Chapter 42 Key Takeaways: Open Questions and Future Directions

These are questions to carry with you — not facts to store away.

Carry this question about science itself: What does "we don't know" actually tell us? Not failure — but evidence that the phenomenon is important enough to resist easy explanation. The largest questions — those that matter most for human flourishing — are the hard ones. The hardest questions are the best ones.

Carry this question about sexual orientation: If the science shows a substantial heritable component without a complete causal model — and sexual fluidity is real, and the cultural organization of same-sex desire varies dramatically across history and place — what does this mean for the political and ethical arguments people make using the science? The science does not determine the ethics. The argument for respecting all consensual orientations does not depend on their biological or non-biological origin.

Carry this question about chemistry: If interpersonal chemistry is a genuinely emergent dyadic property — not reducible to either person's individual characteristics — what does this imply about the entire project of predicting compatibility from profiles? And what does it say about what is most important in the encounter between two people?

Carry this question about prediction: Finkel et al. (2012) found that no matching algorithm outperforms random pairing for long-term outcomes beyond a very low threshold. Stated type preferences consistently fail to predict actual attraction in real encounters. If compatibility is emergent rather than predictable — what does that say about what love is?

Carry this question about consciousness: Neuroscience can identify the correlates of desire without explaining why there is felt experience at all. There will always be aspects of attraction that the scientific account cannot fully capture. What is the relationship between mechanism and meaning in human desire?

Carry this question about long-term love: The neuroscience of companionate, long-term love is far less developed than the neuroscience of early infatuation. What maintains love across decades is poorly understood. What would it mean for how you think about your own relational life if this question had a clear answer?

Carry this question about the future: AI companions, VR intimacy, pharmacological bonding interventions — the technology is developing faster than the ethical frameworks. Who should be involved in making decisions about the direction of that development?

Carry this closing question: What does a science of attraction, done well — critically, humbly, intersectionally — actually enable for human flourishing? And what is your role in that project?

The science of attraction is unfinished. That is its best quality.