This is a good distinction. I feel I was practising dating in my early twenties before wanting to meet my life partner towards the end of that decade. What you are looking for (and the amount of time you would want to spend reading resumes) differs depending on what you are looking for
That actually sounds like a great way to buy a house. But it sounds like a terrible way to sell a house.
Buying a house the current way is terrible. You want me to commit to spending two million bucks on this place after spending ten or fifteen minutes looking around it? I haven't even taken a shower here yet!
Hehe! Reminds me of a diplomatic telegram sent to some remote outpost years ago "What are the latest news?", to which the reply was "Nothing happening, not a damned new!".
> The pun has gone down in history as a clever line from Napier, but it’s a misattribution. Napier never sent such a clever message. Instead, it was the English hymn writer and educator Catherine Winkworth who, aged 16, remarked to a teacher that it would make a good pun on the event. She sent the one-word line into the humour magazine ‘Punch’ and it was published on 18 May 1844.
I don't think it's a good idea, but "women should affect an interest in astrology to weed out the wrong sort of men" is a take I've seen doing the rounds.
I'm sure different people do this differently, so I'm fully only answering for myself here!
Back when I had a Bumble profile, it wasn't like I was talking about astrology in my profile or anything, Bumble just has an area to include it as a little badge. (Like, 5'4", doesn't smoke, Gemini, etc) I think it's actually included by default.
And as I mentioned in a different comment, the people where I'm from don't take astrology seriously. Like it's a fun thing to know your friends' star signs, but no one's calculating their destiny from the position of Jupiter.
So the folks I intend to filter out are the ones who consider themselves like, too rational to contend with that nonsense, or the ones that think they're superior to people who include their star sign. And that's cause I'm full of nonsense lol and want to find someone who doesn't take themselves too seriously.
I guess like, putting "Gemini" in my profile is such a mild thing to me that if someone considers it "shit-testing" we probably wouldn't be a match.
One of my friends puts in her profile that she graduated in the top 10% of her class, which is super effective at filtering out all the people who message her to be like, well you didn't go to that great a school right?
My wife's profile named as 5 things I can't do without: "my rosary" - not even being Catholic. Even I got that hint. - The "astrology"-idea is even better as an instant date-breaker - with me and most decent guys. Though it will leave you with fakers.
I'm thinking this might also depend on local culture.
Where I'm from, no one actually believes in astrology, it's just a fun thing to know people's star signs. So if someone can't tolerate that, they're probably an asshole.
But if you live somewhere where there are people that are seriously into horoscopes, it becomes a lot more reasonable to be a person who pointedly avoids that.
Both ways, I'd guess. a) if nearly "no one" believes in it (Germany, USofA?), more than your sign can feel creepy. If a girl wants to test my tolerance for the lolz, not sure who is the bitch. (Had this date, were she 'pretended' to be racist, to 'test' my 'patience'. I was out of the door, quickly.) b) where most females do believe in horoscopes (Russian university students or in Vietnam), well, if I wanna get laid, ... just knocking on wood with fingers crossed ours are a "fit". Toi toi toi.
There are also women who pretend to be into anime who are not into anime, which I am still wrapping my head around as a woman who was never into anime to begin with.
Worse than any I've seen, but I have heard of worse.
So I knew someone who told me in college, his sci-fi club wanted to attract women, so they got a few girls and decided to show a classic sci-fi film that was recognized as being of artistic value, and known for its use of music. It was even made by a classic, well-respected director, Stanley Kubrick.
Is it so different from the classic high-school thing of pretending (or trying to learn) to like a band in order to impress a guy/girl, or find your way into a friend group?
I don't think it's cool, but some people are really into it to the point that it's sort of an identity marker, and I'm assuming the people you mentioned are faking their interest in order to fit in with an anime-loving social group and/or romantic prospect? If it's neither of those things, then I don't get it either.
That sounds right to me. I guess it's not always about actually trying to form relationships. If a bunch of guys are into a thing that is generally considered low-status and unattractive to women, any relatively attractive woman who signals an interest in the thing will definitely get their attention.
Ironically, my wife and sister spend >10x the amount of time playing console video games as 4x-year olds than I do now, or did in my 30s. And they share notes on gaming. I think they both started gaming decades ago because me and my brother-in-law were super avid gamers, but their initial involvement in gaming seemed to be much more about spending time together than trying to impress.
Re: faked anime interest, that sounds like a passing phenomenon in a for a girl during a phase when she’s not feeling very confident.
I just wrote a comment about it further down, but - is anime really considered a thing that gets you male attention, like video games?
I'll copy and paste my other comment, I hope it doesn't break any rule:
----
I had no idea that anime was considered a male thing in the US.
Is it really so? It seems strange.
When I was growing up in Italy in the 20th century, there were lots and lots of anime on TV, and lots and lots were clearly aimed at girls.
Of course I'm more familiar with the ones for boys. But if I ask any woman about her favorite anime show growing up, she'll bring up a lot of girly ones.
Even the extremely successful Sailor Moon was one; it was common knowledge that it was for girls, a boy who watched it would have been thought of as gay. A female cousin of mine was an enthusiastic fan, despite being an adult.
Another that comes to mind is Rose of Versailles (aka Lady Oscar). It was huge.
I've mentioned two, but there were lots and lots; I think there were as many shows for girls as for boys; I don't know their names because I'm a man.
-----
Are girl's anime not known in the US? Assuming you're from there. Are the only anime famous in the US the ones for boys, to the point that people put anime in the same mental space as video game, an interest typically for men, that gets you male attention?
I think people watch Miyazaki/ Ghost in the Shell/ Your Name and think: "this would be a really cool thing to be into". I guess it suggests curiosity in foreign culture, and distinctive, quirky, non-mainstream tastes, without seeming pretentious.
I'm a guy, and I've probably been in this camp- at least exaggerating my interest in anime. I could never be bothered getting through all the crap to find the gems, but I was always kind of jealous of my friends' anime collections, with the series with long and ridiculously translated names.
There's a decent chance that the person you attract by pretending to like a band will eventually stop caring very much about that band, freeing you to stop pretending.
I know some people occasionally watch a good series without being obsessed with anime generally, and I'm sure there are some kids who like it in general as a passing phase, especially now that it's gone mainstream-ish.
But the ones who care very much that *you* like it? Maybe not forever, but at least into their 40s...
A band is just an artist, anime is a medium. I know plenty of people who've lost interest in individual authors, but what lover of books has ever given up on them in entirety?
This implies that anime-loving men comprise a group that young women find romantically desirable. I ... have a hard time believing that. Has the world changed that much since I was young?
Liking anime (within reason) falls much more in the “quirky and cute” category than the “ewww” category these days I’d say. There are a lot more women out there who like anime, as well.
I had no idea that anime was considered a male thing in the US.
Is it really so? It seems strange.
When I was growing up in Italy in the 20th century, there were lots and lots of anime on TV, and lots and lots were clearly aimed at girls.
Of course I'm more familiar with the ones for boys. But if I ask any woman about her favorite anime show growing up, she'll bring up a lot of girly ones.
Even the extremely successful Sailor Moon was one; it was common knowledge that it was for girls, a boy who watched it would have been thought of as gay. A female cousin of mine was an enthusiastic fan, despite being an adult.
Another that comes to mind is Rose of Versailles (aka Lady Oscar). It was huge.
I've mentioned two, but there were lots and lots; I think there were as many shows for girls as for boys; I don't know their names because I'm a man.
So it's strange to me that anime would be considered mostly for boys.
There’s very little anime on regular television in the US. But due to streaming it’s way more accessible than it used to be so it’s very much a mass market phenomenon now.
It's kind of a racing car everywhere, if you are in the know. Subaru WRX? But maybe you are saying there is not a giant lesbian Subaru fan club in Japan?
There weren't as many anime on TV in the US, so anime culture stayed heavily nerd culture. Like, in US nerd culture it was fine for guys to watch Sailor Moon to the point where Barenaked Ladies had a popular song that mentioned it. (getting anime named-dropped in a popular song was absolutely thrilling to the nerds of the time) The entire idea of there being boy anime and girl anime was slightly foreign, like yeah, those were the demographics in Japan, but here, you gotta take what you can get. The lack of options forced people into just watching whatever.
That said, there were always girls into anime, just somewhat less noticeably so. The stereotypical nerd was male, so watching anime was something of a male thing. But if you went to cons and anime clubs you'd find a lot of girls into it.
I'm in Australia (which absorbs American culture like a thirsty sponge) and a nerd but not an anime fan, and from my perspective anime fandom seems to be male dominated in the way that nerdy subcultures usually are: guys are overrepresented among the fans, and even more overrepresented among the hardcore/obsessive fans. But that's mostly based on stereotypes + what I see on the internet.
It does not! I think it's something a little different - it's to attract partners who don't care if you're super interested in weird, non-mainstream, possibly even somewhat "cringe" things.
It's more like a filter to weed out normies who would be unsettled by a really high interest in "weird" hobbies.
This is actually a good point. After I met a few girls repulsed by my D&D hobby, I started trying to bring it up relatively early.
My wife didn't know what D&D was when we met. When I told her I was into something a little weird, she was worried it was going to be some bizarre sexual fetish. She was entirely relieved to learn it was just some game I play with the guys. Her response was basically, "Do I have to play? No? Then have fun."
Yeah, it's got a much more dominant role in geek culture in the 21st century. Pretty much instead of dropping '42' somewhere you use an anime avatar from what I can tell.
Yes, but it's also those cartoons with cyberpunk cities, demonic entities, ninjas, and tits, but Japan seems to have stopped making those after the 80s boom.
It can definitely exist if the woman is geeky, nerdy, whatever the nomenclature is in other ways. Liking video games, roleplaying, fanfiction, things like that. A lot of men judge women into those hobbies, but anime fans are less likely. Also, if you live in the Bay area, they are likely to have a STEM career.
I still think this is less than 1% of women that identify as anime fans, since there are plenty of anime that appeal to women, anyways.
No. This totally makes sense. It's kind of like the old discourse about 'fake geek girls'--these really did exist, and I ran into a few a while back, though I didn't get mad as they were really just lonely people looking for love.
Thing about geeky guys is they're bad at picking up women (I should know), so if you're looking for an LTR and eventually marriage (or an alimony payment) you can basically 'buy low' as they will have relatively high incomes without the bargaining power more typical among men of that income.
Also, if you actually want marriage and a family with 2.5 kids (less common than usual among people in the Bay Area, I imagine, though Scott can comment on this better than I can), their lack of charisma's actually a plus as they're less likely to be able to seduce a mistress, and other women will be less likely to go after them.
It's the inverse of the guy who pretends to be into art or New Age (or whatever they're calling it now) or feminism to get laid.
Dance classes used to be the most classic move for guys to do this. Though I'm told at some point the message got out and the ratios balanced out, but I have to think there are still opportunities, YMMV.
I think part of the thing about "fake geek girls" is that, while true fakers exist (I can think of one girl in college that I'd describe that way and who even admitted it to me), more often it's just that it's female nature to not be as invested in hobbies as men. Monomania is a mostly male trait. I also think women are generally more interested in the "identity" of a hobby or interest than men are.
A certain type of girl might say, "Well, I'm not sporty or a girly-girl, not artistic or spiritual, etc. etc., and I suppose I like some nerdy/geeky things, so I guess I'm a nerd/geek and these are the sorts of things a nerd/geek does," and so they consciously pursue certain interests for the sake of the identity, rather than just the interests for their own sake. Men are much less inclined to think this way.
Taking an example outside geekdom: I had a girlfriend who would describe herself as a big Cubs fan. By this, she meant that she would wear Cubs hats or shirts all the time, catch maybe 20-30 INNINGS (not games) of Cubs regular season play per year, and then a somewhat higher percentage of playoff innings when that happened (not often, the Cubs being the Cubs), though she was at least highly invested in their epochal World Series win. But I wouldn't assert that she was really "faking it" to get male attention or something. She really saw herself as a big Cubs fan.
My father would also have described himself as a big Cubs fan. By this he meant that he watched 100% of Cubs games that circumstances permitted and was emotionally invested in all of them, and he had an obsessive familiarity with the stats of every player on the roster, which he would analyze in his spare time. Though he didn't wear Cubs hats or shirts.
>it's female nature to not be as invested in hobbies as men. Monomania is a mostly male trait.
I'm really skeptical of this assertion, because I know lots and lots of women who are *very* invested in things. Pick just about anyone I know through tumblr, but also common (but true!) stereotypes like "Horse girls" and "K-pop stans".
I think the issue is that you just don't qualify the sorts of things the modal woman is into as valid hobbies. For example: makeup, fashion, whatever reality TV romance crap passes for entertainment. And the problem is, since those things are totally illegible to the average male as hobbies, you can't judge the level of obsession.
(Also, side note: lots of women's monomania is *their kids*. Mommy bloggers, PTA moms, soccer moms, etc. They make their whole identity about raising kids, who are almost by definition an interest exclusive to them)
Contrast that with your example of sports, which is an archetypally *male* hobby; from an outside view (as someone who doesn't "get" sports), your girlfriend actually does seem like a big fan, especially relative to an average person of her gender. It only doesn't seem that way because, growing up male in a sports-oriented household, you had an inside view of the hobby and what *real* obsession looked like.
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but any real signal for what you're seeing might just be the sex distribution of Autism spectrum traits. What you call "monomania" sounds a *ton* like Autistic/ADHD hyperfixation. The example with your Dad ("obsessive familiarity" with stats "which he would analyze in his spare time"?) sounds pretty textbook. (There's a pretty common social media trend of autistic people calling out their totally-not-autistic fathers for showing clear evidence of where their children got it, and nearly that exact description features in all of them)
I don't know what to say about Tumblr, that's a weird sample, but horse girls are a fair counterpoint. I've known several and that's the closest equivalent I can find in my personal experience to a male level of hobby dedication.
I'm going to classify mothering and self-ornamentation (makeup, fashion) as "human universals" rather than hobbies, even if people differ in how much effort they apply to them. I don't think timeless, socially important activities can really be called hobbies, even if you're someone who REALLY enjoys those activities. A hobby isn't the same as "thing I enjoy doing". Sex is not one of my hobbies, even if it's my favorite activity.
As for the autistic point -- maybe "hyperfixation" is a better term than monomania. But I don't really buy the autistic framing. I've known a few guys who were definitely autistic (and had the diagnosis). My sense is that what makes one autistic is a near-total absence of social intuition. If an ordinary socially awkward nerd is getting a D for social intuition, a 65%, then the autistic guys I knew deserved about a 0%. I'd put my dad at around a C+.
Basically every chess grandmaster could be described as "hyperfixated" on chess. I don't think they've all been autistic, though surely autistics are overrepresented in that demographic. I think this is one of the reasons (though not the only one) that men dominate the high levels of the game.
>I don't think timeless, socially important activities can really be called hobbies, even if you're someone who REALLY enjoys those activities.
Once again, I think your outsider view of these things is presenting an obstacle for accurate assessment. This is an overly-broad argument that can be used to dismiss many things which are widely agreed to be hobbies. Being into bodybuilding/hiking/ultramarathons is just personal fitness, being into hunting is just survival skills, being into anime and books and manga is just our social desire to share stories. Hell, even sport fandom is just a simple example of our universal social desire for tribalism layered onto simulated combat (itself arguably a "human social universal"). Arguably, that applies *more* as a "timeless, socially important activity" than "self-ornamentation".
(I won't argue that you opinion isn't shared by many; there's a common flavor of cultural sexism along the lines of "men have hobbies, women perform social functions")
>I don't really buy the autistic framing... My sense is that what makes one autistic is a near-total absence of social intuition
While that's a large part of it, yes, special interests are so intrinsically linked that they're part of the formal diagnostic criteria:
>Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g., strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interests).
-DSM-V Diagnostic Criteria for 299.00 Autism Spectrum Disorder, criteria B-2
(I made a slight error here; "hyperfixation" is usually used for ADHD, and "special interest" for autism, but the two are so comorbid that most autistic people conflate the two. "Special interests" often last even longer than your average hyperfixation)
This is probably as true for anime as for any other interest people may have.
In general, I have found that I meet more women who are into anime than men who are, that the particular shows and genres they enjoy overlap but aren't exactly the same. Anime certainly isn't a male coded interest, in my experience.
Yeah, I'm actually kind of baffled at people's surprise. I can picture the stereotypical image of what this woman/girl is supposed to be. I bet she has a lot of Hello Kitty merch too.
Yeah, I feel like "anime" is somewhat equivalent to a category of "Regency novels" that would lump Jane Austen's work together with C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower books.
While I can't speak for the anime (though Full Metal Alchemist and Neon Genesis Evangelion are popular enough that even I have heard of them under the rock I live), the list of favorite video games ("Super Smash Bros, Final Fantasy, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, and Fortnite") appear to be all immensely popular video games (and don't have much in common beside that).
For me, this is about as convincing as trying to pass yourself of as a book geek by saying "my favorite books are Lolita, Heidi, the Little Prince, Harry Potter, the Catcher in the Rye, and the Hobbit".
Of course, we don't know if Scott was intentionally aiming for that effect or if he just recited video games popular with people who are currently in their teens.
I also can't say I've met anyone who would use that list of anime of their favorite, and they are especially less likely to be women's favorites. They are all basically shounen, spread from at least 2006 to present day; 90s if you assume the original NGE. I also don't see much overlap between Code Guess and My Hero Academia fans, especially since the former group is about a decade older. It's not necessarily surprising to find someone who likes all those shows, but if you were trying to date an anime fan, I feel like you would have at least one guilty pleasure show that you know is not great, but tells me more about your taste. For me, that would be Higurashi or Golden Time.
Though now that I overthink it, she could just be too shy to reveal her guilty pleasures. She at least has 3 mecha anime, so that gives me some insight of her tastes. Still feels more likely to be a list written by someone who has a lot of friends that are into anime and overhears them talking about it, than someone who is an avid watcher, (which very much might describe Scott?)
It isn't all that surprising for a woman to like shounen anime. If I recall correctly, Shonen Jump, a manga magazine marketed to young boys in Japan, has a pretty high female readership too.
IME My Hero Academia is actually more popular with (young) women than with men (lots of pretty boys lol), and the biggest Code Geass fan I ever met was my ex girlfriend.
But yeah, I'm pretty sure Scott just googled "list of most popular anime", and that's the joke. Should have thrown Hetalia in there.
I dunno, that sounds to me like a nerd girl with normie tastes. I've met a few of them at my work anime club. Eva is popular with girls, Code Geass was very popular with girls, Gurren Lagann a bit less so but I still wouldn't bat an eye. I'd bet very good money that Jane is a dedicated shipper, all of those shows have a strong relationship at their core and have been popular with the girls that like that sort of thing.
If I met Jane I'd start trying to gently introduce her to Gundam (start with Wing) and either Legend of the Galactic Heroes if she loves m/m or Gunbuster if she's willing to take a chance on Anno and f/f.
> Except for the twin study, all of these focus on initial attraction, not on which relationships work and survive. They don’t rule out a situation where the “initial spark” of romantic attraction is random, but people with similar interests and personalities are more likely to stay together. Maybe everyone in these studies is very stupid (cf. they’re mostly undergrads), and they all feel attraction to random unsuitable people at speed dating events, but in real life, selecting people who are long-term compatible with you is the way to go.
Something along these lines, minus the 'very stupid' and most of the 'random', seems really obvious to me. *Of course* short-term attraction is based more on hotness + charisma + other 'shallow' instinctive preferences than on a checklist of deeper qualities or life-plan compatibility! And of course that doesn't imply those deeper qualities and preferences are unimportant for long-term relationship success!
I think the main issue there is that all of those women sound like insufferable cliches. I mean, I know you exaggerated them into insufferable cliches to make a point, but 1) I don't think you're far off, and 2) if I saw any of those profiles I wouldn't read it as "I am this kind of person." I would read it as "I am choosing to represent myself as this kind of person, because I've found that this kind of person gets dates with people who represent themselves as the kind of person I want to date." Which is different. And a dystopian hellscape you can't opt out of if you want to participate meaningfully in the dating market. I'm mostly just glad I'm married.
Lots of obvious counterarguments ("What? People in bars don't lie?") but I think this is a different case. The issue is the same as all social media - the incentives are to go broad and shallow. My friends who are in the dating scene feel big pressure to present themselves as a type. There's no room to be a driven lawyer who is also a Taylor Swift fan.
I say 3 max, 1 obvious popular one that you genuinely enjoy, 1 that touched you deeply and you can never forget, and 1 guilty pleasure. For instance, Full Metal Alchemist, Clannad, Higurashi.
Stereotypically, there are more men into this sort of thing than women, so so long as you want to date men who are like you, it's probably advantageous. Assuming you like men, that is. Some doubt about whether anime is a guy thing, but I bet Minecraft is.
My wife is a geographer with a love of wordplay and puns and a tendency to ramble somewhat... We met offline, but "Bedroomrundi" both gave me a chuckle and is exactly her kind of humour. She could have written that profile!
Now that you've put it into words, I realize that this is also my intuition about why I think people are so against this.
Talking about yourself in this way reeks of an earnestness that people are going to label as performative. You're supposed to be reserved and have people pry out your personality with a crowbar! Can't be tooting your own horn, only unhumble liars do that.
This seems to describe the whole love-hate relationship we have with social media. It encourages narcissism and labeling, but deep down there we still have an aversion to such behavior...even if we've always been hypocrites about it to one degree or another.
Yeah, the game theory of online dating gets weird fast. There's an incentive to present as a type, and there's also an incentive for that type to be a non-type (I can go out or watch Netflix, I'm happy camping or at a black tie gala, etc.). That may also be related to the "cool girl" trope.
I always wondered about the most stereotypical elements of profiles, like "must love dogs" and walks on the beach. I guess dog people really are dog people, but sometimes I couldn't tell if people were being serious or just doing the stochastic parrot thing, like these are words that go together in dating profiles.
When I was dating, I think I subconsciously filtered out the most obvious types, which usually worked out pretty well.
I very much doubt that someone who hates dogs or doesn't like the outdoors would parrot those clichés. It makes perfect sense though, to say upfront if you are any kind of an animal lover, because a dog lover and a dog hater are going to have a rough time together. The "walks on the beach" thing seems a bit less helpful. My guess is it caught on with individuals who wished to express they didn't want to party or make out on every single date.
Any story we tell about ourselves will at most be a partial truth.
The differences were obviously exaggerated, though.
Dating docs outsource a lot of the effort to the party of the reader, and that reader has a limited amount of time. In fact, I would consider the willingness to read a few 10k words written by someone *because* you consider them a prospective partner to be a red flag.
Also, I don't think it is helpful to squeeze in as much about yourself into a short text as possible. Such a text is a kind of ad, so you might want to focus your message on just a few key points. Don't list ten sports you did within the last decade, pick one sport to focus on. Likewise, don't name your 20 most favorite books.
* anime, video games, shy
* economics, Kitchenya, AI art, cryptocurrency schemes
* woo, psychology
* party, princess, clubs, Taylor Swift
*shoe tycoon, vacations, eco-friendly
All seem perfectly good narratives. Still, I think that there is no reason not to chose bullet points which are anti-correlated within the general population. Perhaps the woo/psych woman could also be really into anime. Or the party princess could be interested in AI art. (If you create a roll-playing character, being an oafish half-ork barbarian with INT 9 is certainly an option, but not exactly new. Playing a half-ork Paladin who obsesses over the question why evil exists certainly sounds truer.)
While it is true that sometimes it is in the docs writers interests to not be truthful, I don't think this is much the case with special interests. Relationships are not zero-sum. Do you think the party princess is looking for someone to settle down and have kids with? Or that Ms Over-achiever is looking for a patient and gentle soul to help her through her burnout? Perhaps Ms Woo is looking for a skeptic, while the Kitchenya woman looks for a Mormon and the shy anime girl actually detests both video games and anime but is really a camgirl looking for casual sex.
None of this seems remotely plausible to me. Deceiving by omission about your criteria that society frowns upon (like preferring rich partners) is one thing, but actively encouraging the wrong candidates ("if I pretend to be a drifter anarcho punk living in their bus, nobody will ever suspect that I am really looking for a rich partner to treat me like a princess") seems like a terrible idea.
This is one of the things that bugs me about the rationalist movement generally - the idea that there's "truthfulness" and "lying" and any version of deception must be willful lies.
It's completely unthinkable that someone would claim to be a party princess if she has no interest in partying or princessing. But it's very conceivable that a person who likes partying and rich partners could notice (perhaps even subconsciously) that getting hits corresponds to playing up the party princess angle and choose to sand off the parts of their personality that don't conform to this package.
Yes, but kinda down on the concept of "types" in general. For sure these weren't meant to be taken as literal examples of dating profiles but I was struck by how much they 1) reminded me of dating profiles, and 2) prompted a response from other commenters saying that they'd love to meet people who had these (absurd) profiles.
My complaint more broadly about culture (and I'm not sure it's well-defined tbh) is that we're turning ourselves into shallow representations of a type because that's the best way to get the various algorithms that run our lives to sort us in a way that puts us in touch with people who share our interests. Being an anime-loving gamer girl might just be normal identity construction/hobby collecting/community but there's something mildly dystopian about the way people who have "enjoying video games" or "being a driven lawyer" as part of their personality feel the need to follow a script. You can like video games without "I'm an anime-loving gamer girl! Nya!" being literally the whole definition of you.
The thing that rubs people wrong about these dating docs isn’t so much that people express preferences or even that people try to make themselves sound good (this is bog standard for a dating profile) but that there is an implied “look at how high status I am” embedded in the assumption that lots of people are going to open your particular document and read through your personal essay to determine whether you would think they are a good match for you. On a normal dating site (or in real life) there is a certain symmetry: you see their (short) profile and say “yes”, they look at your (similarly short) profile and say “yes” back, then there’s a conversation that eats up time equally for both of you. It’s arguably true that requiring potential suitors to sign off on your 26 points of agreement before even starting to talk is more efficient since there are fewer false positives, but putting the burden of figuring that out on the other person just feels wrong to fairness-obsessed humans.
This may be less true for people who deliberately pick dating sites for allowing long profiles and consider a short profile a weak signal of incompatibility.
(Signed, the above person, who sees dating docs as convenient probably-more-honest-than-usual long profiles. Which are sadly primarily written by poly people, so not very helpful, but still. Reading a list of dealbreakers is so much faster than having to ask about each one. Could there be an extravert/introvert distinction here?)
It's just another kind of assortative mating, why not?
I think the thing is the decay of OKCupid means the sort of people who would be on there are now trying dating docs. You want to write a long profile and only select for people who (a) invest effort into you (b) read and write a lot and (c) match you on all the 42 other things...well, 10 years ago you would have gone on OKCupid, now you're writing dating docs.
I think it's something like an extravert/introvert distinction. My recollection of dating (which was not internet based, which was still considered for "losers" at the time) was that outside of the few high status guys that could consistently manage hookups with attractive people, is that most guys weren't that picky. At least to start, regular access to hooking up with an attractive girl (meaning anything from just kissing to sex) was enough to overcome some relatively obvious incompatibilities. Usually that meant just a reasonably short relationship. Sometimes they'd end up "accidently" becoming long term, usually with disastrous results ranging between spending a lot of prime dating years on and off again with somebody incompatible because it was easy all the way to marriage and kids before flaming out spectactularely. But very occasionally sometimes those relationships ended up "working" despite what looked like huge obstacles.
I could see a similar dynamic for online dating. For people who experience dating as enjoyable and would rather be with one or more not quite right persons while looking for the right one, the dating docs just unnecessarily limit their options. For people who experience dating as more of a chore and would rather be single than with mr/ms not quite right, the dating doc eliminates some hassle. Or those those who are do not see dating as a hassle but perceive themselves as time constrained and are wary of the trap of spending too much time with mr/ms not quite right, the dating doc is a useful tool that limits the risk of spending too much time with mr/ms not quite right and that benefit is worth the risk of false negatives culling out actually suitable partners.
Right, if you have a dating doc then to me it looks like a signal of "Look at me, I'm in such high demand that my application process looks like D. E. Shaw" but in the back of my mind I'm thinking "But if you're so wonderful how come you're still single?"
If you're attractive and you have a goddamn recruitment pipeline, my working assumption is that you either have massive invisible issues that repel people once they get to know you, or you just enjoy rejecting people for shits and giggles.
I would agree if it were literally structured as an application, but if it's just a list of all the person's qualities, it seems like you can read as much as you want and keep going only if you find it useful.
"What is your opinion of dating docs?" versus "How many dating docs have you read?" would be an interesting survey question. I should probably collate a few similar ones and submit them as one of the supplemental surveys...
I'm really interested in this response because I wouldn't have considered this point of view at all!
Dating apps are designed to get your as many matches as possible, the majority of which are very low value. Back when I was on the apps, I would be sending messages to matches getting nothing back (or very little substantial), or fielding low effort openers to which I wouldn't hear back from. A typical tinder conversation goes "hi", "heya? Wyd?", And silence.
Dating docs tell me that this person doesn't get as many low effort approaches and doesn't want to make many low effort approaches, which is appealing. I much prefer getting 1 high effort approach per week than 20 super low effort approaches per day (20/day is not unrealistic if someone is very active on Tinder in a fairly big population centre)
I think dating sites were hell even before. Basically "90% of the users are texting 10% of the users".
I imagine now the 10% will now have to figure out which of the high effort texts they receive are actually written by humans and which ones are written by the LLMs 3% of the users outsource their flirting to.
> but that there is an implied “look at how high status I am” embedded in the assumption that lots of people are going to open your particular document and read through your personal essay to determine whether you would think they are a good match for you.
I'm not usually a dating profile person, so maybe that's just me, but I read them to see whether the person would be a good match for me. So in that way I kind of see it as an open application to me and it does not feel like a smug show of status at all.
I would think that the problem with dating docs is they come across as desperate. At least, so long as they aren't a normal way to meet people. Perhaps they will become so popular that they won't appear desperate in the future, but right now they seem to signal: "I'm failing at meeting romantic partners in the normal ways, so now I'm trying this."
That said, if one has unusual preferences, a dating doc may still be a good strategy if there's no better way to communicate those unusual preferences to a large (or target) audience. Ideally, probably, someone with a dating doc should pursue other dating strategies in parallel and *should not*, if they find themselves flirting with someone at a coffee shop, tell them: "Check out my dating doc if you want to know more about me."
This is true of online dating in general. "If you are such a catch, why are you single?"
Just like it is patently uncool to obsess over ones coolness, actively searching for a relationship when you are single always has a touch of desperation. (Perhaps one advantage of polyamory for less successful men is that they can plausibly claim to be a secondary (or whatever the term is) in some poly relationship which certainly seems sexier than being a loser who can't get laid.)
Of course, it depends on the status of the person. I would assume that the big names in the ratsphere generally have an oversupply of people willing to date them. For them, dating docs allow them to optimize the quality of their applicants while also increasing the legibility of the dating market, which is good in itself.
For the average heterosexual man in our overwhelmingly male community I agree that publishing dating docs seems a bit desperate. OTOH, I think writing a profile and then not getting any replies is probably less painful than writing a messages to a specific person on a dating site and not getting a reply. As Stalin did not say, being ignored by a single person is painful, being ignored by eight billion humans is an universal human experience.
Assymetry is natural in dating. One person asks, another person answers. They both have their challenges but they are different. Here someone writes and other people read.
I do find it interesting that some people see reading someone's doc as an unfair burden, but not the act of putting yourself out there and crafting one.
Funny, I feel that way about someone on Tinder who doesn't even have a profile and just says "hmu" or something. It's like they think they're so beautiful that every single person in the world must want them, regardless of their other preferences, just after seeing their face.
I agree that one main downside of dating docs is that they are not machine readable.
(Of course, in the age of LLMs, the definition of machine readable is clearly blurry. One could expect a dating site where everyone writes a lengthy date-me doc and a LLM receives two of these documents and checks for compatibility. One could even simply add RLHF by asking the people involved how they judge their compatibility. Still, I am uncertain how this would be better than the old okcupid.
This is exactly my problem with dating docs; as someone who does not get matches on dating apps, it rubs me the wrong way when people solve the "problem" of too many matches.
I think the docs are a great idea. Swiping apps are horrible at connecting people. I am sure some company will streamline it soon, too. As your samples show, people are trying very hard to sound exactly the same as one another. The docs enable people to highlight their differences.
Perhaps when dating apps were new, there was a strong selection bias toward people who were willing to do something bold/new/tech-related. I remember when they first came out and there was a strong stigma about meeting or marrying anyone through this unconventional means.
Then they became popular.
Then they were mobbed by insincere people using the sites outside their intended purpose (so I've heard - I have no direct experience). It's possible the dateme.doc phenomenon is a way to impose a selection bias into the sample to make it easier to identify potential dating opportunities.
Before they were "swiping apps", they were just.. apps. You had to reach out, you had to write messages. I was successful I think in large part because I ignored the tacked-on superficial features ("likes") and just sent messages to women whose profiles I liked. I have no idea if that's still possible, but it was for me less than a decade ago. The match % based on quizzed preferences was useful though.
I expect that's still the most optimal way to date for working professionals.
I met my wife on OKCupid and my experience was via the traditional site. I did searches and paid attention to the details in the profiles. Long after we were dating I learned that there was a swipe component to the app and that was my wife's only exposure... she didn't do any searches and just randomly got my info and matched with me. Seems like the best of both worlds.
If they made people put a bit more effort into questions and actually cared what you list you're looking for enough, it would (I get a decent number of high-percentage potential matches with girls who don't speak English because it doesn't see that as a hard requirement, for example).
What happened was: smartphones. Made it harder to write + read more than a few sentences. Good for twitter&tinder, bad for old-school-okc, sad for SSC/ACX-aficionadi who depended on it.
Sure (I miss my blackberry), but the SSC/ACX types already self-select for readers with a computer. Even if I were to date today, I'd use a web app to draw initial messages, but notwithstanding, it doesn't matter if your target does. I'm sure even back then, many users had the app and still bother getting a profile up. Maybe that's more typical of OKC users.
Well, sure: not all wrote long (or any) texts back then with a full-size keyboard and a 17'' screen; but we writing folks naturally did back then - and found others. Critical size, so to say. (This google-doc-dating-link has ... 179 profiles?!? ... ) - If one comes to okc now as an app, chances are the text will turn out no longer than Scott's examples. And be one of the long ones, then.
"As your samples show, people are trying very hard to sound exactly the same as one another."
Hmm, I guess they all sound like dating app profiles, but I still got a lot of information out of them and I'm pretty sure about who I would want to date and who not.
I haven't used Tinder, but I have used Grindr. The big thing Grindr does for you is filter for people who are online right now, and tell you approximately how far away they are. For casual sex, these two features are much more important than anything about the personality (though some amount of personality is still very important).
I believe that Tinder does the same thing by the nature of its design, though these two features may end up being overemphasized compared to how many people want to use it.
Shouldn’t dating “success” be based on marriage length, lower divorce rates, happiness level after long periods of time, etc. and not just whether your individual preferences are being temporarily met? This seems like evaluating a diet based on whether you enjoy the immediate taste of the food and not on whether you are actually losing weight.
That's a lot harder to determine, though. To know if a marriage lasts 10 years you have to follow people for 10 years, and people are always going to lie about happiness, even to themselves. It's sorta like the numbers on mean number of male and female partners--sure there may be an alpha male phenomenon where a couple of guys are dating all the girls, but you're not going to tell me people don't lie, and in the opposite direction for each sex.
I personally like a nice, musky scent, a soft clean well groomed coat, shining intelligent curious eyes, and a nice athletic figure. Long whiskers also are nice.
I know a cat who really has a thing for Persian type cats.
Am I the only person who would go on a first date with all of the fake dating profiles mentioned, aside from the first? I’ve been partnered for a while but #2-#5 remind me of people I actually dated at some point, and enjoyed the time with. Although with #5 it could be really hard to keep a conversation going unless you happened to both love the same obscure anime.
Crypto was not a thing at the time, thankfully, otherwise who knows how things would have gone. (And even though I’ve always been a determined crypto skeptic, back in the late-2010s crypto boom I dipped my toes in and lost a small amount of cash on a shady ICO, so I can relate.)
Am I naive for just reading 1 as “superficial party girl” rather than “wants your money”? I barely used dating apps before I got together with my partner (not online), so I’m probably not the best judge.
I read it the same way but it’s not lost on me that people who have had a bad time with gold-diggers might see that “treats me like a princess” line a bit differently.
She fits a stereotype that I can only describe with a somewhat offensive Britishism that begins with "S" (but less offensive than the other one beginning with "S" you're probably thinking of).
I believe that "a girl who knows what she wants" is a 'dog whistle' for wanting money. (Like, what else could it possible mean? If she wanted something else, she would be more specific about it.)
More clearly, you also have to "treat her like a princess", must have "good taste in bars and clubs" (which means not the cheap ones) and she will spend "a little too much" time there. In other words, you are supposed to provide her expensive fun all the time.
Yes, she *is* a superficial party girl; that's true. But she expects you to pay for that all, and warns you in advance that it will be a lot of money, and if you don't like that, then you don't deserve her.
Assuming we're allowed to read these profiles as not strictly parodies, openly describing them as "degenerate crypto betting schemes" adds enough self-awareness that it reads like someone who was excited about the space in the early day but is now totally disillusioned by the current grifter-led culture, and sees it for what it is.
I mean, I'd go on a first date with all of them, but I agree that #1 has the biggest red flag (i.e. "is looking for exploitable people"). #4 has a, let's call it yellow flag, with the crypto money leak, but it seems more plausible that structures could be put in place to prevent that causing issues.
If 1 has that red flag it should be obvious from the first date so not a big deal. 4 yellow flag is more subtle and buried in an otherwise appealing package - the danger is greater
You mean she is trying to lure you into a crypto scheme by using reverse psychology? That's possible, but also a siren I'd think one could easily resist.
Nah, I just mean it’s an easy thing to look past at first, but when you want to combine lives (and possibly finances) later on it becomes a concern and by then you’re emotionally attached
Yeah, it's definitely something that needs to be dealt with, but my read on the overall post is that he/she'd be receptive to what Zvi calls Get Compact* and that would defuse the problem.
I feel like the fact that she explicitly called it a "degenerate betting scheme" and admitted she always loses money means it's unlikely that this is actually having a significant negative impact on her finances worse than any other hobby. A key feature of gambling addicts is the lack of self awareness.
Agreed, 1 could be trying to exploit people or could just be someone who’s not too smart and is way too invested in popular culture. Neither work for me so they’d be an automatic no. But a lot of people would look the other way on one or both points, especially if they’re attractive or there’s some other sort of commonality - race/ethnicity, religion, same hometown, etc.
If 1 isn’t trying to exploit you dating her could at least mean some fun nights out. I agree it wouldn’t last unless she had hidden depths (some 1s do).
Right, the crypto thing is firmly in the category of “dumb things that young people do” and as long as there wasn’t any evidence of an underlying gambling addiction or, say, bipolar disorder it’s not something that would trouble me too much.
It’s one of only two interests outside work she mentions, so it’s probably a not-small part of her life. But she’s also implied to be a bit of a workaholic (another negative). She’s stereotypically appealing to blog readers but the discerning gent should beware
I think the list is unrealistic. Where is the vegan recovering heroin addict with a Fine-Arts degree who is into Museums and Acid Trance music and who goes through Dom and Sub phases? But seriously, none of those profiles sounded like women I would be interested in dating — or even have coffee with.
1 would drive me crazy. There's one of those at work and my god, lady, string it the fuck down.
2 seems pretty full of herself; I would go on a date just to tease her. She'd probably not like me but there's a chance she does, and I'm going to have fun either way.
3 is a relative of mine; I find myself having to be careful what I say around them because they take criticism pretty hard. I'd avoid a date to avoid creating problems.
4 seems fun, I'd date them. The fertility comment is probably going to be a problem long-term but those are the kinds of jokes it's fun to lean into.
5 would be interesting, except she's saying she's being pushed into it and she's listing Fortnite as a favorite game; this is a self-conscious teenager who probably won't stand up for herself, and even without the age difference I'd be horribly worried about going all Patrick Bateman on her.
Dating 1-3 seems pointless to me. I have no interest in talking to them about literally anything they said, and that's a deal breaker. It's fine if you have special interests that are eclectic or not mine; I'll still get hours of enjoyment and camaraderie talking about them with you. But there's just nothing THERE for 1-3. Intellectual conversations are the spice of life, and boredom is its bane.
(I married someone with some 4 and some 5 traits.)
This is why I reserve the words "epistemic status: [foo bar]" for entirely sincere and truthful metacommentary on what I am saying... it's helpful to have a magic spell you pull out where things attached to it aren't sarcastic.
I am very likely an anomaly, but my dating life has been WILDLY variable. My dates/partners have had about a 40 year age span, different classes, education levels, drastically different Big 5 spreads, different races, nationalities. I don't feel very surprised when I hear about these things not mattering in practice.
I obviously do have preferences, but they are subtle and flexible enough that they can be satisfied in ways that look superficially dissimilar.
Maybe I'm just a mutant, but I'm a mutant that aligns with the science here, so?
Also, I think you may be missing that people sort of merge when they are together. Like I would love god to tell me how many of those 96% matching political people shifted their politics specifically in contact with their partner. It doesn't surprise me that 96% end up converging, but that doesn't tell me how they started, and I bet that matters for politics and a lot of other dimensions that can change over time. A different example is that my first wife was a working class high school dropout, but also blazingly smart and hard working, and in contact with my upper middle class intelligencia sensibilities (and a fair bit of cultural metis), she got an advanced degree in math and now is a math professor at a local university. That sort of thing is not captured in the data.
Yeah, I was unemployed and technically homeless when my wife met me, she was Oxbridge bound for her post-grad (which reflects our different class backgrounds; for what it's worth I've shaped up since then, definitely somewhat due to her influence).
The phenomenon of a person converting to a different religion for the sake of a spouse is at least widely-known, though I have no idea how common it is. Switching political parties seems even easier given how little difference one’s vote makes to one’s life.
Yes, a woman in my parents’ church met her husband there and ever since I’ve been thinking of trying it, but have been too much of a coward and/or lazy. >.>
I would not have preferred to know my wife’s preferences before our first date, and I’m pretty confident she feels likewise. That was the late 90s, but I don’t think that dynamic would be different for us now.
Moderately liberal democrat and irreligious NY+Miami, conservative evangelical old Yankee family. The only real thing we both had in common when we met was science as an avocation. We grew as adults, and became way more compatible, then got married. The change from who we each were ~25 years ago to now is stark. The same dynamic was even more true of my parents, this month is their 50th anniversary.
The only information that would have been a dealbreaker before or during a first date? Smoking. Fortunately for both of us, she quit cold turkey about a month before I asked her out. Re: a describable dating preference, for me it would be fine to learn this during a first or second date, rather than published in writing.
Perhaps these are too anecdotal to have any value for reasoned debate on the principle of dating preferences. But within our spheres of friends, most of whom have been married once and still are, the degree of political, religious, and cultural change each person has traversed between 20-40 years old is between “a large degree” and “a difference in type.” I hold to my mom’s advice to me, with my daughter: date different types of people, to explore and learn what you are looking for and esp what you can’t abide.
You're on to something: preferences are and should be malleable. I'm not sure it is healthy, let alone productive, to go to these lengths to define oneself so rigidly around various categories.
Maybe I'm biased, coming from a Nordic monoculture where variance in possible mates wasn't exactly huge when I was dating, but if the goal is finding someone to share your life with and grow into something more than the sum of the components, shouldn't you strive to be as open as possible?
This all feels very egocentric. But maybe I just have a strong preference against people with well-defined preferences formalized in dating docs.
I strongly agree with this sentiment. At the time most people are dating and looking for marriage (I'm presuming most in their 20s), most people truly don't understand themselves. And worse, have no idea what kind of person they may be in 10-50 years over the course of their marriage. A strong "I would never date a _________" may reflect a real preference, a preference someone thinks is real, a preference someone wishes were real, or a preference that someone wants other people to think is real. Even if this person is correct right now, that could easily change over the course of a lifetime. My wife thought she didn't want to have kids, but changed her mind when she met me and she realized that she just didn't want to have kids with the people she had previously dated, since they were incompatible with raising a good family.
Younger me didn't know what I would later find perfectly acceptable. Worse, younger me put way more emphasis on things that ended up being minor. There are things about my wife that may annoy me that 18-year-old me may have said was a hard no, but are no real concern at all at this point in my life.
I suspect a lot of the objection is just coming from the tell-don't-show style that many of these are written in, and foregrounding the boring-but-important stuff instead of putting it off in a corner somewhere. I recall Aella complaining about how may of these are tell-don't-show and should be more show-don't-tell, and claimed hers was, but on reading hers, I still found it to be tell-don't-show! So, yeah.
Of all the commentary on the commentary on dating docs (meta-commentary?), this guess feels most directionally correct. I'm a tell-don't-show person who's been surrounded all my life by show-don't-tell folks, found dating docs (and improved legibility generally, sans James Scott-style failures) useful, and was nonplussed by the many negative reactions to the idea.
I mean, it means the same thing it usually means, because "show, don't tell" is classically advice for writing stories in mediums that include text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don%27t_tell
But to explicate a bit -- I'd say largely it means something like, instead of making a statement that summarizes or abstracts, make more concrete statements that expand or instantiate it. One especially common situation it applies to regards qualities of your characters -- instead of telling us "John was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy", actually include in your story cases of John doing things that meet this description. Or, for a different sort of example, instead of writing "The riverbank was a gloomy place at night", actually describe the gloomy elements of the scene.
In a medium like film the "showing" would involve more literally showing, so I guess there the phrasing about making "statements" doesn't quite work, but I'm hoping this is sufficient to point at the correct idea. Does that clarify things?
An online dating profile isn't a short story, so I don't see how storytelling conventions apply. If you're suggesting people should give concrete examples rather than (just) talking abstractly, I fully agree but I don't understand why it wasn't described this way in the first place.
> An online dating profile isn't a short story, so I don't see how storytelling conventions apply.
It's prose that you want people to find appealing and not boring. A lot of what makes that work generalizes beyond stories per se.
> If you're suggesting people should give concrete examples rather than (just) talking abstractly, I fully agree but I don't understand why it wasn't described this way in the first place.
Because the phrase is compact, well-known, and generally understood, whereas trying to describe its meaning explicitly would require a lot more effort. There's a reason I said it means something *like* "give concrete eamples rather than abstract descriptions"; I was attempting to point roughly at the correct concept, not give a complete definition. I would not say that the phrase means *only* that.
I'd think (4) could be at least a good friend (but beware crypto: this need not be the profile of someone seeking to lure others into it, but it could easily be someone with what amounts to a gambling problem) and (2) is someone I used to know in college, whereas I would have a very hard time relating to (5). I also find it hard to imagine anyone else feeling differently!
I could see 5 being hard to get to know but kind and loving if you make the attempt. Plus I like video games and some anime so that’s a common interest and a half.
I'd say #2-5 all seem like they could be decent people. (Even #1 might not turn out to be 'terrible' in real life, but I wouldn't want to risk finding out.)
#4 seems designed to appeal to the average SSC-reading man, and #1 to be basically the opposite. #2 is obviously incompatible with me, but I think she would be compatible with plenty of other guys? #3 and I would probably find each other a bit annoying, but I can imagine a real person who would write like that & be quite warm and kind. #5 comes across as unthreatening but maybe *too* nerdy in the less-interesting-to-me sense of 'nerdy'?
Assuming I were a straight guy, I think both Hana and Larisa would be good potential matches, but let's be real, I wouldn't meet Larisa's standards. So Hana's the only one I could imagine a long term relationship with. But even if they're not all marriage material, most of them seem like they could be great friends (except for Jane -- as an introvert who doesn't share any of her media interests, I have no idea how I would maintain a conversation with her). But I'd say I have friends similar to each of these profiles in real life!
I can't see romance working out with 1 or 2. 3 seems fairly unlikely but I could see an outside shot. 4 sounds like a delightful person to know. 5 I guess I'd have the most in common with in general terms; she sounds shy but we could have fun geeking out together. None of them seem like *very* good odds for a romance working out, but a lot will depend on how each one is in conversation.
Reading other people's responses is fascinating for me too. I wouldn't date any of these women and feel a revulsion to a dating market where these might be the available options. I originally assumed Scott made up five people we were meant to not want to date, but for different reasons - implying that all of us have deal breakers we would want to know in advance.
I'm surprised at the poll results, but also surprised at my happy reaction that Larissa seems to rank toward the bottom. The fewer guys are my competition for Larissa, the more likely she'll be interested in me! I have this visceral response despite being married for 13 years with no intention of being on the dating market again, and Larissa not being a real person.
