I am imagining an alternate-world version of myself: let’s call him Faustus-ב (pronounced “Faustus-bet,” following my convention of using Hebrew letters to designate alternate worlds). I happen to know a lot about Faustus-ב, because he is very much like me in most respects save one, in that Faustus-ב is out to find himself a romantic life partner who will make him enduringly happy. An analysis of how difficult this is will offer some insight into both one of my negations (#14, there isn’t someone for everyone) and also into why I am not interested in spending time and resources in finding a life partner that will make me enduringly happy.

Faustus-ב isn’t particularly picky about the kind of romantic partners who might make him enduringly happy, but there is something that he can’t really compromise on. Like me, Faustus-ב reveals his strange personality through blogging, and he knows that he won’t be happy with someone from whom he has to hide himself and smile through. A real romantic partner, a chance for real intimacy for Faustus-ב would require that a romantic partner would be able to take in all of Faustus-ב’s written strangeness — the bleak pessimism of this blog, the adolescent lusting and strange cultural nostalgias of Hedonix, the icky-squicky squees of Infernal Wonders, and the utter madness of his comics writing, the Tales of Gnosis College and We Must Boost the Signal (when published) and Lady of the Shadows (when written) — and still potentially love Faustus-ב. And by “love Faustus-ב” he means absolutely not “love him in spite of what he writes” nor “loves Faustus-ב and nourishes a secret hope that the love of a good woman^* will ‘heal’ or ‘redeem’ him and make him give up all that.” Faustus-ב knows full well that neither of those will ever work. Only “read it all and potentially loves Faustus-ב, full stop” will work.

The “read it all and potentially loves Faustus-ב, full stop” would have to be a pretty rare woman. Lots of people find my, or in this instance Faustus-ב’s, writing objectionable. Pessimists are generally disdained or hated, mostly, as are pornographers, even if they are pornographers pro bono. I think that perhaps an estimate of 1 in ten-thousand potential partners might meet this criterion. So P(“potentially loves Faustus-ב”) is equal to 1e-4. This doesn’t seem unreasonable at all. It suggests that in a small city there’s on average at least one woman who fits. In the New York Metropolitan Statistical Area, about a thousand.

Of course, the potential partner would need to be appealing to Faustus-ב, too. I’ve said he isn’t too picky, but he’s not completely indiscriminate either. (Before you sneer, dear reader, try to think how many people walking down a city street you could see yourself falling in love with.) I’ll make an optimistic estimate for Faustus-ב here and say that he could fall in love with 1 woman in 100. However, the relevant probability here may not be independent of P(“potentially loves Faustus-ב”). Someone who actually has the property of “read his work and potentially loves Faustus-ב” is probably pretty atypical in ways that Faustus-ב would find appealing. Perhaps she has an intellect twisted in ways that Faustus-ב finds appealing. Or perhaps she just has a really, really big heart. Even in this mean old world there are still people like that, after all. So perhaps we should say that the relevant probability is P(“Faustus-ב potentially loves her”|”she potentially loves Faustus-ב), which it seems reasonable to estimate as 1 in 10, or 1e-1.

So for any candidate partner for Faustus-ב, the probability that she’s the one, that rare somebody for him that would mean a form of enduring happiness the joint event (“Faustus-ב could love her”|”loves Faustus-ב”) & (“loves Faustus-ב”). Using a bit of basic probability theory:
P(“Faustus-ב potentially loves her”|”she potentially loves Faustus-ב”) * P(“she potentially loves Faustus-ב)

= 1e-4 * 1e-1

= 1e-5 (that is, one in a hundred thousand)

Suppose Faustus-ב starts searching through potential partners. The probability of his finding a “hit” after r iterations is given by the formula

P(“hit”) = 1 – [(1-1e-5)^r]

Let’s optimistically imagine that Faustus-ב can vet one potential partner per day. That’s unlikely to be a modal time, ticking steadily away at one partner per day. But maybe it isn’t an unrealistic mean time. Some will show up as hopeless in seconds (“Huh. A member of the American Family Association.”) Others he might date for weeks or months (perhaps as long as 56 months!) before it becomes obvious it won’t work. How long might it be before we might expect him to succeed?

Thanks to the modern miracle of spreadsheets (thank you Libre Office!) we can apply our formula and estimate Faustus-ב’s chances of success over varying intervals of time.

That doesn’t look so good, does it? Feeble chances of success in any human timescale, and he’d have to live into his third century (with no weekends or vacation days) before his odds of success go past break-even.

Poor Faustus-ב! It’s enough to make you want life extension on his behalf. Or perhaps suicide. I could see it going either way.

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^*Faustus-ב is male and straight. He would doubtless be a finer, better, happier person if his sexuality were more ecumenical than it happens to be, and he knows this. It’s just that he doesn’t find that in himself, though believe me, he has looked for it. Hence “woman.” Back to main text.