Funny, but he does not need to go through 3493 dates to meet one of his 18,726 viable bachelorettes. Its probably in the double digits.
You don't meet random people within the general population, you meet random people within your environment. If you are above the normal for intelligence its almost certain that your environment is going to be filled above normal intelligence women, and to a lesser extent its likely the same in terms of attractiveness.
Also his standards are too high (especially on physical attraction - yeesh!)...
I think it's rare to find a software company where all of the employees are software engineers. They are usually outnumbered by designers, marketers, salespeople, support staff, finance, accounting, etc. There is generally a similar number of men and women working in these fields.
Yeah, two standard deviations is too high, even if attractiveness could be modelled as a normal distribution. That's the top 2.5%. Even one standard deviation is the top 15.5%, which is very picky. I don't think the average person is all that terrible.
One standard deviation for intelligence is probably ok. IQ scores are actually based on the normal distribution, where the mean is 100 and one standard deviation is 15 points. So while I don't think 115 is a very high bar, you probably shouldn't ask your date to do an IQ test.
Exactly! You can rationalise any assertion akin to that by broadening your sample space. Your sample space isn't the world's population, it's your environment.
You don't meet random people within the general population, you meet random people within your environment. If you are above the normal for intelligence its almost certain that your environment is going to be filled above normal intelligence women, and to a lesser extent its likely the same in terms of attractiveness.
Also his standards are too high (especially on physical attraction - yeesh!)...