I'd say the opposite. 5 sounds like a perfect match for me, while 4 seems more like friend material. I have a strong interest in the social sciences, and I think I could have some great conversations with Hana. But if she really views *everything* in economic terms, that would probably make it difficult for me to form a more intimate connection with her. Constantly losing money on crypto is also a red flag.
I could see myself potentially dating 3 as well. I'm not into that sort of New Age spirituality myself, but it doesn't bother me as much as it bothers a lot of other rationalists. If she was pushy about her beliefs and practices, that would be a dealbreaker. But as long as she was willing to accept that it wasn't my thing, I think it could work out. (For what it's worth, I've dated a lot of girls like 3, and my current partner is basically a combination of 3 and 5.)
2 seems like a very poor match for me. Being with someone like that sounds absolutely exhausting. I'm a fairly laid back person and it seems clear that I'm not the sort of partner she's looking for.
I wouldn't be interested in 1 at all. I'd probably find her really boring. For that matter, she'd probably find me really boring. I don't think there's even the slightest bit of common ground for a connection here.
The biggest thing is it doesn't seem like we'd ever actually do anything unless I'm consistently pushing for it, and as someone who would myself *want* the other person to be a bit pushy towards doing things together, I think there would be a lot of times where we both want something to happen and it just *doesn't*. And she doesn't seem low-Openness to me per se, just very introverted and low conscientiousness, a level that extends quite a bit beyond nerd stereotypes and into actively avoiding e.g. going to conventions unless someone else asks her three times first.
"To me it seems like Hana (4) is awesome" To me, Hana sounds like someone I would want to talk with (why _is_ development so difficult??), but not live with, and the others all sound like people I'd avoid like the plague.
I am reminded of a novel, The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion, about a man who's tired of deal-breakers turning up among his dates (e.g. his dates habitually don't tell him that they're vegetarian until after arriving at his house for dinner), so he compiles a questionnaire that all prospects must answer. His friends futilely try to explain that this is not how you go about it.
I guess sometimes you might not know that you would like someone with a given trait until you meet a person with that trait. Also, people change their preferences, sometimes influenced by people they love. The problem with prefiltering on a set of criteria is that you might miss an opportunity with a person which fails on some of your preferences, but scores very high on preferences you did not know are also important to you.
The problem here isn't that profile description is a bad filter - it's just that mutual physical attraction is a much more reliable one.
Text profiles are hard to verify, reflect self-image more than personality, and it's still a cointoss whether you two actually vibe IRL. Meanwhile the photos are pretty foolproof - if someone shows up on a date not looking like the photos, the jig is up straight away. And it takes a split-second to judge a photo, when reading a dating doc takes a minute or more - making it faster to find your 1/500 person.
With all the dating apps switching to a swiping-based system, it seems like using apps as a first-pass attractiveness filter is a much more workable model than expecting them to sort people by compatibility - which was way easier 20 years ago where online dating was a niche for a specific kind of person.
In fact, from what I see, the vast majority of dating profiles you see on apps like Tinder don't resemble any of five examples in this post. They're simply empty or have a pithy one-liner. It's very easy to discard these profiles as "not taking dating seriously enough" or "what do I even talk with her about".
I strongly recommend in favour of attempting to match with these profiles anyway! Empty bio does not equal empty brain. Some of my best dates came out of matching with these wildcard profiles - purely on physical attraction alone. If there's no long-term compatibility, that's okay, spending an evening in the company of a stranger who finds you attractive is still better than staying at home. And anything more than that comes as an unexpected bonus.
I agree attractiveness doesn't matter zero, and people should put photos in their docs, but otherwise, I feel like I'm arguing "The current system is bad" and you're counterarguing "But it's the current system!" and we're talking past each other.
I took Loweren as not just saying "it's the current system" but "it works really well for *quickly* applying one of the most important filters of all, mutual attractiveness".
Exactly. My first thought reading Scott's example profiles was "but is she hot tho?" I'd give any of those profiles a chance if they were, none of them if they weren't... I think maybe dating docs are for the ace crowd?
“Spending an evening in the company of a stranger who finds you attractive is still better than staying at home”. This is the kind of sentiment that makes me wonder if maybe I am an alien, because I could not disagree more strongly. Spending time with strangers is basically always awkward, and spending time with one who finds me attractive, once I know they’re incompatible and I’m going to have to turn them down, is *the worst*.
Would you consider going on a date with e.g. a tourist who leaves the country next week? You are not going to form anything long-term for sure, but otherwise I don't see why you should "have to turn them down" in any sense
But what’s the point then? I get all the awkward parts of trying to meet someone and making small talk and self-consciousness and worrying about what to say, and none of the payoff of actually knowing someone well enough that I can relax.
Ultimately, holiday flings are a thing because we enjoy dates themselves, not only some later payoffs.
I felt pretty much the same as you when I was romantically inexperienced - either anxious or bored. Experience helps. I lowered the stakes by going on more casual dates with pretty girls without expecting some far future payoff and got the hang of dating. It's not easy, but I hope one day you will start enjoying it too.
What's the point of dancing with any women when you won't be partnered with any of them long-term, except maybe one? The act itself can be rewarding in many ways.
You're not an alien. Every time this theme comes up, there are people in comments for whom physical attractiveness is not important or not enough. I've seen it enough times on different sites. But we're a minority, and one that goes unnoticed by business.
You're describing dating, though? I mean, you can choose never to date, but you're dramatically decreasing your chances of finding a partner. You cannot find a partner without first meeting a stranger in person.
I know, it sucks! But my point is, some people hate dating, see it as at best a necessary evil, and welcome any technique that might help us find a partner without much dating. I would absolutely talk to a matchmaker if I knew one.
Actually, to generalize a bit more, the initial filter should be on the things individuals are not willing to compromise on. Smoking, location, appearance, political affiliation, ...
That mitigates many frustrations and helps be open on the rest of the magic.
Instead of focusing on defining an ideal, focus on avoiding the showstoppers and main irritations.
For me, it was as simple as walking distance, non-smoking and similar age and I had many fun dating walks before finding the one.
This is not enough for some. For me, music taste is super-important, as in I will never date anyone who likes certain kinds of pop and rap. I have VERY strong reaction to music, and I feel very, very bad in places where there is music I don't like. I try to get away as fast as possible, muttering vile curses under my breath. And if my prospective partner finds this unacceptable, I don't think we have a future.
I think dating docs should be less about things you like, and more about things you absolutely hate. If you match on those, it's a solid foundation: at least you can be angry at the same stuff, and common enemies drives people together well.
Photos are probably a good way for men to judge physical attraction; not so much for women, who are generally less visually attracted, and more influenced by things like charisma and manner that are only visible in person. This may partly explain why it's so difficult for men to get matches on Tinder - it isn't providing women the information they need to feel attraction.
Are you saying that finding a photo attractive necessarily means you'll find the person in the photo attractive in person? I certainly haven't found that to be the case.
No, the opposite. That women especially might find someone attractive in person (maybe after a small amount of getting to know them) whose photo was meh, so primarily photo based matching apps may be causing false negatives.
> The problem here isn't that profile description is a bad filter - it's just that mutual physical attraction is a much more reliable one.
I'll agree, with the caveat that first impressions can be misleading, and the long-term measure of attraction can take time to reveal itself. That is, time and ... intimate encounters.
Plus, to put it in a rationalist idiom, there's the matter of discovering what their strategy is in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, which can take a while. Sometimes you learn things about a person that change them from attractive to repulsive. Or the other way around.
There are people out there like me, for whom "physical attraction" just don't work. I simply cannot from photo, or even a glance at the "real article" alone judge if I want to date that woman. I mean, a lot of women look very beautiful in their dating profiles, and I understand their beauty - I just don't have any reaction beyond "well, that's nice to look at for about 30 seconds".
A well-written text profile that ticks all my marks? Now THAT'S where I get excited. I'm very lucky I found my wife on OKCupid before it become Tinderized, because I had zero success on Tinder. No woman ever matched me, and I had hard time forcing myself to "like" them. While I went on many interesting dates on OKC, so it's not that I'm exceptionally undateable - but Tinder-like sites don't work for me.
My guess is that there are at least two kind of people out there - for some, physical attraction is easy. But for a (sizeable?) minority, it just doesn't work and they NEED something like dating docs, essay-length profiles, questionnaires, anything but photos. As it often happens, the groups don't understand each other. People who find physical attraction easy think we're just ugly, or picky, or whatever. We think people who have success on Tinder are shallow and only look for one-night stands, not relationships. But reality is that we have different needs, and therefore it would be great to have different apps/sites to satisfy those needs. Which we no longer have, because everything is Tinder - it seems "looks" people are the profitable majority.
Many times I wanted to start my own text-only free dating site (as in, no profile photos at all, you MUST have a well-filled profile; partially to save on hosting costs and the need to moderate images, otherwise I would probably allow a single picture). But I never had free time (or skills, really, I'm a programmer, but I know nothing about front-end work beyond basic HTML from 90's when I was designing my Geocities page).
Yes, I think Demisexuality is what it is. Forgot the term.
> Okcupid tried something similar. It was a blunder for the ages.
It would have worked for me, so I guess such app would just have a smaller user base. Most people might be shallow, but not everyone is (to be honest, I did not find my wife attractive at all when we first met, for example). Not that I could ever get it off the ground even if I made it - getting people to join your new dating site is costly and/or requires promotion skills which I have exactly zero of.
The long-form dating profiles found on sites like OKCupid and PlentyOfFish were great back in the 00s, but they lost out to swiping apps and their ease-of-use because at the end of the day the only truly key issues are looks, money, and status (and also partly industry consolidation). Unless you are looking for something really specific, like a religion or someone into polyamory, nobody much cares about reading your carefully written profile--especially all the cliched ones.
I think it's far more than a niche. Sending good messages (facilitated by having profiles to draw from) is, it seems, an under-exploited vector for competition that rationalists should not leave on the table. Source: I did well, am not rich or the most handsome.
The whole thing is mysterious to me. Apparently those swiping apps are extremely annoying to use for both males and females for different reasons, and yet they are the apex predator which decidedly killed off all the alternatives? Probably the real explanation is that they are actually annoying only for the minority of nerdy/autistic types whose opinions I'm disproportionately exposed to.
What works well for the app isn't what works well for the users. They make their money off selling "premium" features that capitalise on addiction and FOMO. Okcupid was never able to monetise that well
Yes, the perverse incentives issue must be pretty troublesome. Maybe it's an avenue for an EA charity? Tractability and neglectedness are clear, and arguing for importance should be easy enough in SV/Bay Area circles, there's certainly no shortage of nerdy/autistic types there!
I don't expect long-form (or the capacity for it) to go away as, imo, it's still the most effective way to date online competitively for those who are sussing out signals beyond "looks, money, status".
The value of a profile is less so in determining compatibility at a glance, and more-so as a jumping off point for dialogue. I would write medium-long messages that drew from things mentioned in profiles, and this always played well. I had no issues getting dates, and I'd bet hard money that I was nowhere near the most handsome or ostensibly wealthy. Good communication sparks interest.
Describing it as "lost out" implies you're assuming a free market with competition. All the modern apps look the same because they're owned by the same company, Match.com - and it buying out OKCupid is what caused the change in OKCupid's UX
1. Should you have expressible dating preferences, and
2. Should you actually express them?
I would say that of course yes, it's reasonable to have dating preferences, but you should be very careful about actually expressing them lest you alienate or repel even the people who satisfy them.
No. I wanted to marry a woman who wanted to have kids. I have friends who want/ed kids but not enough to sort based on it and married people who do not want kids (or the other way around). They love their partners and won't leave them but there are so many people they could have fallen in love with that would have made them just as happy and without this soul-crushing conflict.
My wife didn't want kids back when we started dating, and I wasn't too sure myself -- if she'd asked I'd have ran for the hills. But today we're happy parents! Luckily neither of us had locked away our preferences so categorically.
You start defining these preferences, but they may end up defining you instead. It's hard to change your behaviour if you've spent years building an identity around telling people you don't want kids.
Anyway, I'm just not sure it's good for anyone to spend so much effort ennumerating what it is that think they want but don't have. Seems like a way to ensure present unhappiness and future disappointment.
Seems like a way to get what you want. Some people luck into getting what they want. Some work for it, or at least create the conditions for success.
You're right about the preferences defining you. I don't think that's a bad thing. Birth control is pretty effective. If you don't want kids, you can not have kids. If you do want kids, you can have kids (usually). If you never really commit maybe it happens or maybe it doesn't, but if it happens and you kind of didn't want it, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the work and responsibility. If it doesn't happen and kind of did want it, you may find yourself getting older and wondering how things kind of passed you buy.
See also: Wanting to sleep with other people vs not. Wanting to prioritize career vs community. Figuring out your sexuality, or your gender. Etc. It's great if you can find a partner who can find themselves with you, or one of you is passive enough to follow where the other leads. Or if what you find out about your desires is small enough that it doesn't reorient both your lives. But for most people, there's a lot of heartache there. Of looking at a relationship you've spent years on, maybe a decade or two, and trying to decide if it's worth starting over or just trying to muddle on.
Why is love supposed to be irrational? I hope it’s worked out well for you, but frankly that strikes me as nightmarish—having a relationship founded on common interests and rational preferences has enabled my partner and I to enjoy the good times more, weather the bad times easier, and ultimately have a more carefree romance than we would otherwise. I really can’t emphasize that strongly enough—we certainly haven’t been held back from growth either as individuals or a meta-organism, and we also haven’t had to make nearly as many individual sacrifices/concessions for the sake of the relationship as most of our friends.
I think it depends on the preference(s) and also how one describes/uses them.
To address the describe/use issue first, I think the preferences can be used to generate a reasonable sort order. So, the idea isn't to "weed candidates out" but instead to put the ones most likely to work out near the top of a "people I should date" list. Matching pretty high on both partners lists implies that they should go on a date (with each other). It isn't that dating someone who misses on a lot of preferences is "bad", just that it is more likely to be a miss and you have only a finite amount of time.
In concrete terms, someone looking to get married and have a lot of kids and who wants to spend time camping might find a better date than someone who is divorced and never intends to marry again, has been sterilized and has lots of plant allergies. It isn't that these two CAN'T fall in love and have a successful relationship, but maybe each has better odds dating other people?
For preferences I think it can work if one is honest with one's self about what actually matters. Wants kids vs doesn't want kids (though, I concede this can change). Likes to read a lot vs has no interest in books (a friend of mine thinks this one can be critical). Is looking to get married vs is looking to casually date.
MUST scuba dive is a bad preference in a way that "I'm trying to find a spouse now" is not.
I think I'm in love with Hana. Or possibly the internal simulations of Aaron Smith Teller and the Comet King have hijacked by brain's attraction centers to make me think I'm in love with Hana. God dammit.
Strictly speaking, they jointly control a majority of the shares in her "who should I date" market, but there's still plenty of opportunity for new people to buy in. The shares aren't linearly fungible with money.
OK Cupid used to have a blog called OKTrends where they did statistics with data from their userbase. One post I remember in particular looked at the match questions that predicted resulting relationships (which they knew from a survey when people disabled their profiles and answered, I met someone via OKCupid). They suggested that the questions people thought were very important (religion, smoking, etc) were less predictive of relationship-forming that some others ("Do you like scary movies?"). Here's the link: http://web.archive.org/web/20110315063632/blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-best-questions-for-first-dates/
In that case I guess gender/sex isn't a confounder, but being sexually open and liking beer are both traits in the "ladette" cluster, it makes sense they would go together.
Jane has remarkably narrow tastes in anime for someone who likes anime. Someone should introduce her to Monster and Nodame Cantabile. But she sounds like a nice person.
I think Scott either (a) doesn't actually watch anime so he listed the common ones that came to mind or (b) figured if he dropped references to Ya Boy Kongming in there nobody would know what he was talking about.
It's one of the ways fiction can be truer than reality sometimes.
It tracks for someone who has anime as one of multiple nerdy hobbies in the late 2000s early 2010s. Really, the one that most raised my eyebrows there was Fortnite.
There are many people really into hobbies that might be described by connesseurs as trash taste. There is also a certain segment of the population that doesn't "get out much" and hasn't discovered the real gems of a hobby that they spend so much time with.
I mean, look at all the people who have played D&D for years and haven't tried a good system yet. *ducks*
I'm not saying those anime are trash. I've watched some of them and I like them a lot. But they mostly (all) in the same pretty narrow subgenre of battle shounen stuff. There's so many other great types of anime to watch!
No, but an anime "auteur" might. That is why you get things like the self-deprecatingly named podcast/youtube channel "Trash Taste". Maybe a more descript term might be "common" or "popular".
But there are so many people out there who may sink a lot of time in the hobby and just never explore outside of the common hit titles. Or they assume the other stuff will be boring or not for them because they watched some seasonal filler once and assume everything is like that.
Go watch Erased! Madoka! Kill La Kill! Ranking of Kings! Gamers! Made in Abyss! Konosuba! Many more! I yell from the rooftops directly at people who have only seen shonen battle anime. These aren't even impenetrable high art works. But I still run into anime fans who haven't seen any of them.
You should see the matrimonial section of Indian newspapers. However, I hope you won't mock them.
They're very earnest and absolutely open about things Americans would find non PC.
Often, the parents are placing ads. I only saw about 10 of these and one was an ad for a gay son - the mom was looking for a man for him.
Westernized folks there wouldn't deign to use ads to find spouses for their offspring and while I think they'd have very similar preferences, they'd pretend to be very open minded. Therefore I find these ads charming.
I live in America and every time I visit India I browse a few ads in the papers because they tell me so much about things that have changed (or not) - since I grew up there.
I was waiting for someone to bring Indian matrimonials up.
When I read them, I find it interesting how little information is often provided about the potential spouse (or it's generic/vague/boilerplate "respects elders and loves youngers" sort of thing), but how much information is included about the family they come from.
I suppose it makes sense. In a typical Indian marriage, the family is a package deal. These are the people who will owe you obligations, and these are the people whom you will owe obligations to, so best to find out who they are, what they are likely to offer you and what they are likely to want from you.
Another is the word "simple". The connotation of this word in North American English is "not too intelligent". It occurred to me that in India, the implication is "no surprises." You're not going to marry this dude and then find out that he has some weird personality quirk that you now have to live with.
Well, women in the West straighten their hair, use gel etc. It looks like it takes effort.
"Simple" Indian women don't do this. Their hair looks well-kept (neat) but that involved no machines (like a straightener) or gels. No spa visits for simple women. Just a comb and coconut oil. Maybe some black hair clips.
That's an interesting cultural detail. It wasn't too long ago that people in the West also put ads in newspapers to find a partner, but I think it was more rare that parents would put out ads on behalf of their offspring.
Relatedly, and my apologies if this is rude, but I've noticed that Indian men tend to show up a lot in the comments on Facebook pages and the like, where they try to pick up women. "Thirsting" is the term, I think. Is it true that single Indian men are especially desperate for contact with women, such that they shoot their shot in any online space they come across? Or is this just a statistical quirk caused by there just being a lot of single Indian men?
If it were just down to numerical superiority of Indians, then you'd also expect to see plenty of Indian men pursuing other strategies, like white-knighting or whatever. You never see that, only ever thirsting, implying that the cultural difference is real.
Hi, I'm an ultra-orthodox Jew, and I would like to point out a few things about "shidduch resumes."
1) The single biggest thing that's looked at are the schools the person attended. Ultra-orthodox high schools are generally selective, and most schools have a defined stereotype and perceived rank. This becomes even clearer after high school, when the boys go to yeshivas that are very often smaller than most high schools (my options for yeshiva were ~25 guys, ~30 guys, & ~160 guys), leading to even more sorting. Girls go to 'seminary' after high school and similar dynamics are at play for them. In addition, prospective in-laws are now able to ask the staff of the school about the person. This works pretty well only because ultra-orthodox jews generally get married less than one year out of the religious school system.
2) Another useful feature of these resumes is to provide references who are willing to talk about the person, which allows prospective in-laws the chance to see who their friends are, and how their friends describe them without meeting the prospective partner.
3) The basic outline of the reference will also tell you if the person has deviated in any significant way from the standard ultra-orthodox educational path, which is then interpreted in different ways according to personal preference. (If someone is currently in Yeshivas Brisk in Jerusalem, the path they took to get there may show that they are not a typical 'Brisk Bochur,' for better or for worse.)
4) Ultra-orthodox parents often support their sons-in-law in Torah study for several years after marriage, the resume may indicate how long such support is being sought or offered.
5) It also bears mentioning that in the orthodox jewish world, parents are heavily involved in their childrens' dating lives, and the possibility of comparing potential partners is antithetical to all of the social & religious norms surrounding the dating process. People in the shidduch process are not supposed to see one profile that says "I'm in pre-med" alongside one that says "I'm a secretary in an elementary school," instead, resumes are given to parents. Parents reject any that are extremely obviously incompatible, kind of as in Scott's example, and then if they receive one that seems to make sense, they investigate. This includes general fact-finding (personal history, looks, family, sub-subsectarian religious affiliation, etc.), reputation checking (are they a 'catch'?), and trying to get a sense of whether they would be likely to hit it off. The potential partners are then supposed to consider the combination of resumes, 'backround check', and any other information and decide if they are interested in dating each other. If they agree to meet, the partners are understood to be interested in the possibility of marriage; at this point the potential partners are now running things, mostly. This extremely high degree of parental involvement may make the high level of filtering easier than it would be for the person themselves, who may have a bias toward saying yes.
6) It is also worth noting that the general sentiment of the community is that resumes are a necessary evil, and we commit a gross injustice when we attempt to pin someone down to what can be stated on a resume.
7) Finally, it is worth noting that resumes are a relatively recent innovation, and while I am not certain when they became common, they definitely were not a feature of jewish life in prewar European communities.
TL, DR:
The orthodox Jewish process is a lot more complicated than resumes, and resumes are not a longstanding tradition.
This is absolute insanity. I have never found a girlfriend on a dating app who was in the same country as me, let alone one who was in a similar age range or had remotely similar views as me. Or maybe it's just that guys with Muslim names either have to be super-successful, or date Muslim girls by pretending to be super-religious.
I assume you live in a majority-white country? I have heard that even a hint of 'foreign-ness' tanks your desirability on dating apps in the US, but I'm not sure if that also goes for other majority-white countries.
Stereotypes are sadly true--men of all races (except black) discriminate against black women. White men are preferred by women of all races (except black women, who prefer black men). Nobody likes the Asian guys except for Asian women (who also like white man almost as much). In general all the women prefer their own race, though Asian women like white guys almost as much as Asian guys (probably leading to the WMAF couples everyone comments on).
Here's a more detailed chart, not sure which year:
My experience having a dating doc: with one or two exceptions, everyone whose emailed me about it has been unusually interesting and compatible with me (I think less based on specific listed preferences than on being a good match for my writing tone). The exceptions were also alright in that at least we had a more interesting initial conversation than I usually have with a random app match, because they were working off knowing my interests.
I've also had one or two people I matched with on a dating app that clicked through to it, saw I want kids, and cancelled the date on me (which wasn't fun, but probably a net positive).
For what it's worth, my marriage is a statistical anomaly. I'm an atheist liberal Democrat with an undergraduate engineering degree, and my wife talks to ghosts, voted for Trump, hasn't finished community college, and, most astoundingly of all, does read books but does not like Terry Pratchett novels.
I started dating her around nine years ago. If you had asked me back then what I wanted in a girlfriend, she would have checked almost none of the boxes and probably should have set off a lot of alarm bells, but when you're 32, not employed, living with your parents, and have never had a girlfriend before, when someone shows interest in you you're inclined to give them a chance; it only took one date to decide she was a keeper, and ever since, in spite of problems that would probably make a sane man or woman run for the hills, I've never been happier or felt like my life has been more meaningful.
This may be the most interesting comment in this entire section. I'm devoured by curiosity about how someone could have both actually liked Trump for years AND been fake-newsed about January 6th. Can you get your wife in here please? You can tell her you're talking to someone else who can't figure out why anyone likes Terry Pratchett.
Different take on why people react negatively to dating docs:
For some people, writing a dating doc is socially similar to saying "I'm smart".
People don't think you're smart because you say you're smart, they think you're smart because either
1. You convincingly "perform smartness"
2. You demonstrate social proof of smartness (e.g. you have a PhD in Mathematics from
Failure to do either of the above make people think you're either too stupid to understand the rules, or trying to deceive people too stupid to understand the rules.
I see two main (overlapping) groups of people for whom a dating doc will trigger a similar reaction:
1. If the reader lives in a low trust environment (maybe due to their filter bubble), the idea of telling people who you are will trigger the trust issue. They believe you know that only a gullible person would believe this doc, and thus you are manipulative.
2. Many people are not comfortable writing structured documents - to them this sort of guide is likely to come off as trying *way* too hard, which signals either desperation or deceptiveness. The idea that this is something someone could casually type out never cross their mind. (perhaps adjacently ,the idea of solving problems through structured documents may be alien to them)
Now here's the twist I find interesting - even if you're able to understand why these documents may be a good idea in principle, if you have the emotional reaction that sharing this doc was a rather large social faux pas that is generally going to short-circuit any "pro dating doc" argument because people filter *hard* against people who do things they consider large social faux pas.
I agree you shouldn't just say "I'm smart", but I feel like a well-written dating doc demonstrates smartness, either by listing accomplishments (eg a PhD) or by being written fluently and cleverly.
I know you were just using "smart" as an example, but I feel like good writing can demonstrate lots of things (playfulness, sense of humor, self-awareness), and lots of other things aren't worth faking (if someone says Terry Pratchett is their favorite author, that's not, like, a status thing where we need to disbelieve them, it just helps match them with other people who like his style).
Economic historian Gregory Clark asserts there was a very high degree of assortative mating in England in the 19th Century. I don't know if that's true, but if it were, one mechanism could be that a lot of courtship was carried out by letters. E.g., poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett famously exchanged a vast number of letters before their marriage. (Parts of London had more than one mail delivery per day then, so they might each write the other twice per day.)
Presumably, prose style played a big role in Victorian courtship.
> I feel like good writing can demonstrate lots of things (playfulness, sense of humor, self-awareness)
Well of course you think that, you're a good writer. What about all those people who are lousy writers, or merely so-so? People for whom writing is less of a window into the soul, and more of a dreary chore that they stumble through the same way you might muddle through a line-dancing session?
> know you were just using "smart" as an example, but I feel like good writing can demonstrate lots of things
We agree.
> and lots of other things aren't worth faking
To be clear, I think for many people the judgment arrives before they get to the content. Simply seeing that you've written it triggers a heuristic judgment that you're malicious or unwittingly committing a massive social faux pas.
That said, people *absolutely* fake favorite authors, video games, etc. to prey on people. There are a number of anime fandoms known to attract male predators because female fans tend to be vulnerable, as an example. If this kind of paranoia seems weird, I refer you to your own essay "Different Worlds"[0] which is part of the inspiration for this line of thought.
I get all those arguments, but my personal experience with any kind of online dating was not so good, mostly because the subconscious aspects of attraction were missing. Most of the time, I knew after 5 minutes into a date that this is not it.
After my divorce, going to events where like minded women could be expected worked much better. For me it was tantra, and the criteria were interest in self development, a certain openness in relationship, willingness to grow together and an interest in new experiences. I found my second wife and later most of my lovers there, people that I probably would have neglected in online dating
No offense, but the vibe from your post seems more "don't follow my example" than "this will help you find happiness." It sounds like multiple divorces in your life, for which you have my condolences.
This is a misunderstanding. Just one divorce, after 20 years. Now happily together with my second wife for 13 years.
It seems you are making the assumption that lovers means I split from my second wife. This is a little strange in the comment section of a post that explicitly has polyamory as one of Scott's requirements (and where I mention openness in relationship as one of my requirements)
OK. This shows one more time how much monogamy is still the norm these days. One can be any gender he/she/xe likes, but a maximum of one romantic partner is taken as a given.
My wife and I were some days ago discussing if we could think of any positive depiction of consensual non-monogamy in TV or movies and we weren't able to come up with one.
Hana's in a poly relationship with Harry, who cashed out his crypto token 2 years ago and now writes a blog about scientific approaches to bodybuilding, Jane, who picks anime for the rest of them to watch together and is Hana's sub, and Dick, who runs a company that uses AI to find new places to drill for oil companies, pays for the house they all live in, and totally isn't the same guy who wrote a bunch of stuff for Counter-Currents ten years ago.
If only she were a closet drug addict, then she'd really check all my boxes! Of course, the closet drug addicts I dated never let me know they were drug addicts until we were in the sexual bonding phase of the relationship. But subconsciously I seem to be attracted to closet drug addicts.
This just occurred to me, though—maybe a higher proportion of women are closet drug addicts than I had initially assumed?
“drug addict” to my mind suggests “person with an obligate daily heroin or coke problem,” and i would call that very uncommon in the kinds of milieus people here tend to inhabit. if you mean something more like weed, or marginal overuse of prescribed meds, the prevalence is probably fair to middling?
the distinction i’m making here is largely in the degree to which barriers to procurement are also barriers to maintaining a reasonably functional and productive life, so the substance matters.
To answer your question: I'm guessing you didn't come of age in the late 70s and 80s?
I lived in a decaying mill town that was the transshipment point for the Gambino crime family's drug import and distribution business—and the town was also close to two Universities, so we had a lot of educated druggies. Cocaine was ubiquitous. Heroin was readily available. The only reason I wasn't indulging in those drugs was that I spent nearly every weekend tripping. As an aside, LSD seems to make things like opiates, tobacco, and pizza disgusting—and I suppose they are, but LSD makes them *really* seem disgusting (after 40 years I still have trouble looking at pizza without cringing). And once you've done LSD, cocaine seems kinda one-dimensional.
Most of my friends got past their heroin and cocaine addictions. One of my (former) heroin addict friends said that quitting heroin was easier than quitting smoking—saying it was three days of hell quitting heroin, but tobacco addiction was more pernicious and it took him years to finally quit smoking.
Despite the scare stories you hear about heroin, it seemed to be much less damaging to handling normal responsibilities like jobs and school than alcohol was. One friend died of an OD. But AFAIK all my other friends who were heroin- and cocaine-addicted came through their addictions just fine. Of course, HIV started spreading (1983? 84?), and that seemed to scare a bunch of people straight.
My impression, never having been close to any heroin users, is that it's manageable to the degree that your life is otherwise going well. Or to put another way, it's fine if things are fine, but if things are bad it makes them really bad. Does that match up with your experience?
Since we're doing this about the dating profile stereotypes (I'm married in real life, but whatever):
1) I'd totally give Cindy a chance. I don't go to bars, or at least I don't drink at them, but I did enjoy dancing back in high school and she sounds like a lot of fun. It could go wrong, and I imagine that the most likely outcome is that she rejects me, but I'd still like to see what happens. And I do happen to like Taylor Swift's music.
2) This girl is out of my league. I don't have much in the way of career ambitions and tend to be lazy and procrastinate a lot. I could offer to be a househusband or assistant-type the way a wife might have been in The Bad Old Days to a high-achieving husband, but I couldn't be her equal. I'd probably leave her to other people who are Going Places and just not respond to the profile.
3) Astrology? Eww, red flag. She sounds like a totally sweet and caring person, but I'd ruin it with my intolerance toward woo. Pass. (I don't like my actual wife's belief in the supernatural either, but that's another story.)
4) Yeah, I'm totally interested in this kind of person; I took one economics class in college and the textbook totally changed my way of thinking. Definitely contact.
5) On paper, this is my dream girl. I would totally be down to hang out and let her show me her favorite animes and play video games together. I'd be afraid of coming on too strong, though, or that I'd end up with yet another one-sided attraction to someone who only wants to be friends. Once upon a time in college, I ended up in a conversation with a girl I while we were waiting for a campus bus; when I asked her what her favorite Final Fantasy was and she said Six, my response was a only half-joking "Will you marry me?"
I had a habit of strategically pulling out oversized anime magazines (Newtype) or rpg manuals on busses when I saw a woman get on that seemed interesting. This would get them to talk to me and think that they had initiated the conversation. I still have some very good friends I had met this way.
"98% of whites marry other whites; 90-95% of blacks marry other blacks."
Those figures are too high, at least for American newlyweds. According to the Wikipedia article you link to, in 2010:
"Among all newlyweds, 9.4% of whites, 17.1% of blacks, 25.7% of Hispanics and 27.7% of Asians married someone whose race or ethnicity was different from their own."
> [after speed dating] realistically probably people just chose whoever was hottest and maybe most personable
If true, this would be a pretty damning indictment of the usefulness of speed-dating. Instead of going to a speed dating event to talk to people for 3-4 minutes each and then asking to be put in touch with the hottest of them, you can open tinder and swipe right on the hottest profile pictures in a smaller number of seconds each without leaving your couch.
Knowing 'Hana' is just a Scooby-Doo-style mask and if you ripped it off you'd find either Scott Alexander or GPT-4.. doesn't exactly seem to diminish this longing.
Suspect this sensation is not unique amongst ACX readers.
I am currently building a dating app that is similar to Tinder but WITHOUT any chatting. It will launch in about three months.
I agree that certain "basic" info like what the person is looking for (gender, long or short term relationship) is obviously significant. But the rest is largely bullshit. You only really get to know a person in real life.
Someone who heavily used dating apps successfully knows that the chatting in Tinder is generic and pointless. Nowadays, Tinder even provides gpt or similar generated chat suggestions, signifying how generic the whole thing is. Meeting people in real life is what counts.
Users who don't show up to the date get a bad rating.
Okay but to get a good rating you need people to agree to meet up and both meet up. If I'm new to the site how can I convince someone to meet up with me if we can't chat. How do we even set up a meeting place. And how do we have confidence it's worth our time to go. I'm clearly missing something
You need to look good or wrote sth witty in your bio. I'm also considering having voice messages in your profile, so.beimg well articulated or having a sexy voice is a plus. Setting a meeting place works through the schedule date feature in the app where you swpcify a place and time (and later maybe activity)
The idea makes sense and us close to done. My real problem will be getting the intial bunch of users. The cold start problem so to speak
That actually sounds like a really good idea, both the lack of chat and the voice messages. One suggestion: most people hate the sound of their own voice and making them write and perform a voice message will be a significant barrier. You can ease them into it by having a generic message to record first, like "My name is X, welcome to my profile!" and then they can add personalized ones later.
I guess I just wrote an entire post arguing against this thesis, so I'm not really sure what else to say.
Maybe it's a matter of efficiency? You could give zero information, and go on one hundred dates to find the right person. Three minutes into the date, they might say they're an alcoholic, and you can awkwardly wait out the rest of the date with them even though you know you're a bad match. And you can repeat this a hundred times.
Or you can let them sort ahead of time, and then maybe it only takes ten dates to find the right person.
I don't understand why people are so much more interested in wasting the hundred dates.
Many people seem to think that the impossibility of certainty implies that any attempt to make decisions on a rational basis is inherently doomed to failure.
An attendant at a hospital emergency room refused to help me decide which hospital to attend, by telling me whether it was busy there, because the situation “might change” before I had time to get there.
A police officer I called to inquire about whether the car I was about to buy had been reported as stolen was reluctant to answer my question, because the information system might not be completely up to date. Even though the car’s plates came up clean, it might still have been stolen, but not reported and recorded yet, so what was the point of doing the search?
The chief safety officer at my location of employment decided not to make available to safety wardens, in event of an evacuation, electronically recorded information about staff entrances and exits, to assist the safety wardens determine whether everyone had safely evacuated. Why not? Because occasionally people enter or leave the buildings without the electronic record being created. The data is not 100% reliable, so it’s therefore useless as an input to any rational decision making process.
For these people, reducing the likelihood of error from 10% to 1% is meaningless because there is still a 1% chance of being 100% wrong, and the costs of being wrong are unbearable.
You shouldn’t be surprised. This community describes itself as “rationalist”. So on some level you must understand that people aren’t really interested in wasting 100 dates, they just lack the ability to rationally conclude that this is the likely consequence of attempting to eliminate false negatives in dating decisions.
I'm still reading, but wanted to add to first part, where Scott describes critical incompatibilities. In my reality (country close to Russia), there is most important point, probably. I totally won't be able to date someone who supports Russia in the war with Ukraine. It is just not imaginable.
Sure, and politics is going to be a salient issue like he said. If you're close to Russia that's obviously a lot more important than many of the culture war issues currently big in the USA--look at Scott being afraid of wokies *and* hardcore-MAGA people. Cultural appropriation is obviously a lot less pressing than territorial appropriation of your house by Putin's battalions.
Yeah, but for me it is even more about basic humanism. I cannot fathom how people can support massive war with a lot of casualties. Even US wars are bad in this regard, but current war is much worse.
I mean, every war has massive casualties. I don't have anything nice to say about Putin (he's definitely getting closer to Hitler-level evil), but quite a few far-righties here in the USA seem to think he's some kind of Christian defender of the white race, presumably because the left half of our local elites (the Joe Biden/New York Times types) don't like him. Everything in the USA becomes about our culture war eventually. I imagine Russian troops that close to you correct that delusion pretty quickly.
"For a while, the person in the entire US with the highest match percent with me was my actual girlfriend (who I had met separately, not using the site)."
I'm a bit confused about how this could happen, isn't it extremely improbable that the person you're most compatible with in the entire country just happens to be someone you've also met irl? Seems a bit like when people claim to have met their one soul mate out of the 8 billion people in the world and it just happens to be someone that lives in the same building or works at the same place, rather than say... a village in Mozambique.
On this topic, maybe a bit of an odd question, I've been wondering for a while reading the blog, how Scott manages to have so much success dating people selected on extremely niche psychological traits. The readership for ACX skews about 90% male, right? You'd think there'd be 10 guys similar to Scott for every one woman similar to his partner. I'd guess the competition for guys following this strategy is extremely fierce. Is this something most guys could feasibly pull off, or would you need to be some kind of rationalist chad?
First, OKC was almost certainly filtering for location, even if Scott searched for the entire US.
Second, OKC provides the opportunity to answer literally thousands of compatibility questions. Most people only answered the first 10 (which I think were compulsory?), but some people would answer hundreds or thousands of them. The more questions you answered, the more granular the compatibility results could be.
It's worth noting that Scott was describing OKC "back when it was good," in other words, back when swiping wasn't a thing yet and profiles and compatibility questions were THE focus of the site.
Scott is a high-status doctor who is, more importantly, a central figure in a social movement. Being a person of national prominence makes the dating pool much larger even if the reasons you're prominent are low-status or gender skewed. This comparison is unfair in connotation but necessary to make my point: Cult leaders and serial murderers get dates even if they interact mostly with men. Scott is neither, but my point is that the reason you appeared on the news is less important than the fact that you appeared on the news. His dating experience is atypical.
There was a time I'd have said there's a lesson here. If you have unique traits, the reason you appear unique is less important than the fact that you do. This is how I got dates and met my wife when I was dating a hundred and eighty years ago. But in the modern dating environment you have to balance that with the chances that you'll actually get seen at all. It's like job hunting - having a unique and interesting resume might get you the job, but that resume still needs to check all the boxes the employer set up to filter resumes. So it can't be but *so* unique and interesting.
He's also a very good communicator. I think he's implied that he's less so, in meat-space, using spontaneously-composed vocalizations. But I expect that his romantic correspondence would make fascinating reading, several centuries from now, assuming neither AI extinction nor transhuman immortality, so that everyone who's met anyone alive today is dead. Also, my model of Scott (never having met him, so highly uncertain) is that he'd be horrified by that idea and that if/when he sees this comment he may even take steps to make sure that this never happens. :-)
If the high percentages are close enough, but much higher than everyone else, then it's likely that they're not meaningfully different, while being meaningfully different from everyone else. (The OK Cupid questions even let you rate how important a question was to you, from not at all to deal-breaker.) And relationships break up for reasons other than compatibility; it's not deterministic.
> I'm a bit confused about how this could happen, isn't it extremely improbable that the person you're most compatible with in the entire country just happens to be someone you've also met irl?
One thing that OKCupid let you do— if you went to someone's profile, you could go through and specifically answer all the questions they answered. This could raise your compatibility higher than people who were similarly compatible in theory but who answered a different subset of questions.
>their one soul mate out of the 8 billion people in the world<
If you believe in soul mates, then you believe in the supernatural, and surely the supernatural can handle things like being born close enough to each other for your souls to actually mate.
>For a while, the person in the entire US with the highest match percent with me was my actual girlfriend (who I had met separately, not using the site). She told me I was her second-highest match percent; her ex was #1.
Surely this demonstrates that these questions only tease out short-term surface-level compatibility rather than long-term compatibility? After all, your then-girlfriend and her ex broke up, as did you and your then-girlfriend.
I think that's too harsh. It shows that a high percentage is a good indicator for a viable relationship, but isn't a guarantee. There's probably a margin of error on there within which the percentage, while meaningful, is imprecise. If there were two people on Old OKC who matched 95%, 94%, and the rest were all 80%, then I'd say either of the 90s would be a good bet, as the 1 percentage point is unilkely to be significant.
Also, there are other determinants of relationship permanence beyond compatibility (personal choices, how one changes under life stresses, circumstances like different life directions that only come to light later, etc.).
My ex-girlfriend and disagreed about children but were otherwise compatible. We're back together now as secondaries, so I have out-technically-nitpicked you in this technical-nitpicking contest.
IRL you have three seconds to get someone's attention and it takes ten seconds max for them to decide if they even want to talk to you, which is why your first words to them must always be a question. The swipe-right apps are little different. You have only seconds to make an impression. On first contact a salesperson doesn't try to sell the sale. The salesperson tries to sell the appointment. Perhaps there are intellectuals who set aside time and sit down purposely to read through dating resumés, dull though they may be with little attempt to capture the reader from the first sentence. I think that a dating doc should only be communicated after initial contact and a primary expression of interest. At the very least it's more graceful than going straight to intimate pix.
Whatever happened to frustration, rejection, not lying about yourself and dignity? All character building experiences. I guess I'm showing my age, but I'm so glad I don't have to try to date anyone (married for 47 years). I rather think online dating is like social media: you lie about yourself and your life for 'likes' of a more direct kind.
My wife and I were married in 1985. We were 23 and 22 when we got married. My parents were Republicans, hers were Democrats. It wasn't something we ever discussed or felt worthy of discussion.
So the 4% number of cross-party marriages really stood out to me. That's a huge decline in the available pool of potential spouses. Which is a real shame.
That stood out to me too. I could understand if that were extremely political people (with 4% being the lizardman's constant), but not across all people that happen to be registered to vote with one of the two major parties. Maybe a lot of people answer that with "Independent" or "Libertarian" or something?
Affiliation can also be pretty random. I live in NYC and I registered as a Democrat in 1980 for the sole reason that often the Democratic primary was the real election.
Polarization is the biggest thing going. When I was dating, back in the Stone Age, a person’s politics was far and away _not_ the most important thing about them. Not so today.
Old friends have cut me for my politics, and (a) I don’t talk about them much and (b) I don’t think they are all that far from the median. It’s just that there’s nobody at the median any more.
A lot of these stats come from dating apps, which skew young/city where Dem women are currently very polarized. In a big city its pretty common to see a profile that starts with "No Republicans"
Who wants to marry someone like themselves? Many great relationships have a yin and yang that a dating doc would actually filter against. Larisa and her ultra ambitious husband would end up at each others' throats. She'd probably be better with a laid back, good looking, funny guy, who could also look after the kids' emotions while Larisa grew her multinational shoe empire. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I never felt like I needed a partner to share too many of my interests. She does have to be smart (good breeding genetics), good looking, and from the same social class or higher. But if I am into anime and reptiles then i actively don't want my partner to be into that stuff. It is just too much.
Nah, I've seen geek-geek marriages, they work pretty well. They do dorky things together. I think Larisa and Lariso probably would be at each others' throats, but Cindy and Charllie would have fun clubbing together, Sky and Storm would help each other align their chakras, and Hana and Jane are going to have no shortage of nerd guys happy to marry them.
It's those alpha monarch-of-the-hill personality types that can't attract like, because in the end there can be only one.
Geeks are rare, and geek marriages more so. In a big city and with the aid of tech you might find your geek match, but only if your geekdom is heavily online. (and is a geek match actually optimal?) As a neo luddite, I will not find my match with the aid of the internet. The average joe has hobbies like watching Netflix, pets, and outdoorsy stuff. They narrow their prospects by only meeting people who share those interests.
I agree, and there are gender ratio issues as alluded to above. The thing is matches between similar people seem to do pretty well from what I've seen...except for alpha types, they fight over dominance.
The 5 women described here are hobbies, not people. I can't get any judgement out of them other than "their hobby seems fun/boring". #1 is the only one I strongly dislike, I don't have much preference between 2-5.
I myself find dating docs useful. Anybody who writes one is a hostile tentacular alien to which I am anathema to, as is anybody who thinks they are a good idea. This is because they signal wildly divergent cultural norms to which I view as monstrous, being that they are almost entirely represented in the Rationalist/EA sphere. One could say they identify low match percentage. Online dating profiles more broadly signal only mildly divergent cultural norms from my own, to the extent that it's theoretically possible for somebody I find normal to be found by sheer accident.
I could then assume that the monstrous aliens would love them as a tool for finding each other, if only the population wasn't skewed heavily towards male.
I think there's a reasonable position of "like the epistemology, dislike the conclusions". (And yes, there is a lot of groupthink inside rationalism which leads to rationalists generally having 95% the same opinions as each other, which on the surface is something you'd think rationalists would oppose.)
Lots of us find Rationalists/EA to be off-putting/weird/monstrous. I can't speak for him or anyone else, but I like reading different perspective and find the Rationalists are at least pretty good about clarity of thought and expression. I usually agree at least somewhat with Rationalists, and where we disagree it's often a fascinating glimpse into completely alien ways of thinking.
I really enjoy reading ACX and think there are a lot of interesting ideas to be found here, but similarly find people who self-identify as part of the "Rationalist community" to be a bit akin to space aliens.
As has been suggested by earlier replies, there can be interest or utility in reading things to which I fundamentally disagree with or find off-putting. Occasionally I might not even disagree with it depending on what it is. I will also admit that while I believe that Rationalists in particular have an incoherent epistemology, it isn't the worst thing currently in vogue and makes it at least possible to have a conversation, even if it will quickly break down from incompatible assumptions on both what sounds convincing, and what arguments are for.
"I believe that Rationalists in particular have an incoherent epistemology"
Could you elaborate on this? While I don't aspire to fully rational conclusions about everything, my current understanding was that Rationalists aspire to do Bayesian updates on new evidence, which seems to me to be coherent, though exhausting.
Horrifically, I was writing a reply to this and accidentally lost all my progress. You will forgive me for being very brief, as the initial reply has eaten up most of my time. The following is merely one issue, but the number of issues with Rationalist thought broadly could fill an entire blog in itself.
Bayesian epistemology makes certain assumptions. For example, that there is such a thing as "degrees of belief" or "degrees of evidence" by which we can "update" our "assent", and doing so in the proper way is what determines rationality. I reject both of these things. There is no such thing as "degrees of belief", or "degrees of evidence", except in the vernacular or defined very narrowly such that they are inapplicable to any kind of updating.
A quick example of how degrees of belief as used by Bayesians can quickly fall into a black hole of oblivion, consider belief P in which you have 97% confidence. How confident are you of your belief of "I believe that I have 97% confidence in belief P"? Anything less than 100% lowers the overall assent, and we can continue to ask this question indefinitely. Answering with 100% to the first meta question doesn't stop the meta questions, and answering 100% all the time sounds like epistemic stubbornness.
I don't have a huge degree of faith in longtermism or the idea that we can do Bayesian updates on beliefs in any kind of a realistic way. The Sequences? I'd rather read trashy horror novels. EA? Whatever, I don't know what the best way to solve world poverty is and everyone who knows enough to give me an answer has an angle they're peddling.
But the rationalists are fun to read, tickle my logic brain, have a vague air of danger about them (Aella ranks fetishes by tabooness and popularity with survey sizes in the sextuple digits and Scott survived an attack from the *New York Times*!), and aren't woke or fascist. I'd rather have a beer with Scott Alexander than any of his antagonists in the media or those Nazi frog a-holes by a mile. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
"Bayesian epistemology makes certain assumptions. For example, that there is such a thing as "degrees of belief" or "degrees of evidence" by which we can "update" our "assent", and doing so in the proper way is what determines rationality. I reject both of these things"
Ok, that sounds strange to me. Just in everyday decisions one needs at least crude probability estimates. E.g. the risk of a car crash is sufficient to induce me to wear my seat belt, but not sufficient for me to preclude trips to the grocery store. How can one reject "degrees of belief", probability estimates, and still make daily decisions?
Very crudely speaking, I update my expectations when I see new evidence. E.g. in this area, I've seen a lot of thunderstorms which even the 1 day forecast failed to predict, so I now treat the forecasts here as less reliable than in other places that I've lived. What would you do with similar information?
