith that the algorithms know who you like, know who likes you in return, but bias and poor dating come into effect, and people go unmatched for years.
Great piece though for many reasons, I suspect none of the advice here will ever be taken, especially in the United States. We saw an attempt to make this happen and uh, the market outcomes were not great.
A woman who can competently ask out a man under any circumstances (ie, could be even partly receptive to this article) is wired so fundamentally psychologically different from the vast hordes of normie women in America, that quite frankly they're not going to have any problems in life of any kind. They're already kind of ubermensch winners.
Asked out both my long term boyfriends. Now marrying a woman (who I also asked out)—my guess is many women wired this way find dating the vast majority of men tiresome due to these kinds of role expectations. It’s interesting that the post talks about how much less information a woman gets when she asks a man out than the reverse—I experience it the opposite way. If a man asked me out before I got the chance to, I usually didn’t have enough information yet to know the most important thing: whether or not I like him!
The vast majority of people, of both genders, are not wired in any way because of any experiences they've had or any conclusion that they've consciously reached.
The vast vast majority of people follow scripts they they've been presented to by other people, whether it be through social media, social groups, "social norms", etc. Both the women wired this way and any men with role expectations that reinforce why they're wired that way!
In fact, having any conscious thought about these things probably puts someone above 80% of people! So I think I stand by my point, lol. It honestly took me at least two decades of life to realize I need to absolutely ignore every normie life script/social expectation.
That being said, this problem is probably slightly worse with regards to women because at least now in 2025, women are probably somewhat more conformist than men.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you - I almost take it a step farther and say that any woman who would be even partly receptive to this article is *already* asking men out on their own. Asking someone out competently requires a comfort level with being in an assertive role, and no one is going to be convinced to be comfortable being assertive by an equation.
Your point that asking men out for women provides more information when their chances of being rejected increases is very insightful. To give a different example from the men being the bosses: less physically attractive women can benefit more from this strategy since they’re more likely to be rejected.
"if you’re in a situation where men doing stuff like “seeking nonmarital partners” and “taking a long time to decide whether to marry a partner” are suppressed or punished—in religious social groups that take chastity seriously, there’s a lot less asymmetric downside to asking a man out."
I would add nerdy spaces as an example - like the ones I assume Ajeya travels in. I think men are less likely, on average, to string women along there.
I would disagree about at least the second way of stringing women along being uncommon in nerdy circles. I also feel somewhat iffy about moralizing them as stringing people along... they're strategies that are sometimes okay but disproportionately benefit males; when men don't use them women can expect to experience less drawbacks from using less secretive strategies
Yeah sorry, predictable misunderstanding - I didn't mean uncommon in an absolute sense, just less common. I mean, there's less women so they are more important to lock down. And probably other things too.
I'm sorry that you've gone through that challenge, and glad you found peace with your decision.
When I read your post, I thought there was a subset of guys that are just jerks, while there are other guys that don't get asked out who would do anything if they were asked out. But, when I started thinking about my experiences, I was a guy who didn't 1) put in sufficient effort with (at least) one girl who asked me out and 2) ignored many non-explicit signals probably fairly often.
These memories had been percolating in my head, so I put them together.
I hope other guys can learn from my experience and date better, and the next Sympathetic won't have to deal with the same inattentiveness that you experienced. Good luck.
Good piece. Left out was the simple version: you should not have to ask a man out because if he likes you, he’ll ask you out. If he hasn’t asked you out, he’s probably not that into you.
I guess "Contra Cotra" was too on the nose?
> Men are more likely to want to date partners that they don’t want to marry than women are.
So what information does the woman gain when a man asks her out? This argument rests on the assumption that a man asking her out is more likely to marry her, when the article itself states that the act of being asked out is not evidence of wanting marriage.
It's better evidence than him not asking you out!
If a relative stranger asks you out, are you going to assume it's because he's interested in marriage? Seems to me it's only a signal in very traditional cultures, like at church gatherings.
i am going to assume he's more interested in marrying me than a similar dude who didn't ask me out
hm. ok, fair enough. I think it's a bad heuristic, imo most people ask others out to get to know them better and see what happens from there.
