Red Flags & Adverse Selection#
Why “still single” is a market prediction, not a character read
Three ideas, before anything else#
- information asymmetry
- adverse selection
- unraveling
Get these three straight now — the scenario in a minute uses all of them.
Information asymmetry#
One side of a match can see things the other side can’t — how someone actually behaves in a relationship, versus how they present on a first date.
Economists call this information asymmetry: one party knows something relevant that the other party can’t verify.
Adverse selection#
If you can’t tell good from bad up front, and both get treated the same way, the good ones have the most to lose from staying — so they leave first, and who’s left skews worse over time.
That’s adverse selection. It’s not a claim about anyone’s character. It’s a prediction about who’s still in the pool.
Unraveling#
Run that forward: as the average quality of “still available” drops, it gets harder to trust anyone still there, so more good people leave sooner — a market can hollow itself out this way without anyone doing anything wrong.
Economists call this progressive exit unraveling.
Now, back to the point#
Two people. Both “still single” at 34. Same fact, different reasons.
Two people, same fact#
| Trait | Alex | Blair |
|---|---|---|
| Visible fact | still single at 34 | still single at 34 |
| What a stranger assumes | something’s wrong with them | something’s wrong with them |
| What’s actually true | turned down three good relationships that weren’t quite right | has been the one getting left, for reasons they haven’t addressed |
| Verifiable from a profile alone | no | no |
What adverse selection predicts#
The market treats Alex and Blair identically — both read as a “red flag” by the same folk logic, because the pool of people still single at 34 really does skew, on average, toward Blair’s story more than Alex’s.
The prediction is about the pool. It says nothing about which one either of them actually is.
The mechanism explains why the pool looks the way it does. It cannot tell you which person you’re looking at.
Tutorial 4#
A lot of fictional personas, partial information only. Choose who you’d pair with — then find out what the rest of the sheet said.
What today doesn’t settle#
Adverse selection reads “still available” as evidence of low quality. It has no separate term for someone who stayed available on purpose. Both produce the same pool from outside.
Week 12 is where this, Week 1’s gap, and Week 3’s gap all come back at once.
See you next week#
Week 5: Screening Games