I don't worry much about meta level questions. Object level questions typically have so much uncertainty around them anyway that I view just approximating the "right" probabilities as bayesian looks "close enough" to me.
And so we see a few more issues common among Rationalists, though not one that in itself is an incoherence to me. Rather we're now talking about ignorance of other options, and ignorance of one's own position, which are just mistakes based on missing information.
Merely taking in sense data and drawing conclusions is not Bayesian updating, nor does such require degrees of belief or degrees of evidence. To take this as evidence of degrees of belief is making a mistake of equivocation, mistaking the probability of an event with a quality of one's belief. This is the very distinction I'm arguing, that these things are separate things.
Here's a simple fact, and this fact tends to apply to practically everything Rationalists think, and indeed, most intellectuals these days. These assumptions are not obvious, and are not merely controversial. They're both controversial and novel, appearing only in the 20th century.
The whole world has turned for thousands of years without appeal to degrees of belief. Even Bayes in his essay was talking very specifically about probabilities of explicitly measurable phenomenon, the location of thrown balls. His was a mathematical result concerned with dealing with probabilistic uncertainty, not epistemic, and even within the realms of mathematics and probability there are multiple interpretations besides Bayesianism. Modern Rationalists have no appreciation for just how historically bizarre their assumptions are, mistaking said assumptions as common sense and/or scientifically supported. Even these justifications are assumptions, assumptions on what it means for something to be "common sense" and "scientifically supported".
Which brings us back to your example. All you've described is a perfectly normal event that doesn't lend itself to describing any particular epistemological theory over any other. I could just as easily say you've applied the pramanas of the Nyaya school properly.
As to meta level and object level, we've fallen into more assumptions I will be ignoring for the sake of staying somewhat focused. The point of my example was to demonstrate that degrees of belief can very easily lead to incoherence. Whether or not you "worry" about it, the example was a demonstration showing that assuming degrees of belief means that overall assent to any belief at all approaches zero and we can't be sure of anything. Which is, as per your own example, not obviously the case. Perhaps there is an argument to be made to defend Baysianism here, but one would have to make that argument not brush it aside. Even classical Roman Sceptics did the work to square their belief that we can't be sure of anything with the obvious observation that everybody, including them, doesn't routinely fall into wells or run into bears in their uncertainty.
Mathematics makes certain assumptions. For example, that there is such a thing as "sets", and manipulating them in the proper way is what determines correctness. I reject both of these things. There is no such thing as "sets", except in the vernacular or defined very narrowly such that they are inapplicable to any kind of mathematical operations.
A quick example of how sets as used by mathematicians can quickly fall into a black hole of oblivion, let R be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. If R is not a member of itself, then its definition entails that it is a member of itself; yet, if it is a member of itself, then it is not a member of itself, since it is the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. And this is just one of many nonsensical constructions you would have to believe in to be a "mathematician"!</satire>
> Anything less than 100% lowers the overall assent
I assume you mean that this lowers the original probability―that 97% becomes 96% or something? I would disagree with that interpretation.
That you seem to think that "Mathematics" is the same thing as "Set Theory" makes me wonder if you're trolling. Set Theory, more specifically modern iterations like Zermelo-Fraenkel Set Theory with the axiom of Choice, or ZFC, is often treated as foundational to mathematics as a whole, and the very basics of Set Theory are taught as foundational in schools due to popularity among academics. But also, it's often taught that Christopher Columbus wanted to prove the Earth was round in opposition to widespread belief in flat earth.
Luckily, Set Theorists are not so benighted by aliens that they are unaware of the flaws of ZFC as Foundational. It is well known that there are mathematical statements independent of ZFC, it is still the case that there are people who view the Axiom of Choice as controversial, the use of Category Theory is still widespread and preferred in certain fields of mathematics, and Gödel's program continues on. There are even people that think Set Theory is just wrong headed from the beginning in terms of being foundational. I'm mostly agnostic on these issues, as are many, maybe even most, Mathematicians. The true reason Set Theory is treated as foundational is because of its great utility, and so it is thought if only we fine tune it more we can solve its problems. But it is still recognised that it has these problems.
This makes it not at all analogous to Rationalist, who assume that their extremely controversial Bayesian ideas about belief are all settled.
As to being confused about assent and probability, Bayesian Epistemology assumes that probability is just the measure of one's belief, or using another word, assent. Mathematically we find that 97% multiplied by 99% is in fact 96% rounded. So again I think that either you can't do basic math while also being unaware of what you're talking about, or you're trolling.
Ah, I just now realised you were also the one who did the drive-by post that cited Legal Eagle to me as if he was the gold standard of evidence, attempting to answer my question at that time by completely misunderstanding the question. I suppose I know not to bother responding in the future.
In this question, what differentiates the word "adaptations" from "cultural norms?" For example, in what sense could I not say that the difference between Bengal and the US are primarily adaptations to living in different environments? What is this distinction trying to get at?
You seemed to be using "cultural norms" in regards to general practices in the SF/Bay EA/Rationalist community (which I should probably note that I'm not part of). In that category, I'd put things like "a tendency to shortcut complex social interactions".
As for "adaptations", I'd suggest that the SF/Bay area may have a distinctly bad dating scene, such that various groups that find themselves there might have to resort to extreme measures to achieve a satisfactory quantity and quality of outcomes amongst their community. Different groups may resort to different means, and the nature of a group will influence the means it uses, which is to say that I think dating docs seem like a typically rationalist way to approach this type of problem.
However, I'd suggest that in a counterfactual world in which the center of the EA/Rationalist community was in a place with a better dating scene (say, New York City), this development would be unlikely to occur as anything more than an occasional experiment.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is teleology, and walking a mile in other people's shoes. Sometimes there are features of a group that simply reflect what a group **is**, but sometimes there are features of a group that are adaptations to its environment, and perhaps a certain amount of ones visceral reaction to the adaptations should be re-directed toward the environment that made the adaptations necessary.
I recently did a quick study where I asked people for their personality-adjective partner preferences, and then asked them what they meant by those. I think the answers were pretty revealing: https://twitter.com/tailcalled/status/1680269225418522628
For instance, one guy who preferred an honest partner brought up the importnace of her not cheating on him. And one guy who preferred a nice partner brought up that he wanted her to take on a housewife-like role.
I think part of the issue is in using abstract terms like "nice", when really everyone wants something more specific. Like the conservative guy wants a nice housewife, you probably want a nice girlfriend who doesn't mock nerds and doesn't aggressively push woke stuff, and a woke guy probably wants a nice woman who cares about the oppressed. You all agree that you want someone nice, but you disagree about what "nice" means.
”How do you translate these to single-dimensional scores on a psychological exam?"
A lot of the things you bring up in your profiles could totally be measured psychometrically by the way, they'd just be in the interests domain rather than in the temperament domain. There are correlations between interests and personality, but they are relatively modest, so practically they are pretty different.
Usually the way you measure interests is by asking people whether they are interested in the relevant things. So for instance, "Are you interested in business?", "Would you be fine with combining vacations and work?", "Would you be interested in going skydiving?", "Would you be interested in hiking in the Alps?", etc..
Probably this isn't gonna be entirely unidimensional (I imagine this profile is combining nearly-orthogonal factors of thrill-seeking/outdoorsy interests and business interests), but that's not really a problem psychometrically (you're probably familiar with the Big five, which is a multidimensional measure of personality). As long as it's relatively low-rank, it's still gonna work fine, and I think you'd be surprised about how much variation you can stuff into surprisingly low-rank models.
There may also be a bit of subtle ethnic humor in the use of the word "nice", in that lots of Jewish mothers were looking for a "nice Jewish boy" in the latter half of the last century. There's the idea of 'edelkayt', which was this sort of softy yeshiva boy the Israeli settlers rebelled against being (pretty understandably if you remember what preceded the foundation of Israel in Jewish history).
Regarding the "cheating", I expect that the archetypal case involves lying about the cheating, too. That is, it's not a case where the partner comes back and says matter-of-factly, "yeah, I had sex with someone else, what now?", or the case where the partner comes back and breaks down in a confession and asks for forgiveness. But more like a case where the partner lies about it, and conceals it, and the secret eats away at the relationship like a worm. If the secret has no effect on the relationship at all, the partner is basically a sociopath, and if it does, then it's not perfect deception.
TLDR, I don't want a partner perfectly optimized for deceiving me. Power corrupts.
I am married to a more religious/conservative Hana (with a bit of Larisa). Are they really that rare/in demand? She's definitely my type and probably the type of lots of folks on this blog are attracted to but just from casual observation does not seem to be the type for a lot of guys even successful ones.
I'm Methodist she is Catholic. It may be just the part of the country we are from (location of a major university in the South) but intellectual Christians are not particularly rare here. Lots of very well educated people at our church.
Interesting! I'm happy for both of you; I used to walk by all the old dusty theology texts in the college library and wonder what use anyone made of them. I'm happy someone's still reading them.
Or she just had a major breakup due to the guy's personality changing as he incorporates an increasing certainty of AI doom. Or her partner turned out to be a con artist who was running a giant scam. Or on her last birthday she got her two partners together for an MMF three-way, and it turns out that they weren't merely "heteroflexible", and were more into each other than her, and while on one level she's happy for them, long story short she's single now and looking for a straight mono guy.
Shit happens. Sometimes there really is a $100 bill lying on the ground.
Or the guy turned out to be so into far-right politics he was into bringing back monarchy and left his prior girlfriend while she was pregnant with his kid, while the other one found to be writing very nasty and hoste politically incorrect stuff for various alt-right outlets. We are on the border of crowdsourcing a Hana universe.
(I see your Yudkowsky and SBF references and raise you a Yarvin and Hanania...)
But as to the original point, I'll agree to disagree.
I wasn't actually thinking of them, honest! I was more thinking of people getting depressed and making short-term decisions, and a male version of Elizabeth Holmes.
And, like, I literally found a $100 bill on the ground a few weeks ago.
Yeah, I get that. Your reaction makes sense. Sometimes it takes a few minutes for context to percolate through my head, which is plenty of time for me to put my foot in my mouth. :-)
"solve the gender imbalance" means all other lovers are chicks. Bonus.
More seriously... I don't see the demand. She's weird, and just because her profile is positively weird doesn't rule out her being REALLY weird in unlisted events and driving most people away. The guy who owns his own tech company doesn't want to wake up to jokes about "why are they called slippers if you wear them without a slip?"
Well...have you read the rest of the comments? Everyone wants her! Even though they know she doesn't actually exist!
Why do nerd guys want a nerd woman, rather than someone who 'cleans up well' and will balance their weaknesses? I think a lot of nerd guys are really passionate about their interests and would like to find someone who shares them, just like athletic guys want a woman they can go running with or artsy guys want a woman who appreciates art. The thing is that given the skew of interests, nerd women are hard to find.
If pairings ultimately end up being sorted without the docs then who needs them.? Without them you'll date people from the broader spectrum of humanity and maybe learn. These docs strike me as an effort to sanitize human contact. A contraction of human possibility.
How much of the problem is the fact that the set of single men and the set of single women are incompatible with each other? Single men skew conservative, and single women skew liberal. Small group differences overall compound into large differences at the margin. I think most counterintuitive dating market conclusions can be explained by adverse selection. The most compatible people are already matched up.
I'm surprised at the negativity. For me, someone having a dating doc signals some degree of confidence, intelligence, good communication, awareness of their wants, commitment to taking a potential relationship seriously, and an interest in organising and optimising their life. That's before I've read the contents.
Those are all attractive qualities to me and I would happily filter based on them were I still in the dating pool.
1. It means you can't find anyone. Negative social proof. Low status.
2. It means you have a laundry list of stuff you want from the other person, which is going to make them feel very inadequate.
3. A lot of people prefer the romantic game of suggestion, indirection, and passion. These sorts of people tend not to read ACX but presumably have popped out for this post.
Clearly everyone has different preferences and so will read these things differently. I'll give my take on your list anyway:
1. Or they're just trying to raise the bar of their average suitor to someone who'll be a better fit. I don't see why I should care about the "status" of a potential partner anyway, as long as they're a good match. Also - how is this different from having a tinder profile?
2. Maybe if you've got low self-esteem that might make you feel inadequate? I like someone who knows what they want. The docs I've read don't seem particularly bad in this way anyway.
3. Well yes, but this approach doesn't preclude that any more than tinder does.
Sure, why not, argument is fun, that's why we're all here. ;)
1. I guess. It might be a different set of men and women doing it--nerdy guys and very picky women in this case.
2. I mean, I'm not saying you're bad for having one, just giving reasons why people might not like them. I think if you make a long list of bullet points people are going to figure 'this person has 25 things they're looking for and even if I have 23 of them they're going to be impossible to please in real life'.
3. But it does. The whole point of having a written document is to move from implicit to explicit, which some people don't like.
Yeah, I don't really disagree with you on 1 & 2. Just depends on the contents of the doc I guess.
With 3, maybe I'm missing some nuance but I just thought this was the trade-off everyone makes when they do internet dating, or speed dating and such for that matter. You sacrifice some spontaneity for more reliable results.
I think that was the case back when it was more of a geek thing. Now it's what everyone does, at least in part because many of the old approach methods are now considered sexual harassment.
Agreed. I think most people would interpret a dating doc the way that you describe. ACX selects for odd ducks.
It took me a lot of years to learn how to hide the coldly analytical part of my brain. Talked my way out of getting laid an embarrassing number of times. Eventually it sunk in that thinking that way makes the vast majority of people really uncomfortable.
Point being, I would never use a dating doc, because I actively try to keep that part of my personality under wraps. Obviously, for long term stuff you don’t want to be disingenuous or be hiding parts of yourself forever. But I’ve found that it works way better to present as a regular dude in the beginning and let the fact that my brain is weird trickle out over time.
I’ve been married for 38 years (married at 19). This is all so baffling to me - life and love can just happen if you let it - if you enmesh yourself in other humans. The heart wants what the heart wants...
For a lot of other people, it's a major problem. It's like being a 6'2" guy who doesn't understand why other men have so many problems finding women, or a really hot woman who doesn't get why other women have trouble.
sure - I was also young and I married my best friend and I was actively religious then and so my dating pool was limited to other actively religious men…I wish it wasn’t so hard for people now days…
I recall someone saying something like: I don't really know what I want and I won't be satisfied until I get it.
Dating is not a scientific experiment it's a psychological and sociological experience. Between ~16 and ~30, you are also finding out and creating who you are. This is the paradox of participatory reality.
Yup. I have a pair of friends who happened to meet in middle school and started their relationship in late high school and 20 years later are still into each other, without any external pressure to be (they aren't in a religious tradition or anything like that).
They understand they simply lucked into the right place and right time of having strong sexual chemistry + high intellectual and emotional compatibility.
But you understand that I'm saying that you had a tremendous amount of dumb luck, right? Your brain chemistry and hormones are particularly compatible with someone else's brain chemistry and hormones, and you just randomly happened to be peers in the same place and time in a way which connected you socially.
"...life and love can just happen if you let it..." includes the caveat "...as long as you're very lucky."
Don't ascribe a romance lotto win to deliberate action on your part, as if anyone else could do the same. You didn't make it happen, and saying otherwise perpetuates a toxic fantasy.
true but we weren’t romantically involved - we were friends -it’s a fine point but worth stating- the physical attraction/ hormones weren’t there for me till after I got married - they developed overtime. just my experience-I don’t mean to lay that on anyone -apologies for doing that.
I've never had trouble finding high-pqying tech jobs, and I'm deeply confused by all the unemployed street people. Just answer some LinkedIn messages from headhunters and get a job, there's no reason to live on the street.
It's a parody of what you appeared to be doing -- treating your own highly fortunate situation as the default, and wondering why other people don't just let good things happen to them
I think you’re reading more into my response then what I said. I don’t mean that at all - Let me give you an analogy -I wish I had more women friends ILR - I know that to actually accomplish that I need to put myself out there more - not online but ILR because deep friendships are formed by being around a person - a lot - (think of the friends you made in college) but it’s really hard for me to be more physically social - it’s awkward, it’s uncomfortable and I’m inpatient, I’m an introvert, I feel like an outsider, etc - I think dating is akin to this. I could be massively wrong -I don’t know because it’s not experience.
Great analogy. Although I do think a lot of guys underestimate how much they can actually do to improve their attractiveness. I’m tall, but that’s about it. Dad bod, average facial features (ie, ugly or handsome depending on the day and the angle), grew up as the ugly unattractive guy.
I started getting consistently referred to as attractive/handsome by both men and women around 25. Didn’t get any better looking, just carried myself better and dramatically improved my social skills.
Still, the analogy holds. Some small percentage of the homeless could turn it around and make six figures with a little help. But lots of people just can’t be different than the way they are. If you can’t or won’t learn to be better, then your ceiling will stay your ceiling.
But what if you don't want to enmesh yourself in other humans. You spend your days at work, and your evenings playing video games, and you absolutely hate parties, bars and any large gatherings of people, yet yearn for a soulmate? Online dating in 00's was a godsend for people like me.
Serious question for all the lonely nerd guys here: which personality type did work for you? (One of Scott's or another.) We all know there aren't enough Hanas to go around, so who did you find happiness with?
I converted from a lonely nerd guy to a casually dating nerd guy. None of my dates really fit any of the exaggerated stereotypes here - there's bits and pieces of each in various combinations.
For casual dating, anyone who is not a basket case and sufficiently attractive has worked well for me. I can’t really see a pattern above and beyond that. I don’t think any of the girls I’ve dated would have made sense from a dating doc perspective. Currently dating a cute girl from Mexico who does not speak English and isn’t particularly smart (def not dumb, just not intellectual). I’m pretty sure English and above average brains would have been two of my biggest filters.
As I’ve gotten older, Ive filtered much harder for kindness, honesty, and emotional stability. Not ready yet for serious long term make it work type stuff, so no idea there.
I have a close straight male friend where part of our friendship is acting as one another's dating coach and commiseration buddy. We've both noticed how OKCupid and all its sibling websites and apps across Match have been degraded to the point of uselessness. Someone whose profile I haven't seen yet sends me a message? Maybe I receive it, maybe I don't, maybe it hits my inbox THREE YEARS after they sent it (true story). Someone who I've matched with sends a message? Again, maybe it shows in the inbox right away, and maybe it shows up a month after it was sent, and probably it shows up never.
Dealbreaker preferences, like smoking or parenting status? Frequently ignored.
Premium membership does not fix these issues, either. While I've never paid for membership, my friend has, and he likewise often receives messages weeks/months/years after they were originally sent and also has his dealbreakers ignored. Plus, as a straight man he is inundated by messages from laughably transparent scammer profiles that OKC is absolutely capable of shutting down but does not.
It's so clear that OKC is constantly being tweaked to thwart most daters' ultimate goal: To find a partner and no longer need the dating platform. I don't necessarily mind a business giving users the choice between a shitty free product and a terrific premium product, but OKC can't even do *that,* likely because (duh), once they've identified that someone is willing to pay $40 a month for their profile, then they REALLY don't want that person to be successful enough in dating to leave.
It just sucks. How do you solve the fundamental problem of dating companies and their customers having perfectly opposed goals?
(Use Fetlife, I suppose, but that's a very tough putt for those with weak stomachs.)
"Plus, as a straight man he is constantly inundated by messages from laughably transparent scammer profiles."
What, you don't believe there are all those Hot Singles In My Area Now just *panting* with eagerness to get to know me better and shower me with affection? I'm shocked that these clickbait ads at the bottom of online news sites might be fake, shocked, I tell you! 😁
I had two of them try to sell me crypto. Which was at least entertaining, as apart from all the ladies shilling their Onlyfans and dominatrixes looking for clients (I tried asking them for tips on domming technique, they weren't forthcoming).
Kik has become totally useless as you are inundated with random messages from camgirls. I even swapped my gender presentation and they kept coming!
No, the particular scammer messages he receives aren't ads, they're set up just like any other user, but they almost universally feature photos of an improbably young, improbably hot Asian woman (usually with photos that a reverse search reveals to be models for (whatever)), who owns an improbably successful business in an improbable industry like tech, travels constantly for work, isn't that specific about relationship goals, has extremely weak English, and are frequently schilling crypto.
I've been seeing a lot of those profiles on dating apps recently too. Exactly what you described, to a T. I've even seen them on Her, which is a dating app specifically for lesbians, so it's not just straight men being targeted!
Wooo-oooww, I wouldn't think lesbians as a demographic could possibly be dumb enough to fall for these scams often enough to make it worth the scammer's effort.
"Hot Singles In My Area Now" BBWCupid must have a different source of scammers. The ones cluttering my inbox are slim 30 year-olds in Nairobi looking for 31-99 year olds (but still leaving their profile set at within-250-miles-of-Nairobi) (and what is anyone slim, if that were true, doing on a BBW site in the first place???). I suspect that they are all the same 30 year old unemployed man living in his mother's basement trying to scam the price of an airline ticket.
Oh, I forgot. OKCupid will now generate 6 likes when used as the free app, and when you pay to see who they are they turn out to be on the other side of the world.
"How do you solve the fundamental problem of dating companies and their customers having perfectly opposed goals?"
I don't know, but it motivates this supplementary question:
"To what extent has the breakdown in monogamous norms in western society been driven by the commercial imperatives of Tinder & friends?" The best way to keep people on your platform forever is not to keep them perpetually frustrated they can't find a long-term partner, but convinced that an endless series of short-term hookups is exactly what they want.
Meh, I don't have any formal stats to back this up, by my sense is that the majority of adults out of their wild youth hate the current state of dating platforms and wistfully long for the days when they were more useful for actually finding a partner.
I don't think the dating apps are trying to convince everyone to be content with an endless series of hookups. I think they're trying to give the impression that, with limitless supply it's possible to find the perfect partner if you just keep swiping.
Okay, I was dubious about "dating docs" but the comments section has converted me on them. The amount of people going "Oooh Hana my dream girl" while I'm going "she has to make up some silly jokey name for the rooms in her house in order to remind her to buy groceries???? how does she cross the street unaccompanied?" 😦 Being interested in your pet subject or hobby is one thing, being economics-obsessed to that degree is.... worrying. I think you all know I like the works of Tolkien but dang it, I'm not naming the rooms in my house out of his writings in order to remember "I need to change the bed sheets and put the washing on".
Definitely need dating docs to keep the likes of that away from me! (And me away from them, because I'm sure I'm every bit as much not their cup of tea).
(Also I am so glad I have never had the faintest interest in dating. So, so glad. I now see why the sexual instinct has to be so strong, otherwise the rest of you would never manage to reproduce the species if left to your own devices).
It's adorable. Also, a person who is kind of a mess might be more forgiving of you being kind of a mess as well - you'll learn to cover for each other's dysfunction. Most happy relationships I see have that vibe, really.
I viewed it as her not taking herself and her interests too seriously? Like, she's perfectly capable of writing and keeping lists, but instead she's managed to re-derive memory palaces. And it could make for some fun flirting. Import/export ratios, trade barriers, inflation rates, overheating, that kind of thing. ;-)
If it turned out that she was only barely functional as a human being, and was incapable of dealing with life without these sorts of references, that'd be another thing. But that's what in-person dates are for.
On the other hand people are quite capable of rapidly filtering through basic profile information themselves. The big problem with matchmaking isn't the matchmaking part, it's getting enough people in and helping everyone filter through everyone else as efficiently as possible. So helping people put together profiles containing relevant information including, most importantly, their picture, is a good thing, but telling them who they should pair with is not.
This is all making me wonder - what's the male version of Hana? Stereotypes suggest it's "I like Taylor Swift concerts, long chats about feelings, and bringing you flowers", but does anyone know a real organic example that looks like it?
Be a little more charitable in your stereotypes, haha. I'd say something more along the lines of, say, a guy who talks about coaching track and field at a local organization for underprivileged youth (i.e. he's fit and also altruistic), maybe jokes about how his most-used bookmark is unfuckyourhabitat.com (i.e. he's tidier than most guys), and probably alludes to his job security and his pride in his budget spreadsheet strategy to save for a down payment on a house (i.e. he won't be a drain on your resources and is a smart, goal-oriented guy). I'm not sure how you'd get a masculine version of Hana's sense of humor across (because many women like a guy who can make them laugh) but I would never claim to be funny!
Hm, pride in budget spreadsheet sounds like careful (good) but also resource-constrained(bad). I do like some of the others though (guess there's a lesson here for guys on the dating market to talk more about their interior design tastes? Or at least mention having them).
Yeah! I think a lot of men would do well to cultivate their aesthetic tastes, if that's something they can do genuinely and from a place of sincerity. It helps you dress better, it makes your home feel more welcoming, it enables you to have more conversations with aesthetically-oriented people (and I think, on the whole, that women tend to be more aesthetically-oriented, in a broader sense than sexual attraction).
Well, Hana hyper-targets a specific male-dominated subculture, so the real analogy is something like:
"In my free time, I work on my epic Dorca/Marlene fanfic-- that is, when I'm not getting nerdsniped by researching feudal traditions across the world in order to make sure that the Wizarding World really feels real. (As far as I'm concerned, Harry Potter was written by Hatsune Mitsu. Don't tell me that's not what 'death of the author' means, Roland Barthes is dead too and I can make him say whatever I want.) I stole my shoelaces from the president (is that cryptic enough to keep the Twitter users from knowing we like it here?). I also like first-person shooters, especially Call of Duty-- yes, for the obvious reason, I'm Soap/Ghost trash."
This feels a bit *too" specific. Like Hana doesn't call out specific bloggers or whatever. I think you're right about the subculture targeting, but this feels more like the anime fan profile - someone who drops a lot of references but doesn't signal character traits that appeal to the subculture. You'd need to signal being the kind of guy that exciting for fanfictioners (are fanfics really that female dominated?) Or maybe woo or something.
I did toss this off in a couple minutes so it could definitely be refined, but here's my reasoning:
-writing a very long fanfic implies that the author is creative and not just a passive consumer
-the reference to getting nerdsniped means that they're smart and curious, and that they can tell you interesting things about history
-Dorca/Marlene and Soap/Ghost both signal heavy involvement in the subculture; so does knowing that "I stole my shoelaces from the president" means you're a Tumblr user
-Soap/Ghost is a *gay male* ship; the speaker is probably queer and definitely going to get invested in your favorite gay ship
-the speaker remixes ingroup references in a funny way (...okay, not THAT funny because I did it in 10 minutes in between getting shoes on my kid, but ykwim)
-knowing who Roland Barthes is and what 'death of the author' means that you're generally literary, not someone who only consumes fanfic and Marvel movies
-"Harry Potter was written by Hatsune Mitsu" is a very credible signal that you share the target audience's political opinions (i.e. that you dislike JKR for being anti-trans) (oh god please do not get into JKR discourse under my comment I am just trying to explain my reasoning)
Partner trait preference is all well and good, but the instant you turn dating into a game of app algorithm minmaxing or find yourself writing a goddamned resume you've type-A'd yourself and the whole scene you're in into a region where I consider you more an animate object than a human being, for better or worse.
You know, I was thinking. We talk about dehumanizing people and seeing them as objects and the like as if it's some artifact of modern society and the machine age, but people have been exploiting and deceiving each other since...before they were people, mimicry and camouflage are things in the animal kingdom. Is the guy 'objectifying' the girl he wants to love and leave any different than the crooked financial advisor planning to fleece his mark of either gender?
Apparently some subconscious attraction between individuals in physical proximity is determined by distinct smells caused by variations in their combinations of MHC (Major Histocompatibility Complex) genes:
So if these could ever be classified and expressed in a fairly compact set of letters, analogous to blood groups, then perhaps there is a marketing opportunity for a new dating app, or a supplement to existing apps:
Clients registering would mail a cheek swab, from which their relevant DNA could be analyzed. Then the app would pop up possible matches whose MHC differs widely (which it seems is the positive factor, as opposed to similarities). A bonus is that presumably the offspring of a successful match on that basis, in combining differing MHC from both parents, would have an unusually healthy immune system!
But it is questionable whether these instinctive chemical indicators could trump incompatibilities of the kind being discussed here, such as different interests and goals or conflicting opinions on politics for example.
I had no idea how statistically rare my relationship with my spouse is. I'm a Christian Republican with a JD and they are a Agnostic Democrat that dropped out of college. I never would have guessed those were strong sorters. However, both of us have the same energy as Jane in that last profile. I think it might be really hard to use survey's to best pin down what makes people have a good marriage, but it would be great to have more research.
An unexplored angle: That’s also some “is/ought” confusion (and a bit of naturalistic fallacy) in the objection that Scott dive into.
Things like dating docs are an (attempt at) innovation. So, by definition, objecting with “but that’s not how people do it” is more of a non sequitur than it first appears. If Henry Ford showed someone his Model T plans and someone said “but, statistically, most people travel by horse or foot, not by machine,” I wouldn’t begrudge Henry saying “no sh*t, what’s your point?”
Along a similar vein, when divorce rates are 45% in the US, an objection that’s basically “we can’t innovate long-term partner selection in X way because people tend to do Y instead” is pretty weak. Clearly Y has plenty of room to improve, and innovation necessarily assumes a future that looks different than the past.
Here is my take on this: you can infer a ranking of people from their decisions and preferences (People’s choices determine a partial ordering over people’s desirability: https://nunosempere.com/blog/2023/06/17/ordering-romance/). Then, it's not implausible to think that someone using a dating doc reveals that they are lower down that ranking--because they couldn't find romantic success without the dating doc. Therefore, from an evidential decision theory perspective, it's a bad move to have a dating doc**.
** caveats may apply. other decision theories may provide other recommendations.
This is a surprising companion comment to the comment above saying they hate dating docs because they feel too much like a claim to high status.
I think you are psyching yourself into a terrible low-trust equilibrium, the sort of thing where people refuse to tell you their names because it signals that they're not high-status enough that you should already know. In practice I see lots of great people with dating docs.
As an aside: I’d never heard of the ‘dating doc’ before this article, but they remind me of the Personal User Manual idea that I learned about ~5 years ago, which I love and always try to proselytize.
As someone currently in the muck of dating apps after the end of a long relationship, I haven't encountered the 'dating doc'. But I think the issue with listing preferences generally is that lists of traits and profiles are bad a capturing personality - and personality determines a lot of the 'spark' of compatibility.
That, and there's a tendency to treat the date like a dry job interview, and it can be tough to break out of that format. People ask formulaic questions, and are guarded about potential flaws and their pasts in ways that don't allow them to act like the interesting and idiosyncratic people they are.
Anyway, I've met a lot of people in my preferred demographics who I don't otherwise seem to have much to converse about, whereas most of those demographics besides gender (age, cultural background, education, politics interests...) aren't rigidly defined and can be flexed.
Done well, a dating doc is an asynchronous speed dating event. Hundreds or thousands of potential matches can spend 4 minutes with "you," and you do the same, without having to coordinate a specific time.
Looked at that way, a video where you say all the stuff you would put in a doc should also be an option. Less crunchy data transmitted per minute, but 1000x more "vibes"
The overall videofication of information is somewhat distressing to me, since I prefer things that (1) let me skip over paragraphs that go on a tangent without having to guess what time it ends at, (2) let me get back to the start of a paragraph when I notice my thoughts drifted without having to guess what time it started at, (3) don't have exaggerated tonal affectations (very common these days) to keep a listener's attention, since those feel a lot like nails on chalkboard to me, (4) don't take as long to load when I'm in a low-bandwidth environment (e.g. train wifi).
...I'm probably forgetting a point. I do think some videos can be nice to watch, but all in all, in the majority of cases, I don't click on Youtube links (etc) unless they're sent to me personally by someone I trust, just because my experience so far has shown that others are overwhelmingly not for me, and thus I've stopped bothering with them.
That said: Yes, dating videos sound like a good idea! I personally wouldn't watch them for all the aforementioned reasons, but there's presumably plenty of people who would, and I encourage people to use the format that gives them results.
Doc doc doc. I abhor videos. Docs are a much more pleasant, comfortable way to take in information for me.
I am happy reading a dozen dating docs; I’d only watch a video if I was already seriously interested in the guy, and if I was already seriously interested I wouldn’t need to.
I gather this is an unusual preference, but it’s unquestionably mine, and I have trouble modeling the other preference.
Isn’t that just a dating website though? It’s the symmetry that matters here, is there’s a community of people that really love google docs and want to use it as an impromptu dating platform, great, but the implication should be that they are spending time reading other peoples docs too. The way it’s often presented though is “I spent an hour writing this, now I am sending it out into the ether and I expect the rest of you to read it” and that’s what comes off as kind of narcissistic.
Hmm. I feel like the negative views of date-me docs don't really have much to do with doubts about the efficacy of describable dating preferences, but rather a concern that writing a date-me doc is a yellow flag for potential narcissism and entitlement. That doesn't mean that this is necessarily a reasonable view, but it at least explains some of the revulsion.
I wanna write a longer reply but I wanna preliminarily say I have no idea why it’d be possible to pick one significantly more interesting person out of those hypothetical girls based on just that, and I really really don’t understand why I so obviously should be. The idea is really strange to me!
I feel similarly about Myers-Briggs as you do about dating compatability docs. It's so obviously useful once you understand it. Existing studies that don't show value tend to be poorly designed.
This quote from Reddit is a sentiment I’ve seen around a lot:
“Jesus. I'm not trying to be insulting at all but even just the existence of a Date Me Doc, or an online dating profile is just so antithetical to how I grew up. (I'm 38) I see people addicted to these apps and now "burning out" from them, it all seems kinda crazy and gamified. The over analysis and "sciencification" of attraction really take the fun out of life, and it happens in every game where people min max to suck the joy out of it. Just talk to people...it is still easy for people from my generation.”
But what it misses — one thing it misses, at least — is consent. If you join a dating website, you can reasonably assume that the people you find there want to find dates and will not be offended if you ask them. Compare that with asking someone out that you’ve met at a local board game meetup or folk dance meetup or whatever: someone very well could be offended by that, since they’re just there to do $HOBBY and now they feel like they’re being treated like a piece of meat. I often see this expressed through a feminist lens — “women go to $HOBBY meetups to do $HOBBY, not to get hit on!” — but it seems more broadly applicable.
"only 4% of marriages are between Democrats and Republicans". I think this means if you get one partner who's willing to state "Democrat" on a survey and the other willing to state "Republican". As opposed to say all those "independents" who still often vote the straight ticket as being easier. Before you object to that characterization, other surveys have found more than 30% of people answering "independent".
"The most popular dating apps, like Tinder, almost push you into that mode." I think it's more that the companies that can monetize their apps successfully have found that the users who go for attractiveness are the ones who pay (or are susceptible to ads or however else they actually get money).
I marveled at the profiles, but then thought better. It's a signaling device - you care about x, and if your potential partner is repulsed by that it's better not to waste both your time. On the other hand, I've had a couple of relatives who ended up divorcing because (probably) not discussing these signals enough - but not before producing kids. Are we better off for not having these now? Unsure.
Whenever the topic of relationship choice comes up, I’m stuck by the question, ‘how do people KNOW this person will be a good match? Dating docs try to solve the problem, but people (or at least some people) seem surprisingly good at it without help. (Finding the person is a separate problem.)
Example, my husbands best friend in grade school now lives in another country though they’ve remained in touch over the years. Their initial attraction was largely based on a mutual love of fart jokes and their accomplishments were of the video game variety. They’ve grown into very different people, both from who they were then and from each other. So it was surprising to eventually meet him and discover how strikingly similar he is to me. We took different paths, but ended up with the same career. We have read many of the same books, blogs, etc. - notably ones of no interest to my husband. I think it is true that this friend is the sort of person my husband is very compatible with, but how on earth did he know that based on information available when they were in kindergarten?
Very interesting! I'd love to hear more about you three - have you noticed any patterns in how your husband communicates with you and his friend vs with other people?
Having thought more about this I have a more coherent objection than my "I don't like Scott's made-up profiles and want to make that a complaint about actual profiles" comment earlier.
Determining dating preference is a multi-armed bandit problem.
For those unfamiliar, this is a problem in computer science/machine learning. Imagine you have two slot machines - one of which has a 40% chance of giving you a dollar and one of which has a 60% chance of giving you a dollar. You want to make as much money as possible but you don't know which is which. Assuming you have limited resources to play these machines you want to spend as much time as possible at the 60% machine, yes. But you also want to spend some amount of time confirming that you have guessed the right machine. Since you can never be completely sure which machine is the 60% machine, you employ a strategy that balances exploration to increase your confidence that you have the right machine with exploitation of the one you suspect is the 60% machine.
In dating you should also optimize for both exploration of your preferences and optimization of those preferences. Some folks like Scott may have a strong understanding of their preferences, plus be extremely high status and able to whittle down a large dating pool by several orders of magnitude and still find a match. Such a person should spend a lot of time exploiting those preferences because they're optimized and possible to exploit. But for most folks, preferences are a guess at what would make them happy in a partner, not a 100% certain formula for partner perfection. You may have dimensions along which you're very certain ("I want to date a woman"), dimensions along which you're not so certain ("I think sharing my political affiliation is important in a partner but I'd be open to meeting someone who thinks differently") and worst, dimensions along which you think you're certain but you're not ("Oh turns out I didn't want to date a woman, something it took me 10 years to learn because I only went on dates with women."). Plus for most folks, some amount of preference compromise is necessary, so knowing what is and is not a dealbreaker is another exploration/exploitation puzzle.
It's not necessarily true that dating docs/expansive profiles/checklists/whatever have to silo you, preventing exploration and putting you all in on your guessed preferences. Someone who thinks critically about their own assumptions about their preferences might use these tools in a different way that actually helps optimize. But in practice, I suspect they do way more often than not.
When I wrote a dating profile, I updated it after every unsuccessful date in such a manner as to be less attractive to (the sort of person) who I went on a date with, targeting in particular the ways in which we were incompatible.
It worked; my spouse messaged me because my profile came across as a likeable asshole. (Fair cop.)
Where dating profiles fail to be useful (for the specific purpose of finding a compatible life partner), I think they tend to fail because the users are trying to attract as many people as possible (complicated social reasons for this, but this isn't what you actually want to do, even if you are struggling to find matches now*).
And dating docs are basically just dating profiles that have been divorced from the specific user interface of a specific dating app. All the same failure modes apply.
Maybe somebody should create an industry standard for dating profile documents, so they can be imported into any dating app that supports the standard, using whatever data the dating app supports. I don't think it's a secret that people using data apps are likely to have accounts on several (although probably their actual usage is mostly limited to one, as regional variations in the popularity of specific applications means that a given dating app may be locally dominant).
*I know some of the responses I'll get to this. "I struggle to find any partners / get any responses now, why would I try to be deliberately unattractive to people?"
Well, first, you aren't trying to be deliberately unattractive, exactly, so much as being honestly unattractive; posting a picture of yourself sneezing ... okay, that might work, as I think about it, but maybe not the way you might hope. Maybe.
Trying to attract as many people as possible is what everybody else is doing, second. Your goal is to stand out, yes? If you can get somebody to go "Wait what?" and keep reading, you've won your first battle already, getting somebody to spend more than a second or two to say "Nope" and move on.
Third, trying to attract everybody is, unless your social skills are pretty on-point, is obvious, and comes across as desperate. Don't come across as desperate!
You can come across as desperate if you go the honest unattractive route as well, note. Don't snivel. Don't apologize. The attitude you should take: These are the things you may not like about me, and if you don't like them about me, move on to somebody else, so we can both save our time, because I'm looking for somebody for whom these things are not a problem / are a positive. The attitude you should not take: These are the things nobody likes about me, and I'm sorry I'm such a terrible person, but maybe you can take pity on me and date me anyways. With the caveat that maybe the "attitude you should not take" is the attitude you should take if that's who you are; there are people out there who will like that. But there aren't a whole lot of them, and you'll have more success if that isn't your entire dating pool, so only go that route if that is exactly who you are, and that is exactly who you need to date.
If you're going into dating for the purposes of finding a life partner - then take that purpose seriously. You are trying to find a life partner. Quit messing around with trying to date people who aren't that, and quit trying to date people who are your ideal life partner, but for whom you are not their ideal life partner; even if that succeeds, do you -want- to spend the rest of your life with somebody who is unhappy in their relationship with you?
Mind, there are other reasons to date which are perfectly valid.
Even assuming that humans actually know what they really want in a partner and can/will formulate their desires into words, I get the idea behind describable dating preferences, but I cannot count the number of times a female seemed to check all the boxes and when I actually followed her scent and met her it was like....meh.
Not done reading but I'd love to see a poll on into/neutral/eww for your fake profiles. Hana sounds obviously awesome and I have a hard time imagining anyone (anyone here?) ranking someone above her, but also would love to be wrong about that.
I think Cindy is probably more attractive in general than she is to typical readers of this blog. I have a hard job seeing many people who read Scott liking Cindy or (worse?) Sky much. I'm a little surprised Larisa seems to be relatively unpopular and most people like Hana more than I do. To me, only Jane sounds tolerable, and even she is far from my ideal match.
Is it just me or do Hana and Jane seem the least bad options? Hana sounds a bit mad, but maybe in a harmless interesting way. The other three sound just awful.
As someone who tends to be "that relentlessly match-making friend"...to me, dating docs aren't so much about preference filtering but a *distribution mechanism*--if I don't know that you are actively looking for a partner, I am not likely to look out for someone for you!
As unromantic as it is, the probability of finding a compatible match has a large marketing component to it...and classic marketing issues like distribution and awareness applies.
I have a lot of nostalgia for old OkCupid, and one thing that really ought to exist but doesn't is a nonprofit dating app with the sole goal of being _really, incredibly good_ at matching people. It seems like a relatively inexpensive way to create a quality of life increase in US cities, because dating is a really big but tractable allocation problem right now. It would be really "easy" to ingest a list of hard preferences and return matches in the area guaranteed to meet those. It doesn't solve all the problems of modern relationships, but it would be exponentially better than the current state of the art!
My simple guess is: there isn't one because not every potential inefficiency is always addressed immediately.
In addition, creating the app would be relatively inexpensive, but with any dating app you are going to want moderation to keep spam out, and advertising to create a good customer experience, and those are both ongoing expenses that don't get cheaper if you're a nonprofit.
I think it would still be a worthwhile endeavor though!
Not sure if this is a good epistemic rule, but, in a situation where Scott and Gwern disagree, I'm leaning towards Gwern with low confidence. Given that this discusses dating, if Jacob Falkovich weighs in, I would go with his tiebreaker.
Where do you post them? I saw Chris Olah's dating doc because it was posted on Marginal Revolution, but this will not work for people who have zero fame. Is the idea to become at least a little bit famous?
Do people who use dating docs also use swiping apps? How does their experience compare? Since Scott seemed to meet people on OKCupid, it seems like that at least used to be about as good as a dating doc, although now OKCupid is hot garbage ime
What do you write on dating docs that you couldn't easily convey in a swiping app? Many of these apps allow you to post your political affiliation, race, desire for children, and include a bio that shows any other traits you wish to see. Many dating docs that I've seen are quite similar to a profile on one of these apps
Do dating docs mostly help you date friends? This seems like the main benefit, in that if you create a dating doc, then your friends will probably be the first to know about it and it's a way to signal that you'd potentially be open to dating them.
Are there any people who exclusively do dating docs and do not use apps? The type of person who would make a dating doc is at least potentially interesting given the effort put in, but I'm wondering if I would see that type of person eventually on an app. This is probably unanswerable in general, but only via anecdotes
This is the directory I know of: https://dateme.directory. Manifold also has a dating doc section: https://manifold.markets/date-docs. I think lots of folks just post links on their personal websites or social media accounts as well.
Most swiping apps I have seen don’t have space for long essays in the potential romantic interest’s voice (exception: OKCupid). Dating docs consist only of this (with other useful information conveyed in that format). I don’t want to date a guy unless I like him; political affiliation, race and desire for children don’t tell me whether I do, listening to him for five minutes does. At least at the should I ask him out level.
Not to me, but worth noting I am a very non-visual person. Pictures don't actually give me that much sense of personality, in practice - too similar between people. They tend to be good for presumably-harder-to-fake signals of physical fitness/attractiveness/liking animals, but that's really not what I'm interested in?
I suspect essays are much less work for people who are comfortable and fluent with words, enjoy using them, and enjoy reading them. Probably much more work for people who aren't. Fortunately, selecting for people who are fluent and comfortable with words, and enjoy them, is one of my goals (since I want compatibility with hi-I'm-an-editor), so...
The problem with the above argument is that is slides from a few (and it's important that they are just a few) points that almost everyone everyone agrees upon ("I want a human <gender> who speaks my language and shares my culture") to the points that are actually in dispute, namely that people know what they want for almost everything else.
gender, language, culture. No-one is disputing these. But what people also think is important includes age, children (wanting to have in the future, not wanting partner to have any, etc), and a variety of "vanity culture" signifiers (being vegan, must like the outdoors, must be a fan of Phish, etc etc).
Of course there is imprecision here, such is life. What I consider a "vanity culture" signifier might, in your case, you are the one special snowflake unlike all others in the world, be an actual deep "cultural setting", so deep that it cannot be overridden. But the way to bet is that it's not.
Ultimately those of us who are older, or happily paired off, don't much care. You want to waste 20 years of your life and suffer a grossly diminished dating pool when you come to your sense, go ahead.
But there might be some wisdom in assuming that there is something to our accumulated years of experience rather than dismissing it out of hand.
The Western fad for assuming that the olds are idiots who know nothing of "true" love or "real" sex or how to give meaning to life has a long dreary history beginning in at least the mid-19th C. Yet not one of those rebel generations, from silents to beats to hippies to millenials, seems to achieved anything significantly different or worthwhile compared to their predecessors. Perhaps the accumulated experience of the ages is, in this case, mostly correct?
Most of the olds told you to have kids or at least agree on having them or not, and that big age gaps were bad for relationships, if not immoral the way people think now. (The 'mal mariee' was a theme a century ago.)
Vegan and the outdoors, maybe not.
I actually agree with your overall point that the wisdom of the ages actually does have value here.
I don't think vegan is a vanity culture signifier! You could be eating the majority of your meals with this person for the rest of your life! If you can never eat the same things as them, that's a pretty big quality of life hit!
Also, are saying people shouldn't sort on wanting to have children vs. not? What do you think people are even doing here?
I don't think the older generations constantly swiped right on Tinder and had no criteria. I think they married into families they knew extremely well, in some cases their own cousins.
Plenty of people kinda sorta think they don't want children. And then change their minds.
If you have had a vasectomy or hysterectomy, sure, by all means make "Don't want children" a red line on your profile. If you HAVEN'T had such surgery, then someone is fooling themself as to what they are absolutely certain they want...
As for vegan, let's get serious here. Even if we don't believe the statistic that 84% of vegans (a number I see no reason to quibble with given my personal experiences) there's a spectrum here from
- will never eat meat again, and think it is so icky that refuse to associate with anyone different
all the way to
- sneaks in bacon when thinks other people aren't looking, and couldn't care less what other people eat.
Unless you're one of the (very very few) all the way on the far end of this spectrum, ultimately what does it matter. Partner A eats their food, partner B eats their different food, and life goes on.
Look, I fully understand that FOR SOME PEOPLE, issues like food or drugs or smoking are essentially taboos, not justified on rational grounds but on some sort of self-image grounds. Hell, I have red-lines like that. But I am also aware that the vast bulk of people simply are not like that. Plenty of people who don't drink seem to be OK living with what I would consider lushes, plenty of non-potheads seem to be OK living with potheads. I don't get it, and it's not the life I would choose, but I'm pointing out the realities here.
Your point about 10% vs 90% is well-taken, and I will not argue that (though I suspect the numbers are substantially more skewed). There are definitely unusual people in the world, and part of that unusualness may be a substantially higher than average degree of self-awareness. But the way to bet is that the average person is in the 90% of low self-awareness (even AFTER controlling for the fact that they believe themselves to be in the self-aware 10%).
Or to put it differently, world history is full of mostly failed communal living experiments. These were people who self-selected each other based on a certain set of beliefs about themselves (generally as of age 22 or so), and who mostly learned over the next 10 years that their age 22 self was an idiot.
I'm coming across as a grouchy curmudgeon, I know. If you want to read a different take on this, by someone with plenty of experience, plenty of numbers, and 90% less grouchiness, read
Lori Gottlieb's "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough" which will show you something of the REAL (and silly, and self-destructive) red lines that people are imposing on themselves, rather than the Philosophy 101 experiments of this page.
The below article cites some research favourable to Scott's case. A quote -
"Research in laboratory settings consistently shows that what people say they want in a partner has virtually no bearing on who they actually choose to date [citations] And yet, once people are in established relationships, they are happier when their partners match their ideals [citations]."
I was under the impression that love strikes like lightning from the blue, unbidden and unpredictable, rendering the sufferer powerless - and unlike Lichtenberg figures, the scars last forever.