I was wondering about your information yield difference point as well. The tables from the experiment were not super clear, but seemed to suggest men are more likely to accept escalations of intimacy when initiated by women than when roles are reversed, but the information gained, especially on the first round, appears to be exactly the same in single instances. Specifically, both parties learn about the desires of the other party. But the initial interaction regardless of the initiating party doesn’t reveal the probable character of the other party. This seems validated by the counter factual that if he was the kind of person to ask you and he wants to he would, which means he either doesn’t want to or isn’t the kind to ask. If he answers honestly you get the same information as if the man had asked. It’s seems like your point regarding information yield hinges on the idea that some slice of men will say, ‘why not?’ Which admittedly adds cost to the ask. The mitigation I’d advocate here is scrutiny in the second round; the actual date. That said, maybe I just misread your point.
Really interesting article. Navigating by Moonlight was great read as well. Thanks for the reference!
The piece is great. I've always been suspicious of the Gale-Shapely algorithm's implications and I appreciate your thoughtful and thorough criticism of it. The point about low information gained by women from asking men out is especially valuable.
Also, the whole thing is great but I especially appreciate the capital letters exhorting people to move. You're top dead center. People ought to move way more aggressively for lots of reasons but especially that.
I get the sense, from some of the other capital letters, that dating has been hard at times. I'm right there with you. It's tough out there and I don't miss it.
I suspect asking out men worked well for Cotra because she's part of a very male-skewed subculture: the rationalist/Effective Altruist/Tech scene. In that kind of context, where men outnumber women 2 or 3 to 1, men are more likely to want to lock down a woman rather than play the field, because they simply have fewer options. That same imbalance means women also basically gets to have their pick of the litter. I doubt she often experienced romantic rejection, at least not to initial asks.
I really do feel like womenkind, despite trying to correct for it, still routinely overestimate the integrity of the male aggregate.
Off all of my male existence, I do predict that a sizable fraction of men would be turned off by a woman asking them out.
You could say such a man wouldn’t be a good match, but men are sinister! They’ll waste precious matchmaking months and years just for fun. Depending on their alternatives they would likely accept, mentally noting it wouldn’t be “long term”, while preparing to engage in their own hypergamous monkey branch.
Granted, I would *guess* that many women willing to ask a man out in current gender relation conditions, select inadvertently for the type of man who would not care.
But it sure does feel like the “just ask him out” advice is what is delivered unto women in a way that “just be yourself” is to men. I do wonder if the traditional strategy of simply loitering in the guy’s presence for a couple of weeks outperforms.
The traditional strategy of just showing up and waiting never worked for me at all (I would say it's the worst one), so I switched to the agentic strategy of asking men out. The results were mixed - it only worked wonderfully with introverted men who were already into me. I would say that an in-between strategy of initiating intense flirting with wild playfulness and then waiting for him to ask me out provided the best results so far.
There is a big internet dating company that was all about women asking men out, and it's had difficulty for a number of reasons. Does that mean the concept is wrong -- no, Bumble did what its name is: it bumbled along.
I interpreted the data shown of the two studies (small sample size, and that one dude in each study who is either OK with cheating or in a poly relationship) as showing that not all single men will accept a date when asked by a woman, but women will accept a much lower percentage of offers for a date. So men will accept a date when asked by a woman, but not all men.
Women are most vocally frustrated with dating that there aren't enough good men, and men complain that so few women accept their requests for dates, so I can't accept that a large number of men who CAN'T get a date WON'T accept a date when the traditional gender roles are reversed.
This is great, and also I think there's an important generalization. A generalization that is so obvious that you didn't bother pointing it out. And yet, something everyone loves to forget:
The optimal solution to any problem depends on the details of that specific problem.
That's it. That's the lesson! Tech people*, despite being very smart, seem especially prone to forgetting this. Maybe this is because they study problems in an extremely 'genericised' way, with as many specifics stripped out as possible.
