I once met a student at MIT who adopted an extraordinary method for sorting potential dates into categories. Scott’s objective was to find the perfect woman, and he used a very complex, time-consuming system to accomplish his goal. Every day, he went online to search for at least ten women who met his criteria: among other attributes, he wanted someone who had a college degree, demonstrated athleticism, and was fluent in a language other than English. Once he found qualified candidates, he sent them one of three form letters containing a set of questions about what kind of music they liked,
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