It's always fascinating to learn about the different models others have of seemingly commonplace phenomena.
During the sexual-pairing phase of my life (I'm beyond that phase now), I was never able to figure out which women attracted me. Some just did — like a thunderbolt or cupid's arrow hitting me — but the vast majority didn't. I was never able to understand which particular physical or personality traits attracted me. Those hidden variables defeated all my attempts at self-reflective deduction. Worse yet, even when I made the effort to get to know the women who I thought should attract me (liberal-smart-educated-creative-regular facial features), I discovered that getting to know them didn't increase my attraction. So, given that one in a hundred women with some hidden variable which I couldn't pin down attracted me, I never gave dating apps a try.
Any data on how far away we can detect those scent molecules? Outdoors or indoors, the "Cupid's Arrow" phenomenon seems to require I be able to see the other person's face. So I may very well be in range of their scent molecules.
You got one now? Grab a used undershirt and see what happens. I couldn't find any actual data on Google Scholar, but someone may have better google-fu than me.
I just remember the last couple of people I was with both specifically mentioned smell as a significant component of their attraction to me. Lacking other positive nonfinancial qualities, I tend to give the MHC explanation credence. ;)
I think what criteria you filter on would depend on what your goals are. A lot of people, at any one point in time, are looking *for* a one night stand and are trying to avoid commitment. But the real problem are interaction effects--I know many people use sex as a gateway to more committed relationships (that is, sex is considered the first or early step on that path). Therefore, sex appeal would be a necessary but not sufficient criterion for a relationship, followed by whatever personality characteristics you're into.
How much research is there on the olfactory side of things? The people I find attractive in photos does not fully overlap with real life and for my wife and myself, smell has a huge influence on attractiveness, and possibly for other relationship variables.
That this factor is so heavily missing from all discussions around this topic has always weirded me out and led me to the conclusion that most people maybe dont even know what an extremely compatible person is even suposed to smell like, which would be shocking. I've def heard from people that they dont care about smell in general or that they dont care about their partners smell as long as it smell "clean." Both of these statements are kind of crazy to me. My girlfriends smell is intoxicating to me and vice versa.
I'll chime in here with a rough description of the dating process in my sub-section of the Orthodox Jewish population.
- Every single has a resume/profile. These can be extremely spartan with just basic bio info like name/parents name, DOB/place of birth and residence, school history, current employment details, or can be more detailed with information about what the person is like and what they are looking for. A picture of the person may or may not be included. But every single profile will include references.
- A "shadchan" (matchmaker) will have the idea that Jacob might be a good match for Rachel. She (the vast majority of shadchanim are women), will suggest the match.
- Jacob and Rachel's parents or other close relative or friend will call the references on the profiles, and will additionally try to find people who know them and are not listed as references (the expectation being that people on the resume are vetted friends who are pre-disposed to say nice things about the person).
- They will be asking about most of the following: What is the single's personality? What is their level of religious observance? What kind of home did they grow up in? Are there any medical or mental health issues? Where do they want to live? What kind of lifestyle are they looking for? They will not ask whether or not they want to have children; that is considered to be a given for any single choosing to participate in this dating system.
- If both camps like what they hear, the shadchan will coordinate a 1st meeting.
- The 1st date is formal. The man will take the woman to a nice bar or restaurant, and they will spend around 3-4 hours talking. There will be no physical contact, not even a handshake or hug. This is almost always purely a vibe check. Not much of substance will be said or shared, and the expectation is that there will be a 2nd date unless one party really doesn't like the other person. The shadchan will coordinate the next date as well.
- The 2nd - 5th date will be spent verifying compatibility on the smaller things you can't ask about in reference calls. The minutiae of religious passion and observance, interests, lifestyle preferences, how many children you want to have, are you actually doing well in your career, etc. At any point past the 2nd date it is considered appropriate to end things (via the shadchan) if you just don't enjoy spending time with that person. Also at any point past the 2nd date the level of formality of the date is entirely the choice of the couple themselves.
- The 6th-10th dates are for DMC's and chemistry building. At some point in this stretch the couple will stop using the shadchan as a go-between and communicate directly. If either party wants to end it, they will have to end it directly too.
- Beyond the 10th date the couple is assumed to eventually be getting engaged. This usually happens in the 12 to 18 date range. Couples taking longer than this is usually due to commitment issues on the part of somebody, family difficulties, or some characteristic on the part of one single that the other one is trying to get over.
- After engagement, the couple will get married within 3-5 months.
Results: (non-scientific numbers)
- 80% marriage rate by age 30, 95% by age 40.
- 5-10% divorce rate.
- 70% happy/functional marriage rate.
Context:
- We are raised from birth to see getting married and having children (as many as possible) as a pre-requisite to living a religiously correct and happy life. Our social structures encourage this at every level, and there is very little comfortable space for older unmarried people.
- We are raised and educated gender-segregated. We do not socialize with the opposite gender who are not our close relatives.
- We are raised from birth with firm gender roles. It's the man responsibility to provide, and the woman's to raise children.
- We are taught what to look for and value in a marriage partner: religious compatibility, someone who is kind to us and others, someone who will be a good parent someone who can fulfill their assigned gender role, someone who we enjoy spending time with. Men are told to look for a woman who can make them feel masculine, woman are encouraged to look for a man who makes them feel feminine.
- We are told to avoid getting hung up on physical attraction at the early stages. Attraction will grow naturally as you spend more time together and your chemistry increases. Declining to meet someone based on just their physical appearance is heavily frowned upon.
- We are also told to avoid getting hung up on any number of minor things: How they dress, if they talk too fast, if they work an uncool job, if you don't like someone in their family, etc. We are taught that all of those things will fade or matter less as you get to know each other and as your chemistry grows.
- There is zero physical contact throughout the dating process until marriage.
- The man is expected to pay for everything throughout the dating process (if he is young or under-resourced his parents will usually pitch in).
- The parents of the couple will pay for the entire wedding (with community support for those needing it) and will also help setup their first home with furniture/appliances/dishes and the like.
Why did I write this megillah? Because Scott's argument is entirely correct, and should actually be taken much farther than he did. People need to be preference-maxing. It's easy to get married and stay happily married when you know what you want and have the tools to find potential partners who want the same thing.
- How many times does the typical person go through this process? (IE how many potential matches does a person/family usually reject before accepting one and marrying?)
- Where is the resume? Do you print it out and give it to the shadchan, or is it floating online for anyone to see?
- Why shadchanim instead of friends and family making the match directly? Are the shadchanim considered especially skilled, or are they just good central repositories of knowledge?
- What happens if someone is flawed in some way (an illness, nonconformist, unintelligent, unattractive, etc)?
- The average man will date 5-6 people before getting married, the average woman will date 3-4 (there are more woman than men in the system at any given time because woman typically start dating at 20 while men usually start around 23).
- Shadchanim collect them and pass them around digitally, usually PDF's, via whatsapp or email. There are some online repositories of resumes; this is a very recent innovation and people still mostly date people who are directly suggested to them.
- Good shadchanim will have a rep of making good suggestions, therefore parents are more likely to consider their ideas. Additionally, good shadchanim help facilitate the actual dating process. After dates the shadchan will usually talk to both parties and hear feedback, this feedback can be very helpful towards guiding future dates or raising points that need to be cleared up. They can also help convince people to give something another shot if they think their reason for saying no isn't serious, or they can encourage people to slow down and give it more time if they feel they're proceeding too quickly without going over necessary ground. Friends and family absolutely can and do make suggestions, and even facilitate, and a larger percentage of matches are happening that way over time.
- They are encouraged to date others who are similarly flawed (directionally, not attribute-wise).
Still confused about the mismatch between 3-4 and 5-6. This should only be possible if the total number of women using the system over time is substantially more than the total number of men. It is not enough that there are more women than men at any given time, what matters is the total number over a long time period that use the system.
The birth rates in these communities is very high, so the number of 20 year olds is substantially larger than the number of 23 year olds in a sustainable (for now) way.
In order for the population to increase by a factor of 5.5/3.5 over the course of 3 years, the population would need to double every 5 years. If it takes 20 years before people start having children, they'd need to have at least 32 children on average to maintain this growth rate (and that's not counting the fact that they will be well over 20 by the time they have that many). This doesn't seem realistic.
congratulations on discovering the "shidduch crisis"
there is a well known phenomena in the jewish community that girls have a more difficult time finding a match than men. This comes down there simply being fewer men which is for a few reasons
1) birth rates. the more orthodox communities have a higher birth rate and a very clear expectation of the male being a few years older than the woman. So to begin with there is 5-10% more males in the dating pool
2) the rate of attrition for men is higher; men are more likely to go "off the road" than women
3) the rate of severe mental illness is higher among men than women
between those three things it's estimated that there are around 10-15% more women than men
this next part is speculation on my part based on anecdotal evidence but my guess is that women have a long right tail that averages out the mean but the median woman goes on fewer dates than the median man
Worth noting that those with severe mental illness should rightfully be counted towards the average number of dates, even if the illness is severe enough that their number of dates is zero. This may pull the number for men closer to the number for women.
I believe there point is people who are severely mentally ill are excluded from the process. No matchmaker would take them as a client, so they get 0 dates for that reason, but that still means they should be excluded from the question, how many dates does a man within the system go on.
I have definitely expressed this in a mathematically incorrect way, so thank you for calling it out. Gruns Patent below gets closer to an accurate account of the mismatch between men and women's dating experiences in this community.
They are related but not equivalent words. A "Yenta" is a busybody, someone who makes it her business to know what everyone is up to and what's going on in everyone's home. A person like that is more likely to be a shadchan, because that kind of personality and knowledge comes in very handy when setting people up. But not all yentas are shadchanim and not all shadchanim are yentas.
Sholom, your post indicates that you are a member of the Chabad subculture in American Orthodox Judaism. While your post accurately describes the reality for perhaps 70% of that population, there is an increasing number of singles in the community who are not marrying till their late 20s or early 30s. In some cases, this is exacerbated by the system itself which can create too strong a filter, or devolved into the narcissism of small differences.
Are we convinced that the OKCupid algorithm was actually more accurate than some other simple sorting algorithm like matching people by IQ or something?
It was changed a few times; I know a guy who reverse-engineered it using two profiles back in the early 2010s when you didn't have to associate it with a phone number. But that was all using user-submitted preferences to match people; there's no guarantee people know what's good for them.
There is a considerable amount of research that indicates that people regard a quick spontaneous response to be more honest and authentic than one the other person took their time and thought carefully about the options. For most people I have met, intellectual forethought is considered suspicious. Initial impressions are trusted more than calculated ones. There seems to be an idea in popular culture that one's intuition is a better gauge of oneself and one's own needs and desires than objective consideration. Given that, it isn't surprising that a great many people believe that you can't objectively articulate what you want or need in a partner.
This could be a case of the self-fulfilling prophesy. That is, two intuitive people, both of whom believe in first impressions and spontaneity as a sign of authenticity, may actually be more compatible with each other than they would be with someone more rational.
But rational people might be well advised to filter on the exact opposite set of criteria.
> And all of this is separate from the types of preferences mentioned above - ie it’s not just the easy things like race, religion, income, number of children desired, politics, sexual compatibility, etc. Everything here is after the 1/500 even-getting-started number listed above! So learning about people from profiles must allow an even stronger filter than that!
I really don't think all of this *is* separate from the types of preferences mentioned above. What are the odds that Cindy is poly or willing to tolerate a mostly asexual partner?
OKCupid was a huge nerd snipe of a site, as it fed the introvert's tendency to think the answer was just around the corner from answering another hundred compatibility questions, rather than in just messaging and meeting up with people. In reality, most people's dealbreakers are all correlated with each other, and you can easily get an idea if someone is in your "market" from five photos and two paragraphs. Scott has much more idiosyncratic criteria than the vast majority of people, but even still there's only a couple questions that will essentially narrow down the pool with a high degree of confidence.
This does not match my experience. Photos are rarely any help except to check attraction which is not remotely enough (high male attractiveness correlates very highly with disinterest in long-term commitment), and two paragraphs can be certainly no but are ~never certainly yes (and not-certainly-no filters into a 1/100 in my “market” pool, not anything better). I think I have less idiosyncratic criteria than Scott but am pretty sure of this conclusion (granted, I am also female).
You are right about Cindy but I think you are overconfident on your general point.
A worrisome trend is that corporations have adapted the concept of dating docs to employment. Using so called "job ads", they publish stringent criteria they have for employment and have the job applicants bear the load of checking for compatibility. This is despite Science(TM) showing that these formal criteria (like having an MD, or truck driver licence, or a PhD) have no correlation with the outcome of three minute long HR interviews.
Seriously, I think that dating docs are mostly useful in situations where there is an asymmetry between the supply of both prospective partners. For example, the rationality crowd seems to be overwhelmingly male (84% cismale on the 2022 ACX survey). Or I would expect that high status individuals within that group (e.g. Scott, EY) have probably way more people interested in dating them than they can possibly date. In such cases, dating docs serve multiple purposes:
* They advertise the fact that the writer is looking for dates (which can override the common courtesy of not cold-messaging people regarding romantic intentions especially in settings where universalization of such a behavior would see them flooded with such)
* They pre-filter candidates so that flooding does not occur
So dating docs sound like an obvious positive sum action for all the parties involved (except for more brazen people who would have cold-messaged their target audience before and now (1) have to compete with more considerate people and (2) may be summarily told "RTFM, you do not qualify".
Even for the ones filtered out by the criteria stated in the dating docs, the process is actually helpful, because it gives them feedback on a process which is normally completely opaque. If nine out of ten prospective partners state that they prefer a provider enabling a lavish lifestyle or physical beauty or BMIs below 20 or sizes above 1.9m, this is actually helpful information. Perhaps not directly actionable (unless one is willing to embark on a career in the drug trade or have ones leg bones enlarged or whatever), but still helpful (perhaps the correct choice is to search elsewhere for partners or romance a LLM or whatever).
Of course, one problem is that openness about certain criteria is generally frowned upon. Writing "your net income should be at least 100,000$ a year" is not the optimal way to filter for high earners, because many people (including people who qualify) will consider this criterion indicative of a shallow character. I think much of the traditional dating strategies revolve about maintaining plausible deniability about such things (which is why paying for dinner in a fancy restaurant will lead to better outcomes than just sending a copy of ones the bank balance).
One solution here might might be to provide aggregated information about the previous relationships. "my previous partners made between 100k and 130k a year" sounds at least less shallow than "I won't date anyone who makes less than 90k". One might still appear less shallow if one lied about that, though.
In general, I have two extreme models of the dating market, with the truth probably in between.
The one-dimensional model would be that most people of one gender, orientation and phase of life desire similar qualities in their partners. Few people are attracted by poverty or ugliness, after all. So for heterosexuals, you can order both by their hotness score, and the stable equilibrium will be the Nth hottest woman dating the Nth hottest man.
The high-dimensional model would assert that romantic potential is determined by lots of different preferences. People want partners with shared interests, similar (or complementary) kinks, members of their own subcultures and so on.
Obviously the real dating markets are mixtures of both, but I am totally puzzled as to regard what mixture. Any suggestions?
Love your leading joke, but ironically, I've seen some studies that show the interview results is better correlated with job success than degrees. I don't remember if job history listed on resume was more or less correlated than interview though...
Maybe we should just give all prospective dates an IQ test and sort based on that?
I built a dating app that does boolean matching based on users' selected dealmakers & dealbreakers to filter matches (the app is now mothballed). Suffice to say the obvious that the format of the app is insufficient unless you have a billionaire friend that is willing to give you a lot of money for marketing. If no one is on the app, then it is hard to get traction, no matter the algorithm.
So if someone is thinking about building such an app, either be really young and build it over the long run, or have a clear business & marketing strategy that leads to user growth despite initial users having few matches.
Such a document could have prevented the Jonah Hill situation - the text messages his ex shared were all about incompatible expectations for partner behavior.
I think the mistake here is confusing two questions:
* Are people most attracted to people who match their stated preferences?
* Are people most likely to date people who match their stated preferences?
Sadly, people don't get to date the people they are most attracted to. Imagine if the undergrads in any of the speed-dating studies were sent on a desert island and left to incubate until they're somehow all paired up. When asked about their preference, maybe every girl said "I want a tall boyfriend" and every boy said "I want a girlfriend with a 0.2 waist-to-hip ratio". But, at the end, the most attractive girls will pair with the most attractive boys, and you will have no correlation between stated preferences and who people actually date. However, you will find a high correlation between the two partners' objective attractiveness.
In that regard, the utility of date-me docs is not to find people who would match your preferences, but to find people in your league.
Even granted your assumptions, the utility would be to find compatible people in your league, with whom you could actually have a meaningful, happy relationship. ("League" here probably means "social class and location" at least as much as "attractiveness by whatever the local criteria are".)
I look forward to your upcoming column “Yet Another Bay Area House Party Redux,” starring Hana, Jane, Larissa, and Sky (Cindy makes a cameo appearance, decides the party is boring/weird, and leaves after 5 minutes). Please do it! The ACX commentariat will be eternally grateful. 😊
Dating docs are an attempt to solve a problem (the lack of partner). Unfortunately, trying to solve a problem = signaling that you have one; and that is low-status. The people making fun of dating docs are signaling that they don't have this problem; and whether that is true or not, the signal is high-status.
Note that reading or writing dating docs implies a preference for reading or writing. Some people hate reading and writing, so this solution wouldn't work for them.
I wonder how honest can people actually be in their dating docs. People are hypocritical -- maybe you want to date a person of the same race, and your potential partner also wants to date a person of the same race... but your potential partner may still perceive this information in your dating doc as evidence of racism and reject you. (Maybe they actually don't mind you saying this, but are still afraid that their friends might judge them for dating a racist. Problem is, your dating doc is a public document.) Talking about your partner's income may be a similar problem: you may want to date someone in the same social class, but don't want to be seen as a person for whom money is so important. Among woke people, expressing a preference for your partner being cis could be a similar problem. So a lot of important information may be unmentionable.
In a comment in this thread, Jack mentions preference for "kindness, honesty, and emotional stability". Can these things be talked about explicitly? Do honest people write "I am honest" and dishonest people write "I am dishonest" in their dating docs? Does anyone admit being hateful, or a psychopath? It could even be the other way round, a normal person admitting "sometimes I am not as nice as I would like to be" and a psychopath saying "actually, I am perfectly nice all the time". Or maybe admitting that "I am a little bit X" actually means that person is X a lot. In other words, you probably can't trust most information like this.
Dating doc is a potential weakness, e.g. if you are an attractive girl looking for a long-term relation, but there are many guys wanting to have a one-night stand with you. You just told them exactly what they should pretend to be!
Also, knowing yourself (sufficiently that you can describe yourself in a document) is quite difficult. I might be able to do it now, but I doubt that I would do a good job in my 20s. But maybe it's a part of the process of learning: figuring out what went wrong, and updating your doc accordingly. For example, in a parallel universe where LessWrong and the rationalist community never existed, I would have difficulty describing that I am looking for a *rationalist*. I would probably write something like "looking for an educated and open-minded person", but that's not the same. It is not even a narrow filter because many people are educated and almost everyone considers themselves open-minded.
This probably sounds too negative, but I actually like the idea. I just notice the imperfections. Freestyle description sounds nicer than checkboxes: I get more of the feeling that I know the person. Also, when other people design the checkboxes, sometimes you just don't fit any category; text allows you to describe it using your own words. We should probably use something similar also for finding friends.
I forgot the obvious thing: dating docs do not scale. (Until we have an AI capable of reading them and finding a match, which actually might happen soon.) So we need checkboxes as the first filter, and the dating docs as a second filter.
Would you necessarily want to restrict the potential candidate pool *before* meeting them in person? I think preferences are a complex interaction--I may weight certain personality traits higher than physical attractiveness, but the weights aren't "1.0" and "0". So it's entirely possible that a sufficiently attractive candidate could make up for a lack of certain personality traits, but only in comparison to whoever else showed up. You can't really predict these things in advance, so perhaps best to use filters conservatively.
Then again, spending an evening with a member of your preferred gender isn't always a complete waste of time, even if neither sex nor romance is likely to result. What else are you going to do for two hours? So maybe it makes sense to be liberal with who you agree to meet.
(Aware that many women are forced to proactively protect themselves from the potential for sexual harassment, so filtering for "creepy" as early in the process as possible is non-optional).
I would say it depends on how many candidates you have. If there is no one that passes your filter, it makes sense to try and meet someone else. On the other hand, if there are candidates that pass your filter, it makes sense to try them first (and if that fails, proceed to people outside your filter).
In other words, just don't use the filter as an excuse for staying alone.
Or maybe review your filters. Beyond the basics (race, social class, educational level, relationship status, etc.) I don't think we can know how we will respond to meeting someone for the first time. So it pays to be widen your pool , within practical limits.
“spending an evening with a member of your preferred gender isn’t always a complete waste of time... what else are you going to do”
oh man i can think of soooo many things i would rather do than spend 1:1 time with a (randomly picked from the population) stranger. that sounds like a 3/10 time to me
some of us are more introverted lol. or more weird. or both!
This post is f-ing great! The day before, I was listening to "Tea for the Tillerman". And I need a hard headed women... And I updated my profile on e-harmony, and added pictures. For me the problem with a dating doc is exposure. I live far away from any big city, so number of people is much bigger on e-harmony. (though the interface totally sucks, and I can't put my likes into whatever pigeon holes they've put up.)
> Entry number 1... Hello. I'm Marianella. I'm a Virgo and I'm 15. My hobby is **PoisonGas**! Nice to meet you.
> Entry number 2... Petra the Pisces here! I'm 16 and I love tall, dark boys! I love to sing in the **BlackRain**! Nice to meet you.
> Entry number 3... I'm Carolina, and I'm 10. When I grow up I want to be Miss Universe. I do a mean **Tornado**! Nice to meet you.
> Entry number 4... I'm Richard. I'm 29. And I'm here to protest beauty pageant sexism! My proudest accomplishment is the **BlackHole**! Nice to meet you.
Dating docs are cringey but also kind of inevitable, right?
1. Scarcity exists. There aren't hundreds of men with Richard Feynman brains and Henry Cavill shoulders lobbing pebbles at my bedroom window.
2. The dating market wants to clear. Everyone wants love or at least a good time.
3. Information asymmetries exist. Why not clear the fog a bit? As credit ratings and standardized test scores do.
I'm glad I haven't had to make one! My husband and I got sloshed around in a tiny office dating pool of numerate 22-year-olds, which probably happens less in a WFH world.
Separately, how do polyamorous people with kids have the time and energy to keep going on dates?
I think a large part of why people are against dating docs is two-fold:
- it's not mainstream (yet?) and as such seems, like all online dating, desperate/weird/... . Basically it goes against the fairytale "you will bump into your perfect partner in the library/on the way to work/... and one of you will drop all their papers/books and the other will help pick them up and it will be cute and fate and the universe have this perfectly organized for you and if you try to make it more likely to meet a suitable partner you hate romance and mess up the universe's plans"
- This checklist mentality adopted at large scale would lead to even more segregation than we have now. If I only meet people who are in my social class, I'm in even more of a bubble/echo chamber etc. (I do personally agree that this could have pretty bad societal implications if everyone could filter for a lot of describable preferences/hard facts before seeing a list of people that want to date.)
I'm not talking about people being excluded by such filters, I'm talking about the relationships that are created as a result of such filters being explicit and in code vs the status quo (filters are implicit/can get broken through)
> Many people want a partner of the same religion and level of religiosity.
This can't be right. Traditional literature/religion is full of indications that men need to be forced to marry within their religion, because otherwise they'll just convert to whatever their wife wants.
And in general - and this is easily observed today - women are much, much more religious than men. Insisting that you want a partner of the same level of religiosity as yourself is much like insisting that you want a partner of the same height as yourself: at a system level, almost nobody can possibly accomplish this, and it's not really worthwhile to try.
I think that most negative reaction on dating docs is sorta emotional and arguments is rationalization. Why it often provokes negatives? First thing - it strikes all "marriages are made in heaven" and "instant strike of romantic love" narratives, and this is still a big thing in our culture - dating docs are much more about "rational partner choosing" than "arrows of cupid". Second - we still mentally more villagers than citizens, and in village being too picky is a bad plan - but much more OK in big city
The way this topic was taught in my sociology class referenced Intimate Relationships by Rowland Miller, Chapter 3 of which I think covers the current research well.
For casual relationships/one-night stands: pretty much everyone's mainly looking for someone physically attractive. If you can get along with them at least a little bit, then you might stick around for a while and call it FWB or a situationship, but looks are still the main criterion for both genders.
For longer-term relationships, here's how it breaks down:
* Everyone's got similar dealbreakers (which are generally pretty obvious: kids, career, smoking/drug use, poly/mono, whether or not someone's very politically-minded or religiously observant and if so which religion/party are they a member of, etc.).
* Everyone's looking for a certain baseline level of assortative matching; the biggest difference between what straight men vs. women are looking for is that men tend to more heavily favor good health/looks and women tend to more heavily focus on wealth/earnings potential, but everything else is pretty similar and there's absolutely a lot of trading-off between how much of each criterion partners satisfy.
* How the assortative matching shakes out for long-term relationships is that they're all *benchmark* requirements: people look for a certain bare minimum (depending on how desirable/attractive they themselves are), but beyond that they're not super-important.
* Once the benchmark's met on both sides, what everyone's really looking for is how well you two get along: agreeableness, compassion, loyalty, and so on.
The latest edition of that book came out in 2022, and Chapter 3's got an *extensive* bibliography. I'm probably not pulling out the right citations, but here's a sampling:
* For similarities in requirements: Thomas, A. G., Jonason, P. K., Blackburn, J. D., & Li, N. P. (2020). Mate preference priorities in the East and West: A cross-cultural test of the mate preference priority model. Journal of Personality. doi:10.1111/jopy12514
* For a summarized list of what people want: Lam, B. C. P., Cross, S. E., Wu, T., Yeh, K., Wang, Y., & Su, J. C. (2016). What do you want in a marriage? Examining marriage ideals in Taiwan and the United States. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 703–732.
* More on what people look for in a casual relationship (not sure which one they were citing!):
* Eastwick, P. W., Luchies, L. B., Finkel, E. J., & Hunt, L. L. (2014). The predictive validity of ideal partner preferences: A review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140, 623–665.
* Eastwick, P. W., & Hunt, L. L. (2014). Relational mate value: Consensus and uniqueness in romantic evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 728–751.
* For people adjusting their standards to meet who they're already dating: Kučerová, R., Csajbók, Z., & Havlíček, J. (2018). Coupled individuals adjust their ideal mate preferences according their actual partner. Personality and Individual Differences, 135, 248–257.
Suffice it to say that I think the research isn't in a completely terrible place right now (knock-on-wood), and that at least some of the criteria are well-understood.
The real criticism of date-me docs, then, wouldn't be that the preferences themselves are undescribable: it'd be that what people put into the date-me docs doesn't effectively depict what matters.
And I think that's a bad criticism, too; I think writing about yourself is a great way to show off your personality, especially if you write a lot in general. (Even if you're just showing off the fact that your first instinct to show yourself off is to do it in writing!)
So really, I think that the main criticism might just boil down to an example of The Worst Argument In The World.
A not-so-hot take: I hope AI-assisted dating will take off someday. I won't need it, I hope, since I'm already married, but other men and women like me are suffering. Tinder-like apps are shit - "matching" people on attractiveness seems like anathema to me. And long-form dating sites are mostly dead and not coming back, unless someone finds a way to monetize them (well, Substack found a way to monetize long reads, which were going the way of dodo with advent of social networks, so there is hope there). But if I had to date again, it would be so, so nice to let an AI assistant comb the internet for a likely woman who matches my preferences...
From reading the article and the comments here, it seems like we have dating apps that are actually good: OKCupid and eHarmony. Why, then, do we hear so much about how dating is broken these days and loneliness is at all-time highs?
I would guess it's a combination of a few things
1. These apps are not as good as people say they are
2. People don't actually want to settle down that badly
3. People's standards are too high
Anyone have insight into why dating isn't basically solved? We can put aside the question of what's wrong with the existing social science and consider the efficacy of the existing social engineering.
Dating is solved for most people because most people aren’t single by the age of 30. For the rest it’s primarily due to their own standards being too high, yes.
Yeah, it does seem that it's not exactly horrifically broken or anything, but it seems hard to argue that platforms that make preferences more legible have helped. Of course, maybe the results would be _even worse_ without them, but hard to prove.
That's still 53 percent for whom dating is "fully" solved, plus a lot of people are happy in a relationship without being married. The single people aged 30+ are still an abnormality.
Sure, maybe, but it's not surprising to me that the cultural discourse better reflects the _change_ in the circumstances than the level that they're at now. Ie, when marriage drops by 14% we will hear doom and gloom whether it drops from 90 -> 76 or 67 -> 53
> Anyone have insight into why dating isn't basically solved?
You can't solve a supply-and-demand issue with a matchmaking algorithm. Basically, a combination of "standards are too high" and "value proposition too low". Online dating is now the predominant way couples meet though, so I wouldn't call it broken.
As for an opportunity...not that I see, there are more geeks than there are women who want to date them. You could rip them off, I suppose, but that won't make you popular around here at least.
It may have made them more money, which is why I'm asking if there's an opportunity to release a product that does what OKCupid used to do. I gather the degradation in service did not flip them from unprofitable to profitable, but merely increased profits.
What sort of product are you envisioning when you say "rip them off"?
It's probably not the sort of thing I would work on in any case (happily working on my own startup). However, I think it's important to analyze the market size independent of the vibes and ethics. After all, as the inimitable Nikita Bier says, "One of the most important differentiators between great consumer founders and the rest is a willingness to acknowledge a shameful truth about people—and then being comfortable attaching your name to that product." (https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1675526162318065668?s=20)
I agree with you about analyzing market size independent of vibes and ethics, but I don't have the social skills, access to capital, organizational ability to be an entrepreneur.
Nonetheless...you asked me a question. I guess I meant 'invent a dating service for nerds which will sucker in enough lonely male nerds that you can make some money off them before they realize they're not getting anywhere.' I suspect a lot of that population has gone incel or is watching harem anime (or both) at this point. But, heck...the guy who gets rich is the guy who does the thing everyone says he can't.
The linked Tweet is referencing an app doing essentially what you are saying. You can meet this need cheaply without involving real people at all, as Character.ai is doing. People can invent fake personas that will do romantic roleplay with users, enhanced with AI generated images as well.
I came for the headline and stayed for the glimpses into Scott’s love life.
I think the argument here is correct, but wonder if there is something more to be gotten from the skeptics on stated preferences. I think lots of people (applies to me at various points in my life) overstate the importance of, for example, matters of taste (liking the same music, pop culture ephemera, sports teams, whatever) and how important alignment on that is for a happy, long-term relationship.
Basically I think there’s a bucket of important things you should be aligned on - monogamy, religion, politics, whatever, and a bucket of things that feel like they are important but probably aren’t - Taylor Swift fandom. Of course person to person these categories can change and there is no one size fits all solution to disentangling what is important and what isn’t. That’s probably something best left to your friends to actually help you sort through. But a study that predicts that e.g. shared musical taste doesn’t mean much as far as lowering divorce risk is a decent enough hint that maybe for most people that’s a criterion that should fall in the “not that important” bucket.
People don't think dating docs are weird and repellent because there are no legible criteria to screen potential partners. But these criteria should be a blunt, first-pass tool. If I want an atheist guy in his 30s in DC, and you're a 20-year-old Christian woman in Ohio, we're not compatible. Great. Tell people your basic criteria. But once you have someone who meets those first few basic, legible, criteria...go on a freaking date! You'll be able to tell within 30 minutes whether you're attracted to the person, like the person, and feel comfortable with the person. And you cannot determine this from any amount of reading and writing google docs.
Dating docs are weird because they're incredibly long and detailed, and because the effort you spend writing ten pages about yourself and reading other people's manifestos is effort that could more usefully be spent going on dates, and actually figuring out whether you like the person.
If you like them, feel comfortable with them, want to have sex with them...you'll find that all the details on your 15th page about your ethical philosophy and tastes in video games absolutely do not matter at all.
Dating docs (or very long dating profiles like in the old OkCupid days) are certainly a weird thing for weird people.
The question is what do you enjoy more? Reading long articles by people you don’t know? Or spending time with people you don’t know?
If asked to choose between A) reading 10 long dating profiles only to realize 9 aren’t for me or B) going on 10 short coffee dates 9 of which are dudes I don’t vibe with, I slam A. But probably most people pick B. (Also, most people probably vibe with more than 1/10 people lol.)
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. But there’s a place for niche dating strategies for niche people.
Agreed. I just don't think it's going to work for most of those guys because there are more guys filling those out than girls interested in the kind of guys who would fill those out.
But, if even a few get lucky, it's probably worth it for them.
I think you're overestimating how significant those numbers say political compatibility is. The study said that 4% of marriages are between a Republican and a Democrat, which *sounds* low, but given that something like 30% of people are Republicans and 30% Democrats and 40% Independents, you would only expect 9% from pure mixing. There are 17% between Independents and non-Independents, but from random mixing you would only expect 24%.
Looking at these numbers actually made me realize that this level of political compatibility appears to be far *less* important to most people than I would have expected. It looks like 16% of Democrats are married across party lines, even though 70% of their options are across party lines (about 1/4) of the expected number), and 84% of Democrats are married to other Democrats, even though only 30% of their options are Democrats (about 3x the expected number) so there's something like a factor of 12 between their probability of marrying a particular non-Democrat compared to their probability of marrying a particular Democrat. But a factor of 12 is much smaller than I would have expected in this era of high polarization - and low enough that you wouldn't actually want a filter that eliminates 100% of the people from the wrong side of that line.
I think your comment has the right conclusion, although I believe your numbers are off. The expected probability of a random pair of people being one Democrat and one Republican would be 30% x 40% x 2, since it could be Democrat + Republican _or_ Republican + Democrat. So the expected probability would be 18%. Similarly, you would expected an Independent and a non-Independent pairing 48% of the time, not 24% of the time. So the factor should be 24. Which is pretty high. Might still not be enough to instantiate a filter that eliminates 100%, but it is pretty high.
Mark my words, soon dating apps will happen in VR. Assuming we get to a point where it can read and show your facial expressions. And possibly upper body language as well.
In fact VR would be perfect for meeting strangers. You can sort of be yourself in an avatar with a different voice (or the same voice), it would be like a real life meet up, except you can end it anytime and move on to the next one.
I noticed this post mentions race a few times, seemingly with the implication that most Americans would only want to date someone of the same race as themselves. Now I'm curious, is that really true, and to what extent? My intuition says there are plenty of people who don't have an explicit preference regarding race, even if they might filter potential partners on other factors like political views. I'm wondering if my social circles and I are outliers on this.
For context: I'm a straight white (ethnically part-Jewish) guy in my late 20s, politically liberal, who has lived most of my life in the NYC area and the Boston area. I don't think it's wrong if someone has a preference towards dating someone of their same race, but I've never had that kind of preference. When I was more actively trying to date and using the apps, I went on dates with both white and non-white women without it ever coming up as an issue. And many of my friends seem to feel similarly.
Yeah, it's true, though that's declined. As you say you are in a pretty liberal area.
"Among all newlyweds, 9.4% of whites, 17.1% of blacks, 25.7% of Hispanics and 27.7% of Asians married someone whose race or ethnicity was different from their own."
42% of interracial marriages in the US are white/hispanic, and "hispanic" naturally includes people with substantial (if not majority) european ancestry.
>I noticed this post mentions race a few times, seemingly with the implication that most Americans would only want to date someone of the same race as themselves.
The vast majority of white Americans marry white people. And many of those who marry "non-whites" are marrying hispanics of significant (if not majority) european ancestry.
People of different races on average look very different, have different political views, have different culture/interests/values, have large different in career/income/education. People are vastly more likely to have more in common with someone of their own race than of a different race. People have these preferences *within race*, so it would be really weird if there weren't substantial race preferences.
And I think your post highlights something very funny - in one breath, liberal americans will say that differences between races are small and we should look past them, then in the next breath they claim that racial differences are so profound that it's worth engaging in literal race discrimination to make sure that there's enough of each race in colleges, corporations etc.
Of course, your dating life is almost certainly going to be one in which you're specifically exposed to non-whites who you have more in common with than average. I'm sure most NYC liberals would show strong race preferences if they were subjected to the *average* white, black, hispanic, asian people of the opposite sex from around the country.
My grandpa was a medical doctor and he had zero difficulties finding a date or a spouse. Aren't you a psychiatrist, Scott? So maybe your ease in finding a catch isn't that informative. I mean, how many women who are moderately indisposed to poly life would flip flop to snag a doc? Or men.
This is an absurd question, Scott. I don't know if it's the asexuality or what, but the answer to your puzzle, or whatever you want to call it, of the five dating ads is:
1) Which of them is the best-looking?
2) Which of them is the best at giving head?
I don't care about *anything* any of them wrote. None of that has absolutely any relevance for a relationship. Have your weird hobbies, girl!
How old are you? When I was 19 I would be 100% in agreement. But a decade later... sorry, but even the best head giver in the world isn't worth it if she's highly annoying.
Edit: And obviously there are deal-breakers, but nobody is going to write out the real ones (I'm single because I cheated on my five last boyfriends; I'm incapable of accepting any guy who isn't out of my league; etc.) in a dating ad.
Speculatively, I think dating docs (as opposed to broad categorical pre-screening) will, if they grow in popularity, have the effect of essentially making women increasingly convinced that few men if any are good enough for them.
I would push back on the claim that a public "date me" profile reduces pipeline and exposure. I suspect that a well formed and publicized one actually both gets you a much better top-of-the-pipeline, and acts as a more efficient filter. You and your extended social network are probably much better about targeting single people with your profile than any dating app would be. So way more eyeballs on first pass, much better chance of multiple exposures to the same eyeballs (it's still a weird enough thing that folk might read and talk about your profile multiple times; an early adopter advantage), and network effects (they'd be a perfect match for Jane! Let's introduce them)
I spent years on OkCupid in two countries and never met Hana. Surprisingly low amount of resulting relationships. But I did find that free text profiles gave some sense of the person.
Actually, thinking back on this. The problem was exactly that I *did* meet a few Hanas - women who can create a charmingly quirky dating profile which shows intelligence and an interesting inner world, and activates my damsel in distress sensor (also often pretty). But also people which a more sober reading of their profile would reveal have a hard time managing their daily lives. I kept falling for them and sticking around for too long, only to discover really you can't have a relationship with those people, even if they did stick around.
I can't believe that after realizing this in the past, and being married and off the market for a few years, I still read that profile and think "wow, she sounds great, I would have loved to date her." Facepalm.
In my experience, the chance that Hana also loves Taylor Swift is surprisingly high, relative to what stereotypes would suggest. Swift is actually hip with rock critics.
Back when I used to use dating apps, similar music preference + photos were uncannily good at predicting compatibility for me. I think music taste can reveal most other preferences fairly quickly like for instance where you prefer to live, religion, interests, personality.
"You've been short-term renting this place for 18 months now, when are you going to finally commit?"
"I don't know. I think I'm just waiting for the interest rates to go down. Isn't me staying here good enough?"
This is a good distinction. I feel I was practising dating in my early twenties before wanting to meet my life partner towards the end of that decade. What you are looking for (and the amount of time you would want to spend reading resumes) differs depending on what you are looking for
That actually sounds like a great way to buy a house. But it sounds like a terrible way to sell a house.
Buying a house the current way is terrible. You want me to commit to spending two million bucks on this place after spending ten or fifteen minutes looking around it? I haven't even taken a shower here yet!
There's definitely an uncanny valley of people who say they're into anime yet pluralize 'animes'.
This might be a toxic trait but I could see myself doing it to weed out the people who overly care that I said "animes"
Nono that's good. It's a truthful signal
Hehe! Reminds me of a diplomatic telegram sent to some remote outpost years ago "What are the latest news?", to which the reply was "Nothing happening, not a damned new!".
Up there with peccavi for diplomatic correspondence
Maybe it even happened
> The pun has gone down in history as a clever line from Napier, but it’s a misattribution. Napier never sent such a clever message. Instead, it was the English hymn writer and educator Catherine Winkworth who, aged 16, remarked to a teacher that it would make a good pun on the event. She sent the one-word line into the humour magazine ‘Punch’ and it was published on 18 May 1844.
I don't think it's a good idea, but "women should affect an interest in astrology to weed out the wrong sort of men" is a take I've seen doing the rounds.
I quite literally do this ahaha
Not to any great extent, I just let Bumble include my star sign in my profile.
I apologize if this is a dense question. But wouldn't you weed out people with intellect, and select for those who are just DTF?
From the perspective of someone reading your profile, either you're shit-testing or you're full of junk beliefs. Both are bad news.
How is this actually supposed to work?
I'm sure different people do this differently, so I'm fully only answering for myself here!
Back when I had a Bumble profile, it wasn't like I was talking about astrology in my profile or anything, Bumble just has an area to include it as a little badge. (Like, 5'4", doesn't smoke, Gemini, etc) I think it's actually included by default.
And as I mentioned in a different comment, the people where I'm from don't take astrology seriously. Like it's a fun thing to know your friends' star signs, but no one's calculating their destiny from the position of Jupiter.
So the folks I intend to filter out are the ones who consider themselves like, too rational to contend with that nonsense, or the ones that think they're superior to people who include their star sign. And that's cause I'm full of nonsense lol and want to find someone who doesn't take themselves too seriously.
I guess like, putting "Gemini" in my profile is such a mild thing to me that if someone considers it "shit-testing" we probably wouldn't be a match.
One of my friends puts in her profile that she graduated in the top 10% of her class, which is super effective at filtering out all the people who message her to be like, well you didn't go to that great a school right?
Those damned men and their logic and reasoning! Patriarchy!!!
My wife's profile named as 5 things I can't do without: "my rosary" - not even being Catholic. Even I got that hint. - The "astrology"-idea is even better as an instant date-breaker - with me and most decent guys. Though it will leave you with fakers.
I'm thinking this might also depend on local culture.
Where I'm from, no one actually believes in astrology, it's just a fun thing to know people's star signs. So if someone can't tolerate that, they're probably an asshole.
But if you live somewhere where there are people that are seriously into horoscopes, it becomes a lot more reasonable to be a person who pointedly avoids that.
Both ways, I'd guess. a) if nearly "no one" believes in it (Germany, USofA?), more than your sign can feel creepy. If a girl wants to test my tolerance for the lolz, not sure who is the bitch. (Had this date, were she 'pretended' to be racist, to 'test' my 'patience'. I was out of the door, quickly.) b) where most females do believe in horoscopes (Russian university students or in Vietnam), well, if I wanna get laid, ... just knocking on wood with fingers crossed ours are a "fit". Toi toi toi.
For me, it would weed out the good ones.
There are also women who pretend to be into anime who are not into anime, which I am still wrapping my head around as a woman who was never into anime to begin with.
Yeah, but now anime means 'My Hero Academia', not 'Legend of the Overfiend'.
Worse than any I've seen, but I have heard of worse.
So I knew someone who told me in college, his sci-fi club wanted to attract women, so they got a few girls and decided to show a classic sci-fi film that was recognized as being of artistic value, and known for its use of music. It was even made by a classic, well-respected director, Stanley Kubrick.
"There was me, that is Alex..."
Ah, a dude of culture, I see.
There's something special about a cartoon that singlehandedly gives an entire country a notorious reputation.
To be fair, any woman who lists Legend of the Overfiend deserves at least one date...
Is it so different from the classic high-school thing of pretending (or trying to learn) to like a band in order to impress a guy/girl, or find your way into a friend group?
I think so. Anime was never "cool" like bands were. If it is now, I missed the memo.
I don't think it's cool, but some people are really into it to the point that it's sort of an identity marker, and I'm assuming the people you mentioned are faking their interest in order to fit in with an anime-loving social group and/or romantic prospect? If it's neither of those things, then I don't get it either.
I think it just gets women more male attention? Sort of like playing video games?
That sounds right to me. I guess it's not always about actually trying to form relationships. If a bunch of guys are into a thing that is generally considered low-status and unattractive to women, any relatively attractive woman who signals an interest in the thing will definitely get their attention.
Ironically, my wife and sister spend >10x the amount of time playing console video games as 4x-year olds than I do now, or did in my 30s. And they share notes on gaming. I think they both started gaming decades ago because me and my brother-in-law were super avid gamers, but their initial involvement in gaming seemed to be much more about spending time together than trying to impress.
Re: faked anime interest, that sounds like a passing phenomenon in a for a girl during a phase when she’s not feeling very confident.
I just wrote a comment about it further down, but - is anime really considered a thing that gets you male attention, like video games?
I'll copy and paste my other comment, I hope it doesn't break any rule:
----
I had no idea that anime was considered a male thing in the US.
Is it really so? It seems strange.
When I was growing up in Italy in the 20th century, there were lots and lots of anime on TV, and lots and lots were clearly aimed at girls.
Of course I'm more familiar with the ones for boys. But if I ask any woman about her favorite anime show growing up, she'll bring up a lot of girly ones.
Even the extremely successful Sailor Moon was one; it was common knowledge that it was for girls, a boy who watched it would have been thought of as gay. A female cousin of mine was an enthusiastic fan, despite being an adult.
Another that comes to mind is Rose of Versailles (aka Lady Oscar). It was huge.
I've mentioned two, but there were lots and lots; I think there were as many shows for girls as for boys; I don't know their names because I'm a man.
-----
Are girl's anime not known in the US? Assuming you're from there. Are the only anime famous in the US the ones for boys, to the point that people put anime in the same mental space as video game, an interest typically for men, that gets you male attention?
Anime is definitely considered "cool" in certain geeky subcultures, even if they're not explicitly anime subcultures.
Anime is kind of cool.
I think people watch Miyazaki/ Ghost in the Shell/ Your Name and think: "this would be a really cool thing to be into". I guess it suggests curiosity in foreign culture, and distinctive, quirky, non-mainstream tastes, without seeming pretentious.
I'm a guy, and I've probably been in this camp- at least exaggerating my interest in anime. I could never be bothered getting through all the crap to find the gems, but I was always kind of jealous of my friends' anime collections, with the series with long and ridiculously translated names.
There's a decent chance that the person you attract by pretending to like a band will eventually stop caring very much about that band, freeing you to stop pretending.
Pretending to like anime is a life sentence.
Are you claiming that people who like anime like it forever?
I know some people occasionally watch a good series without being obsessed with anime generally, and I'm sure there are some kids who like it in general as a passing phase, especially now that it's gone mainstream-ish.
But the ones who care very much that *you* like it? Maybe not forever, but at least into their 40s...
Fwiw, I used to like anime quite a bit, when I first discovered it in the 90s. Introduced it to many people too. Lost interest in my early 30s.
A band is just an artist, anime is a medium. I know plenty of people who've lost interest in individual authors, but what lover of books has ever given up on them in entirety?
This implies that anime-loving men comprise a group that young women find romantically desirable. I ... have a hard time believing that. Has the world changed that much since I was young?
Liking anime (within reason) falls much more in the “quirky and cute” category than the “ewww” category these days I’d say. There are a lot more women out there who like anime, as well.
I had no idea that anime was considered a male thing in the US.
Is it really so? It seems strange.
When I was growing up in Italy in the 20th century, there were lots and lots of anime on TV, and lots and lots were clearly aimed at girls.
Of course I'm more familiar with the ones for boys. But if I ask any woman about her favorite anime show growing up, she'll bring up a lot of girly ones.
Even the extremely successful Sailor Moon was one; it was common knowledge that it was for girls, a boy who watched it would have been thought of as gay. A female cousin of mine was an enthusiastic fan, despite being an adult.
Another that comes to mind is Rose of Versailles (aka Lady Oscar). It was huge.
I've mentioned two, but there were lots and lots; I think there were as many shows for girls as for boys; I don't know their names because I'm a man.
So it's strange to me that anime would be considered mostly for boys.
There’s very little anime on regular television in the US. But due to streaming it’s way more accessible than it used to be so it’s very much a mass market phenomenon now.
Apparently in Japan, Subaru is a racing car.
It's kind of a racing car everywhere, if you are in the know. Subaru WRX? But maybe you are saying there is not a giant lesbian Subaru fan club in Japan?
What is Subaru for you?
There weren't as many anime on TV in the US, so anime culture stayed heavily nerd culture. Like, in US nerd culture it was fine for guys to watch Sailor Moon to the point where Barenaked Ladies had a popular song that mentioned it. (getting anime named-dropped in a popular song was absolutely thrilling to the nerds of the time) The entire idea of there being boy anime and girl anime was slightly foreign, like yeah, those were the demographics in Japan, but here, you gotta take what you can get. The lack of options forced people into just watching whatever.