*I actually don't know if they are any worse about this than any other group of people, tbh
Agree -- technology isn't solving the "find a match" issue. They're just picture depositories with secure chat functions. At the same time, it's a human issue -- I have faith that the algorithms know who you like, know who likes you in return, but bias and poor dating come into effect, and people go unmatched for years.
Great piece though for many reasons, I suspect none of the advice here will ever be taken, especially in the United States. We saw an attempt to make this happen and uh, the market outcomes were not great.
https://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/US-stocks-bumble-2024-08-08.png
A woman who can competently ask out a man under any circumstances (ie, could be even partly receptive to this article) is wired so fundamentally psychologically different from the vast hordes of normie women in America, that quite frankly they're not going to have any problems in life of any kind. They're already kind of ubermensch winners.
Asked out both my long term boyfriends. Now marrying a woman (who I also asked out)—my guess is many women wired this way find dating the vast majority of men tiresome due to these kinds of role expectations. It’s interesting that the post talks about how much less information a woman gets when she asks a man out than the reverse—I experience it the opposite way. If a man asked me out before I got the chance to, I usually didn’t have enough information yet to know the most important thing: whether or not I like him!
The vast majority of people, of both genders, are not wired in any way because of any experiences they've had or any conclusion that they've consciously reached.
The vast vast majority of people follow scripts they they've been presented to by other people, whether it be through social media, social groups, "social norms", etc. Both the women wired this way and any men with role expectations that reinforce why they're wired that way!
In fact, having any conscious thought about these things probably puts someone above 80% of people! So I think I stand by my point, lol. It honestly took me at least two decades of life to realize I need to absolutely ignore every normie life script/social expectation.
That being said, this problem is probably slightly worse with regards to women because at least now in 2025, women are probably somewhat more conformist than men.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you - I almost take it a step farther and say that any woman who would be even partly receptive to this article is *already* asking men out on their own. Asking someone out competently requires a comfort level with being in an assertive role, and no one is going to be convinced to be comfortable being assertive by an equation.
You don't have to ask me out. You just have to say yes a bunch of times up to and including when I ask you to marry me.
Your point that asking men out for women provides more information when their chances of being rejected increases is very insightful. To give a different example from the men being the bosses: less physically attractive women can benefit more from this strategy since they’re more likely to be rejected.
"if you’re in a situation where men doing stuff like “seeking nonmarital partners” and “taking a long time to decide whether to marry a partner” are suppressed or punished—in religious social groups that take chastity seriously, there’s a lot less asymmetric downside to asking a man out."
I would add nerdy spaces as an example - like the ones I assume Ajeya travels in. I think men are less likely, on average, to string women along there.
I would disagree about at least the second way of stringing women along being uncommon in nerdy circles. I also feel somewhat iffy about moralizing them as stringing people along... they're strategies that are sometimes okay but disproportionately benefit males; when men don't use them women can expect to experience less drawbacks from using less secretive strategies
Yeah sorry, predictable misunderstanding - I didn't mean uncommon in an absolute sense, just less common. I mean, there's less women so they are more important to lock down. And probably other things too.
And yeah good point about the terminology!
Good argument, though it felt like a convoluted way of making a simple case.
I'm sorry that you've gone through that challenge, and glad you found peace with your decision.
When I read your post, I thought there was a subset of guys that are just jerks, while there are other guys that don't get asked out who would do anything if they were asked out. But, when I started thinking about my experiences, I was a guy who didn't 1) put in sufficient effort with (at least) one girl who asked me out and 2) ignored many non-explicit signals probably fairly often.
These memories had been percolating in my head, so I put them together.
I hope other guys can learn from my experience and date better, and the next Sympathetic won't have to deal with the same inattentiveness that you experienced. Good luck.
https://plebdating.substack.com/p/if-a-demon-asks-if-youre-a-god-you
"You can change how much men like you—we’re not going into depth on this, this topic is better covered by the whole rest of the internet."
It’s always worked for me because I don’t want marriage and transaction costs are low… so this checks out.
Good piece. Left out was the simple version: you should not have to ask a man out because if he likes you, he’ll ask you out. If he hasn’t asked you out, he’s probably not that into you.
oh no, should i MOVE!
but you've already moved