SilasBarta comments on Typical Mind and Politics - Less Wrong

46 Post author: Yvain 12 June 2009 12:28PM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 12 June 2009 08:07:14PM *  3 points [-]

Okay, here goes (and my remark applies to several of your comments but the linked one was representative):

If you do not know any women, something is wrong. It either means that (1) you don't know anyone at all, in which case you should take care of that before "find a girlfriend" reaches the top of your list of priorities, or it means that (2) none of the men you know have introduced you to any of the women they know, which probably means something needs to be addressed on your end too, or it means that (3) the men you know themselves do not know any women, in which case something is wrong with them

There, first you identified how my situation was strange in one of three ways. Then, you listed things I should do to adapt:

If you know some women, but all the women you know are all taken or for some reason unacceptable, the odds are good that they know women who are neither taken nor unacceptable. Behave in a decent manner ...

There's nothing wrong with attempting to help with suggestions -- except for their grounding in ignorance of my situation -- but you are quite clearly saying that no one else should have done anything else accomodative on their end.

Therefore, you both claimed that my needs are unusual, and no one else needed to accomodate them.

Comment author: Alicorn 12 June 2009 08:13:13PM *  2 points [-]

Somehow, I don't think saying "You're doing everything right, your lack of success is the fault of misbehaving others, and I'll be sure to tell them so if I ever meet the people in your social circle" would have been germane or helpful. Is it possible that people in your social circle aren't giving you enough of a chance or giving you enough leeway for your quirks? Sure. That's totally possible. I can't do anything about that, so I didn't focus on it.

Secondly, I made no claims about your needs. I made statements of advice conditional on who you might or might not be acquainted with (I identified the relevant and mutually exclusive categories as: nobody, only men who haven't introduced you to any women, only men who don't know women, or some women who you find unacceptable). The only "need" that was involved was your interest in finding women who you could date, which, given the thread's context, was hardly unusual - and I never said it was!

Comment author: SilasBarta 12 June 2009 08:33:08PM 7 points [-]

The only "need" that was involved was your interest in finding women who you could date, which, given the thread's context, was hardly unusual - and I never said it was!

The unusual need was not interest in finding women, but rather, interest in finding women while not having the superabundant resources you falsely assume everyone has. Remember, your original advice was basically, "Hey, just try your luck with one of the million women who have prefiltered you and see who you're spark-y with."

a.k.a. "You can't find any bread? Well, why not just draw down your cake stockpiles?"

You didn't seem to think that people like me could exist -- the very same unfortunate premise people treat you with.

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