That said, there were always girls into anime, just somewhat less noticeably so. The stereotypical nerd was male, so watching anime was something of a male thing. But if you went to cons and anime clubs you'd find a lot of girls into it.
I'm in Australia (which absorbs American culture like a thirsty sponge) and a nerd but not an anime fan, and from my perspective anime fandom seems to be male dominated in the way that nerdy subcultures usually are: guys are overrepresented among the fans, and even more overrepresented among the hardcore/obsessive fans. But that's mostly based on stereotypes + what I see on the internet.
It does not! I think it's something a little different - it's to attract partners who don't care if you're super interested in weird, non-mainstream, possibly even somewhat "cringe" things.
It's more like a filter to weed out normies who would be unsettled by a really high interest in "weird" hobbies.
This is actually a good point. After I met a few girls repulsed by my D&D hobby, I started trying to bring it up relatively early.
My wife didn't know what D&D was when we met. When I told her I was into something a little weird, she was worried it was going to be some bizarre sexual fetish. She was entirely relieved to learn it was just some game I play with the guys. Her response was basically, "Do I have to play? No? Then have fun."
Is anime those cartoons of goggle-eyed kids? Never seen the appeal of it, but as a youth I'd have been prepared to fib if necessary!
Yeah, it's got a much more dominant role in geek culture in the 21st century. Pretty much instead of dropping '42' somewhere you use an anime avatar from what I can tell.
This is a good insight, it probably fills the cultural niche that science fiction filled in the mid/late 20th century.
Yes, but it's also those cartoons with cyberpunk cities, demonic entities, ninjas, and tits, but Japan seems to have stopped making those after the 80s boom.
It can definitely exist if the woman is geeky, nerdy, whatever the nomenclature is in other ways. Liking video games, roleplaying, fanfiction, things like that. A lot of men judge women into those hobbies, but anime fans are less likely. Also, if you live in the Bay area, they are likely to have a STEM career.
I still think this is less than 1% of women that identify as anime fans, since there are plenty of anime that appeal to women, anyways.
No. This totally makes sense. It's kind of like the old discourse about 'fake geek girls'--these really did exist, and I ran into a few a while back, though I didn't get mad as they were really just lonely people looking for love.
Thing about geeky guys is they're bad at picking up women (I should know), so if you're looking for an LTR and eventually marriage (or an alimony payment) you can basically 'buy low' as they will have relatively high incomes without the bargaining power more typical among men of that income.
Also, if you actually want marriage and a family with 2.5 kids (less common than usual among people in the Bay Area, I imagine, though Scott can comment on this better than I can), their lack of charisma's actually a plus as they're less likely to be able to seduce a mistress, and other women will be less likely to go after them.
It's the inverse of the guy who pretends to be into art or New Age (or whatever they're calling it now) or feminism to get laid.
Dance classes used to be the most classic move for guys to do this. Though I'm told at some point the message got out and the ratios balanced out, but I have to think there are still opportunities, YMMV.
I think part of the thing about "fake geek girls" is that, while true fakers exist (I can think of one girl in college that I'd describe that way and who even admitted it to me), more often it's just that it's female nature to not be as invested in hobbies as men. Monomania is a mostly male trait. I also think women are generally more interested in the "identity" of a hobby or interest than men are.
A certain type of girl might say, "Well, I'm not sporty or a girly-girl, not artistic or spiritual, etc. etc., and I suppose I like some nerdy/geeky things, so I guess I'm a nerd/geek and these are the sorts of things a nerd/geek does," and so they consciously pursue certain interests for the sake of the identity, rather than just the interests for their own sake. Men are much less inclined to think this way.
Taking an example outside geekdom: I had a girlfriend who would describe herself as a big Cubs fan. By this, she meant that she would wear Cubs hats or shirts all the time, catch maybe 20-30 INNINGS (not games) of Cubs regular season play per year, and then a somewhat higher percentage of playoff innings when that happened (not often, the Cubs being the Cubs), though she was at least highly invested in their epochal World Series win. But I wouldn't assert that she was really "faking it" to get male attention or something. She really saw herself as a big Cubs fan.
My father would also have described himself as a big Cubs fan. By this he meant that he watched 100% of Cubs games that circumstances permitted and was emotionally invested in all of them, and he had an obsessive familiarity with the stats of every player on the roster, which he would analyze in his spare time. Though he didn't wear Cubs hats or shirts.
Many such cases.
>it's female nature to not be as invested in hobbies as men. Monomania is a mostly male trait.
I'm really skeptical of this assertion, because I know lots and lots of women who are *very* invested in things. Pick just about anyone I know through tumblr, but also common (but true!) stereotypes like "Horse girls" and "K-pop stans".
I think the issue is that you just don't qualify the sorts of things the modal woman is into as valid hobbies. For example: makeup, fashion, whatever reality TV romance crap passes for entertainment. And the problem is, since those things are totally illegible to the average male as hobbies, you can't judge the level of obsession.
(Also, side note: lots of women's monomania is *their kids*. Mommy bloggers, PTA moms, soccer moms, etc. They make their whole identity about raising kids, who are almost by definition an interest exclusive to them)
Contrast that with your example of sports, which is an archetypally *male* hobby; from an outside view (as someone who doesn't "get" sports), your girlfriend actually does seem like a big fan, especially relative to an average person of her gender. It only doesn't seem that way because, growing up male in a sports-oriented household, you had an inside view of the hobby and what *real* obsession looked like.
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but any real signal for what you're seeing might just be the sex distribution of Autism spectrum traits. What you call "monomania" sounds a *ton* like Autistic/ADHD hyperfixation. The example with your Dad ("obsessive familiarity" with stats "which he would analyze in his spare time"?) sounds pretty textbook. (There's a pretty common social media trend of autistic people calling out their totally-not-autistic fathers for showing clear evidence of where their children got it, and nearly that exact description features in all of them)
I don't know what to say about Tumblr, that's a weird sample, but horse girls are a fair counterpoint. I've known several and that's the closest equivalent I can find in my personal experience to a male level of hobby dedication.
I'm going to classify mothering and self-ornamentation (makeup, fashion) as "human universals" rather than hobbies, even if people differ in how much effort they apply to them. I don't think timeless, socially important activities can really be called hobbies, even if you're someone who REALLY enjoys those activities. A hobby isn't the same as "thing I enjoy doing". Sex is not one of my hobbies, even if it's my favorite activity.
As for the autistic point -- maybe "hyperfixation" is a better term than monomania. But I don't really buy the autistic framing. I've known a few guys who were definitely autistic (and had the diagnosis). My sense is that what makes one autistic is a near-total absence of social intuition. If an ordinary socially awkward nerd is getting a D for social intuition, a 65%, then the autistic guys I knew deserved about a 0%. I'd put my dad at around a C+.
Basically every chess grandmaster could be described as "hyperfixated" on chess. I don't think they've all been autistic, though surely autistics are overrepresented in that demographic. I think this is one of the reasons (though not the only one) that men dominate the high levels of the game.
>I don't think timeless, socially important activities can really be called hobbies, even if you're someone who REALLY enjoys those activities.
Once again, I think your outsider view of these things is presenting an obstacle for accurate assessment. This is an overly-broad argument that can be used to dismiss many things which are widely agreed to be hobbies. Being into bodybuilding/hiking/ultramarathons is just personal fitness, being into hunting is just survival skills, being into anime and books and manga is just our social desire to share stories. Hell, even sport fandom is just a simple example of our universal social desire for tribalism layered onto simulated combat (itself arguably a "human social universal"). Arguably, that applies *more* as a "timeless, socially important activity" than "self-ornamentation".
(I won't argue that you opinion isn't shared by many; there's a common flavor of cultural sexism along the lines of "men have hobbies, women perform social functions")
>I don't really buy the autistic framing... My sense is that what makes one autistic is a near-total absence of social intuition
While that's a large part of it, yes, special interests are so intrinsically linked that they're part of the formal diagnostic criteria:
>Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g., strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interests).
-DSM-V Diagnostic Criteria for 299.00 Autism Spectrum Disorder, criteria B-2
(I made a slight error here; "hyperfixation" is usually used for ADHD, and "special interest" for autism, but the two are so comorbid that most autistic people conflate the two. "Special interests" often last even longer than your average hyperfixation)
This is probably as true for anime as for any other interest people may have.
In general, I have found that I meet more women who are into anime than men who are, that the particular shows and genres they enjoy overlap but aren't exactly the same. Anime certainly isn't a male coded interest, in my experience.
Yeah, I'm actually kind of baffled at people's surprise. I can picture the stereotypical image of what this woman/girl is supposed to be. I bet she has a lot of Hello Kitty merch too.
Yeah, I feel like "anime" is somewhat equivalent to a category of "Regency novels" that would lump Jane Austen's work together with C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower books.
You can drop "regency". I'd say "anime" is the equivalent of "novels" or "movies".
Indeed, it could mean anything.
While I can't speak for the anime (though Full Metal Alchemist and Neon Genesis Evangelion are popular enough that even I have heard of them under the rock I live), the list of favorite video games ("Super Smash Bros, Final Fantasy, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, and Fortnite") appear to be all immensely popular video games (and don't have much in common beside that).
For me, this is about as convincing as trying to pass yourself of as a book geek by saying "my favorite books are Lolita, Heidi, the Little Prince, Harry Potter, the Catcher in the Rye, and the Hobbit".
Of course, we don't know if Scott was intentionally aiming for that effect or if he just recited video games popular with people who are currently in their teens.
Language changes.
I would prefer these people to those who care enough about animes that they spell it "anime"
I have a friend who liked pronouncing it "uh-neem".
BAKA! Kore o yomu koto ga dekireba, watashi ga gūguru hon'yaku o shiyō shita dake de nihongo ga mattaku wakaranai koto ga wakarimasu!
I also can't say I've met anyone who would use that list of anime of their favorite, and they are especially less likely to be women's favorites. They are all basically shounen, spread from at least 2006 to present day; 90s if you assume the original NGE. I also don't see much overlap between Code Guess and My Hero Academia fans, especially since the former group is about a decade older. It's not necessarily surprising to find someone who likes all those shows, but if you were trying to date an anime fan, I feel like you would have at least one guilty pleasure show that you know is not great, but tells me more about your taste. For me, that would be Higurashi or Golden Time.
Though now that I overthink it, she could just be too shy to reveal her guilty pleasures. She at least has 3 mecha anime, so that gives me some insight of her tastes. Still feels more likely to be a list written by someone who has a lot of friends that are into anime and overhears them talking about it, than someone who is an avid watcher, (which very much might describe Scott?)
It isn't all that surprising for a woman to like shounen anime. If I recall correctly, Shonen Jump, a manga magazine marketed to young boys in Japan, has a pretty high female readership too.
IME My Hero Academia is actually more popular with (young) women than with men (lots of pretty boys lol), and the biggest Code Geass fan I ever met was my ex girlfriend.
But yeah, I'm pretty sure Scott just googled "list of most popular anime", and that's the joke. Should have thrown Hetalia in there.
I dunno, that sounds to me like a nerd girl with normie tastes. I've met a few of them at my work anime club. Eva is popular with girls, Code Geass was very popular with girls, Gurren Lagann a bit less so but I still wouldn't bat an eye. I'd bet very good money that Jane is a dedicated shipper, all of those shows have a strong relationship at their core and have been popular with the girls that like that sort of thing.
If I met Jane I'd start trying to gently introduce her to Gundam (start with Wing) and either Legend of the Galactic Heroes if she loves m/m or Gunbuster if she's willing to take a chance on Anno and f/f.
I'm surprised by Code Geass, given the blatant fanservice as well as the genre.
CLAMP draws very pretty men, and Lelouch and Suzaku had a very intense, emotional relationship. That'll get you pretty far.
"There's definitely an uncanny valley of people who say they're into anime yet pluralize 'animes'."
I wouldn't date a person who says "octopi" or <spit> "agendae". Also won't mix with the the hoi polloi.
:-)
"The hoi polloi" is its own tell.
This meeting only has one agendum: Why do the octopodes like watching animées?
> animées
Wait, is it a French word now?
> Except for the twin study, all of these focus on initial attraction, not on which relationships work and survive. They don’t rule out a situation where the “initial spark” of romantic attraction is random, but people with similar interests and personalities are more likely to stay together. Maybe everyone in these studies is very stupid (cf. they’re mostly undergrads), and they all feel attraction to random unsuitable people at speed dating events, but in real life, selecting people who are long-term compatible with you is the way to go.
Something along these lines, minus the 'very stupid' and most of the 'random', seems really obvious to me. *Of course* short-term attraction is based more on hotness + charisma + other 'shallow' instinctive preferences than on a checklist of deeper qualities or life-plan compatibility! And of course that doesn't imply those deeper qualities and preferences are unimportant for long-term relationship success!
I think the main issue there is that all of those women sound like insufferable cliches. I mean, I know you exaggerated them into insufferable cliches to make a point, but 1) I don't think you're far off, and 2) if I saw any of those profiles I wouldn't read it as "I am this kind of person." I would read it as "I am choosing to represent myself as this kind of person, because I've found that this kind of person gets dates with people who represent themselves as the kind of person I want to date." Which is different. And a dystopian hellscape you can't opt out of if you want to participate meaningfully in the dating market. I'm mostly just glad I'm married.
Lots of obvious counterarguments ("What? People in bars don't lie?") but I think this is a different case. The issue is the same as all social media - the incentives are to go broad and shallow. My friends who are in the dating scene feel big pressure to present themselves as a type. There's no room to be a driven lawyer who is also a Taylor Swift fan.
I don't know - 4 seemed nice, though obviously she would have freaked me out with the fertility rate thing back when I was much younger.
I want to date at least two of them, they sound like highly enjoyable cliches to me.
Heh, yes. I would probably get on best with Jane, but Hana is definitely adorkable.
As a gay man, I usually prefer to maintain a gender imbalance in Bedroomrundi, but Hana might be able to get me to change that preference.
Oh youre gay? Good job on being gay.
?
so... it seems i am getting the impression i should list *fewer* of my favorite anime in my dating profile? And maybe not also mention minecraft
Then again, it filters really well for fellow autists.
It would have worked for me?
I say 3 max, 1 obvious popular one that you genuinely enjoy, 1 that touched you deeply and you can never forget, and 1 guilty pleasure. For instance, Full Metal Alchemist, Clannad, Higurashi.
Stereotypically, there are more men into this sort of thing than women, so so long as you want to date men who are like you, it's probably advantageous. Assuming you like men, that is. Some doubt about whether anime is a guy thing, but I bet Minecraft is.
My wife is a geographer with a love of wordplay and puns and a tendency to ramble somewhat... We met offline, but "Bedroomrundi" both gave me a chuckle and is exactly her kind of humour. She could have written that profile!
Now that you've put it into words, I realize that this is also my intuition about why I think people are so against this.
Talking about yourself in this way reeks of an earnestness that people are going to label as performative. You're supposed to be reserved and have people pry out your personality with a crowbar! Can't be tooting your own horn, only unhumble liars do that.
Damn shame though
This seems to describe the whole love-hate relationship we have with social media. It encourages narcissism and labeling, but deep down there we still have an aversion to such behavior...even if we've always been hypocrites about it to one degree or another.
> You're supposed to be reserved and have people pry out your personality with a crowbar!
Speaking as someone matching that description, I can say that nobody has ever thought of it as a positive trait of mine.
Yeah, the game theory of online dating gets weird fast. There's an incentive to present as a type, and there's also an incentive for that type to be a non-type (I can go out or watch Netflix, I'm happy camping or at a black tie gala, etc.). That may also be related to the "cool girl" trope.
I always wondered about the most stereotypical elements of profiles, like "must love dogs" and walks on the beach. I guess dog people really are dog people, but sometimes I couldn't tell if people were being serious or just doing the stochastic parrot thing, like these are words that go together in dating profiles.
When I was dating, I think I subconsciously filtered out the most obvious types, which usually worked out pretty well.
I very much doubt that someone who hates dogs or doesn't like the outdoors would parrot those clichés. It makes perfect sense though, to say upfront if you are any kind of an animal lover, because a dog lover and a dog hater are going to have a rough time together. The "walks on the beach" thing seems a bit less helpful. My guess is it caught on with individuals who wished to express they didn't want to party or make out on every single date.
Any story we tell about ourselves will at most be a partial truth.
The differences were obviously exaggerated, though.
Dating docs outsource a lot of the effort to the party of the reader, and that reader has a limited amount of time. In fact, I would consider the willingness to read a few 10k words written by someone *because* you consider them a prospective partner to be a red flag.
Also, I don't think it is helpful to squeeze in as much about yourself into a short text as possible. Such a text is a kind of ad, so you might want to focus your message on just a few key points. Don't list ten sports you did within the last decade, pick one sport to focus on. Likewise, don't name your 20 most favorite books.
* anime, video games, shy
* economics, Kitchenya, AI art, cryptocurrency schemes
* woo, psychology
* party, princess, clubs, Taylor Swift
*shoe tycoon, vacations, eco-friendly
All seem perfectly good narratives. Still, I think that there is no reason not to chose bullet points which are anti-correlated within the general population. Perhaps the woo/psych woman could also be really into anime. Or the party princess could be interested in AI art. (If you create a roll-playing character, being an oafish half-ork barbarian with INT 9 is certainly an option, but not exactly new. Playing a half-ork Paladin who obsesses over the question why evil exists certainly sounds truer.)
While it is true that sometimes it is in the docs writers interests to not be truthful, I don't think this is much the case with special interests. Relationships are not zero-sum. Do you think the party princess is looking for someone to settle down and have kids with? Or that Ms Over-achiever is looking for a patient and gentle soul to help her through her burnout? Perhaps Ms Woo is looking for a skeptic, while the Kitchenya woman looks for a Mormon and the shy anime girl actually detests both video games and anime but is really a camgirl looking for casual sex.
None of this seems remotely plausible to me. Deceiving by omission about your criteria that society frowns upon (like preferring rich partners) is one thing, but actively encouraging the wrong candidates ("if I pretend to be a drifter anarcho punk living in their bus, nobody will ever suspect that I am really looking for a rich partner to treat me like a princess") seems like a terrible idea.
This is one of the things that bugs me about the rationalist movement generally - the idea that there's "truthfulness" and "lying" and any version of deception must be willful lies.
It's completely unthinkable that someone would claim to be a party princess if she has no interest in partying or princessing. But it's very conceivable that a person who likes partying and rich partners could notice (perhaps even subconsciously) that getting hits corresponds to playing up the party princess angle and choose to sand off the parts of their personality that don't conform to this package.
Hmm, Yeah cliches, but one made to appeal to all the hetero guy types. I'd totally like to date Hanna. Are you a hetero male?
Yes, but kinda down on the concept of "types" in general. For sure these weren't meant to be taken as literal examples of dating profiles but I was struck by how much they 1) reminded me of dating profiles, and 2) prompted a response from other commenters saying that they'd love to meet people who had these (absurd) profiles.
My complaint more broadly about culture (and I'm not sure it's well-defined tbh) is that we're turning ourselves into shallow representations of a type because that's the best way to get the various algorithms that run our lives to sort us in a way that puts us in touch with people who share our interests. Being an anime-loving gamer girl might just be normal identity construction/hobby collecting/community but there's something mildly dystopian about the way people who have "enjoying video games" or "being a driven lawyer" as part of their personality feel the need to follow a script. You can like video games without "I'm an anime-loving gamer girl! Nya!" being literally the whole definition of you.
The thing that rubs people wrong about these dating docs isn’t so much that people express preferences or even that people try to make themselves sound good (this is bog standard for a dating profile) but that there is an implied “look at how high status I am” embedded in the assumption that lots of people are going to open your particular document and read through your personal essay to determine whether you would think they are a good match for you. On a normal dating site (or in real life) there is a certain symmetry: you see their (short) profile and say “yes”, they look at your (similarly short) profile and say “yes” back, then there’s a conversation that eats up time equally for both of you. It’s arguably true that requiring potential suitors to sign off on your 26 points of agreement before even starting to talk is more efficient since there are fewer false positives, but putting the burden of figuring that out on the other person just feels wrong to fairness-obsessed humans.
This may be less true for people who deliberately pick dating sites for allowing long profiles and consider a short profile a weak signal of incompatibility.
(Signed, the above person, who sees dating docs as convenient probably-more-honest-than-usual long profiles. Which are sadly primarily written by poly people, so not very helpful, but still. Reading a list of dealbreakers is so much faster than having to ask about each one. Could there be an extravert/introvert distinction here?)
It's just another kind of assortative mating, why not?
I think the thing is the decay of OKCupid means the sort of people who would be on there are now trying dating docs. You want to write a long profile and only select for people who (a) invest effort into you (b) read and write a lot and (c) match you on all the 42 other things...well, 10 years ago you would have gone on OKCupid, now you're writing dating docs.
I think it's something like an extravert/introvert distinction. My recollection of dating (which was not internet based, which was still considered for "losers" at the time) was that outside of the few high status guys that could consistently manage hookups with attractive people, is that most guys weren't that picky. At least to start, regular access to hooking up with an attractive girl (meaning anything from just kissing to sex) was enough to overcome some relatively obvious incompatibilities. Usually that meant just a reasonably short relationship. Sometimes they'd end up "accidently" becoming long term, usually with disastrous results ranging between spending a lot of prime dating years on and off again with somebody incompatible because it was easy all the way to marriage and kids before flaming out spectactularely. But very occasionally sometimes those relationships ended up "working" despite what looked like huge obstacles.
I could see a similar dynamic for online dating. For people who experience dating as enjoyable and would rather be with one or more not quite right persons while looking for the right one, the dating docs just unnecessarily limit their options. For people who experience dating as more of a chore and would rather be single than with mr/ms not quite right, the dating doc eliminates some hassle. Or those those who are do not see dating as a hassle but perceive themselves as time constrained and are wary of the trap of spending too much time with mr/ms not quite right, the dating doc is a useful tool that limits the risk of spending too much time with mr/ms not quite right and that benefit is worth the risk of false negatives culling out actually suitable partners.
Agreed. I’m not going to toggle checkboxes on a series of dateme docs, and the golden rule applies here.
Right, if you have a dating doc then to me it looks like a signal of "Look at me, I'm in such high demand that my application process looks like D. E. Shaw" but in the back of my mind I'm thinking "But if you're so wonderful how come you're still single?"
If you're attractive and you have a goddamn recruitment pipeline, my working assumption is that you either have massive invisible issues that repel people once they get to know you, or you just enjoy rejecting people for shits and giggles.
I would agree if it were literally structured as an application, but if it's just a list of all the person's qualities, it seems like you can read as much as you want and keep going only if you find it useful.
"What is your opinion of dating docs?" versus "How many dating docs have you read?" would be an interesting survey question. I should probably collate a few similar ones and submit them as one of the supplemental surveys...
I'm really interested in this response because I wouldn't have considered this point of view at all!
Dating apps are designed to get your as many matches as possible, the majority of which are very low value. Back when I was on the apps, I would be sending messages to matches getting nothing back (or very little substantial), or fielding low effort openers to which I wouldn't hear back from. A typical tinder conversation goes "hi", "heya? Wyd?", And silence.
Dating docs tell me that this person doesn't get as many low effort approaches and doesn't want to make many low effort approaches, which is appealing. I much prefer getting 1 high effort approach per week than 20 super low effort approaches per day (20/day is not unrealistic if someone is very active on Tinder in a fairly big population centre)
I think dating sites were hell even before. Basically "90% of the users are texting 10% of the users".
I imagine now the 10% will now have to figure out which of the high effort texts they receive are actually written by humans and which ones are written by the LLMs 3% of the users outsource their flirting to.
> but that there is an implied “look at how high status I am” embedded in the assumption that lots of people are going to open your particular document and read through your personal essay to determine whether you would think they are a good match for you.
I'm not usually a dating profile person, so maybe that's just me, but I read them to see whether the person would be a good match for me. So in that way I kind of see it as an open application to me and it does not feel like a smug show of status at all.
I would think that the problem with dating docs is they come across as desperate. At least, so long as they aren't a normal way to meet people. Perhaps they will become so popular that they won't appear desperate in the future, but right now they seem to signal: "I'm failing at meeting romantic partners in the normal ways, so now I'm trying this."
That said, if one has unusual preferences, a dating doc may still be a good strategy if there's no better way to communicate those unusual preferences to a large (or target) audience. Ideally, probably, someone with a dating doc should pursue other dating strategies in parallel and *should not*, if they find themselves flirting with someone at a coffee shop, tell them: "Check out my dating doc if you want to know more about me."
This is true of online dating in general. "If you are such a catch, why are you single?"
Just like it is patently uncool to obsess over ones coolness, actively searching for a relationship when you are single always has a touch of desperation. (Perhaps one advantage of polyamory for less successful men is that they can plausibly claim to be a secondary (or whatever the term is) in some poly relationship which certainly seems sexier than being a loser who can't get laid.)
Of course, it depends on the status of the person. I would assume that the big names in the ratsphere generally have an oversupply of people willing to date them. For them, dating docs allow them to optimize the quality of their applicants while also increasing the legibility of the dating market, which is good in itself.
For the average heterosexual man in our overwhelmingly male community I agree that publishing dating docs seems a bit desperate. OTOH, I think writing a profile and then not getting any replies is probably less painful than writing a messages to a specific person on a dating site and not getting a reply. As Stalin did not say, being ignored by a single person is painful, being ignored by eight billion humans is an universal human experience.
Assymetry is natural in dating. One person asks, another person answers. They both have their challenges but they are different. Here someone writes and other people read.
I do find it interesting that some people see reading someone's doc as an unfair burden, but not the act of putting yourself out there and crafting one.
I think part of it may be like the (Groucho) Marx quote, paraphrased as "I'm not interested in reading the dating doc of anyone who has to write one".
I love that.
Funny, I feel that way about someone on Tinder who doesn't even have a profile and just says "hmu" or something. It's like they think they're so beautiful that every single person in the world must want them, regardless of their other preferences, just after seeing their face.
Good point. I don't even read a lot of work emails, and they PAY me to do that.
Hell, I actively avoid reading work emails. Life goes much smoother that way.
I agree that one main downside of dating docs is that they are not machine readable.
(Of course, in the age of LLMs, the definition of machine readable is clearly blurry. One could expect a dating site where everyone writes a lengthy date-me doc and a LLM receives two of these documents and checks for compatibility. One could even simply add RLHF by asking the people involved how they judge their compatibility. Still, I am uncertain how this would be better than the old okcupid.
This is exactly my problem with dating docs; as someone who does not get matches on dating apps, it rubs me the wrong way when people solve the "problem" of too many matches.
I think the docs are a great idea. Swiping apps are horrible at connecting people. I am sure some company will streamline it soon, too. As your samples show, people are trying very hard to sound exactly the same as one another. The docs enable people to highlight their differences.
Perhaps when dating apps were new, there was a strong selection bias toward people who were willing to do something bold/new/tech-related. I remember when they first came out and there was a strong stigma about meeting or marrying anyone through this unconventional means.
Then they became popular.
Then they were mobbed by insincere people using the sites outside their intended purpose (so I've heard - I have no direct experience). It's possible the dateme.doc phenomenon is a way to impose a selection bias into the sample to make it easier to identify potential dating opportunities.
Before they were "swiping apps", they were just.. apps. You had to reach out, you had to write messages. I was successful I think in large part because I ignored the tacked-on superficial features ("likes") and just sent messages to women whose profiles I liked. I have no idea if that's still possible, but it was for me less than a decade ago. The match % based on quizzed preferences was useful though.
I expect that's still the most optimal way to date for working professionals.
OKCupid still exists and allows that, it just is nowhere near as popular as Tinder/Bumble/etc.
OkC has adopted more of the swipe app mechanics in part due to low effort openers
I met my wife on OKCupid and my experience was via the traditional site. I did searches and paid attention to the details in the profiles. Long after we were dating I learned that there was a swipe component to the app and that was my wife's only exposure... she didn't do any searches and just randomly got my info and matched with me. Seems like the best of both worlds.
If they made people put a bit more effort into questions and actually cared what you list you're looking for enough, it would (I get a decent number of high-percentage potential matches with girls who don't speak English because it doesn't see that as a hard requirement, for example).
What happened was: smartphones. Made it harder to write + read more than a few sentences. Good for twitter&tinder, bad for old-school-okc, sad for SSC/ACX-aficionadi who depended on it.
Sure (I miss my blackberry), but the SSC/ACX types already self-select for readers with a computer. Even if I were to date today, I'd use a web app to draw initial messages, but notwithstanding, it doesn't matter if your target does. I'm sure even back then, many users had the app and still bother getting a profile up. Maybe that's more typical of OKC users.
Well, sure: not all wrote long (or any) texts back then with a full-size keyboard and a 17'' screen; but we writing folks naturally did back then - and found others. Critical size, so to say. (This google-doc-dating-link has ... 179 profiles?!? ... ) - If one comes to okc now as an app, chances are the text will turn out no longer than Scott's examples. And be one of the long ones, then.
"As your samples show, people are trying very hard to sound exactly the same as one another."
Hmm, I guess they all sound like dating app profiles, but I still got a lot of information out of them and I'm pretty sure about who I would want to date and who not.
I haven't used Tinder, but I have used Grindr. The big thing Grindr does for you is filter for people who are online right now, and tell you approximately how far away they are. For casual sex, these two features are much more important than anything about the personality (though some amount of personality is still very important).
I believe that Tinder does the same thing by the nature of its design, though these two features may end up being overemphasized compared to how many people want to use it.
Shouldn’t dating “success” be based on marriage length, lower divorce rates, happiness level after long periods of time, etc. and not just whether your individual preferences are being temporarily met? This seems like evaluating a diet based on whether you enjoy the immediate taste of the food and not on whether you are actually losing weight.
That's a lot harder to determine, though. To know if a marriage lasts 10 years you have to follow people for 10 years, and people are always going to lie about happiness, even to themselves. It's sorta like the numbers on mean number of male and female partners--sure there may be an alpha male phenomenon where a couple of guys are dating all the girls, but you're not going to tell me people don't lie, and in the opposite direction for each sex.
Lots of people who use dating apps aren't looking to get married.
This assumes that the goal of both users is "marriage length, lower divorce rates, happiness level after long periods of time, etc.".
What do cats aim for in romance?
I personally like a nice, musky scent, a soft clean well groomed coat, shining intelligent curious eyes, and a nice athletic figure. Long whiskers also are nice.
I know a cat who really has a thing for Persian type cats.
Am I the only person who would go on a first date with all of the fake dating profiles mentioned, aside from the first? I’ve been partnered for a while but #2-#5 remind me of people I actually dated at some point, and enjoyed the time with. Although with #5 it could be really hard to keep a conversation going unless you happened to both love the same obscure anime.
(I wound up marrying #4, fyi)
5 > 1 > 2 > 4 > 3. I predict I’m the only one here with that preference order. 4 would be higher but crypto is a real dealbreaker.
Crypto was not a thing at the time, thankfully, otherwise who knows how things would have gone. (And even though I’ve always been a determined crypto skeptic, back in the late-2010s crypto boom I dipped my toes in and lost a small amount of cash on a shady ICO, so I can relate.)
Am I naive for just reading 1 as “superficial party girl” rather than “wants your money”? I barely used dating apps before I got together with my partner (not online), so I’m probably not the best judge.
I read it the same way but it’s not lost on me that people who have had a bad time with gold-diggers might see that “treats me like a princess” line a bit differently.
She fits a stereotype that I can only describe with a somewhat offensive Britishism that begins with "S" (but less offensive than the other one beginning with "S" you're probably thinking of).
I believe that "a girl who knows what she wants" is a 'dog whistle' for wanting money. (Like, what else could it possible mean? If she wanted something else, she would be more specific about it.)
More clearly, you also have to "treat her like a princess", must have "good taste in bars and clubs" (which means not the cheap ones) and she will spend "a little too much" time there. In other words, you are supposed to provide her expensive fun all the time.
Yes, she *is* a superficial party girl; that's true. But she expects you to pay for that all, and warns you in advance that it will be a lot of money, and if you don't like that, then you don't deserve her.
Assuming we're allowed to read these profiles as not strictly parodies, openly describing them as "degenerate crypto betting schemes" adds enough self-awareness that it reads like someone who was excited about the space in the early day but is now totally disillusioned by the current grifter-led culture, and sees it for what it is.
I mean, I'd go on a first date with all of them, but I agree that #1 has the biggest red flag (i.e. "is looking for exploitable people"). #4 has a, let's call it yellow flag, with the crypto money leak, but it seems more plausible that structures could be put in place to prevent that causing issues.
If 1 has that red flag it should be obvious from the first date so not a big deal. 4 yellow flag is more subtle and buried in an otherwise appealing package - the danger is greater
You mean she is trying to lure you into a crypto scheme by using reverse psychology? That's possible, but also a siren I'd think one could easily resist.
Nah, I just mean it’s an easy thing to look past at first, but when you want to combine lives (and possibly finances) later on it becomes a concern and by then you’re emotionally attached
Oh, so more like "one of my side interests is losing money by betting on horses."
👍🏻
Yeah, it's definitely something that needs to be dealt with, but my read on the overall post is that he/she'd be receptive to what Zvi calls Get Compact* and that would defuse the problem.
*Defined here - https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/out-to-get-you/
I feel like the fact that she explicitly called it a "degenerate betting scheme" and admitted she always loses money means it's unlikely that this is actually having a significant negative impact on her finances worse than any other hobby. A key feature of gambling addicts is the lack of self awareness.
Like the "We can stay retarded longer than they can stay solvent" pitch for buying Gamestop stock? ;)
"I can stay retarded longer than any prospective partner can stay solvent" is definitely something I'd want to know!
Agreed, 1 could be trying to exploit people or could just be someone who’s not too smart and is way too invested in popular culture. Neither work for me so they’d be an automatic no. But a lot of people would look the other way on one or both points, especially if they’re attractive or there’s some other sort of commonality - race/ethnicity, religion, same hometown, etc.
If 1 isn’t trying to exploit you dating her could at least mean some fun nights out. I agree it wouldn’t last unless she had hidden depths (some 1s do).
Right, the crypto thing is firmly in the category of “dumb things that young people do” and as long as there wasn’t any evidence of an underlying gambling addiction or, say, bipolar disorder it’s not something that would trouble me too much.
It’s one of only two interests outside work she mentions, so it’s probably a not-small part of her life. But she’s also implied to be a bit of a workaholic (another negative). She’s stereotypically appealing to blog readers but the discerning gent should beware
This. I would strongly advise anyone to go on at least a first date with all 5.
I think the list is unrealistic. Where is the vegan recovering heroin addict with a Fine-Arts degree who is into Museums and Acid Trance music and who goes through Dom and Sub phases? But seriously, none of those profiles sounded like women I would be interested in dating — or even have coffee with.
Maybe I just dated more interesting women than you folks. :-)
None of mine had Dom phases.
1 would drive me crazy. There's one of those at work and my god, lady, string it the fuck down.
2 seems pretty full of herself; I would go on a date just to tease her. She'd probably not like me but there's a chance she does, and I'm going to have fun either way.
3 is a relative of mine; I find myself having to be careful what I say around them because they take criticism pretty hard. I'd avoid a date to avoid creating problems.
4 seems fun, I'd date them. The fertility comment is probably going to be a problem long-term but those are the kinds of jokes it's fun to lean into.
5 would be interesting, except she's saying she's being pushed into it and she's listing Fortnite as a favorite game; this is a self-conscious teenager who probably won't stand up for herself, and even without the age difference I'd be horribly worried about going all Patrick Bateman on her.
For me it's 4 > 5 >> 1 = 2 = 3
Dating 1-3 seems pointless to me. I have no interest in talking to them about literally anything they said, and that's a deal breaker. It's fine if you have special interests that are eclectic or not mine; I'll still get hours of enjoyment and camaraderie talking about them with you. But there's just nothing THERE for 1-3. Intellectual conversations are the spice of life, and boredom is its bane.
(I married someone with some 4 and some 5 traits.)
98% of whites marry other whites? Where did that figure come from? The source states that 90.6% of white newlyweds in 2010 married other whites.
You actually read the source! Good on you. It's hard to write this comment without sounding sarcastic.
This is why I reserve the words "epistemic status: [foo bar]" for entirely sincere and truthful metacommentary on what I am saying... it's helpful to have a magic spell you pull out where things attached to it aren't sarcastic.
I am very likely an anomaly, but my dating life has been WILDLY variable. My dates/partners have had about a 40 year age span, different classes, education levels, drastically different Big 5 spreads, different races, nationalities. I don't feel very surprised when I hear about these things not mattering in practice.
I obviously do have preferences, but they are subtle and flexible enough that they can be satisfied in ways that look superficially dissimilar.
Maybe I'm just a mutant, but I'm a mutant that aligns with the science here, so?
Also, I think you may be missing that people sort of merge when they are together. Like I would love god to tell me how many of those 96% matching political people shifted their politics specifically in contact with their partner. It doesn't surprise me that 96% end up converging, but that doesn't tell me how they started, and I bet that matters for politics and a lot of other dimensions that can change over time. A different example is that my first wife was a working class high school dropout, but also blazingly smart and hard working, and in contact with my upper middle class intelligencia sensibilities (and a fair bit of cultural metis), she got an advanced degree in math and now is a math professor at a local university. That sort of thing is not captured in the data.
Yeah, I was unemployed and technically homeless when my wife met me, she was Oxbridge bound for her post-grad (which reflects our different class backgrounds; for what it's worth I've shaped up since then, definitely somewhat due to her influence).
The phenomenon of a person converting to a different religion for the sake of a spouse is at least widely-known, though I have no idea how common it is. Switching political parties seems even easier given how little difference one’s vote makes to one’s life.
Is eHarmony still in business? Thier model is explicitly the OKCupid thing but with more "designed by a phd" and "aiming for marriage" veneer.
Yes, a woman in my parents’ church met her husband there and ever since I’ve been thinking of trying it, but have been too much of a coward and/or lazy. >.>
Yeah, I met my wife there in 2021.
I think Match owns OKC, but I don't remember if eH is also under the same ownership. I would not be surprised if they are.
On this, suum cuique.
I would not have preferred to know my wife’s preferences before our first date, and I’m pretty confident she feels likewise. That was the late 90s, but I don’t think that dynamic would be different for us now.
Moderately liberal democrat and irreligious NY+Miami, conservative evangelical old Yankee family. The only real thing we both had in common when we met was science as an avocation. We grew as adults, and became way more compatible, then got married. The change from who we each were ~25 years ago to now is stark. The same dynamic was even more true of my parents, this month is their 50th anniversary.
The only information that would have been a dealbreaker before or during a first date? Smoking. Fortunately for both of us, she quit cold turkey about a month before I asked her out. Re: a describable dating preference, for me it would be fine to learn this during a first or second date, rather than published in writing.
Perhaps these are too anecdotal to have any value for reasoned debate on the principle of dating preferences. But within our spheres of friends, most of whom have been married once and still are, the degree of political, religious, and cultural change each person has traversed between 20-40 years old is between “a large degree” and “a difference in type.” I hold to my mom’s advice to me, with my daughter: date different types of people, to explore and learn what you are looking for and esp what you can’t abide.
You're on to something: preferences are and should be malleable. I'm not sure it is healthy, let alone productive, to go to these lengths to define oneself so rigidly around various categories.
Maybe I'm biased, coming from a Nordic monoculture where variance in possible mates wasn't exactly huge when I was dating, but if the goal is finding someone to share your life with and grow into something more than the sum of the components, shouldn't you strive to be as open as possible?
This all feels very egocentric. But maybe I just have a strong preference against people with well-defined preferences formalized in dating docs.
I strongly agree with this sentiment. At the time most people are dating and looking for marriage (I'm presuming most in their 20s), most people truly don't understand themselves. And worse, have no idea what kind of person they may be in 10-50 years over the course of their marriage. A strong "I would never date a _________" may reflect a real preference, a preference someone thinks is real, a preference someone wishes were real, or a preference that someone wants other people to think is real. Even if this person is correct right now, that could easily change over the course of a lifetime. My wife thought she didn't want to have kids, but changed her mind when she met me and she realized that she just didn't want to have kids with the people she had previously dated, since they were incompatible with raising a good family.
Younger me didn't know what I would later find perfectly acceptable. Worse, younger me put way more emphasis on things that ended up being minor. There are things about my wife that may annoy me that 18-year-old me may have said was a hard no, but are no real concern at all at this point in my life.
I suspect a lot of the objection is just coming from the tell-don't-show style that many of these are written in, and foregrounding the boring-but-important stuff instead of putting it off in a corner somewhere. I recall Aella complaining about how may of these are tell-don't-show and should be more show-don't-tell, and claimed hers was, but on reading hers, I still found it to be tell-don't-show! So, yeah.
Of all the commentary on the commentary on dating docs (meta-commentary?), this guess feels most directionally correct. I'm a tell-don't-show person who's been surrounded all my life by show-don't-tell folks, found dating docs (and improved legibility generally, sans James Scott-style failures) useful, and was nonplussed by the many negative reactions to the idea.
James Scott, as in "Seeing Like A State"?
What does "show" mean in a text document? (Or ""tell" for that matter)
I mean, it means the same thing it usually means, because "show, don't tell" is classically advice for writing stories in mediums that include text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don%27t_tell
But to explicate a bit -- I'd say largely it means something like, instead of making a statement that summarizes or abstracts, make more concrete statements that expand or instantiate it. One especially common situation it applies to regards qualities of your characters -- instead of telling us "John was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy", actually include in your story cases of John doing things that meet this description. Or, for a different sort of example, instead of writing "The riverbank was a gloomy place at night", actually describe the gloomy elements of the scene.
In a medium like film the "showing" would involve more literally showing, so I guess there the phrasing about making "statements" doesn't quite work, but I'm hoping this is sufficient to point at the correct idea. Does that clarify things?
An online dating profile isn't a short story, so I don't see how storytelling conventions apply. If you're suggesting people should give concrete examples rather than (just) talking abstractly, I fully agree but I don't understand why it wasn't described this way in the first place.
> An online dating profile isn't a short story, so I don't see how storytelling conventions apply.
It's prose that you want people to find appealing and not boring. A lot of what makes that work generalizes beyond stories per se.
> If you're suggesting people should give concrete examples rather than (just) talking abstractly, I fully agree but I don't understand why it wasn't described this way in the first place.
Because the phrase is compact, well-known, and generally understood, whereas trying to describe its meaning explicitly would require a lot more effort. There's a reason I said it means something *like* "give concrete eamples rather than abstract descriptions"; I was attempting to point roughly at the correct concept, not give a complete definition. I would not say that the phrase means *only* that.
I feel like someone needs to start a poll about these five women.
To me it seems like Hana (4) is awesome, Jane (5) could be a good friend, and the rest are terrible.
It's hard for me to imagine anyone else feeling differently.
Second the poll
I'd think (4) could be at least a good friend (but beware crypto: this need not be the profile of someone seeking to lure others into it, but it could easily be someone with what amounts to a gambling problem) and (2) is someone I used to know in college, whereas I would have a very hard time relating to (5). I also find it hard to imagine anyone else feeling differently!
I could see 5 being hard to get to know but kind and loving if you make the attempt. Plus I like video games and some anime so that’s a common interest and a half.
I'd say #2-5 all seem like they could be decent people. (Even #1 might not turn out to be 'terrible' in real life, but I wouldn't want to risk finding out.)
#4 seems designed to appeal to the average SSC-reading man, and #1 to be basically the opposite. #2 is obviously incompatible with me, but I think she would be compatible with plenty of other guys? #3 and I would probably find each other a bit annoying, but I can imagine a real person who would write like that & be quite warm and kind. #5 comes across as unthreatening but maybe *too* nerdy in the less-interesting-to-me sense of 'nerdy'?
Right, 4 does seem constructed to appeal to the EA Bay Area crowd.
Assuming I were a straight guy, I think both Hana and Larisa would be good potential matches, but let's be real, I wouldn't meet Larisa's standards. So Hana's the only one I could imagine a long term relationship with. But even if they're not all marriage material, most of them seem like they could be great friends (except for Jane -- as an introvert who doesn't share any of her media interests, I have no idea how I would maintain a conversation with her). But I'd say I have friends similar to each of these profiles in real life!
Third the poll
I can't see romance working out with 1 or 2. 3 seems fairly unlikely but I could see an outside shot. 4 sounds like a delightful person to know. 5 I guess I'd have the most in common with in general terms; she sounds shy but we could have fun geeking out together. None of them seem like *very* good odds for a romance working out, but a lot will depend on how each one is in conversation.
(4) is as close to a typical ACX reader's dream girl as you're going to get, which is probably why Scott put it in there.
They exist, but lots of guys want them, and some of the nerd guys are *very* rich now.
Reading other people's responses is fascinating for me too. I wouldn't date any of these women and feel a revulsion to a dating market where these might be the available options. I originally assumed Scott made up five people we were meant to not want to date, but for different reasons - implying that all of us have deal breakers we would want to know in advance.
I'm surprised at the poll results, but also surprised at my happy reaction that Larissa seems to rank toward the bottom. The fewer guys are my competition for Larissa, the more likely she'll be interested in me! I have this visceral response despite being married for 13 years with no intention of being on the dating market again, and Larissa not being a real person.
Sure, why not.
https://forms.gle/rhKXKfQBd2NviMJZ9
EDIT: It turns out surveymonkey is ass :/ I'm going to port the answers I already got to google sheets, so your effort was not wasted.
I'm not entirely sure how to expose collected data, but I can figure that out later, I guess?
Results up at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17zQwIp1cFUzpLmq0ghDeW8eILu3WHkKmIOpcqkH_9P0/edit?usp=sharing
I've manually imported a bunch of SurveyMonkey answers, which is why they have similar timestamps in that spreadsheet.
I'd say the opposite. 5 sounds like a perfect match for me, while 4 seems more like friend material. I have a strong interest in the social sciences, and I think I could have some great conversations with Hana. But if she really views *everything* in economic terms, that would probably make it difficult for me to form a more intimate connection with her. Constantly losing money on crypto is also a red flag.
I could see myself potentially dating 3 as well. I'm not into that sort of New Age spirituality myself, but it doesn't bother me as much as it bothers a lot of other rationalists. If she was pushy about her beliefs and practices, that would be a dealbreaker. But as long as she was willing to accept that it wasn't my thing, I think it could work out. (For what it's worth, I've dated a lot of girls like 3, and my current partner is basically a combination of 3 and 5.)
2 seems like a very poor match for me. Being with someone like that sounds absolutely exhausting. I'm a fairly laid back person and it seems clear that I'm not the sort of partner she's looking for.
I wouldn't be interested in 1 at all. I'd probably find her really boring. For that matter, she'd probably find me really boring. I don't think there's even the slightest bit of common ground for a connection here.
The biggest thing is it doesn't seem like we'd ever actually do anything unless I'm consistently pushing for it, and as someone who would myself *want* the other person to be a bit pushy towards doing things together, I think there would be a lot of times where we both want something to happen and it just *doesn't*. And she doesn't seem low-Openness to me per se, just very introverted and low conscientiousness, a level that extends quite a bit beyond nerd stereotypes and into actively avoiding e.g. going to conventions unless someone else asks her three times first.
Rephrasing this to be less cringey:
Reading Jane's profile, I don't think she wants romance. I think she just wants a friend.
I think that, if I invited her to makeouts, she'd be very tense and uncomfortable and neither of us would enjoy it.
I think that, if we watched anime together, she'd make sure we were in separate chairs three feet apart, to make sure I didn't try to cuddle.
Better to think of her as a friend.
"To me it seems like Hana (4) is awesome" To me, Hana sounds like someone I would want to talk with (why _is_ development so difficult??), but not live with, and the others all sound like people I'd avoid like the plague.
I am reminded of a novel, The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion, about a man who's tired of deal-breakers turning up among his dates (e.g. his dates habitually don't tell him that they're vegetarian until after arriving at his house for dinner), so he compiles a questionnaire that all prospects must answer. His friends futilely try to explain that this is not how you go about it.
I guess sometimes you might not know that you would like someone with a given trait until you meet a person with that trait. Also, people change their preferences, sometimes influenced by people they love. The problem with prefiltering on a set of criteria is that you might miss an opportunity with a person which fails on some of your preferences, but scores very high on preferences you did not know are also important to you.
The problem here isn't that profile description is a bad filter - it's just that mutual physical attraction is a much more reliable one.
Text profiles are hard to verify, reflect self-image more than personality, and it's still a cointoss whether you two actually vibe IRL. Meanwhile the photos are pretty foolproof - if someone shows up on a date not looking like the photos, the jig is up straight away. And it takes a split-second to judge a photo, when reading a dating doc takes a minute or more - making it faster to find your 1/500 person.
With all the dating apps switching to a swiping-based system, it seems like using apps as a first-pass attractiveness filter is a much more workable model than expecting them to sort people by compatibility - which was way easier 20 years ago where online dating was a niche for a specific kind of person.
In fact, from what I see, the vast majority of dating profiles you see on apps like Tinder don't resemble any of five examples in this post. They're simply empty or have a pithy one-liner. It's very easy to discard these profiles as "not taking dating seriously enough" or "what do I even talk with her about".
I strongly recommend in favour of attempting to match with these profiles anyway! Empty bio does not equal empty brain. Some of my best dates came out of matching with these wildcard profiles - purely on physical attraction alone. If there's no long-term compatibility, that's okay, spending an evening in the company of a stranger who finds you attractive is still better than staying at home. And anything more than that comes as an unexpected bonus.
Using attractiveness first or primarily makes sense, I agree with you! Good write up loweren
I agree attractiveness doesn't matter zero, and people should put photos in their docs, but otherwise, I feel like I'm arguing "The current system is bad" and you're counterarguing "But it's the current system!" and we're talking past each other.
I took Loweren as not just saying "it's the current system" but "it works really well for *quickly* applying one of the most important filters of all, mutual attractiveness".
Exactly. My first thought reading Scott's example profiles was "but is she hot tho?" I'd give any of those profiles a chance if they were, none of them if they weren't... I think maybe dating docs are for the ace crowd?
Attractiveness isn't the current system because of dating apps, it's the current system because of biology.
“Spending an evening in the company of a stranger who finds you attractive is still better than staying at home”. This is the kind of sentiment that makes me wonder if maybe I am an alien, because I could not disagree more strongly. Spending time with strangers is basically always awkward, and spending time with one who finds me attractive, once I know they’re incompatible and I’m going to have to turn them down, is *the worst*.
Would you consider going on a date with e.g. a tourist who leaves the country next week? You are not going to form anything long-term for sure, but otherwise I don't see why you should "have to turn them down" in any sense
But what’s the point then? I get all the awkward parts of trying to meet someone and making small talk and self-consciousness and worrying about what to say, and none of the payoff of actually knowing someone well enough that I can relax.
Ultimately, holiday flings are a thing because we enjoy dates themselves, not only some later payoffs.
I felt pretty much the same as you when I was romantically inexperienced - either anxious or bored. Experience helps. I lowered the stakes by going on more casual dates with pretty girls without expecting some far future payoff and got the hang of dating. It's not easy, but I hope one day you will start enjoying it too.
Practice?
What's the point of dancing with any women when you won't be partnered with any of them long-term, except maybe one? The act itself can be rewarding in many ways.
You're not an alien. Every time this theme comes up, there are people in comments for whom physical attractiveness is not important or not enough. I've seen it enough times on different sites. But we're a minority, and one that goes unnoticed by business.
You're describing dating, though? I mean, you can choose never to date, but you're dramatically decreasing your chances of finding a partner. You cannot find a partner without first meeting a stranger in person.
I know, it sucks! But my point is, some people hate dating, see it as at best a necessary evil, and welcome any technique that might help us find a partner without much dating. I would absolutely talk to a matchmaker if I knew one.
Actually, to generalize a bit more, the initial filter should be on the things individuals are not willing to compromise on. Smoking, location, appearance, political affiliation, ...
That mitigates many frustrations and helps be open on the rest of the magic.
Instead of focusing on defining an ideal, focus on avoiding the showstoppers and main irritations.
For me, it was as simple as walking distance, non-smoking and similar age and I had many fun dating walks before finding the one.
Yes, all profiles you see on a dating app like Tinder are supposed to be pre-filtered by your age and distance settings.
This is not enough for some. For me, music taste is super-important, as in I will never date anyone who likes certain kinds of pop and rap. I have VERY strong reaction to music, and I feel very, very bad in places where there is music I don't like. I try to get away as fast as possible, muttering vile curses under my breath. And if my prospective partner finds this unacceptable, I don't think we have a future.
I think dating docs should be less about things you like, and more about things you absolutely hate. If you match on those, it's a solid foundation: at least you can be angry at the same stuff, and common enemies drives people together well.
Photos are probably a good way for men to judge physical attraction; not so much for women, who are generally less visually attracted, and more influenced by things like charisma and manner that are only visible in person. This may partly explain why it's so difficult for men to get matches on Tinder - it isn't providing women the information they need to feel attraction.
Are you saying that finding a photo attractive necessarily means you'll find the person in the photo attractive in person? I certainly haven't found that to be the case.
No, the opposite. That women especially might find someone attractive in person (maybe after a small amount of getting to know them) whose photo was meh, so primarily photo based matching apps may be causing false negatives.
> The problem here isn't that profile description is a bad filter - it's just that mutual physical attraction is a much more reliable one.
I'll agree, with the caveat that first impressions can be misleading, and the long-term measure of attraction can take time to reveal itself. That is, time and ... intimate encounters.
Plus, to put it in a rationalist idiom, there's the matter of discovering what their strategy is in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, which can take a while. Sometimes you learn things about a person that change them from attractive to repulsive. Or the other way around.
There are people out there like me, for whom "physical attraction" just don't work. I simply cannot from photo, or even a glance at the "real article" alone judge if I want to date that woman. I mean, a lot of women look very beautiful in their dating profiles, and I understand their beauty - I just don't have any reaction beyond "well, that's nice to look at for about 30 seconds".
A well-written text profile that ticks all my marks? Now THAT'S where I get excited. I'm very lucky I found my wife on OKCupid before it become Tinderized, because I had zero success on Tinder. No woman ever matched me, and I had hard time forcing myself to "like" them. While I went on many interesting dates on OKC, so it's not that I'm exceptionally undateable - but Tinder-like sites don't work for me.
My guess is that there are at least two kind of people out there - for some, physical attraction is easy. But for a (sizeable?) minority, it just doesn't work and they NEED something like dating docs, essay-length profiles, questionnaires, anything but photos. As it often happens, the groups don't understand each other. People who find physical attraction easy think we're just ugly, or picky, or whatever. We think people who have success on Tinder are shallow and only look for one-night stands, not relationships. But reality is that we have different needs, and therefore it would be great to have different apps/sites to satisfy those needs. Which we no longer have, because everything is Tinder - it seems "looks" people are the profitable majority.
Many times I wanted to start my own text-only free dating site (as in, no profile photos at all, you MUST have a well-filled profile; partially to save on hosting costs and the need to moderate images, otherwise I would probably allow a single picture). But I never had free time (or skills, really, I'm a programmer, but I know nothing about front-end work beyond basic HTML from 90's when I was designing my Geocities page).
> But for a (sizeable?) minority, it just doesn't work and they NEED something like dating docs
Are you referring to this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demisexuality
> Many times I wanted to start my own text-only free dating site
Okcupid tried something similar. It was a blunder for the ages.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/okcupid-experiments-users-discovers-everyone-shallow-n166761
Yes, I think Demisexuality is what it is. Forgot the term.
> Okcupid tried something similar. It was a blunder for the ages.
It would have worked for me, so I guess such app would just have a smaller user base. Most people might be shallow, but not everyone is (to be honest, I did not find my wife attractive at all when we first met, for example). Not that I could ever get it off the ground even if I made it - getting people to join your new dating site is costly and/or requires promotion skills which I have exactly zero of.
The long-form dating profiles found on sites like OKCupid and PlentyOfFish were great back in the 00s, but they lost out to swiping apps and their ease-of-use because at the end of the day the only truly key issues are looks, money, and status (and also partly industry consolidation). Unless you are looking for something really specific, like a religion or someone into polyamory, nobody much cares about reading your carefully written profile--especially all the cliched ones.
In what sense were they "great"?
It sounds like there's a subset of people who were interested in things other than looks, money, and status, and that might be a useful niche to fill.
I think it's far more than a niche. Sending good messages (facilitated by having profiles to draw from) is, it seems, an under-exploited vector for competition that rationalists should not leave on the table. Source: I did well, am not rich or the most handsome.
The whole thing is mysterious to me. Apparently those swiping apps are extremely annoying to use for both males and females for different reasons, and yet they are the apex predator which decidedly killed off all the alternatives? Probably the real explanation is that they are actually annoying only for the minority of nerdy/autistic types whose opinions I'm disproportionately exposed to.
They hit all (or most, depending on how many matches you'd get) of the gamification buttons that the longform apps wouldn't hit.
What works well for the app isn't what works well for the users. They make their money off selling "premium" features that capitalise on addiction and FOMO. Okcupid was never able to monetise that well
Yes, the perverse incentives issue must be pretty troublesome. Maybe it's an avenue for an EA charity? Tractability and neglectedness are clear, and arguing for importance should be easy enough in SV/Bay Area circles, there's certainly no shortage of nerdy/autistic types there!
Right, but the vast majority are male.
It's evolution. It's not what makes the organism happy, it's what lets it survive.
Kind of ironic as we're talking about dating apps.
I don't expect long-form (or the capacity for it) to go away as, imo, it's still the most effective way to date online competitively for those who are sussing out signals beyond "looks, money, status".
The value of a profile is less so in determining compatibility at a glance, and more-so as a jumping off point for dialogue. I would write medium-long messages that drew from things mentioned in profiles, and this always played well. I had no issues getting dates, and I'd bet hard money that I was nowhere near the most handsome or ostensibly wealthy. Good communication sparks interest.
Describing it as "lost out" implies you're assuming a free market with competition. All the modern apps look the same because they're owned by the same company, Match.com - and it buying out OKCupid is what caused the change in OKCupid's UX
There's two questions here:
1. Should you have expressible dating preferences, and
2. Should you actually express them?
I would say that of course yes, it's reasonable to have dating preferences, but you should be very careful about actually expressing them lest you alienate or repel even the people who satisfy them.
+1
I find the notion of having such definite dating preferences set in stone very unromantic and rather egocentric.
Isn't love supposed to be irrational? Aren't we supposed to grow and evolve when we bond together?
No. I wanted to marry a woman who wanted to have kids. I have friends who want/ed kids but not enough to sort based on it and married people who do not want kids (or the other way around). They love their partners and won't leave them but there are so many people they could have fallen in love with that would have made them just as happy and without this soul-crushing conflict.
My wife didn't want kids back when we started dating, and I wasn't too sure myself -- if she'd asked I'd have ran for the hills. But today we're happy parents! Luckily neither of us had locked away our preferences so categorically.
You start defining these preferences, but they may end up defining you instead. It's hard to change your behaviour if you've spent years building an identity around telling people you don't want kids.
Anyway, I'm just not sure it's good for anyone to spend so much effort ennumerating what it is that think they want but don't have. Seems like a way to ensure present unhappiness and future disappointment.
Seems like a way to get what you want. Some people luck into getting what they want. Some work for it, or at least create the conditions for success.
You're right about the preferences defining you. I don't think that's a bad thing. Birth control is pretty effective. If you don't want kids, you can not have kids. If you do want kids, you can have kids (usually). If you never really commit maybe it happens or maybe it doesn't, but if it happens and you kind of didn't want it, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the work and responsibility. If it doesn't happen and kind of did want it, you may find yourself getting older and wondering how things kind of passed you buy.
See also: Wanting to sleep with other people vs not. Wanting to prioritize career vs community. Figuring out your sexuality, or your gender. Etc. It's great if you can find a partner who can find themselves with you, or one of you is passive enough to follow where the other leads. Or if what you find out about your desires is small enough that it doesn't reorient both your lives. But for most people, there's a lot of heartache there. Of looking at a relationship you've spent years on, maybe a decade or two, and trying to decide if it's worth starting over or just trying to muddle on.
Why is love supposed to be irrational? I hope it’s worked out well for you, but frankly that strikes me as nightmarish—having a relationship founded on common interests and rational preferences has enabled my partner and I to enjoy the good times more, weather the bad times easier, and ultimately have a more carefree romance than we would otherwise. I really can’t emphasize that strongly enough—we certainly haven’t been held back from growth either as individuals or a meta-organism, and we also haven’t had to make nearly as many individual sacrifices/concessions for the sake of the relationship as most of our friends.
I think it depends on the preference(s) and also how one describes/uses them.
To address the describe/use issue first, I think the preferences can be used to generate a reasonable sort order. So, the idea isn't to "weed candidates out" but instead to put the ones most likely to work out near the top of a "people I should date" list. Matching pretty high on both partners lists implies that they should go on a date (with each other). It isn't that dating someone who misses on a lot of preferences is "bad", just that it is more likely to be a miss and you have only a finite amount of time.
In concrete terms, someone looking to get married and have a lot of kids and who wants to spend time camping might find a better date than someone who is divorced and never intends to marry again, has been sterilized and has lots of plant allergies. It isn't that these two CAN'T fall in love and have a successful relationship, but maybe each has better odds dating other people?
For preferences I think it can work if one is honest with one's self about what actually matters. Wants kids vs doesn't want kids (though, I concede this can change). Likes to read a lot vs has no interest in books (a friend of mine thinks this one can be critical). Is looking to get married vs is looking to casually date.
MUST scuba dive is a bad preference in a way that "I'm trying to find a spouse now" is not.
I think I'm in love with Hana. Or possibly the internal simulations of Aaron Smith Teller and the Comet King have hijacked by brain's attraction centers to make me think I'm in love with Hana. God dammit.
She's married to a guy who owns his own tech company. Or in a polyamorous relationship with two of them.
Strictly speaking, they jointly control a majority of the shares in her "who should I date" market, but there's still plenty of opportunity for new people to buy in. The shares aren't linearly fungible with money.
OK Cupid used to have a blog called OKTrends where they did statistics with data from their userbase. One post I remember in particular looked at the match questions that predicted resulting relationships (which they knew from a survey when people disabled their profiles and answered, I met someone via OKCupid). They suggested that the questions people thought were very important (religion, smoking, etc) were less predictive of relationship-forming that some others ("Do you like scary movies?"). Here's the link: http://web.archive.org/web/20110315063632/blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-best-questions-for-first-dates/
The founder of OK Cupid also wrote an entire book about these trends: https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/11/6132023/okcupid-data-blog-is-back-in-book-form.
Sadly nobody seems to have done similar analysis since then, and the okcupid data sample was already self selected and doesn't represent most people
Ah yes; one memorable one was, openness to sex was correlated with taste for beer.
Isn't that correlation not just massively confounded by the third variable of "being a man"?
Sorry, I meant for women.
In that case I guess gender/sex isn't a confounder, but being sexually open and liking beer are both traits in the "ladette" cluster, it makes sense they would go together.
Jane has remarkably narrow tastes in anime for someone who likes anime. Someone should introduce her to Monster and Nodame Cantabile. But she sounds like a nice person.
I think Scott either (a) doesn't actually watch anime so he listed the common ones that came to mind or (b) figured if he dropped references to Ya Boy Kongming in there nobody would know what he was talking about.
It's one of the ways fiction can be truer than reality sometimes.
It tracks for someone who has anime as one of multiple nerdy hobbies in the late 2000s early 2010s. Really, the one that most raised my eyebrows there was Fortnite.
There are many people really into hobbies that might be described by connesseurs as trash taste. There is also a certain segment of the population that doesn't "get out much" and hasn't discovered the real gems of a hobby that they spend so much time with.
I mean, look at all the people who have played D&D for years and haven't tried a good system yet. *ducks*
I'm not saying those anime are trash. I've watched some of them and I like them a lot. But they mostly (all) in the same pretty narrow subgenre of battle shounen stuff. There's so many other great types of anime to watch!
No, but an anime "auteur" might. That is why you get things like the self-deprecatingly named podcast/youtube channel "Trash Taste". Maybe a more descript term might be "common" or "popular".
But there are so many people out there who may sink a lot of time in the hobby and just never explore outside of the common hit titles. Or they assume the other stuff will be boring or not for them because they watched some seasonal filler once and assume everything is like that.
Go watch Erased! Madoka! Kill La Kill! Ranking of Kings! Gamers! Made in Abyss! Konosuba! Many more! I yell from the rooftops directly at people who have only seen shonen battle anime. These aren't even impenetrable high art works. But I still run into anime fans who haven't seen any of them.
You should see the matrimonial section of Indian newspapers. However, I hope you won't mock them.
They're very earnest and absolutely open about things Americans would find non PC.
Often, the parents are placing ads. I only saw about 10 of these and one was an ad for a gay son - the mom was looking for a man for him.
Westernized folks there wouldn't deign to use ads to find spouses for their offspring and while I think they'd have very similar preferences, they'd pretend to be very open minded. Therefore I find these ads charming.
I live in America and every time I visit India I browse a few ads in the papers because they tell me so much about things that have changed (or not) - since I grew up there.
Seems sensible to me. I'm surprised (but pleased!) things have liberalized enough people are using the ads to find partners for gay people.
I was waiting for someone to bring Indian matrimonials up.
When I read them, I find it interesting how little information is often provided about the potential spouse (or it's generic/vague/boilerplate "respects elders and loves youngers" sort of thing), but how much information is included about the family they come from.
I suppose it makes sense. In a typical Indian marriage, the family is a package deal. These are the people who will owe you obligations, and these are the people whom you will owe obligations to, so best to find out who they are, what they are likely to offer you and what they are likely to want from you.
Another is the word "simple". The connotation of this word in North American English is "not too intelligent". It occurred to me that in India, the implication is "no surprises." You're not going to marry this dude and then find out that he has some weird personality quirk that you now have to live with.
Bingo. Very insightful read
Another commonly used word is "innocent" when parents advertise for their divorced kid, which i think means they were not at fault.
Simple is an interesting Indian use of this word. I think it can mean any number of things that are highly valued as showing good character, such as :
-Being frugal
-Not being into fashionable clothing
-Being uncomplicated emotionally
-Being extremely humble
-Choosing Indian wear over Western
- Having a low maintenance lifestyle (most particularly, hair)
So "simple" in this context seems similar to "low maintenance"?
Explain the hair, please.
Well, women in the West straighten their hair, use gel etc. It looks like it takes effort.
"Simple" Indian women don't do this. Their hair looks well-kept (neat) but that involved no machines (like a straightener) or gels. No spa visits for simple women. Just a comb and coconut oil. Maybe some black hair clips.
Sort of like cats. A neat, well-groomed fur coat, kept clean by regular washings, is perfect.
I always thought of "innocent divorcee" as having overtones of "faithful".
That's an interesting cultural detail. It wasn't too long ago that people in the West also put ads in newspapers to find a partner, but I think it was more rare that parents would put out ads on behalf of their offspring.
Relatedly, and my apologies if this is rude, but I've noticed that Indian men tend to show up a lot in the comments on Facebook pages and the like, where they try to pick up women. "Thirsting" is the term, I think. Is it true that single Indian men are especially desperate for contact with women, such that they shoot their shot in any online space they come across? Or is this just a statistical quirk caused by there just being a lot of single Indian men?
If it were just down to numerical superiority of Indians, then you'd also expect to see plenty of Indian men pursuing other strategies, like white-knighting or whatever. You never see that, only ever thirsting, implying that the cultural difference is real.
Hi, I'm an ultra-orthodox Jew, and I would like to point out a few things about "shidduch resumes."
1) The single biggest thing that's looked at are the schools the person attended. Ultra-orthodox high schools are generally selective, and most schools have a defined stereotype and perceived rank. This becomes even clearer after high school, when the boys go to yeshivas that are very often smaller than most high schools (my options for yeshiva were ~25 guys, ~30 guys, & ~160 guys), leading to even more sorting. Girls go to 'seminary' after high school and similar dynamics are at play for them. In addition, prospective in-laws are now able to ask the staff of the school about the person. This works pretty well only because ultra-orthodox jews generally get married less than one year out of the religious school system.
2) Another useful feature of these resumes is to provide references who are willing to talk about the person, which allows prospective in-laws the chance to see who their friends are, and how their friends describe them without meeting the prospective partner.
3) The basic outline of the reference will also tell you if the person has deviated in any significant way from the standard ultra-orthodox educational path, which is then interpreted in different ways according to personal preference. (If someone is currently in Yeshivas Brisk in Jerusalem, the path they took to get there may show that they are not a typical 'Brisk Bochur,' for better or for worse.)
4) Ultra-orthodox parents often support their sons-in-law in Torah study for several years after marriage, the resume may indicate how long such support is being sought or offered.
5) It also bears mentioning that in the orthodox jewish world, parents are heavily involved in their childrens' dating lives, and the possibility of comparing potential partners is antithetical to all of the social & religious norms surrounding the dating process. People in the shidduch process are not supposed to see one profile that says "I'm in pre-med" alongside one that says "I'm a secretary in an elementary school," instead, resumes are given to parents. Parents reject any that are extremely obviously incompatible, kind of as in Scott's example, and then if they receive one that seems to make sense, they investigate. This includes general fact-finding (personal history, looks, family, sub-subsectarian religious affiliation, etc.), reputation checking (are they a 'catch'?), and trying to get a sense of whether they would be likely to hit it off. The potential partners are then supposed to consider the combination of resumes, 'backround check', and any other information and decide if they are interested in dating each other. If they agree to meet, the partners are understood to be interested in the possibility of marriage; at this point the potential partners are now running things, mostly. This extremely high degree of parental involvement may make the high level of filtering easier than it would be for the person themselves, who may have a bias toward saying yes.
6) It is also worth noting that the general sentiment of the community is that resumes are a necessary evil, and we commit a gross injustice when we attempt to pin someone down to what can be stated on a resume.
7) Finally, it is worth noting that resumes are a relatively recent innovation, and while I am not certain when they became common, they definitely were not a feature of jewish life in prewar European communities.
TL, DR:
The orthodox Jewish process is a lot more complicated than resumes, and resumes are not a longstanding tradition.
This is absolute insanity. I have never found a girlfriend on a dating app who was in the same country as me, let alone one who was in a similar age range or had remotely similar views as me. Or maybe it's just that guys with Muslim names either have to be super-successful, or date Muslim girls by pretending to be super-religious.
I assume you live in a majority-white country? I have heard that even a hint of 'foreign-ness' tanks your desirability on dating apps in the US, but I'm not sure if that also goes for other majority-white countries.
OKCupid actually did the data back in 2014, probably the last time you could publish stuff like that on the web:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/okcupid-race_n_5811840
Stereotypes are sadly true--men of all races (except black) discriminate against black women. White men are preferred by women of all races (except black women, who prefer black men). Nobody likes the Asian guys except for Asian women (who also like white man almost as much). In general all the women prefer their own race, though Asian women like white guys almost as much as Asian guys (probably leading to the WMAF couples everyone comments on).
Here's a more detailed chart, not sure which year:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fxakqc4czimh51.png
I’m more of a Hana-Jane type of guy. Were those biographies written with AI?
My experience having a dating doc: with one or two exceptions, everyone whose emailed me about it has been unusually interesting and compatible with me (I think less based on specific listed preferences than on being a good match for my writing tone). The exceptions were also alright in that at least we had a more interesting initial conversation than I usually have with a random app match, because they were working off knowing my interests.
I've also had one or two people I matched with on a dating app that clicked through to it, saw I want kids, and cancelled the date on me (which wasn't fun, but probably a net positive).
For what it's worth, my marriage is a statistical anomaly. I'm an atheist liberal Democrat with an undergraduate engineering degree, and my wife talks to ghosts, voted for Trump, hasn't finished community college, and, most astoundingly of all, does read books but does not like Terry Pratchett novels.
I started dating her around nine years ago. If you had asked me back then what I wanted in a girlfriend, she would have checked almost none of the boxes and probably should have set off a lot of alarm bells, but when you're 32, not employed, living with your parents, and have never had a girlfriend before, when someone shows interest in you you're inclined to give them a chance; it only took one date to decide she was a keeper, and ever since, in spite of problems that would probably make a sane man or woman run for the hills, I've never been happier or felt like my life has been more meaningful.
(Btw, she did give up on Trump after Jan 6.)
ghosts are just some guys, you know? this is sweet and i wish you both the very best
This may be the most interesting comment in this entire section. I'm devoured by curiosity about how someone could have both actually liked Trump for years AND been fake-newsed about January 6th. Can you get your wife in here please? You can tell her you're talking to someone else who can't figure out why anyone likes Terry Pratchett.
Yes, Terry Pratchett is a show-stopper for me. I'm OK with the rest the bio, though.
> and, most astoundingly of all, does read books but does not like Terry Pratchett novels.
Instant divorce! Only half kidding.
Different take on why people react negatively to dating docs:
For some people, writing a dating doc is socially similar to saying "I'm smart".
People don't think you're smart because you say you're smart, they think you're smart because either
1. You convincingly "perform smartness"
2. You demonstrate social proof of smartness (e.g. you have a PhD in Mathematics from
Failure to do either of the above make people think you're either too stupid to understand the rules, or trying to deceive people too stupid to understand the rules.
I see two main (overlapping) groups of people for whom a dating doc will trigger a similar reaction:
1. If the reader lives in a low trust environment (maybe due to their filter bubble), the idea of telling people who you are will trigger the trust issue. They believe you know that only a gullible person would believe this doc, and thus you are manipulative.
2. Many people are not comfortable writing structured documents - to them this sort of guide is likely to come off as trying *way* too hard, which signals either desperation or deceptiveness. The idea that this is something someone could casually type out never cross their mind. (perhaps adjacently ,the idea of solving problems through structured documents may be alien to them)
Now here's the twist I find interesting - even if you're able to understand why these documents may be a good idea in principle, if you have the emotional reaction that sharing this doc was a rather large social faux pas that is generally going to short-circuit any "pro dating doc" argument because people filter *hard* against people who do things they consider large social faux pas.
I'm smart. I'm also a moron a lot of the time, as demonstrated by my making this comment to tell you that I'm smart.
I agree you shouldn't just say "I'm smart", but I feel like a well-written dating doc demonstrates smartness, either by listing accomplishments (eg a PhD) or by being written fluently and cleverly.
I know you were just using "smart" as an example, but I feel like good writing can demonstrate lots of things (playfulness, sense of humor, self-awareness), and lots of other things aren't worth faking (if someone says Terry Pratchett is their favorite author, that's not, like, a status thing where we need to disbelieve them, it just helps match them with other people who like his style).
As far as I'm concerned, Terry Pratchett was the greatest writer of all time and I will defend this proposition to the death. :P
Economic historian Gregory Clark asserts there was a very high degree of assortative mating in England in the 19th Century. I don't know if that's true, but if it were, one mechanism could be that a lot of courtship was carried out by letters. E.g., poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett famously exchanged a vast number of letters before their marriage. (Parts of London had more than one mail delivery per day then, so they might each write the other twice per day.)
Presumably, prose style played a big role in Victorian courtship.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that..."
Then again, Jane Austen died single.
> I feel like good writing can demonstrate lots of things (playfulness, sense of humor, self-awareness)
Well of course you think that, you're a good writer. What about all those people who are lousy writers, or merely so-so? People for whom writing is less of a window into the soul, and more of a dreary chore that they stumble through the same way you might muddle through a line-dancing session?
It's possible that good prose stylists repel poor prose stylists, which turns out to be good for everybody.
I'm now getting a mental image of someone thinking "Oh, no, their flawless use of the subjunctive is out of my league!".
But how would they know it’s flawless? :-)
> know you were just using "smart" as an example, but I feel like good writing can demonstrate lots of things
We agree.
> and lots of other things aren't worth faking
To be clear, I think for many people the judgment arrives before they get to the content. Simply seeing that you've written it triggers a heuristic judgment that you're malicious or unwittingly committing a massive social faux pas.
That said, people *absolutely* fake favorite authors, video games, etc. to prey on people. There are a number of anime fandoms known to attract male predators because female fans tend to be vulnerable, as an example. If this kind of paranoia seems weird, I refer you to your own essay "Different Worlds"[0] which is part of the inspiration for this line of thought.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/02/different-worlds/
Silly question, but is your username a reference to the surfer kid who gave a local news interview about a great day?
I get all those arguments, but my personal experience with any kind of online dating was not so good, mostly because the subconscious aspects of attraction were missing. Most of the time, I knew after 5 minutes into a date that this is not it.
After my divorce, going to events where like minded women could be expected worked much better. For me it was tantra, and the criteria were interest in self development, a certain openness in relationship, willingness to grow together and an interest in new experiences. I found my second wife and later most of my lovers there, people that I probably would have neglected in online dating
No offense, but the vibe from your post seems more "don't follow my example" than "this will help you find happiness." It sounds like multiple divorces in your life, for which you have my condolences.
This is a misunderstanding. Just one divorce, after 20 years. Now happily together with my second wife for 13 years.
It seems you are making the assumption that lovers means I split from my second wife. This is a little strange in the comment section of a post that explicitly has polyamory as one of Scott's requirements (and where I mention openness in relationship as one of my requirements)
Fair enough. I am actively non-poly and didn't make that connection.
OK. This shows one more time how much monogamy is still the norm these days. One can be any gender he/she/xe likes, but a maximum of one romantic partner is taken as a given.
My wife and I were some days ago discussing if we could think of any positive depiction of consensual non-monogamy in TV or movies and we weren't able to come up with one.
Big Love.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Love
Anyone know if Hana is single?
Hana's in a poly relationship with Harry, who cashed out his crypto token 2 years ago and now writes a blog about scientific approaches to bodybuilding, Jane, who picks anime for the rest of them to watch together and is Hana's sub, and Dick, who runs a company that uses AI to find new places to drill for oil companies, pays for the house they all live in, and totally isn't the same guy who wrote a bunch of stuff for Counter-Currents ten years ago.
this is not dialing down the attraction level
If only she were a closet drug addict, then she'd really check all my boxes! Of course, the closet drug addicts I dated never let me know they were drug addicts until we were in the sexual bonding phase of the relationship. But subconsciously I seem to be attracted to closet drug addicts.
This just occurred to me, though—maybe a higher proportion of women are closet drug addicts than I had initially assumed?
“drug addict” to my mind suggests “person with an obligate daily heroin or coke problem,” and i would call that very uncommon in the kinds of milieus people here tend to inhabit. if you mean something more like weed, or marginal overuse of prescribed meds, the prevalence is probably fair to middling?
the distinction i’m making here is largely in the degree to which barriers to procurement are also barriers to maintaining a reasonably functional and productive life, so the substance matters.
To answer your question: I'm guessing you didn't come of age in the late 70s and 80s?
I lived in a decaying mill town that was the transshipment point for the Gambino crime family's drug import and distribution business—and the town was also close to two Universities, so we had a lot of educated druggies. Cocaine was ubiquitous. Heroin was readily available. The only reason I wasn't indulging in those drugs was that I spent nearly every weekend tripping. As an aside, LSD seems to make things like opiates, tobacco, and pizza disgusting—and I suppose they are, but LSD makes them *really* seem disgusting (after 40 years I still have trouble looking at pizza without cringing). And once you've done LSD, cocaine seems kinda one-dimensional.
Most of my friends got past their heroin and cocaine addictions. One of my (former) heroin addict friends said that quitting heroin was easier than quitting smoking—saying it was three days of hell quitting heroin, but tobacco addiction was more pernicious and it took him years to finally quit smoking.
Despite the scare stories you hear about heroin, it seemed to be much less damaging to handling normal responsibilities like jobs and school than alcohol was. One friend died of an OD. But AFAIK all my other friends who were heroin- and cocaine-addicted came through their addictions just fine. Of course, HIV started spreading (1983? 84?), and that seemed to scare a bunch of people straight.
My impression, never having been close to any heroin users, is that it's manageable to the degree that your life is otherwise going well. Or to put another way, it's fine if things are fine, but if things are bad it makes them really bad. Does that match up with your experience?
The gag wasn't that she was unattractive, it's that she was taken. ;)
yeah but she’s also poly. the sign won’t stop me
You've never heard or seen the term 'polysaturated'?
did you specify that?
Since we're doing this about the dating profile stereotypes (I'm married in real life, but whatever):
1) I'd totally give Cindy a chance. I don't go to bars, or at least I don't drink at them, but I did enjoy dancing back in high school and she sounds like a lot of fun. It could go wrong, and I imagine that the most likely outcome is that she rejects me, but I'd still like to see what happens. And I do happen to like Taylor Swift's music.
2) This girl is out of my league. I don't have much in the way of career ambitions and tend to be lazy and procrastinate a lot. I could offer to be a househusband or assistant-type the way a wife might have been in The Bad Old Days to a high-achieving husband, but I couldn't be her equal. I'd probably leave her to other people who are Going Places and just not respond to the profile.
3) Astrology? Eww, red flag. She sounds like a totally sweet and caring person, but I'd ruin it with my intolerance toward woo. Pass. (I don't like my actual wife's belief in the supernatural either, but that's another story.)
4) Yeah, I'm totally interested in this kind of person; I took one economics class in college and the textbook totally changed my way of thinking. Definitely contact.
5) On paper, this is my dream girl. I would totally be down to hang out and let her show me her favorite animes and play video games together. I'd be afraid of coming on too strong, though, or that I'd end up with yet another one-sided attraction to someone who only wants to be friends. Once upon a time in college, I ended up in a conversation with a girl I while we were waiting for a campus bus; when I asked her what her favorite Final Fantasy was and she said Six, my response was a only half-joking "Will you marry me?"
I had a habit of strategically pulling out oversized anime magazines (Newtype) or rpg manuals on busses when I saw a woman get on that seemed interesting. This would get them to talk to me and think that they had initiated the conversation. I still have some very good friends I had met this way.
"98% of whites marry other whites; 90-95% of blacks marry other blacks."
Those figures are too high, at least for American newlyweds. According to the Wikipedia article you link to, in 2010:
"Among all newlyweds, 9.4% of whites, 17.1% of blacks, 25.7% of Hispanics and 27.7% of Asians married someone whose race or ethnicity was different from their own."
> [after speed dating] realistically probably people just chose whoever was hottest and maybe most personable
If true, this would be a pretty damning indictment of the usefulness of speed-dating. Instead of going to a speed dating event to talk to people for 3-4 minutes each and then asking to be put in touch with the hottest of them, you can open tinder and swipe right on the hottest profile pictures in a smaller number of seconds each without leaving your couch.
Reeeeeally want to date Hana.
Knowing 'Hana' is just a Scooby-Doo-style mask and if you ripped it off you'd find either Scott Alexander or GPT-4.. doesn't exactly seem to diminish this longing.
Suspect this sensation is not unique amongst ACX readers.
You think a guy who's been writing a blog over a decade might know what kind of lady his readers would go for?
It's not a blog, it's phase one of the world's most lucrative catfishing scheme
Ohhhhhh, that's why he's been doing the surveys! Training data for AIs.
I am currently building a dating app that is similar to Tinder but WITHOUT any chatting. It will launch in about three months.
I agree that certain "basic" info like what the person is looking for (gender, long or short term relationship) is obviously significant. But the rest is largely bullshit. You only really get to know a person in real life.
How without chatting will you get two people to believe neither is a serial killer and meet up irl reliably?
Someone who heavily used dating apps successfully knows that the chatting in Tinder is generic and pointless. Nowadays, Tinder even provides gpt or similar generated chat suggestions, signifying how generic the whole thing is. Meeting people in real life is what counts.
Users who don't show up to the date get a bad rating.
Okay but to get a good rating you need people to agree to meet up and both meet up. If I'm new to the site how can I convince someone to meet up with me if we can't chat. How do we even set up a meeting place. And how do we have confidence it's worth our time to go. I'm clearly missing something
You need to look good or wrote sth witty in your bio. I'm also considering having voice messages in your profile, so.beimg well articulated or having a sexy voice is a plus. Setting a meeting place works through the schedule date feature in the app where you swpcify a place and time (and later maybe activity)
The idea makes sense and us close to done. My real problem will be getting the intial bunch of users. The cold start problem so to speak
Sorry for the spelling I'm on my phone in a crowded subway
That actually sounds like a really good idea, both the lack of chat and the voice messages. One suggestion: most people hate the sound of their own voice and making them write and perform a voice message will be a significant barrier. You can ease them into it by having a generic message to record first, like "My name is X, welcome to my profile!" and then they can add personalized ones later.
Good idea, thanks
I guess I just wrote an entire post arguing against this thesis, so I'm not really sure what else to say.
Maybe it's a matter of efficiency? You could give zero information, and go on one hundred dates to find the right person. Three minutes into the date, they might say they're an alcoholic, and you can awkwardly wait out the rest of the date with them even though you know you're a bad match. And you can repeat this a hundred times.
Or you can let them sort ahead of time, and then maybe it only takes ten dates to find the right person.
I don't understand why people are so much more interested in wasting the hundred dates.
Many people seem to think that the impossibility of certainty implies that any attempt to make decisions on a rational basis is inherently doomed to failure.
An attendant at a hospital emergency room refused to help me decide which hospital to attend, by telling me whether it was busy there, because the situation “might change” before I had time to get there.
A police officer I called to inquire about whether the car I was about to buy had been reported as stolen was reluctant to answer my question, because the information system might not be completely up to date. Even though the car’s plates came up clean, it might still have been stolen, but not reported and recorded yet, so what was the point of doing the search?
The chief safety officer at my location of employment decided not to make available to safety wardens, in event of an evacuation, electronically recorded information about staff entrances and exits, to assist the safety wardens determine whether everyone had safely evacuated. Why not? Because occasionally people enter or leave the buildings without the electronic record being created. The data is not 100% reliable, so it’s therefore useless as an input to any rational decision making process.
For these people, reducing the likelihood of error from 10% to 1% is meaningless because there is still a 1% chance of being 100% wrong, and the costs of being wrong are unbearable.
You shouldn’t be surprised. This community describes itself as “rationalist”. So on some level you must understand that people aren’t really interested in wasting 100 dates, they just lack the ability to rationally conclude that this is the likely consequence of attempting to eliminate false negatives in dating decisions.
I'm still reading, but wanted to add to first part, where Scott describes critical incompatibilities. In my reality (country close to Russia), there is most important point, probably. I totally won't be able to date someone who supports Russia in the war with Ukraine. It is just not imaginable.
Sure, and politics is going to be a salient issue like he said. If you're close to Russia that's obviously a lot more important than many of the culture war issues currently big in the USA--look at Scott being afraid of wokies *and* hardcore-MAGA people. Cultural appropriation is obviously a lot less pressing than territorial appropriation of your house by Putin's battalions.
Yeah, but for me it is even more about basic humanism. I cannot fathom how people can support massive war with a lot of casualties. Even US wars are bad in this regard, but current war is much worse.
I mean, every war has massive casualties. I don't have anything nice to say about Putin (he's definitely getting closer to Hitler-level evil), but quite a few far-righties here in the USA seem to think he's some kind of Christian defender of the white race, presumably because the left half of our local elites (the Joe Biden/New York Times types) don't like him. Everything in the USA becomes about our culture war eventually. I imagine Russian troops that close to you correct that delusion pretty quickly.
Weird ;-)
"For a while, the person in the entire US with the highest match percent with me was my actual girlfriend (who I had met separately, not using the site)."
I'm a bit confused about how this could happen, isn't it extremely improbable that the person you're most compatible with in the entire country just happens to be someone you've also met irl? Seems a bit like when people claim to have met their one soul mate out of the 8 billion people in the world and it just happens to be someone that lives in the same building or works at the same place, rather than say... a village in Mozambique.
On this topic, maybe a bit of an odd question, I've been wondering for a while reading the blog, how Scott manages to have so much success dating people selected on extremely niche psychological traits. The readership for ACX skews about 90% male, right? You'd think there'd be 10 guys similar to Scott for every one woman similar to his partner. I'd guess the competition for guys following this strategy is extremely fierce. Is this something most guys could feasibly pull off, or would you need to be some kind of rationalist chad?
First, OKC was almost certainly filtering for location, even if Scott searched for the entire US.
Second, OKC provides the opportunity to answer literally thousands of compatibility questions. Most people only answered the first 10 (which I think were compulsory?), but some people would answer hundreds or thousands of them. The more questions you answered, the more granular the compatibility results could be.
I find this plausible!
"Would you rather..."
a) be answering 1000 questions
b) do the swiping 1000 times
It's its own filter, I suppose.
(And if anyone knows which question I'm referring to, hope I gave you a chuckle.)
It's worth noting that Scott was describing OKC "back when it was good," in other words, back when swiping wasn't a thing yet and profiles and compatibility questions were THE focus of the site.
Yup. Ah, memories.
Still friends with some of the people I met in those days.
Scott is a high-status doctor who is, more importantly, a central figure in a social movement. Being a person of national prominence makes the dating pool much larger even if the reasons you're prominent are low-status or gender skewed. This comparison is unfair in connotation but necessary to make my point: Cult leaders and serial murderers get dates even if they interact mostly with men. Scott is neither, but my point is that the reason you appeared on the news is less important than the fact that you appeared on the news. His dating experience is atypical.
There was a time I'd have said there's a lesson here. If you have unique traits, the reason you appear unique is less important than the fact that you do. This is how I got dates and met my wife when I was dating a hundred and eighty years ago. But in the modern dating environment you have to balance that with the chances that you'll actually get seen at all. It's like job hunting - having a unique and interesting resume might get you the job, but that resume still needs to check all the boxes the employer set up to filter resumes. So it can't be but *so* unique and interesting.
He's also a very good communicator. I think he's implied that he's less so, in meat-space, using spontaneously-composed vocalizations. But I expect that his romantic correspondence would make fascinating reading, several centuries from now, assuming neither AI extinction nor transhuman immortality, so that everyone who's met anyone alive today is dead. Also, my model of Scott (never having met him, so highly uncertain) is that he'd be horrified by that idea and that if/when he sees this comment he may even take steps to make sure that this never happens. :-)
If the high percentages are close enough, but much higher than everyone else, then it's likely that they're not meaningfully different, while being meaningfully different from everyone else. (The OK Cupid questions even let you rate how important a question was to you, from not at all to deal-breaker.) And relationships break up for reasons other than compatibility; it's not deterministic.
> I'm a bit confused about how this could happen, isn't it extremely improbable that the person you're most compatible with in the entire country just happens to be someone you've also met irl?
One thing that OKCupid let you do— if you went to someone's profile, you could go through and specifically answer all the questions they answered. This could raise your compatibility higher than people who were similarly compatible in theory but who answered a different subset of questions.
I blame the rationalist community - it selects for an extremely specific type of person and puts them all in close proximity to each other.
Everything I've said about compatibility is also true for my friends who aren't famous.
>their one soul mate out of the 8 billion people in the world<
If you believe in soul mates, then you believe in the supernatural, and surely the supernatural can handle things like being born close enough to each other for your souls to actually mate.
>For a while, the person in the entire US with the highest match percent with me was my actual girlfriend (who I had met separately, not using the site). She told me I was her second-highest match percent; her ex was #1.
Surely this demonstrates that these questions only tease out short-term surface-level compatibility rather than long-term compatibility? After all, your then-girlfriend and her ex broke up, as did you and your then-girlfriend.
I think that's too harsh. It shows that a high percentage is a good indicator for a viable relationship, but isn't a guarantee. There's probably a margin of error on there within which the percentage, while meaningful, is imprecise. If there were two people on Old OKC who matched 95%, 94%, and the rest were all 80%, then I'd say either of the 90s would be a good bet, as the 1 percentage point is unilkely to be significant.
Also, there are other determinants of relationship permanence beyond compatibility (personal choices, how one changes under life stresses, circumstances like different life directions that only come to light later, etc.).
No, that doesn’t follow.
Wow not even attempting to argue your point, just "no ur wrong lol"
My ex-girlfriend and disagreed about children but were otherwise compatible. We're back together now as secondaries, so I have out-technically-nitpicked you in this technical-nitpicking contest.
I'm not even mad to be contradicted, I'm just giggling like a Japanese schoolgirl that senpai noticed me.
IRL you have three seconds to get someone's attention and it takes ten seconds max for them to decide if they even want to talk to you, which is why your first words to them must always be a question. The swipe-right apps are little different. You have only seconds to make an impression. On first contact a salesperson doesn't try to sell the sale. The salesperson tries to sell the appointment. Perhaps there are intellectuals who set aside time and sit down purposely to read through dating resumés, dull though they may be with little attempt to capture the reader from the first sentence. I think that a dating doc should only be communicated after initial contact and a primary expression of interest. At the very least it's more graceful than going straight to intimate pix.
Whatever happened to frustration, rejection, not lying about yourself and dignity? All character building experiences. I guess I'm showing my age, but I'm so glad I don't have to try to date anyone (married for 47 years). I rather think online dating is like social media: you lie about yourself and your life for 'likes' of a more direct kind.
"People in the past used to believe in things! Honor, respect...what do you believe in?"
"I believe whatever doesn't kill you just makes you..." clicks away from profile "...stranger."
My wife and I were married in 1985. We were 23 and 22 when we got married. My parents were Republicans, hers were Democrats. It wasn't something we ever discussed or felt worthy of discussion.
So the 4% number of cross-party marriages really stood out to me. That's a huge decline in the available pool of potential spouses. Which is a real shame.
That stood out to me too. I could understand if that were extremely political people (with 4% being the lizardman's constant), but not across all people that happen to be registered to vote with one of the two major parties. Maybe a lot of people answer that with "Independent" or "Libertarian" or something?
Affiliation can also be pretty random. I live in NYC and I registered as a Democrat in 1980 for the sole reason that often the Democratic primary was the real election.
Polarization is the biggest thing going. When I was dating, back in the Stone Age, a person’s politics was far and away _not_ the most important thing about them. Not so today.
Old friends have cut me for my politics, and (a) I don’t talk about them much and (b) I don’t think they are all that far from the median. It’s just that there’s nobody at the median any more.
A lot of these stats come from dating apps, which skew young/city where Dem women are currently very polarized. In a big city its pretty common to see a profile that starts with "No Republicans"
Who wants to marry someone like themselves? Many great relationships have a yin and yang that a dating doc would actually filter against. Larisa and her ultra ambitious husband would end up at each others' throats. She'd probably be better with a laid back, good looking, funny guy, who could also look after the kids' emotions while Larisa grew her multinational shoe empire. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I never felt like I needed a partner to share too many of my interests. She does have to be smart (good breeding genetics), good looking, and from the same social class or higher. But if I am into anime and reptiles then i actively don't want my partner to be into that stuff. It is just too much.
Nah, I've seen geek-geek marriages, they work pretty well. They do dorky things together. I think Larisa and Lariso probably would be at each others' throats, but Cindy and Charllie would have fun clubbing together, Sky and Storm would help each other align their chakras, and Hana and Jane are going to have no shortage of nerd guys happy to marry them.
It's those alpha monarch-of-the-hill personality types that can't attract like, because in the end there can be only one.
Geeks are rare, and geek marriages more so. In a big city and with the aid of tech you might find your geek match, but only if your geekdom is heavily online. (and is a geek match actually optimal?) As a neo luddite, I will not find my match with the aid of the internet. The average joe has hobbies like watching Netflix, pets, and outdoorsy stuff. They narrow their prospects by only meeting people who share those interests.
I agree, and there are gender ratio issues as alluded to above. The thing is matches between similar people seem to do pretty well from what I've seen...except for alpha types, they fight over dominance.
Larisa's profile doesn't actually mention ambition, it only mentions keeping up with her, i.e. don't make her cancel her plans.
The 5 women described here are hobbies, not people. I can't get any judgement out of them other than "their hobby seems fun/boring". #1 is the only one I strongly dislike, I don't have much preference between 2-5.
I myself find dating docs useful. Anybody who writes one is a hostile tentacular alien to which I am anathema to, as is anybody who thinks they are a good idea. This is because they signal wildly divergent cultural norms to which I view as monstrous, being that they are almost entirely represented in the Rationalist/EA sphere. One could say they identify low match percentage. Online dating profiles more broadly signal only mildly divergent cultural norms from my own, to the extent that it's theoretically possible for somebody I find normal to be found by sheer accident.
I could then assume that the monstrous aliens would love them as a tool for finding each other, if only the population wasn't skewed heavily towards male.
Finding rationalist/ea norms alien and monsterous is, well, not unheard of, but does raise the question of why you're here.
I think there's a reasonable position of "like the epistemology, dislike the conclusions". (And yes, there is a lot of groupthink inside rationalism which leads to rationalists generally having 95% the same opinions as each other, which on the surface is something you'd think rationalists would oppose.)
Lots of us find Rationalists/EA to be off-putting/weird/monstrous. I can't speak for him or anyone else, but I like reading different perspective and find the Rationalists are at least pretty good about clarity of thought and expression. I usually agree at least somewhat with Rationalists, and where we disagree it's often a fascinating glimpse into completely alien ways of thinking.
I really enjoy reading ACX and think there are a lot of interesting ideas to be found here, but similarly find people who self-identify as part of the "Rationalist community" to be a bit akin to space aliens.
As has been suggested by earlier replies, there can be interest or utility in reading things to which I fundamentally disagree with or find off-putting. Occasionally I might not even disagree with it depending on what it is. I will also admit that while I believe that Rationalists in particular have an incoherent epistemology, it isn't the worst thing currently in vogue and makes it at least possible to have a conversation, even if it will quickly break down from incompatible assumptions on both what sounds convincing, and what arguments are for.
"I believe that Rationalists in particular have an incoherent epistemology"
Could you elaborate on this? While I don't aspire to fully rational conclusions about everything, my current understanding was that Rationalists aspire to do Bayesian updates on new evidence, which seems to me to be coherent, though exhausting.
Horrifically, I was writing a reply to this and accidentally lost all my progress. You will forgive me for being very brief, as the initial reply has eaten up most of my time. The following is merely one issue, but the number of issues with Rationalist thought broadly could fill an entire blog in itself.
Bayesian epistemology makes certain assumptions. For example, that there is such a thing as "degrees of belief" or "degrees of evidence" by which we can "update" our "assent", and doing so in the proper way is what determines rationality. I reject both of these things. There is no such thing as "degrees of belief", or "degrees of evidence", except in the vernacular or defined very narrowly such that they are inapplicable to any kind of updating.
A quick example of how degrees of belief as used by Bayesians can quickly fall into a black hole of oblivion, consider belief P in which you have 97% confidence. How confident are you of your belief of "I believe that I have 97% confidence in belief P"? Anything less than 100% lowers the overall assent, and we can continue to ask this question indefinitely. Answering with 100% to the first meta question doesn't stop the meta questions, and answering 100% all the time sounds like epistemic stubbornness.
I don't have a huge degree of faith in longtermism or the idea that we can do Bayesian updates on beliefs in any kind of a realistic way. The Sequences? I'd rather read trashy horror novels. EA? Whatever, I don't know what the best way to solve world poverty is and everyone who knows enough to give me an answer has an angle they're peddling.
But the rationalists are fun to read, tickle my logic brain, have a vague air of danger about them (Aella ranks fetishes by tabooness and popularity with survey sizes in the sextuple digits and Scott survived an attack from the *New York Times*!), and aren't woke or fascist. I'd rather have a beer with Scott Alexander than any of his antagonists in the media or those Nazi frog a-holes by a mile. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
Thanks very much for your response.
"Bayesian epistemology makes certain assumptions. For example, that there is such a thing as "degrees of belief" or "degrees of evidence" by which we can "update" our "assent", and doing so in the proper way is what determines rationality. I reject both of these things"
Ok, that sounds strange to me. Just in everyday decisions one needs at least crude probability estimates. E.g. the risk of a car crash is sufficient to induce me to wear my seat belt, but not sufficient for me to preclude trips to the grocery store. How can one reject "degrees of belief", probability estimates, and still make daily decisions?
Very crudely speaking, I update my expectations when I see new evidence. E.g. in this area, I've seen a lot of thunderstorms which even the 1 day forecast failed to predict, so I now treat the forecasts here as less reliable than in other places that I've lived. What would you do with similar information?
I don't worry much about meta level questions. Object level questions typically have so much uncertainty around them anyway that I view just approximating the "right" probabilities as bayesian looks "close enough" to me.
And so we see a few more issues common among Rationalists, though not one that in itself is an incoherence to me. Rather we're now talking about ignorance of other options, and ignorance of one's own position, which are just mistakes based on missing information.
Merely taking in sense data and drawing conclusions is not Bayesian updating, nor does such require degrees of belief or degrees of evidence. To take this as evidence of degrees of belief is making a mistake of equivocation, mistaking the probability of an event with a quality of one's belief. This is the very distinction I'm arguing, that these things are separate things.
Here's a simple fact, and this fact tends to apply to practically everything Rationalists think, and indeed, most intellectuals these days. These assumptions are not obvious, and are not merely controversial. They're both controversial and novel, appearing only in the 20th century.
The whole world has turned for thousands of years without appeal to degrees of belief. Even Bayes in his essay was talking very specifically about probabilities of explicitly measurable phenomenon, the location of thrown balls. His was a mathematical result concerned with dealing with probabilistic uncertainty, not epistemic, and even within the realms of mathematics and probability there are multiple interpretations besides Bayesianism. Modern Rationalists have no appreciation for just how historically bizarre their assumptions are, mistaking said assumptions as common sense and/or scientifically supported. Even these justifications are assumptions, assumptions on what it means for something to be "common sense" and "scientifically supported".
Which brings us back to your example. All you've described is a perfectly normal event that doesn't lend itself to describing any particular epistemological theory over any other. I could just as easily say you've applied the pramanas of the Nyaya school properly.
As to meta level and object level, we've fallen into more assumptions I will be ignoring for the sake of staying somewhat focused. The point of my example was to demonstrate that degrees of belief can very easily lead to incoherence. Whether or not you "worry" about it, the example was a demonstration showing that assuming degrees of belief means that overall assent to any belief at all approaches zero and we can't be sure of anything. Which is, as per your own example, not obviously the case. Perhaps there is an argument to be made to defend Baysianism here, but one would have to make that argument not brush it aside. Even classical Roman Sceptics did the work to square their belief that we can't be sure of anything with the obvious observation that everybody, including them, doesn't routinely fall into wells or run into bears in their uncertainty.
Mathematics makes certain assumptions. For example, that there is such a thing as "sets", and manipulating them in the proper way is what determines correctness. I reject both of these things. There is no such thing as "sets", except in the vernacular or defined very narrowly such that they are inapplicable to any kind of mathematical operations.
A quick example of how sets as used by mathematicians can quickly fall into a black hole of oblivion, let R be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. If R is not a member of itself, then its definition entails that it is a member of itself; yet, if it is a member of itself, then it is not a member of itself, since it is the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. And this is just one of many nonsensical constructions you would have to believe in to be a "mathematician"!</satire>
> Anything less than 100% lowers the overall assent
I assume you mean that this lowers the original probability―that 97% becomes 96% or something? I would disagree with that interpretation.
That you seem to think that "Mathematics" is the same thing as "Set Theory" makes me wonder if you're trolling. Set Theory, more specifically modern iterations like Zermelo-Fraenkel Set Theory with the axiom of Choice, or ZFC, is often treated as foundational to mathematics as a whole, and the very basics of Set Theory are taught as foundational in schools due to popularity among academics. But also, it's often taught that Christopher Columbus wanted to prove the Earth was round in opposition to widespread belief in flat earth.
Luckily, Set Theorists are not so benighted by aliens that they are unaware of the flaws of ZFC as Foundational. It is well known that there are mathematical statements independent of ZFC, it is still the case that there are people who view the Axiom of Choice as controversial, the use of Category Theory is still widespread and preferred in certain fields of mathematics, and Gödel's program continues on. There are even people that think Set Theory is just wrong headed from the beginning in terms of being foundational. I'm mostly agnostic on these issues, as are many, maybe even most, Mathematicians. The true reason Set Theory is treated as foundational is because of its great utility, and so it is thought if only we fine tune it more we can solve its problems. But it is still recognised that it has these problems.
This makes it not at all analogous to Rationalist, who assume that their extremely controversial Bayesian ideas about belief are all settled.
As to being confused about assent and probability, Bayesian Epistemology assumes that probability is just the measure of one's belief, or using another word, assent. Mathematically we find that 97% multiplied by 99% is in fact 96% rounded. So again I think that either you can't do basic math while also being unaware of what you're talking about, or you're trolling.
Ah, I just now realised you were also the one who did the drive-by post that cited Legal Eagle to me as if he was the gold standard of evidence, attempting to answer my question at that time by completely misunderstanding the question. I suppose I know not to bother responding in the future.
How much is different cultural norms, and how much is adaptations to living in a different environment?
In this question, what differentiates the word "adaptations" from "cultural norms?" For example, in what sense could I not say that the difference between Bengal and the US are primarily adaptations to living in different environments? What is this distinction trying to get at?
You seemed to be using "cultural norms" in regards to general practices in the SF/Bay EA/Rationalist community (which I should probably note that I'm not part of). In that category, I'd put things like "a tendency to shortcut complex social interactions".
As for "adaptations", I'd suggest that the SF/Bay area may have a distinctly bad dating scene, such that various groups that find themselves there might have to resort to extreme measures to achieve a satisfactory quantity and quality of outcomes amongst their community. Different groups may resort to different means, and the nature of a group will influence the means it uses, which is to say that I think dating docs seem like a typically rationalist way to approach this type of problem.
However, I'd suggest that in a counterfactual world in which the center of the EA/Rationalist community was in a place with a better dating scene (say, New York City), this development would be unlikely to occur as anything more than an occasional experiment.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is teleology, and walking a mile in other people's shoes. Sometimes there are features of a group that simply reflect what a group **is**, but sometimes there are features of a group that are adaptations to its environment, and perhaps a certain amount of ones visceral reaction to the adaptations should be re-directed toward the environment that made the adaptations necessary.
I recently did a quick study where I asked people for their personality-adjective partner preferences, and then asked them what they meant by those. I think the answers were pretty revealing: https://twitter.com/tailcalled/status/1680269225418522628
For instance, one guy who preferred an honest partner brought up the importnace of her not cheating on him. And one guy who preferred a nice partner brought up that he wanted her to take on a housewife-like role.
I think part of the issue is in using abstract terms like "nice", when really everyone wants something more specific. Like the conservative guy wants a nice housewife, you probably want a nice girlfriend who doesn't mock nerds and doesn't aggressively push woke stuff, and a woke guy probably wants a nice woman who cares about the oppressed. You all agree that you want someone nice, but you disagree about what "nice" means.
”How do you translate these to single-dimensional scores on a psychological exam?"
A lot of the things you bring up in your profiles could totally be measured psychometrically by the way, they'd just be in the interests domain rather than in the temperament domain. There are correlations between interests and personality, but they are relatively modest, so practically they are pretty different.
Usually the way you measure interests is by asking people whether they are interested in the relevant things. So for instance, "Are you interested in business?", "Would you be fine with combining vacations and work?", "Would you be interested in going skydiving?", "Would you be interested in hiking in the Alps?", etc..
Probably this isn't gonna be entirely unidimensional (I imagine this profile is combining nearly-orthogonal factors of thrill-seeking/outdoorsy interests and business interests), but that's not really a problem psychometrically (you're probably familiar with the Big five, which is a multidimensional measure of personality). As long as it's relatively low-rank, it's still gonna work fine, and I think you'd be surprised about how much variation you can stuff into surprisingly low-rank models.
There may also be a bit of subtle ethnic humor in the use of the word "nice", in that lots of Jewish mothers were looking for a "nice Jewish boy" in the latter half of the last century. There's the idea of 'edelkayt', which was this sort of softy yeshiva boy the Israeli settlers rebelled against being (pretty understandably if you remember what preceded the foundation of Israel in Jewish history).
Regarding the "cheating", I expect that the archetypal case involves lying about the cheating, too. That is, it's not a case where the partner comes back and says matter-of-factly, "yeah, I had sex with someone else, what now?", or the case where the partner comes back and breaks down in a confession and asks for forgiveness. But more like a case where the partner lies about it, and conceals it, and the secret eats away at the relationship like a worm. If the secret has no effect on the relationship at all, the partner is basically a sociopath, and if it does, then it's not perfect deception.
TLDR, I don't want a partner perfectly optimized for deceiving me. Power corrupts.
For all of you Hana fans: think about supply and demand here.
She's either married to a guy who owns his own tech company, or is in a polyamorous relationship with two of them.
(Or potentially one of the other Hanas.)
Can confirm. Am a Hana, would marry a Hana. (In a counterfactual world where I didn't marry a charismatic nerd.)
I am married to a more religious/conservative Hana (with a bit of Larisa). Are they really that rare/in demand? She's definitely my type and probably the type of lots of folks on this blog are attracted to but just from casual observation does not seem to be the type for a lot of guys even successful ones.
You Jewish by any chance? The usual inverse correlation between religiosity and intellectualism doesn't seem to hold true with them.
I'm Methodist she is Catholic. It may be just the part of the country we are from (location of a major university in the South) but intellectual Christians are not particularly rare here. Lots of very well educated people at our church.
Interesting! I'm happy for both of you; I used to walk by all the old dusty theology texts in the college library and wonder what use anyone made of them. I'm happy someone's still reading them.
Or she just had a major breakup due to the guy's personality changing as he incorporates an increasing certainty of AI doom. Or her partner turned out to be a con artist who was running a giant scam. Or on her last birthday she got her two partners together for an MMF three-way, and it turns out that they weren't merely "heteroflexible", and were more into each other than her, and while on one level she's happy for them, long story short she's single now and looking for a straight mono guy.
Shit happens. Sometimes there really is a $100 bill lying on the ground.
Or the guy turned out to be so into far-right politics he was into bringing back monarchy and left his prior girlfriend while she was pregnant with his kid, while the other one found to be writing very nasty and hoste politically incorrect stuff for various alt-right outlets. We are on the border of crowdsourcing a Hana universe.
(I see your Yudkowsky and SBF references and raise you a Yarvin and Hanania...)
But as to the original point, I'll agree to disagree.
I wasn't actually thinking of them, honest! I was more thinking of people getting depressed and making short-term decisions, and a male version of Elizabeth Holmes.
And, like, I literally found a $100 bill on the ground a few weeks ago.
All good. It was funny either way. They're kind of in the air in rationalist spaces.
I found a $5 once. Maybe I should start walking the streets in the Bay Area.
Yeah, I get that. Your reaction makes sense. Sometimes it takes a few minutes for context to percolate through my head, which is plenty of time for me to put my foot in my mouth. :-)
And this was actually the food court of a Costco. o_O
I've heard rich people like to shop there to save money...but honestly, it's probably just one of those things.
"solve the gender imbalance" means all other lovers are chicks. Bonus.
More seriously... I don't see the demand. She's weird, and just because her profile is positively weird doesn't rule out her being REALLY weird in unlisted events and driving most people away. The guy who owns his own tech company doesn't want to wake up to jokes about "why are they called slippers if you wear them without a slip?"
Well...have you read the rest of the comments? Everyone wants her! Even though they know she doesn't actually exist!
Why do nerd guys want a nerd woman, rather than someone who 'cleans up well' and will balance their weaknesses? I think a lot of nerd guys are really passionate about their interests and would like to find someone who shares them, just like athletic guys want a woman they can go running with or artsy guys want a woman who appreciates art. The thing is that given the skew of interests, nerd women are hard to find.
If pairings ultimately end up being sorted without the docs then who needs them.? Without them you'll date people from the broader spectrum of humanity and maybe learn. These docs strike me as an effort to sanitize human contact. A contraction of human possibility.
How much of the problem is the fact that the set of single men and the set of single women are incompatible with each other? Single men skew conservative, and single women skew liberal. Small group differences overall compound into large differences at the margin. I think most counterintuitive dating market conclusions can be explained by adverse selection. The most compatible people are already matched up.
Jacob Falkovich said something like that:
https://putanumonit.com/2020/01/26/skewed-and-the-screwed/
You may find it interesting.
I'm surprised at the negativity. For me, someone having a dating doc signals some degree of confidence, intelligence, good communication, awareness of their wants, commitment to taking a potential relationship seriously, and an interest in organising and optimising their life. That's before I've read the contents.
Those are all attractive qualities to me and I would happily filter based on them were I still in the dating pool.
1. It means you can't find anyone. Negative social proof. Low status.
2. It means you have a laundry list of stuff you want from the other person, which is going to make them feel very inadequate.
3. A lot of people prefer the romantic game of suggestion, indirection, and passion. These sorts of people tend not to read ACX but presumably have popped out for this post.
Clearly everyone has different preferences and so will read these things differently. I'll give my take on your list anyway:
1. Or they're just trying to raise the bar of their average suitor to someone who'll be a better fit. I don't see why I should care about the "status" of a potential partner anyway, as long as they're a good match. Also - how is this different from having a tinder profile?
2. Maybe if you've got low self-esteem that might make you feel inadequate? I like someone who knows what they want. The docs I've read don't seem particularly bad in this way anyway.
3. Well yes, but this approach doesn't preclude that any more than tinder does.
Sure, why not, argument is fun, that's why we're all here. ;)
1. I guess. It might be a different set of men and women doing it--nerdy guys and very picky women in this case.
2. I mean, I'm not saying you're bad for having one, just giving reasons why people might not like them. I think if you make a long list of bullet points people are going to figure 'this person has 25 things they're looking for and even if I have 23 of them they're going to be impossible to please in real life'.
3. But it does. The whole point of having a written document is to move from implicit to explicit, which some people don't like.
Yeah, I don't really disagree with you on 1 & 2. Just depends on the contents of the doc I guess.
With 3, maybe I'm missing some nuance but I just thought this was the trade-off everyone makes when they do internet dating, or speed dating and such for that matter. You sacrifice some spontaneity for more reliable results.
I think that was the case back when it was more of a geek thing. Now it's what everyone does, at least in part because many of the old approach methods are now considered sexual harassment.
Agreed. I think most people would interpret a dating doc the way that you describe. ACX selects for odd ducks.
It took me a lot of years to learn how to hide the coldly analytical part of my brain. Talked my way out of getting laid an embarrassing number of times. Eventually it sunk in that thinking that way makes the vast majority of people really uncomfortable.
Point being, I would never use a dating doc, because I actively try to keep that part of my personality under wraps. Obviously, for long term stuff you don’t want to be disingenuous or be hiding parts of yourself forever. But I’ve found that it works way better to present as a regular dude in the beginning and let the fact that my brain is weird trickle out over time.
I’ve been married for 38 years (married at 19). This is all so baffling to me - life and love can just happen if you let it - if you enmesh yourself in other humans. The heart wants what the heart wants...
Well, you got lucky.
For a lot of other people, it's a major problem. It's like being a 6'2" guy who doesn't understand why other men have so many problems finding women, or a really hot woman who doesn't get why other women have trouble.
sure - I was also young and I married my best friend and I was actively religious then and so my dating pool was limited to other actively religious men…I wish it wasn’t so hard for people now days…
The decline of religion is a really underappreciated part of this whole dynamic. People used to meet at church all the time.
I agree…
Married 35+ years.
I recall someone saying something like: I don't really know what I want and I won't be satisfied until I get it.
Dating is not a scientific experiment it's a psychological and sociological experience. Between ~16 and ~30, you are also finding out and creating who you are. This is the paradox of participatory reality.
Yup. I have a pair of friends who happened to meet in middle school and started their relationship in late high school and 20 years later are still into each other, without any external pressure to be (they aren't in a religious tradition or anything like that).
They understand they simply lucked into the right place and right time of having strong sexual chemistry + high intellectual and emotional compatibility.
yep exactly
But you understand that I'm saying that you had a tremendous amount of dumb luck, right? Your brain chemistry and hormones are particularly compatible with someone else's brain chemistry and hormones, and you just randomly happened to be peers in the same place and time in a way which connected you socially.
"...life and love can just happen if you let it..." includes the caveat "...as long as you're very lucky."
Don't ascribe a romance lotto win to deliberate action on your part, as if anyone else could do the same. You didn't make it happen, and saying otherwise perpetuates a toxic fantasy.
true but we weren’t romantically involved - we were friends -it’s a fine point but worth stating- the physical attraction/ hormones weren’t there for me till after I got married - they developed overtime. just my experience-I don’t mean to lay that on anyone -apologies for doing that.
I've never had trouble finding high-pqying tech jobs, and I'm deeply confused by all the unemployed street people. Just answer some LinkedIn messages from headhunters and get a job, there's no reason to live on the street.
???
It's a parody of what you appeared to be doing -- treating your own highly fortunate situation as the default, and wondering why other people don't just let good things happen to them
I think you’re reading more into my response then what I said. I don’t mean that at all - Let me give you an analogy -I wish I had more women friends ILR - I know that to actually accomplish that I need to put myself out there more - not online but ILR because deep friendships are formed by being around a person - a lot - (think of the friends you made in college) but it’s really hard for me to be more physically social - it’s awkward, it’s uncomfortable and I’m inpatient, I’m an introvert, I feel like an outsider, etc - I think dating is akin to this. I could be massively wrong -I don’t know because it’s not experience.
Great analogy. Although I do think a lot of guys underestimate how much they can actually do to improve their attractiveness. I’m tall, but that’s about it. Dad bod, average facial features (ie, ugly or handsome depending on the day and the angle), grew up as the ugly unattractive guy.
I started getting consistently referred to as attractive/handsome by both men and women around 25. Didn’t get any better looking, just carried myself better and dramatically improved my social skills.
Still, the analogy holds. Some small percentage of the homeless could turn it around and make six figures with a little help. But lots of people just can’t be different than the way they are. If you can’t or won’t learn to be better, then your ceiling will stay your ceiling.
Thank you for writing this comment so I didn't have to.
But what if you don't want to enmesh yourself in other humans. You spend your days at work, and your evenings playing video games, and you absolutely hate parties, bars and any large gatherings of people, yet yearn for a soulmate? Online dating in 00's was a godsend for people like me.
Serious question for all the lonely nerd guys here: which personality type did work for you? (One of Scott's or another.) We all know there aren't enough Hanas to go around, so who did you find happiness with?
I converted from a lonely nerd guy to a casually dating nerd guy. None of my dates really fit any of the exaggerated stereotypes here - there's bits and pieces of each in various combinations.
For casual dating, anyone who is not a basket case and sufficiently attractive has worked well for me. I can’t really see a pattern above and beyond that. I don’t think any of the girls I’ve dated would have made sense from a dating doc perspective. Currently dating a cute girl from Mexico who does not speak English and isn’t particularly smart (def not dumb, just not intellectual). I’m pretty sure English and above average brains would have been two of my biggest filters.
As I’ve gotten older, Ive filtered much harder for kindness, honesty, and emotional stability. Not ready yet for serious long term make it work type stuff, so no idea there.
Hana/Jane hybrid, I'd say? My ex was a 100% Jane and it didn't quite work out, though it was pleasant.
I'm a Hana/Jane type myself, and I tend to date a lot of Sky/Jane types.
(I'm not a guy and not lonely, but I am nerdy and into girls, so I figured I'd answer too.)
Sure, why not? :) I remember the old Myers-Briggs arguments about NF and NT types going together, but who knows how accurate that is.
> OKCupid, back when it was good.
Oh, man, I miss those days so, so much.
I have a close straight male friend where part of our friendship is acting as one another's dating coach and commiseration buddy. We've both noticed how OKCupid and all its sibling websites and apps across Match have been degraded to the point of uselessness. Someone whose profile I haven't seen yet sends me a message? Maybe I receive it, maybe I don't, maybe it hits my inbox THREE YEARS after they sent it (true story). Someone who I've matched with sends a message? Again, maybe it shows in the inbox right away, and maybe it shows up a month after it was sent, and probably it shows up never.
Dealbreaker preferences, like smoking or parenting status? Frequently ignored.
Premium membership does not fix these issues, either. While I've never paid for membership, my friend has, and he likewise often receives messages weeks/months/years after they were originally sent and also has his dealbreakers ignored. Plus, as a straight man he is inundated by messages from laughably transparent scammer profiles that OKC is absolutely capable of shutting down but does not.
It's so clear that OKC is constantly being tweaked to thwart most daters' ultimate goal: To find a partner and no longer need the dating platform. I don't necessarily mind a business giving users the choice between a shitty free product and a terrific premium product, but OKC can't even do *that,* likely because (duh), once they've identified that someone is willing to pay $40 a month for their profile, then they REALLY don't want that person to be successful enough in dating to leave.
It just sucks. How do you solve the fundamental problem of dating companies and their customers having perfectly opposed goals?
(Use Fetlife, I suppose, but that's a very tough putt for those with weak stomachs.)
"Plus, as a straight man he is constantly inundated by messages from laughably transparent scammer profiles."
What, you don't believe there are all those Hot Singles In My Area Now just *panting* with eagerness to get to know me better and shower me with affection? I'm shocked that these clickbait ads at the bottom of online news sites might be fake, shocked, I tell you! 😁
I had two of them try to sell me crypto. Which was at least entertaining, as apart from all the ladies shilling their Onlyfans and dominatrixes looking for clients (I tried asking them for tips on domming technique, they weren't forthcoming).
Kik has become totally useless as you are inundated with random messages from camgirls. I even swapped my gender presentation and they kept coming!
HA! We were typing at about the same time - looks like you're seeing the same scammers my buddy is.
Mine have pictures of women of European, not Asian, descent. Must be a local thing.
But, otherwise, yes.
No, the particular scammer messages he receives aren't ads, they're set up just like any other user, but they almost universally feature photos of an improbably young, improbably hot Asian woman (usually with photos that a reverse search reveals to be models for (whatever)), who owns an improbably successful business in an improbable industry like tech, travels constantly for work, isn't that specific about relationship goals, has extremely weak English, and are frequently schilling crypto.
I've been seeing a lot of those profiles on dating apps recently too. Exactly what you described, to a T. I've even seen them on Her, which is a dating app specifically for lesbians, so it's not just straight men being targeted!
Wooo-oooww, I wouldn't think lesbians as a demographic could possibly be dumb enough to fall for these scams often enough to make it worth the scammer's effort.
"Hot Singles In My Area Now" BBWCupid must have a different source of scammers. The ones cluttering my inbox are slim 30 year-olds in Nairobi looking for 31-99 year olds (but still leaving their profile set at within-250-miles-of-Nairobi) (and what is anyone slim, if that were true, doing on a BBW site in the first place???). I suspect that they are all the same 30 year old unemployed man living in his mother's basement trying to scam the price of an airline ticket.
Oh, I forgot. OKCupid will now generate 6 likes when used as the free app, and when you pay to see who they are they turn out to be on the other side of the world.
Ouch! Not _precisely_ bait-and-switch, but close enough...
"How do you solve the fundamental problem of dating companies and their customers having perfectly opposed goals?"
I don't know, but it motivates this supplementary question:
"To what extent has the breakdown in monogamous norms in western society been driven by the commercial imperatives of Tinder & friends?" The best way to keep people on your platform forever is not to keep them perpetually frustrated they can't find a long-term partner, but convinced that an endless series of short-term hookups is exactly what they want.
Meh, I don't have any formal stats to back this up, by my sense is that the majority of adults out of their wild youth hate the current state of dating platforms and wistfully long for the days when they were more useful for actually finding a partner.
I don't think the dating apps are trying to convince everyone to be content with an endless series of hookups. I think they're trying to give the impression that, with limitless supply it's possible to find the perfect partner if you just keep swiping.
Okay, I was dubious about "dating docs" but the comments section has converted me on them. The amount of people going "Oooh Hana my dream girl" while I'm going "she has to make up some silly jokey name for the rooms in her house in order to remind her to buy groceries???? how does she cross the street unaccompanied?" 😦 Being interested in your pet subject or hobby is one thing, being economics-obsessed to that degree is.... worrying. I think you all know I like the works of Tolkien but dang it, I'm not naming the rooms in my house out of his writings in order to remember "I need to change the bed sheets and put the washing on".
Definitely need dating docs to keep the likes of that away from me! (And me away from them, because I'm sure I'm every bit as much not their cup of tea).
(Also I am so glad I have never had the faintest interest in dating. So, so glad. I now see why the sexual instinct has to be so strong, otherwise the rest of you would never manage to reproduce the species if left to your own devices).
I mean, that's kind of the point, right?
I think the thing is you're going to have 25 guys for every girl making them. So it runs into the same problem you always see.
It's adorable. Also, a person who is kind of a mess might be more forgiving of you being kind of a mess as well - you'll learn to cover for each other's dysfunction. Most happy relationships I see have that vibe, really.
The lack of executive function was a turn off, but the self deprecating humor and solid writing style was a turn on.
I viewed it as her not taking herself and her interests too seriously? Like, she's perfectly capable of writing and keeping lists, but instead she's managed to re-derive memory palaces. And it could make for some fun flirting. Import/export ratios, trade barriers, inflation rates, overheating, that kind of thing. ;-)
If it turned out that she was only barely functional as a human being, and was incapable of dealing with life without these sorts of references, that'd be another thing. But that's what in-person dates are for.
On the other hand people are quite capable of rapidly filtering through basic profile information themselves. The big problem with matchmaking isn't the matchmaking part, it's getting enough people in and helping everyone filter through everyone else as efficiently as possible. So helping people put together profiles containing relevant information including, most importantly, their picture, is a good thing, but telling them who they should pair with is not.
This is all making me wonder - what's the male version of Hana? Stereotypes suggest it's "I like Taylor Swift concerts, long chats about feelings, and bringing you flowers", but does anyone know a real organic example that looks like it?
Be a little more charitable in your stereotypes, haha. I'd say something more along the lines of, say, a guy who talks about coaching track and field at a local organization for underprivileged youth (i.e. he's fit and also altruistic), maybe jokes about how his most-used bookmark is unfuckyourhabitat.com (i.e. he's tidier than most guys), and probably alludes to his job security and his pride in his budget spreadsheet strategy to save for a down payment on a house (i.e. he won't be a drain on your resources and is a smart, goal-oriented guy). I'm not sure how you'd get a masculine version of Hana's sense of humor across (because many women like a guy who can make them laugh) but I would never claim to be funny!
Hm, pride in budget spreadsheet sounds like careful (good) but also resource-constrained(bad). I do like some of the others though (guess there's a lesson here for guys on the dating market to talk more about their interior design tastes? Or at least mention having them).
Yeah! I think a lot of men would do well to cultivate their aesthetic tastes, if that's something they can do genuinely and from a place of sincerity. It helps you dress better, it makes your home feel more welcoming, it enables you to have more conversations with aesthetically-oriented people (and I think, on the whole, that women tend to be more aesthetically-oriented, in a broader sense than sexual attraction).
Well, Hana hyper-targets a specific male-dominated subculture, so the real analogy is something like:
"In my free time, I work on my epic Dorca/Marlene fanfic-- that is, when I'm not getting nerdsniped by researching feudal traditions across the world in order to make sure that the Wizarding World really feels real. (As far as I'm concerned, Harry Potter was written by Hatsune Mitsu. Don't tell me that's not what 'death of the author' means, Roland Barthes is dead too and I can make him say whatever I want.) I stole my shoelaces from the president (is that cryptic enough to keep the Twitter users from knowing we like it here?). I also like first-person shooters, especially Call of Duty-- yes, for the obvious reason, I'm Soap/Ghost trash."
This feels a bit *too" specific. Like Hana doesn't call out specific bloggers or whatever. I think you're right about the subculture targeting, but this feels more like the anime fan profile - someone who drops a lot of references but doesn't signal character traits that appeal to the subculture. You'd need to signal being the kind of guy that exciting for fanfictioners (are fanfics really that female dominated?) Or maybe woo or something.
AO3 fanfic is incredibly female-dominated.
I did toss this off in a couple minutes so it could definitely be refined, but here's my reasoning:
-writing a very long fanfic implies that the author is creative and not just a passive consumer
-the reference to getting nerdsniped means that they're smart and curious, and that they can tell you interesting things about history
-Dorca/Marlene and Soap/Ghost both signal heavy involvement in the subculture; so does knowing that "I stole my shoelaces from the president" means you're a Tumblr user
-Soap/Ghost is a *gay male* ship; the speaker is probably queer and definitely going to get invested in your favorite gay ship
-the speaker remixes ingroup references in a funny way (...okay, not THAT funny because I did it in 10 minutes in between getting shoes on my kid, but ykwim)
-knowing who Roland Barthes is and what 'death of the author' means that you're generally literary, not someone who only consumes fanfic and Marvel movies
-"Harry Potter was written by Hatsune Mitsu" is a very credible signal that you share the target audience's political opinions (i.e. that you dislike JKR for being anti-trans) (oh god please do not get into JKR discourse under my comment I am just trying to explain my reasoning)
Dear Hana, can we please be friends?
Reminds me of this blog- https://putanumonit.com/2022/09/02/date-me-doc/
Partner trait preference is all well and good, but the instant you turn dating into a game of app algorithm minmaxing or find yourself writing a goddamned resume you've type-A'd yourself and the whole scene you're in into a region where I consider you more an animate object than a human being, for better or worse.
Optimization engine (Fortran) seeks optimization engine (C) for functional times, metric maximization. Must support Lagrange multipliers, efficient incremental updating.
You know, I was thinking. We talk about dehumanizing people and seeing them as objects and the like as if it's some artifact of modern society and the machine age, but people have been exploiting and deceiving each other since...before they were people, mimicry and camouflage are things in the animal kingdom. Is the guy 'objectifying' the girl he wants to love and leave any different than the crooked financial advisor planning to fleece his mark of either gender?
Interestingly, I’m an atheist (Dawkins, Dennett, the whole thing) and my wife of thirteen years is an ordained minister and our marriage is solid.
I predict your wife is not from a very fundamentalist/evangelical denomination, am I right?
Oh totally. She’s a Unitarian Universalist which is basically the opposite of fundamentalist.
Oh come on, we both know UU doesn't really count. ;P
Apparently some subconscious attraction between individuals in physical proximity is determined by distinct smells caused by variations in their combinations of MHC (Major Histocompatibility Complex) genes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_odour_and_sexual_attraction
So if these could ever be classified and expressed in a fairly compact set of letters, analogous to blood groups, then perhaps there is a marketing opportunity for a new dating app, or a supplement to existing apps:
Clients registering would mail a cheek swab, from which their relevant DNA could be analyzed. Then the app would pop up possible matches whose MHC differs widely (which it seems is the positive factor, as opposed to similarities). A bonus is that presumably the offspring of a successful match on that basis, in combining differing MHC from both parents, would have an unusually healthy immune system!
But it is questionable whether these instinctive chemical indicators could trump incompatibilities of the kind being discussed here, such as different interests and goals or conflicting opinions on politics for example.
I had no idea how statistically rare my relationship with my spouse is. I'm a Christian Republican with a JD and they are a Agnostic Democrat that dropped out of college. I never would have guessed those were strong sorters. However, both of us have the same energy as Jane in that last profile. I think it might be really hard to use survey's to best pin down what makes people have a good marriage, but it would be great to have more research.
Banned for this comment.
An unexplored angle: That’s also some “is/ought” confusion (and a bit of naturalistic fallacy) in the objection that Scott dive into.
Things like dating docs are an (attempt at) innovation. So, by definition, objecting with “but that’s not how people do it” is more of a non sequitur than it first appears. If Henry Ford showed someone his Model T plans and someone said “but, statistically, most people travel by horse or foot, not by machine,” I wouldn’t begrudge Henry saying “no sh*t, what’s your point?”
Along a similar vein, when divorce rates are 45% in the US, an objection that’s basically “we can’t innovate long-term partner selection in X way because people tend to do Y instead” is pretty weak. Clearly Y has plenty of room to improve, and innovation necessarily assumes a future that looks different than the past.
Here is my take on this: you can infer a ranking of people from their decisions and preferences (People’s choices determine a partial ordering over people’s desirability: https://nunosempere.com/blog/2023/06/17/ordering-romance/). Then, it's not implausible to think that someone using a dating doc reveals that they are lower down that ranking--because they couldn't find romantic success without the dating doc. Therefore, from an evidential decision theory perspective, it's a bad move to have a dating doc**.
** caveats may apply. other decision theories may provide other recommendations.
This is a surprising companion comment to the comment above saying they hate dating docs because they feel too much like a claim to high status.
I think you are psyching yourself into a terrible low-trust equilibrium, the sort of thing where people refuse to tell you their names because it signals that they're not high-status enough that you should already know. In practice I see lots of great people with dating docs.
As an aside: I’d never heard of the ‘dating doc’ before this article, but they remind me of the Personal User Manual idea that I learned about ~5 years ago, which I love and always try to proselytize.
Highly recommend you set one up: https://friday.app/p/personal-user-manual-for-work
As someone currently in the muck of dating apps after the end of a long relationship, I haven't encountered the 'dating doc'. But I think the issue with listing preferences generally is that lists of traits and profiles are bad a capturing personality - and personality determines a lot of the 'spark' of compatibility.
That, and there's a tendency to treat the date like a dry job interview, and it can be tough to break out of that format. People ask formulaic questions, and are guarded about potential flaws and their pasts in ways that don't allow them to act like the interesting and idiosyncratic people they are.
Anyway, I've met a lot of people in my preferred demographics who I don't otherwise seem to have much to converse about, whereas most of those demographics besides gender (age, cultural background, education, politics interests...) aren't rigidly defined and can be flexed.
So clearly these can be done well or done poorly.
Done well, a dating doc is an asynchronous speed dating event. Hundreds or thousands of potential matches can spend 4 minutes with "you," and you do the same, without having to coordinate a specific time.
Looked at that way, a video where you say all the stuff you would put in a doc should also be an option. Less crunchy data transmitted per minute, but 1000x more "vibes"
Actually a cool question - would you rather read a potential partner's dating doc or watch their dating video? Assume you can only do one.
Going on from that, if your answer is "video", and you are making a dating doc - why not make a dating video instead?
Tangent: I'd strongly prefer the doc.
The overall videofication of information is somewhat distressing to me, since I prefer things that (1) let me skip over paragraphs that go on a tangent without having to guess what time it ends at, (2) let me get back to the start of a paragraph when I notice my thoughts drifted without having to guess what time it started at, (3) don't have exaggerated tonal affectations (very common these days) to keep a listener's attention, since those feel a lot like nails on chalkboard to me, (4) don't take as long to load when I'm in a low-bandwidth environment (e.g. train wifi).
...I'm probably forgetting a point. I do think some videos can be nice to watch, but all in all, in the majority of cases, I don't click on Youtube links (etc) unless they're sent to me personally by someone I trust, just because my experience so far has shown that others are overwhelmingly not for me, and thus I've stopped bothering with them.
That said: Yes, dating videos sound like a good idea! I personally wouldn't watch them for all the aforementioned reasons, but there's presumably plenty of people who would, and I encourage people to use the format that gives them results.
Doc doc doc. I abhor videos. Docs are a much more pleasant, comfortable way to take in information for me.
I am happy reading a dozen dating docs; I’d only watch a video if I was already seriously interested in the guy, and if I was already seriously interested I wouldn’t need to.
I gather this is an unusual preference, but it’s unquestionably mine, and I have trouble modeling the other preference.
Isn’t that just a dating website though? It’s the symmetry that matters here, is there’s a community of people that really love google docs and want to use it as an impromptu dating platform, great, but the implication should be that they are spending time reading other peoples docs too. The way it’s often presented though is “I spent an hour writing this, now I am sending it out into the ether and I expect the rest of you to read it” and that’s what comes off as kind of narcissistic.
Hmm. I feel like the negative views of date-me docs don't really have much to do with doubts about the efficacy of describable dating preferences, but rather a concern that writing a date-me doc is a yellow flag for potential narcissism and entitlement. That doesn't mean that this is necessarily a reasonable view, but it at least explains some of the revulsion.
I wanna write a longer reply but I wanna preliminarily say I have no idea why it’d be possible to pick one significantly more interesting person out of those hypothetical girls based on just that, and I really really don’t understand why I so obviously should be. The idea is really strange to me!
I feel similarly about Myers-Briggs as you do about dating compatability docs. It's so obviously useful once you understand it. Existing studies that don't show value tend to be poorly designed.
This quote from Reddit is a sentiment I’ve seen around a lot:
“Jesus. I'm not trying to be insulting at all but even just the existence of a Date Me Doc, or an online dating profile is just so antithetical to how I grew up. (I'm 38) I see people addicted to these apps and now "burning out" from them, it all seems kinda crazy and gamified. The over analysis and "sciencification" of attraction really take the fun out of life, and it happens in every game where people min max to suck the joy out of it. Just talk to people...it is still easy for people from my generation.”
But what it misses — one thing it misses, at least — is consent. If you join a dating website, you can reasonably assume that the people you find there want to find dates and will not be offended if you ask them. Compare that with asking someone out that you’ve met at a local board game meetup or folk dance meetup or whatever: someone very well could be offended by that, since they’re just there to do $HOBBY and now they feel like they’re being treated like a piece of meat. I often see this expressed through a feminist lens — “women go to $HOBBY meetups to do $HOBBY, not to get hit on!” — but it seems more broadly applicable.
"only 4% of marriages are between Democrats and Republicans". I think this means if you get one partner who's willing to state "Democrat" on a survey and the other willing to state "Republican". As opposed to say all those "independents" who still often vote the straight ticket as being easier. Before you object to that characterization, other surveys have found more than 30% of people answering "independent".
"The most popular dating apps, like Tinder, almost push you into that mode." I think it's more that the companies that can monetize their apps successfully have found that the users who go for attractiveness are the ones who pay (or are susceptible to ads or however else they actually get money).
I marveled at the profiles, but then thought better. It's a signaling device - you care about x, and if your potential partner is repulsed by that it's better not to waste both your time. On the other hand, I've had a couple of relatives who ended up divorcing because (probably) not discussing these signals enough - but not before producing kids. Are we better off for not having these now? Unsure.
Whenever the topic of relationship choice comes up, I’m stuck by the question, ‘how do people KNOW this person will be a good match? Dating docs try to solve the problem, but people (or at least some people) seem surprisingly good at it without help. (Finding the person is a separate problem.)
Example, my husbands best friend in grade school now lives in another country though they’ve remained in touch over the years. Their initial attraction was largely based on a mutual love of fart jokes and their accomplishments were of the video game variety. They’ve grown into very different people, both from who they were then and from each other. So it was surprising to eventually meet him and discover how strikingly similar he is to me. We took different paths, but ended up with the same career. We have read many of the same books, blogs, etc. - notably ones of no interest to my husband. I think it is true that this friend is the sort of person my husband is very compatible with, but how on earth did he know that based on information available when they were in kindergarten?
Very interesting! I'd love to hear more about you three - have you noticed any patterns in how your husband communicates with you and his friend vs with other people?
Having thought more about this I have a more coherent objection than my "I don't like Scott's made-up profiles and want to make that a complaint about actual profiles" comment earlier.
Determining dating preference is a multi-armed bandit problem.
For those unfamiliar, this is a problem in computer science/machine learning. Imagine you have two slot machines - one of which has a 40% chance of giving you a dollar and one of which has a 60% chance of giving you a dollar. You want to make as much money as possible but you don't know which is which. Assuming you have limited resources to play these machines you want to spend as much time as possible at the 60% machine, yes. But you also want to spend some amount of time confirming that you have guessed the right machine. Since you can never be completely sure which machine is the 60% machine, you employ a strategy that balances exploration to increase your confidence that you have the right machine with exploitation of the one you suspect is the 60% machine.
In dating you should also optimize for both exploration of your preferences and optimization of those preferences. Some folks like Scott may have a strong understanding of their preferences, plus be extremely high status and able to whittle down a large dating pool by several orders of magnitude and still find a match. Such a person should spend a lot of time exploiting those preferences because they're optimized and possible to exploit. But for most folks, preferences are a guess at what would make them happy in a partner, not a 100% certain formula for partner perfection. You may have dimensions along which you're very certain ("I want to date a woman"), dimensions along which you're not so certain ("I think sharing my political affiliation is important in a partner but I'd be open to meeting someone who thinks differently") and worst, dimensions along which you think you're certain but you're not ("Oh turns out I didn't want to date a woman, something it took me 10 years to learn because I only went on dates with women."). Plus for most folks, some amount of preference compromise is necessary, so knowing what is and is not a dealbreaker is another exploration/exploitation puzzle.
It's not necessarily true that dating docs/expansive profiles/checklists/whatever have to silo you, preventing exploration and putting you all in on your guessed preferences. Someone who thinks critically about their own assumptions about their preferences might use these tools in a different way that actually helps optimize. But in practice, I suspect they do way more often than not.
this is a very astutely expressed concern, i agree
I simply do not believe that people will give truthful answers to "are you attracted to your wife's sister?" in a poll.
When I wrote a dating profile, I updated it after every unsuccessful date in such a manner as to be less attractive to (the sort of person) who I went on a date with, targeting in particular the ways in which we were incompatible.
It worked; my spouse messaged me because my profile came across as a likeable asshole. (Fair cop.)
Where dating profiles fail to be useful (for the specific purpose of finding a compatible life partner), I think they tend to fail because the users are trying to attract as many people as possible (complicated social reasons for this, but this isn't what you actually want to do, even if you are struggling to find matches now*).
And dating docs are basically just dating profiles that have been divorced from the specific user interface of a specific dating app. All the same failure modes apply.
Maybe somebody should create an industry standard for dating profile documents, so they can be imported into any dating app that supports the standard, using whatever data the dating app supports. I don't think it's a secret that people using data apps are likely to have accounts on several (although probably their actual usage is mostly limited to one, as regional variations in the popularity of specific applications means that a given dating app may be locally dominant).
*I know some of the responses I'll get to this. "I struggle to find any partners / get any responses now, why would I try to be deliberately unattractive to people?"
Well, first, you aren't trying to be deliberately unattractive, exactly, so much as being honestly unattractive; posting a picture of yourself sneezing ... okay, that might work, as I think about it, but maybe not the way you might hope. Maybe.
Trying to attract as many people as possible is what everybody else is doing, second. Your goal is to stand out, yes? If you can get somebody to go "Wait what?" and keep reading, you've won your first battle already, getting somebody to spend more than a second or two to say "Nope" and move on.
Third, trying to attract everybody is, unless your social skills are pretty on-point, is obvious, and comes across as desperate. Don't come across as desperate!
You can come across as desperate if you go the honest unattractive route as well, note. Don't snivel. Don't apologize. The attitude you should take: These are the things you may not like about me, and if you don't like them about me, move on to somebody else, so we can both save our time, because I'm looking for somebody for whom these things are not a problem / are a positive. The attitude you should not take: These are the things nobody likes about me, and I'm sorry I'm such a terrible person, but maybe you can take pity on me and date me anyways. With the caveat that maybe the "attitude you should not take" is the attitude you should take if that's who you are; there are people out there who will like that. But there aren't a whole lot of them, and you'll have more success if that isn't your entire dating pool, so only go that route if that is exactly who you are, and that is exactly who you need to date.
If you're going into dating for the purposes of finding a life partner - then take that purpose seriously. You are trying to find a life partner. Quit messing around with trying to date people who aren't that, and quit trying to date people who are your ideal life partner, but for whom you are not their ideal life partner; even if that succeeds, do you -want- to spend the rest of your life with somebody who is unhappy in their relationship with you?
Mind, there are other reasons to date which are perfectly valid.
Even assuming that humans actually know what they really want in a partner and can/will formulate their desires into words, I get the idea behind describable dating preferences, but I cannot count the number of times a female seemed to check all the boxes and when I actually followed her scent and met her it was like....meh.
Not done reading but I'd love to see a poll on into/neutral/eww for your fake profiles. Hana sounds obviously awesome and I have a hard time imagining anyone (anyone here?) ranking someone above her, but also would love to be wrong about that.
I tried not to make it "five very different people and one of them is the rationalist and that's obviously the good one", but it was too hard.
https://forms.gle/ojKksMPKdxpXttUo9 (and results at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17zQwIp1cFUzpLmq0ghDeW8eILu3WHkKmIOpcqkH_9P0/edit?usp=sharing ). Yeah; Hana seems to be most highly preferred, and no one wants to seriously date Cindy.
I think Cindy is probably more attractive in general than she is to typical readers of this blog. I have a hard job seeing many people who read Scott liking Cindy or (worse?) Sky much. I'm a little surprised Larisa seems to be relatively unpopular and most people like Hana more than I do. To me, only Jane sounds tolerable, and even she is far from my ideal match.
Is it just me or do Hana and Jane seem the least bad options? Hana sounds a bit mad, but maybe in a harmless interesting way. The other three sound just awful.
As someone who tends to be "that relentlessly match-making friend"...to me, dating docs aren't so much about preference filtering but a *distribution mechanism*--if I don't know that you are actively looking for a partner, I am not likely to look out for someone for you!
As unromantic as it is, the probability of finding a compatible match has a large marketing component to it...and classic marketing issues like distribution and awareness applies.
I have a lot of nostalgia for old OkCupid, and one thing that really ought to exist but doesn't is a nonprofit dating app with the sole goal of being _really, incredibly good_ at matching people. It seems like a relatively inexpensive way to create a quality of life increase in US cities, because dating is a really big but tractable allocation problem right now. It would be really "easy" to ingest a list of hard preferences and return matches in the area guaranteed to meet those. It doesn't solve all the problems of modern relationships, but it would be exponentially better than the current state of the art!
Why isn't there one? It can't be that expensive, although it might be difficult to get a critical mass of users to centralize on one app.
Is it hard to keep talent at a nonprofit when they can work on more remunerative but less good apps?
My simple guess is: there isn't one because not every potential inefficiency is always addressed immediately.
In addition, creating the app would be relatively inexpensive, but with any dating app you are going to want moderation to keep spam out, and advertising to create a good customer experience, and those are both ongoing expenses that don't get cheaper if you're a nonprofit.
I think it would still be a worthwhile endeavor though!
Not sure if this is a good epistemic rule, but, in a situation where Scott and Gwern disagree, I'm leaning towards Gwern with low confidence. Given that this discusses dating, if Jacob Falkovich weighs in, I would go with his tiebreaker.
I have questions about dating docs
Where do you post them? I saw Chris Olah's dating doc because it was posted on Marginal Revolution, but this will not work for people who have zero fame. Is the idea to become at least a little bit famous?
Do people who use dating docs also use swiping apps? How does their experience compare? Since Scott seemed to meet people on OKCupid, it seems like that at least used to be about as good as a dating doc, although now OKCupid is hot garbage ime
What do you write on dating docs that you couldn't easily convey in a swiping app? Many of these apps allow you to post your political affiliation, race, desire for children, and include a bio that shows any other traits you wish to see. Many dating docs that I've seen are quite similar to a profile on one of these apps
Do dating docs mostly help you date friends? This seems like the main benefit, in that if you create a dating doc, then your friends will probably be the first to know about it and it's a way to signal that you'd potentially be open to dating them.
Are there any people who exclusively do dating docs and do not use apps? The type of person who would make a dating doc is at least potentially interesting given the effort put in, but I'm wondering if I would see that type of person eventually on an app. This is probably unanswerable in general, but only via anecdotes
This is the directory I know of: https://dateme.directory. Manifold also has a dating doc section: https://manifold.markets/date-docs. I think lots of folks just post links on their personal websites or social media accounts as well.
Thank you, some of the bios are really funny
Most swiping apps I have seen don’t have space for long essays in the potential romantic interest’s voice (exception: OKCupid). Dating docs consist only of this (with other useful information conveyed in that format). I don’t want to date a guy unless I like him; political affiliation, race and desire for children don’t tell me whether I do, listening to him for five minutes does. At least at the should I ask him out level.
Pictures aren’t worth a thousand words then?
More seriously, an essay would be more interesting than photos and probably less work than taking a good photo
Not to me, but worth noting I am a very non-visual person. Pictures don't actually give me that much sense of personality, in practice - too similar between people. They tend to be good for presumably-harder-to-fake signals of physical fitness/attractiveness/liking animals, but that's really not what I'm interested in?
I suspect essays are much less work for people who are comfortable and fluent with words, enjoy using them, and enjoy reading them. Probably much more work for people who aren't. Fortunately, selecting for people who are fluent and comfortable with words, and enjoy them, is one of my goals (since I want compatibility with hi-I'm-an-editor), so...
The problem with the above argument is that is slides from a few (and it's important that they are just a few) points that almost everyone everyone agrees upon ("I want a human <gender> who speaks my language and shares my culture") to the points that are actually in dispute, namely that people know what they want for almost everything else.
gender, language, culture. No-one is disputing these. But what people also think is important includes age, children (wanting to have in the future, not wanting partner to have any, etc), and a variety of "vanity culture" signifiers (being vegan, must like the outdoors, must be a fan of Phish, etc etc).
Of course there is imprecision here, such is life. What I consider a "vanity culture" signifier might, in your case, you are the one special snowflake unlike all others in the world, be an actual deep "cultural setting", so deep that it cannot be overridden. But the way to bet is that it's not.
Ultimately those of us who are older, or happily paired off, don't much care. You want to waste 20 years of your life and suffer a grossly diminished dating pool when you come to your sense, go ahead.
But there might be some wisdom in assuming that there is something to our accumulated years of experience rather than dismissing it out of hand.
The Western fad for assuming that the olds are idiots who know nothing of "true" love or "real" sex or how to give meaning to life has a long dreary history beginning in at least the mid-19th C. Yet not one of those rebel generations, from silents to beats to hippies to millenials, seems to achieved anything significantly different or worthwhile compared to their predecessors. Perhaps the accumulated experience of the ages is, in this case, mostly correct?
Most of the olds told you to have kids or at least agree on having them or not, and that big age gaps were bad for relationships, if not immoral the way people think now. (The 'mal mariee' was a theme a century ago.)
Vegan and the outdoors, maybe not.
I actually agree with your overall point that the wisdom of the ages actually does have value here.
I don't think vegan is a vanity culture signifier! You could be eating the majority of your meals with this person for the rest of your life! If you can never eat the same things as them, that's a pretty big quality of life hit!
Also, are saying people shouldn't sort on wanting to have children vs. not? What do you think people are even doing here?
I don't think the older generations constantly swiped right on Tinder and had no criteria. I think they married into families they knew extremely well, in some cases their own cousins.
Plenty of people kinda sorta think they don't want children. And then change their minds.
If you have had a vasectomy or hysterectomy, sure, by all means make "Don't want children" a red line on your profile. If you HAVEN'T had such surgery, then someone is fooling themself as to what they are absolutely certain they want...
As for vegan, let's get serious here. Even if we don't believe the statistic that 84% of vegans (a number I see no reason to quibble with given my personal experiences) there's a spectrum here from
- will never eat meat again, and think it is so icky that refuse to associate with anyone different
all the way to
- sneaks in bacon when thinks other people aren't looking, and couldn't care less what other people eat.
Unless you're one of the (very very few) all the way on the far end of this spectrum, ultimately what does it matter. Partner A eats their food, partner B eats their different food, and life goes on.
Look, I fully understand that FOR SOME PEOPLE, issues like food or drugs or smoking are essentially taboos, not justified on rational grounds but on some sort of self-image grounds. Hell, I have red-lines like that. But I am also aware that the vast bulk of people simply are not like that. Plenty of people who don't drink seem to be OK living with what I would consider lushes, plenty of non-potheads seem to be OK living with potheads. I don't get it, and it's not the life I would choose, but I'm pointing out the realities here.
Your point about 10% vs 90% is well-taken, and I will not argue that (though I suspect the numbers are substantially more skewed). There are definitely unusual people in the world, and part of that unusualness may be a substantially higher than average degree of self-awareness. But the way to bet is that the average person is in the 90% of low self-awareness (even AFTER controlling for the fact that they believe themselves to be in the self-aware 10%).
Or to put it differently, world history is full of mostly failed communal living experiments. These were people who self-selected each other based on a certain set of beliefs about themselves (generally as of age 22 or so), and who mostly learned over the next 10 years that their age 22 self was an idiot.
I'm coming across as a grouchy curmudgeon, I know. If you want to read a different take on this, by someone with plenty of experience, plenty of numbers, and 90% less grouchiness, read
Lori Gottlieb's "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough" which will show you something of the REAL (and silly, and self-destructive) red lines that people are imposing on themselves, rather than the Philosophy 101 experiments of this page.
The below article cites some research favourable to Scott's case. A quote -
"Research in laboratory settings consistently shows that what people say they want in a partner has virtually no bearing on who they actually choose to date [citations] And yet, once people are in established relationships, they are happier when their partners match their ideals [citations]."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/dating-decisions/201412/the-real-reason-we-date-people-we-shouldnt
💯
People who aren't named Chad and Stacey often have limited choice in who they can choose to date.
Seriously, even Chad and Stacey have their limitations. I'm not sure Stacey would get the time of day from Thad, after all.
https://virgin-vs-chad.fandom.com/wiki/Thad
They just have more people coming after them.
Thanks!
I was under the impression that love strikes like lightning from the blue, unbidden and unpredictable, rendering the sufferer powerless - and unlike Lichtenberg figures, the scars last forever.
It's always fascinating to learn about the different models others have of seemingly commonplace phenomena.
During the sexual-pairing phase of my life (I'm beyond that phase now), I was never able to figure out which women attracted me. Some just did — like a thunderbolt or cupid's arrow hitting me — but the vast majority didn't. I was never able to understand which particular physical or personality traits attracted me. Those hidden variables defeated all my attempts at self-reflective deduction. Worse yet, even when I made the effort to get to know the women who I thought should attract me (liberal-smart-educated-creative-regular facial features), I discovered that getting to know them didn't increase my attraction. So, given that one in a hundred women with some hidden variable which I couldn't pin down attracted me, I never gave dating apps a try.
MHC complexes? I've been told smell's a huge thing, particularly for women.
Any data on how far away we can detect those scent molecules? Outdoors or indoors, the "Cupid's Arrow" phenomenon seems to require I be able to see the other person's face. So I may very well be in range of their scent molecules.
You got one now? Grab a used undershirt and see what happens. I couldn't find any actual data on Google Scholar, but someone may have better google-fu than me.
I just remember the last couple of people I was with both specifically mentioned smell as a significant component of their attraction to me. Lacking other positive nonfinancial qualities, I tend to give the MHC explanation credence. ;)
I think what criteria you filter on would depend on what your goals are. A lot of people, at any one point in time, are looking *for* a one night stand and are trying to avoid commitment. But the real problem are interaction effects--I know many people use sex as a gateway to more committed relationships (that is, sex is considered the first or early step on that path). Therefore, sex appeal would be a necessary but not sufficient criterion for a relationship, followed by whatever personality characteristics you're into.
How much research is there on the olfactory side of things? The people I find attractive in photos does not fully overlap with real life and for my wife and myself, smell has a huge influence on attractiveness, and possibly for other relationship variables.
That this factor is so heavily missing from all discussions around this topic has always weirded me out and led me to the conclusion that most people maybe dont even know what an extremely compatible person is even suposed to smell like, which would be shocking. I've def heard from people that they dont care about smell in general or that they dont care about their partners smell as long as it smell "clean." Both of these statements are kind of crazy to me. My girlfriends smell is intoxicating to me and vice versa.
I'll chime in here with a rough description of the dating process in my sub-section of the Orthodox Jewish population.
- Every single has a resume/profile. These can be extremely spartan with just basic bio info like name/parents name, DOB/place of birth and residence, school history, current employment details, or can be more detailed with information about what the person is like and what they are looking for. A picture of the person may or may not be included. But every single profile will include references.
- A "shadchan" (matchmaker) will have the idea that Jacob might be a good match for Rachel. She (the vast majority of shadchanim are women), will suggest the match.
- Jacob and Rachel's parents or other close relative or friend will call the references on the profiles, and will additionally try to find people who know them and are not listed as references (the expectation being that people on the resume are vetted friends who are pre-disposed to say nice things about the person).
- They will be asking about most of the following: What is the single's personality? What is their level of religious observance? What kind of home did they grow up in? Are there any medical or mental health issues? Where do they want to live? What kind of lifestyle are they looking for? They will not ask whether or not they want to have children; that is considered to be a given for any single choosing to participate in this dating system.
- If both camps like what they hear, the shadchan will coordinate a 1st meeting.
- The 1st date is formal. The man will take the woman to a nice bar or restaurant, and they will spend around 3-4 hours talking. There will be no physical contact, not even a handshake or hug. This is almost always purely a vibe check. Not much of substance will be said or shared, and the expectation is that there will be a 2nd date unless one party really doesn't like the other person. The shadchan will coordinate the next date as well.
- The 2nd - 5th date will be spent verifying compatibility on the smaller things you can't ask about in reference calls. The minutiae of religious passion and observance, interests, lifestyle preferences, how many children you want to have, are you actually doing well in your career, etc. At any point past the 2nd date it is considered appropriate to end things (via the shadchan) if you just don't enjoy spending time with that person. Also at any point past the 2nd date the level of formality of the date is entirely the choice of the couple themselves.
- The 6th-10th dates are for DMC's and chemistry building. At some point in this stretch the couple will stop using the shadchan as a go-between and communicate directly. If either party wants to end it, they will have to end it directly too.
- Beyond the 10th date the couple is assumed to eventually be getting engaged. This usually happens in the 12 to 18 date range. Couples taking longer than this is usually due to commitment issues on the part of somebody, family difficulties, or some characteristic on the part of one single that the other one is trying to get over.
- After engagement, the couple will get married within 3-5 months.
Results: (non-scientific numbers)
- 80% marriage rate by age 30, 95% by age 40.
- 5-10% divorce rate.
- 70% happy/functional marriage rate.
Context:
- We are raised from birth to see getting married and having children (as many as possible) as a pre-requisite to living a religiously correct and happy life. Our social structures encourage this at every level, and there is very little comfortable space for older unmarried people.
- We are raised and educated gender-segregated. We do not socialize with the opposite gender who are not our close relatives.
- We are raised from birth with firm gender roles. It's the man responsibility to provide, and the woman's to raise children.
- We are taught what to look for and value in a marriage partner: religious compatibility, someone who is kind to us and others, someone who will be a good parent someone who can fulfill their assigned gender role, someone who we enjoy spending time with. Men are told to look for a woman who can make them feel masculine, woman are encouraged to look for a man who makes them feel feminine.
- We are told to avoid getting hung up on physical attraction at the early stages. Attraction will grow naturally as you spend more time together and your chemistry increases. Declining to meet someone based on just their physical appearance is heavily frowned upon.
- We are also told to avoid getting hung up on any number of minor things: How they dress, if they talk too fast, if they work an uncool job, if you don't like someone in their family, etc. We are taught that all of those things will fade or matter less as you get to know each other and as your chemistry grows.
- There is zero physical contact throughout the dating process until marriage.
- The man is expected to pay for everything throughout the dating process (if he is young or under-resourced his parents will usually pitch in).
- The parents of the couple will pay for the entire wedding (with community support for those needing it) and will also help setup their first home with furniture/appliances/dishes and the like.
Why did I write this megillah? Because Scott's argument is entirely correct, and should actually be taken much farther than he did. People need to be preference-maxing. It's easy to get married and stay happily married when you know what you want and have the tools to find potential partners who want the same thing.
Thanks for this. Some extra questions:
- How many times does the typical person go through this process? (IE how many potential matches does a person/family usually reject before accepting one and marrying?)
- Where is the resume? Do you print it out and give it to the shadchan, or is it floating online for anyone to see?
- Why shadchanim instead of friends and family making the match directly? Are the shadchanim considered especially skilled, or are they just good central repositories of knowledge?
- What happens if someone is flawed in some way (an illness, nonconformist, unintelligent, unattractive, etc)?
- The average man will date 5-6 people before getting married, the average woman will date 3-4 (there are more woman than men in the system at any given time because woman typically start dating at 20 while men usually start around 23).
- Shadchanim collect them and pass them around digitally, usually PDF's, via whatsapp or email. There are some online repositories of resumes; this is a very recent innovation and people still mostly date people who are directly suggested to them.
- Good shadchanim will have a rep of making good suggestions, therefore parents are more likely to consider their ideas. Additionally, good shadchanim help facilitate the actual dating process. After dates the shadchan will usually talk to both parties and hear feedback, this feedback can be very helpful towards guiding future dates or raising points that need to be cleared up. They can also help convince people to give something another shot if they think their reason for saying no isn't serious, or they can encourage people to slow down and give it more time if they feel they're proceeding too quickly without going over necessary ground. Friends and family absolutely can and do make suggestions, and even facilitate, and a larger percentage of matches are happening that way over time.
- They are encouraged to date others who are similarly flawed (directionally, not attribute-wise).
Still confused about the mismatch between 3-4 and 5-6. This should only be possible if the total number of women using the system over time is substantially more than the total number of men. It is not enough that there are more women than men at any given time, what matters is the total number over a long time period that use the system.
The birth rates in these communities is very high, so the number of 20 year olds is substantially larger than the number of 23 year olds in a sustainable (for now) way.
In order for the population to increase by a factor of 5.5/3.5 over the course of 3 years, the population would need to double every 5 years. If it takes 20 years before people start having children, they'd need to have at least 32 children on average to maintain this growth rate (and that's not counting the fact that they will be well over 20 by the time they have that many). This doesn't seem realistic.
I agree. This does not compute, mathematically speaking.
Also, doesn't this effect go in the wrong direction for what is described above?
don't think so
fewer men times more dates=more women times fewer dates
congratulations on discovering the "shidduch crisis"
there is a well known phenomena in the jewish community that girls have a more difficult time finding a match than men. This comes down there simply being fewer men which is for a few reasons
1) birth rates. the more orthodox communities have a higher birth rate and a very clear expectation of the male being a few years older than the woman. So to begin with there is 5-10% more males in the dating pool
2) the rate of attrition for men is higher; men are more likely to go "off the road" than women
3) the rate of severe mental illness is higher among men than women
between those three things it's estimated that there are around 10-15% more women than men
this next part is speculation on my part based on anecdotal evidence but my guess is that women have a long right tail that averages out the mean but the median woman goes on fewer dates than the median man
Worth noting that those with severe mental illness should rightfully be counted towards the average number of dates, even if the illness is severe enough that their number of dates is zero. This may pull the number for men closer to the number for women.
I believe there point is people who are severely mentally ill are excluded from the process. No matchmaker would take them as a client, so they get 0 dates for that reason, but that still means they should be excluded from the question, how many dates does a man within the system go on.
I have definitely expressed this in a mathematically incorrect way, so thank you for calling it out. Gruns Patent below gets closer to an accurate account of the mismatch between men and women's dating experiences in this community.
Is shadchan concept equivalent to the concept of yenta? If not, how do they differ? If so, why the change in verbiage?
They are related but not equivalent words. A "Yenta" is a busybody, someone who makes it her business to know what everyone is up to and what's going on in everyone's home. A person like that is more likely to be a shadchan, because that kind of personality and knowledge comes in very handy when setting people up. But not all yentas are shadchanim and not all shadchanim are yentas.
Sholom, your post indicates that you are a member of the Chabad subculture in American Orthodox Judaism. While your post accurately describes the reality for perhaps 70% of that population, there is an increasing number of singles in the community who are not marrying till their late 20s or early 30s. In some cases, this is exacerbated by the system itself which can create too strong a filter, or devolved into the narcissism of small differences.
Are we convinced that the OKCupid algorithm was actually more accurate than some other simple sorting algorithm like matching people by IQ or something?
No, not at all. I don't think anyone else is even trying. I heard sites like eHarmony do, but I've never used them and can't speak to them.
It was changed a few times; I know a guy who reverse-engineered it using two profiles back in the early 2010s when you didn't have to associate it with a phone number. But that was all using user-submitted preferences to match people; there's no guarantee people know what's good for them.
There is a considerable amount of research that indicates that people regard a quick spontaneous response to be more honest and authentic than one the other person took their time and thought carefully about the options. For most people I have met, intellectual forethought is considered suspicious. Initial impressions are trusted more than calculated ones. There seems to be an idea in popular culture that one's intuition is a better gauge of oneself and one's own needs and desires than objective consideration. Given that, it isn't surprising that a great many people believe that you can't objectively articulate what you want or need in a partner.
This could be a case of the self-fulfilling prophesy. That is, two intuitive people, both of whom believe in first impressions and spontaneity as a sign of authenticity, may actually be more compatible with each other than they would be with someone more rational.
But rational people might be well advised to filter on the exact opposite set of criteria.
From just after the profiles:
> And all of this is separate from the types of preferences mentioned above - ie it’s not just the easy things like race, religion, income, number of children desired, politics, sexual compatibility, etc. Everything here is after the 1/500 even-getting-started number listed above! So learning about people from profiles must allow an even stronger filter than that!
I really don't think all of this *is* separate from the types of preferences mentioned above. What are the odds that Cindy is poly or willing to tolerate a mostly asexual partner?
OKCupid was a huge nerd snipe of a site, as it fed the introvert's tendency to think the answer was just around the corner from answering another hundred compatibility questions, rather than in just messaging and meeting up with people. In reality, most people's dealbreakers are all correlated with each other, and you can easily get an idea if someone is in your "market" from five photos and two paragraphs. Scott has much more idiosyncratic criteria than the vast majority of people, but even still there's only a couple questions that will essentially narrow down the pool with a high degree of confidence.
This does not match my experience. Photos are rarely any help except to check attraction which is not remotely enough (high male attractiveness correlates very highly with disinterest in long-term commitment), and two paragraphs can be certainly no but are ~never certainly yes (and not-certainly-no filters into a 1/100 in my “market” pool, not anything better). I think I have less idiosyncratic criteria than Scott but am pretty sure of this conclusion (granted, I am also female).
You are right about Cindy but I think you are overconfident on your general point.
A worrisome trend is that corporations have adapted the concept of dating docs to employment. Using so called "job ads", they publish stringent criteria they have for employment and have the job applicants bear the load of checking for compatibility. This is despite Science(TM) showing that these formal criteria (like having an MD, or truck driver licence, or a PhD) have no correlation with the outcome of three minute long HR interviews.
Seriously, I think that dating docs are mostly useful in situations where there is an asymmetry between the supply of both prospective partners. For example, the rationality crowd seems to be overwhelmingly male (84% cismale on the 2022 ACX survey). Or I would expect that high status individuals within that group (e.g. Scott, EY) have probably way more people interested in dating them than they can possibly date. In such cases, dating docs serve multiple purposes:
* They advertise the fact that the writer is looking for dates (which can override the common courtesy of not cold-messaging people regarding romantic intentions especially in settings where universalization of such a behavior would see them flooded with such)
* They pre-filter candidates so that flooding does not occur
So dating docs sound like an obvious positive sum action for all the parties involved (except for more brazen people who would have cold-messaged their target audience before and now (1) have to compete with more considerate people and (2) may be summarily told "RTFM, you do not qualify".
Even for the ones filtered out by the criteria stated in the dating docs, the process is actually helpful, because it gives them feedback on a process which is normally completely opaque. If nine out of ten prospective partners state that they prefer a provider enabling a lavish lifestyle or physical beauty or BMIs below 20 or sizes above 1.9m, this is actually helpful information. Perhaps not directly actionable (unless one is willing to embark on a career in the drug trade or have ones leg bones enlarged or whatever), but still helpful (perhaps the correct choice is to search elsewhere for partners or romance a LLM or whatever).
Of course, one problem is that openness about certain criteria is generally frowned upon. Writing "your net income should be at least 100,000$ a year" is not the optimal way to filter for high earners, because many people (including people who qualify) will consider this criterion indicative of a shallow character. I think much of the traditional dating strategies revolve about maintaining plausible deniability about such things (which is why paying for dinner in a fancy restaurant will lead to better outcomes than just sending a copy of ones the bank balance).
One solution here might might be to provide aggregated information about the previous relationships. "my previous partners made between 100k and 130k a year" sounds at least less shallow than "I won't date anyone who makes less than 90k". One might still appear less shallow if one lied about that, though.
In general, I have two extreme models of the dating market, with the truth probably in between.
The one-dimensional model would be that most people of one gender, orientation and phase of life desire similar qualities in their partners. Few people are attracted by poverty or ugliness, after all. So for heterosexuals, you can order both by their hotness score, and the stable equilibrium will be the Nth hottest woman dating the Nth hottest man.
The high-dimensional model would assert that romantic potential is determined by lots of different preferences. People want partners with shared interests, similar (or complementary) kinks, members of their own subcultures and so on.
Obviously the real dating markets are mixtures of both, but I am totally puzzled as to regard what mixture. Any suggestions?
Love your leading joke, but ironically, I've seen some studies that show the interview results is better correlated with job success than degrees. I don't remember if job history listed on resume was more or less correlated than interview though...
Maybe we should just give all prospective dates an IQ test and sort based on that?
As a retired HR consultant, I can say that the research supported the use of performance testing as the best way to predict job performance.
Not sure how to translate that to dating...
I built a dating app that does boolean matching based on users' selected dealmakers & dealbreakers to filter matches (the app is now mothballed). Suffice to say the obvious that the format of the app is insufficient unless you have a billionaire friend that is willing to give you a lot of money for marketing. If no one is on the app, then it is hard to get traction, no matter the algorithm.
So if someone is thinking about building such an app, either be really young and build it over the long run, or have a clear business & marketing strategy that leads to user growth despite initial users having few matches.
Such a document could have prevented the Jonah Hill situation - the text messages his ex shared were all about incompatible expectations for partner behavior.
I figured that was more about them breaking up and her wanting to get back at him.
I think the mistake here is confusing two questions:
* Are people most attracted to people who match their stated preferences?
* Are people most likely to date people who match their stated preferences?
Sadly, people don't get to date the people they are most attracted to. Imagine if the undergrads in any of the speed-dating studies were sent on a desert island and left to incubate until they're somehow all paired up. When asked about their preference, maybe every girl said "I want a tall boyfriend" and every boy said "I want a girlfriend with a 0.2 waist-to-hip ratio". But, at the end, the most attractive girls will pair with the most attractive boys, and you will have no correlation between stated preferences and who people actually date. However, you will find a high correlation between the two partners' objective attractiveness.
In that regard, the utility of date-me docs is not to find people who would match your preferences, but to find people in your league.
This is the best explanation. People sort themselves based on looks first and on everything else later.
Even granted your assumptions, the utility would be to find compatible people in your league, with whom you could actually have a meaningful, happy relationship. ("League" here probably means "social class and location" at least as much as "attractiveness by whatever the local criteria are".)
Hi Scott,
I look forward to your upcoming column “Yet Another Bay Area House Party Redux,” starring Hana, Jane, Larissa, and Sky (Cindy makes a cameo appearance, decides the party is boring/weird, and leaves after 5 minutes). Please do it! The ACX commentariat will be eternally grateful. 😊
Dating docs are an attempt to solve a problem (the lack of partner). Unfortunately, trying to solve a problem = signaling that you have one; and that is low-status. The people making fun of dating docs are signaling that they don't have this problem; and whether that is true or not, the signal is high-status.
Note that reading or writing dating docs implies a preference for reading or writing. Some people hate reading and writing, so this solution wouldn't work for them.
I wonder how honest can people actually be in their dating docs. People are hypocritical -- maybe you want to date a person of the same race, and your potential partner also wants to date a person of the same race... but your potential partner may still perceive this information in your dating doc as evidence of racism and reject you. (Maybe they actually don't mind you saying this, but are still afraid that their friends might judge them for dating a racist. Problem is, your dating doc is a public document.) Talking about your partner's income may be a similar problem: you may want to date someone in the same social class, but don't want to be seen as a person for whom money is so important. Among woke people, expressing a preference for your partner being cis could be a similar problem. So a lot of important information may be unmentionable.
In a comment in this thread, Jack mentions preference for "kindness, honesty, and emotional stability". Can these things be talked about explicitly? Do honest people write "I am honest" and dishonest people write "I am dishonest" in their dating docs? Does anyone admit being hateful, or a psychopath? It could even be the other way round, a normal person admitting "sometimes I am not as nice as I would like to be" and a psychopath saying "actually, I am perfectly nice all the time". Or maybe admitting that "I am a little bit X" actually means that person is X a lot. In other words, you probably can't trust most information like this.
Dating doc is a potential weakness, e.g. if you are an attractive girl looking for a long-term relation, but there are many guys wanting to have a one-night stand with you. You just told them exactly what they should pretend to be!
Also, knowing yourself (sufficiently that you can describe yourself in a document) is quite difficult. I might be able to do it now, but I doubt that I would do a good job in my 20s. But maybe it's a part of the process of learning: figuring out what went wrong, and updating your doc accordingly. For example, in a parallel universe where LessWrong and the rationalist community never existed, I would have difficulty describing that I am looking for a *rationalist*. I would probably write something like "looking for an educated and open-minded person", but that's not the same. It is not even a narrow filter because many people are educated and almost everyone considers themselves open-minded.
This probably sounds too negative, but I actually like the idea. I just notice the imperfections. Freestyle description sounds nicer than checkboxes: I get more of the feeling that I know the person. Also, when other people design the checkboxes, sometimes you just don't fit any category; text allows you to describe it using your own words. We should probably use something similar also for finding friends.
I forgot the obvious thing: dating docs do not scale. (Until we have an AI capable of reading them and finding a match, which actually might happen soon.) So we need checkboxes as the first filter, and the dating docs as a second filter.
Would you necessarily want to restrict the potential candidate pool *before* meeting them in person? I think preferences are a complex interaction--I may weight certain personality traits higher than physical attractiveness, but the weights aren't "1.0" and "0". So it's entirely possible that a sufficiently attractive candidate could make up for a lack of certain personality traits, but only in comparison to whoever else showed up. You can't really predict these things in advance, so perhaps best to use filters conservatively.
Then again, spending an evening with a member of your preferred gender isn't always a complete waste of time, even if neither sex nor romance is likely to result. What else are you going to do for two hours? So maybe it makes sense to be liberal with who you agree to meet.
(Aware that many women are forced to proactively protect themselves from the potential for sexual harassment, so filtering for "creepy" as early in the process as possible is non-optional).
I would say it depends on how many candidates you have. If there is no one that passes your filter, it makes sense to try and meet someone else. On the other hand, if there are candidates that pass your filter, it makes sense to try them first (and if that fails, proceed to people outside your filter).
In other words, just don't use the filter as an excuse for staying alone.
Or maybe review your filters. Beyond the basics (race, social class, educational level, relationship status, etc.) I don't think we can know how we will respond to meeting someone for the first time. So it pays to be widen your pool , within practical limits.
“spending an evening with a member of your preferred gender isn’t always a complete waste of time... what else are you going to do”
oh man i can think of soooo many things i would rather do than spend 1:1 time with a (randomly picked from the population) stranger. that sounds like a 3/10 time to me
some of us are more introverted lol. or more weird. or both!
This post is f-ing great! The day before, I was listening to "Tea for the Tillerman". And I need a hard headed women... And I updated my profile on e-harmony, and added pictures. For me the problem with a dating doc is exposure. I live far away from any big city, so number of people is much bigger on e-harmony. (though the interface totally sucks, and I can't put my likes into whatever pigeon holes they've put up.)
This reminds me of "Chrono Cross":
> Entry number 1... Hello. I'm Marianella. I'm a Virgo and I'm 15. My hobby is **PoisonGas**! Nice to meet you.
> Entry number 2... Petra the Pisces here! I'm 16 and I love tall, dark boys! I love to sing in the **BlackRain**! Nice to meet you.
> Entry number 3... I'm Carolina, and I'm 10. When I grow up I want to be Miss Universe. I do a mean **Tornado**! Nice to meet you.
> Entry number 4... I'm Richard. I'm 29. And I'm here to protest beauty pageant sexism! My proudest accomplishment is the **BlackHole**! Nice to meet you.
Dating docs are cringey but also kind of inevitable, right?
1. Scarcity exists. There aren't hundreds of men with Richard Feynman brains and Henry Cavill shoulders lobbing pebbles at my bedroom window.
2. The dating market wants to clear. Everyone wants love or at least a good time.
3. Information asymmetries exist. Why not clear the fog a bit? As credit ratings and standardized test scores do.
I'm glad I haven't had to make one! My husband and I got sloshed around in a tiny office dating pool of numerate 22-year-olds, which probably happens less in a WFH world.
Separately, how do polyamorous people with kids have the time and energy to keep going on dates?
Someone (putanumonit Jacob?): "Date-me docs signal desperation."
Me: "But doctor, I..."
Technically Scott *is* a nice Jewish doctor...
I dated someone who was not really that compatible. It was a mistake, don't do it. Prescreening compatibility is very important.
I think a large part of why people are against dating docs is two-fold:
- it's not mainstream (yet?) and as such seems, like all online dating, desperate/weird/... . Basically it goes against the fairytale "you will bump into your perfect partner in the library/on the way to work/... and one of you will drop all their papers/books and the other will help pick them up and it will be cute and fate and the universe have this perfectly organized for you and if you try to make it more likely to meet a suitable partner you hate romance and mess up the universe's plans"
- This checklist mentality adopted at large scale would lead to even more segregation than we have now. If I only meet people who are in my social class, I'm in even more of a bubble/echo chamber etc. (I do personally agree that this could have pretty bad societal implications if everyone could filter for a lot of describable preferences/hard facts before seeing a list of people that want to date.)
Society would be fine even if date me docs became the norm. People who didn’t meet enough candidates would just relax their filters as an adaptation.
I'm not talking about people being excluded by such filters, I'm talking about the relationships that are created as a result of such filters being explicit and in code vs the status quo (filters are implicit/can get broken through)
> Many people want a partner of the same religion and level of religiosity.
This can't be right. Traditional literature/religion is full of indications that men need to be forced to marry within their religion, because otherwise they'll just convert to whatever their wife wants.
And in general - and this is easily observed today - women are much, much more religious than men. Insisting that you want a partner of the same level of religiosity as yourself is much like insisting that you want a partner of the same height as yourself: at a system level, almost nobody can possibly accomplish this, and it's not really worthwhile to try.
I think that most negative reaction on dating docs is sorta emotional and arguments is rationalization. Why it often provokes negatives? First thing - it strikes all "marriages are made in heaven" and "instant strike of romantic love" narratives, and this is still a big thing in our culture - dating docs are much more about "rational partner choosing" than "arrows of cupid". Second - we still mentally more villagers than citizens, and in village being too picky is a bad plan - but much more OK in big city
The way this topic was taught in my sociology class referenced Intimate Relationships by Rowland Miller, Chapter 3 of which I think covers the current research well.
For casual relationships/one-night stands: pretty much everyone's mainly looking for someone physically attractive. If you can get along with them at least a little bit, then you might stick around for a while and call it FWB or a situationship, but looks are still the main criterion for both genders.
For longer-term relationships, here's how it breaks down:
* Everyone's got similar dealbreakers (which are generally pretty obvious: kids, career, smoking/drug use, poly/mono, whether or not someone's very politically-minded or religiously observant and if so which religion/party are they a member of, etc.).
* Everyone's looking for a certain baseline level of assortative matching; the biggest difference between what straight men vs. women are looking for is that men tend to more heavily favor good health/looks and women tend to more heavily focus on wealth/earnings potential, but everything else is pretty similar and there's absolutely a lot of trading-off between how much of each criterion partners satisfy.
* How the assortative matching shakes out for long-term relationships is that they're all *benchmark* requirements: people look for a certain bare minimum (depending on how desirable/attractive they themselves are), but beyond that they're not super-important.
* Once the benchmark's met on both sides, what everyone's really looking for is how well you two get along: agreeableness, compassion, loyalty, and so on.
The latest edition of that book came out in 2022, and Chapter 3's got an *extensive* bibliography. I'm probably not pulling out the right citations, but here's a sampling:
* For similarities in requirements: Thomas, A. G., Jonason, P. K., Blackburn, J. D., & Li, N. P. (2020). Mate preference priorities in the East and West: A cross-cultural test of the mate preference priority model. Journal of Personality. doi:10.1111/jopy12514
* For a summarized list of what people want: Lam, B. C. P., Cross, S. E., Wu, T., Yeh, K., Wang, Y., & Su, J. C. (2016). What do you want in a marriage? Examining marriage ideals in Taiwan and the United States. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 703–732.
* More on what people look for in a casual relationship (not sure which one they were citing!):
* Eastwick, P. W., Luchies, L. B., Finkel, E. J., & Hunt, L. L. (2014). The predictive validity of ideal partner preferences: A review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140, 623–665.
* Eastwick, P. W., & Hunt, L. L. (2014). Relational mate value: Consensus and uniqueness in romantic evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 728–751.
* For people adjusting their standards to meet who they're already dating: Kučerová, R., Csajbók, Z., & Havlíček, J. (2018). Coupled individuals adjust their ideal mate preferences according their actual partner. Personality and Individual Differences, 135, 248–257.
Suffice it to say that I think the research isn't in a completely terrible place right now (knock-on-wood), and that at least some of the criteria are well-understood.
The real criticism of date-me docs, then, wouldn't be that the preferences themselves are undescribable: it'd be that what people put into the date-me docs doesn't effectively depict what matters.
And I think that's a bad criticism, too; I think writing about yourself is a great way to show off your personality, especially if you write a lot in general. (Even if you're just showing off the fact that your first instinct to show yourself off is to do it in writing!)
So really, I think that the main criticism might just boil down to an example of The Worst Argument In The World.
A not-so-hot take: I hope AI-assisted dating will take off someday. I won't need it, I hope, since I'm already married, but other men and women like me are suffering. Tinder-like apps are shit - "matching" people on attractiveness seems like anathema to me. And long-form dating sites are mostly dead and not coming back, unless someone finds a way to monetize them (well, Substack found a way to monetize long reads, which were going the way of dodo with advent of social networks, so there is hope there). But if I had to date again, it would be so, so nice to let an AI assistant comb the internet for a likely woman who matches my preferences...
Problem is...would you match hers?
Our AIs should sort that out, of course :)
From reading the article and the comments here, it seems like we have dating apps that are actually good: OKCupid and eHarmony. Why, then, do we hear so much about how dating is broken these days and loneliness is at all-time highs?
I would guess it's a combination of a few things
1. These apps are not as good as people say they are
2. People don't actually want to settle down that badly
3. People's standards are too high
Anyone have insight into why dating isn't basically solved? We can put aside the question of what's wrong with the existing social science and consider the efficacy of the existing social engineering.
Dating is solved for most people because most people aren’t single by the age of 30. For the rest it’s primarily due to their own standards being too high, yes.
Yeah, it does seem that it's not exactly horrifically broken or anything, but it seems hard to argue that platforms that make preferences more legible have helped. Of course, maybe the results would be _even worse_ without them, but hard to prove.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/more-americans-are-choosing-to-stay-single/
the share of American adults ages 25 to 54 who are married fell by almost 15 percentage points between 1990 and 2019, from 67 percent to 53 percent.
That's still 53 percent for whom dating is "fully" solved, plus a lot of people are happy in a relationship without being married. The single people aged 30+ are still an abnormality.
Sure, maybe, but it's not surprising to me that the cultural discourse better reflects the _change_ in the circumstances than the level that they're at now. Ie, when marriage drops by 14% we will hear doom and gloom whether it drops from 90 -> 76 or 67 -> 53
> Anyone have insight into why dating isn't basically solved?
You can't solve a supply-and-demand issue with a matchmaking algorithm. Basically, a combination of "standards are too high" and "value proposition too low". Online dating is now the predominant way couples meet though, so I wouldn't call it broken.
OK Cupid went bad. They put a lot of the functionality behind paywalls and serve you a lot of spam.
Why did Match let that happen? Is there an opportunity in the market?
Probably, it made them more money.
As for an opportunity...not that I see, there are more geeks than there are women who want to date them. You could rip them off, I suppose, but that won't make you popular around here at least.
Probability of first marriage by 30 is 13% higher for women than for men, so there is some discrepancy, as you highlight (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db19.htm#:~:text=There%20is%20a%2050%25%20probability,women%20and%2061%25%20for%20men.)
It may have made them more money, which is why I'm asking if there's an opportunity to release a product that does what OKCupid used to do. I gather the degradation in service did not flip them from unprofitable to profitable, but merely increased profits.
What sort of product are you envisioning when you say "rip them off"?
It's probably not the sort of thing I would work on in any case (happily working on my own startup). However, I think it's important to analyze the market size independent of the vibes and ethics. After all, as the inimitable Nikita Bier says, "One of the most important differentiators between great consumer founders and the rest is a willingness to acknowledge a shameful truth about people—and then being comfortable attaching your name to that product." (https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1675526162318065668?s=20)
I agree with you about analyzing market size independent of vibes and ethics, but I don't have the social skills, access to capital, organizational ability to be an entrepreneur.
Nonetheless...you asked me a question. I guess I meant 'invent a dating service for nerds which will sucker in enough lonely male nerds that you can make some money off them before they realize they're not getting anywhere.' I suspect a lot of that population has gone incel or is watching harem anime (or both) at this point. But, heck...the guy who gets rich is the guy who does the thing everyone says he can't.
The linked Tweet is referencing an app doing essentially what you are saying. You can meet this need cheaply without involving real people at all, as Character.ai is doing. People can invent fake personas that will do romantic roleplay with users, enhanced with AI generated images as well.
I'm 99% sure I made the first date me doc
https://twitter.com/dschorno/status/1687141890016329728?t=1-UfpVSfzMNSYcVZrgHS-g&s=19
it was an idea that I came up with without seeing anyone else and was 7 months before the next earliest example I've seen
Did it work?
I came for the headline and stayed for the glimpses into Scott’s love life.
I think the argument here is correct, but wonder if there is something more to be gotten from the skeptics on stated preferences. I think lots of people (applies to me at various points in my life) overstate the importance of, for example, matters of taste (liking the same music, pop culture ephemera, sports teams, whatever) and how important alignment on that is for a happy, long-term relationship.
Basically I think there’s a bucket of important things you should be aligned on - monogamy, religion, politics, whatever, and a bucket of things that feel like they are important but probably aren’t - Taylor Swift fandom. Of course person to person these categories can change and there is no one size fits all solution to disentangling what is important and what isn’t. That’s probably something best left to your friends to actually help you sort through. But a study that predicts that e.g. shared musical taste doesn’t mean much as far as lowering divorce risk is a decent enough hint that maybe for most people that’s a criterion that should fall in the “not that important” bucket.
People don't think dating docs are weird and repellent because there are no legible criteria to screen potential partners. But these criteria should be a blunt, first-pass tool. If I want an atheist guy in his 30s in DC, and you're a 20-year-old Christian woman in Ohio, we're not compatible. Great. Tell people your basic criteria. But once you have someone who meets those first few basic, legible, criteria...go on a freaking date! You'll be able to tell within 30 minutes whether you're attracted to the person, like the person, and feel comfortable with the person. And you cannot determine this from any amount of reading and writing google docs.
Dating docs are weird because they're incredibly long and detailed, and because the effort you spend writing ten pages about yourself and reading other people's manifestos is effort that could more usefully be spent going on dates, and actually figuring out whether you like the person.
If you like them, feel comfortable with them, want to have sex with them...you'll find that all the details on your 15th page about your ethical philosophy and tastes in video games absolutely do not matter at all.
Dating docs (or very long dating profiles like in the old OkCupid days) are certainly a weird thing for weird people.
The question is what do you enjoy more? Reading long articles by people you don’t know? Or spending time with people you don’t know?
If asked to choose between A) reading 10 long dating profiles only to realize 9 aren’t for me or B) going on 10 short coffee dates 9 of which are dudes I don’t vibe with, I slam A. But probably most people pick B. (Also, most people probably vibe with more than 1/10 people lol.)
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. But there’s a place for niche dating strategies for niche people.
Agreed. I just don't think it's going to work for most of those guys because there are more guys filling those out than girls interested in the kind of guys who would fill those out.
But, if even a few get lucky, it's probably worth it for them.
I think you're overestimating how significant those numbers say political compatibility is. The study said that 4% of marriages are between a Republican and a Democrat, which *sounds* low, but given that something like 30% of people are Republicans and 30% Democrats and 40% Independents, you would only expect 9% from pure mixing. There are 17% between Independents and non-Independents, but from random mixing you would only expect 24%.
Looking at these numbers actually made me realize that this level of political compatibility appears to be far *less* important to most people than I would have expected. It looks like 16% of Democrats are married across party lines, even though 70% of their options are across party lines (about 1/4) of the expected number), and 84% of Democrats are married to other Democrats, even though only 30% of their options are Democrats (about 3x the expected number) so there's something like a factor of 12 between their probability of marrying a particular non-Democrat compared to their probability of marrying a particular Democrat. But a factor of 12 is much smaller than I would have expected in this era of high polarization - and low enough that you wouldn't actually want a filter that eliminates 100% of the people from the wrong side of that line.
I think your comment has the right conclusion, although I believe your numbers are off. The expected probability of a random pair of people being one Democrat and one Republican would be 30% x 40% x 2, since it could be Democrat + Republican _or_ Republican + Democrat. So the expected probability would be 18%. Similarly, you would expected an Independent and a non-Independent pairing 48% of the time, not 24% of the time. So the factor should be 24. Which is pretty high. Might still not be enough to instantiate a filter that eliminates 100%, but it is pretty high.
Mark my words, soon dating apps will happen in VR. Assuming we get to a point where it can read and show your facial expressions. And possibly upper body language as well.
In fact VR would be perfect for meeting strangers. You can sort of be yourself in an avatar with a different voice (or the same voice), it would be like a real life meet up, except you can end it anytime and move on to the next one.
I noticed this post mentions race a few times, seemingly with the implication that most Americans would only want to date someone of the same race as themselves. Now I'm curious, is that really true, and to what extent? My intuition says there are plenty of people who don't have an explicit preference regarding race, even if they might filter potential partners on other factors like political views. I'm wondering if my social circles and I are outliers on this.
For context: I'm a straight white (ethnically part-Jewish) guy in my late 20s, politically liberal, who has lived most of my life in the NYC area and the Boston area. I don't think it's wrong if someone has a preference towards dating someone of their same race, but I've never had that kind of preference. When I was more actively trying to date and using the apps, I went on dates with both white and non-white women without it ever coming up as an issue. And many of my friends seem to feel similarly.
Yeah, it's true, though that's declined. As you say you are in a pretty liberal area.
"Among all newlyweds, 9.4% of whites, 17.1% of blacks, 25.7% of Hispanics and 27.7% of Asians married someone whose race or ethnicity was different from their own."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States
That's in 2010; probably gone up a bit since then.
42% of interracial marriages in the US are white/hispanic, and "hispanic" naturally includes people with substantial (if not majority) european ancestry.
>I noticed this post mentions race a few times, seemingly with the implication that most Americans would only want to date someone of the same race as themselves.
The vast majority of white Americans marry white people. And many of those who marry "non-whites" are marrying hispanics of significant (if not majority) european ancestry.
People of different races on average look very different, have different political views, have different culture/interests/values, have large different in career/income/education. People are vastly more likely to have more in common with someone of their own race than of a different race. People have these preferences *within race*, so it would be really weird if there weren't substantial race preferences.
And I think your post highlights something very funny - in one breath, liberal americans will say that differences between races are small and we should look past them, then in the next breath they claim that racial differences are so profound that it's worth engaging in literal race discrimination to make sure that there's enough of each race in colleges, corporations etc.
Of course, your dating life is almost certainly going to be one in which you're specifically exposed to non-whites who you have more in common with than average. I'm sure most NYC liberals would show strong race preferences if they were subjected to the *average* white, black, hispanic, asian people of the opposite sex from around the country.
Pretty sure patient zero was Richard Stallman and that should be enough to convince most people against the practice.
My grandpa was a medical doctor and he had zero difficulties finding a date or a spouse. Aren't you a psychiatrist, Scott? So maybe your ease in finding a catch isn't that informative. I mean, how many women who are moderately indisposed to poly life would flip flop to snag a doc? Or men.
Why would someone who is asexual be interested in polyamory?
Scott discussed this in an old blog post from 2013: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/06/polyamory-is-boring/
Thanks for the link 👍🏻
This is an absurd question, Scott. I don't know if it's the asexuality or what, but the answer to your puzzle, or whatever you want to call it, of the five dating ads is:
1) Which of them is the best-looking?
2) Which of them is the best at giving head?
I don't care about *anything* any of them wrote. None of that has absolutely any relevance for a relationship. Have your weird hobbies, girl!
How old are you? When I was 19 I would be 100% in agreement. But a decade later... sorry, but even the best head giver in the world isn't worth it if she's highly annoying.
In my 30s. In a happy relationship.
Edit: And obviously there are deal-breakers, but nobody is going to write out the real ones (I'm single because I cheated on my five last boyfriends; I'm incapable of accepting any guy who isn't out of my league; etc.) in a dating ad.
Delicious Tacos confirmed Scott Alexander reader
I don't even know who that is. I do like tacos, though.
Speculatively, I think dating docs (as opposed to broad categorical pre-screening) will, if they grow in popularity, have the effect of essentially making women increasingly convinced that few men if any are good enough for them.
I would push back on the claim that a public "date me" profile reduces pipeline and exposure. I suspect that a well formed and publicized one actually both gets you a much better top-of-the-pipeline, and acts as a more efficient filter. You and your extended social network are probably much better about targeting single people with your profile than any dating app would be. So way more eyeballs on first pass, much better chance of multiple exposures to the same eyeballs (it's still a weird enough thing that folk might read and talk about your profile multiple times; an early adopter advantage), and network effects (they'd be a perfect match for Jane! Let's introduce them)
I spent years on OkCupid in two countries and never met Hana. Surprisingly low amount of resulting relationships. But I did find that free text profiles gave some sense of the person.
Actually, thinking back on this. The problem was exactly that I *did* meet a few Hanas - women who can create a charmingly quirky dating profile which shows intelligence and an interesting inner world, and activates my damsel in distress sensor (also often pretty). But also people which a more sober reading of their profile would reveal have a hard time managing their daily lives. I kept falling for them and sticking around for too long, only to discover really you can't have a relationship with those people, even if they did stick around.
I can't believe that after realizing this in the past, and being married and off the market for a few years, I still read that profile and think "wow, she sounds great, I would have loved to date her." Facepalm.
In my experience, the chance that Hana also loves Taylor Swift is surprisingly high, relative to what stereotypes would suggest. Swift is actually hip with rock critics.
This sounds like a great idea. An obvious one, even. But then again, I always found "show, don't tell" an incredibly stupid advice. Might be related.
Back when I used to use dating apps, similar music preference + photos were uncannily good at predicting compatibility for me. I think music taste can reveal most other preferences fairly quickly like for instance where you prefer to live, religion, interests, personality.
What was your process for finding compatible people, when you were looking, Scott?