2:45:24 PM Katja Grace: The main thing that puts me off in online dating profiles is lack of ambition to save the world
2:45:35 PM Katja Grace: Or do anything much
2:48:03 PM Michael Blume: *nods*
2:48:07 PM Michael Blume: this is indeed a problem
2:57:55 PM Katja Grace: Maybe there is a dating site for smart ambitious nerds somewhere
2:58:25 PM Katja Grace: Need to set up lw extension perhaps
2:59:02 PM Michael Blume: haha, yes ^^
3:00:40 PM Katja Grace: Plenty of discussion on why few girls, how to get girls, nobody ever says 'oy, girls on lw, want to get together some time?'
3:01:14 PM Michael Blume: somebody really should say that
3:01:34 PM Michael Blume: hell, I'm tempted to just copy that IM into a top-level post and click 'submit'
3:01:48 PM Katja Grace: Haha dare you to
LW pickup lines:
"Hey baby, wanna get froze together?"
"Wanna make a little adaptation executor? Wanna practice?"
"I don't bite. Unless that's in your definition of Friendliness . . ."
"Wanna grab coffee and swap some memes?"
"There's a world in which we get together. Wanna make it this one?"
"The coin came up heads, so I guess you have to sleep with me."
LW pickup lines
"Are you an evidential decision theorist? Because if we get together that increases the probability the simulators are benevolent."
Also, along Yvain's lines, anything with the words "set of priors", "bimodal", "improper".
...So there's this very complicated moment of a group coming together, where enough individuals, for whatever reason, sort of agree that something worthwhile is happening, and the decision they make at that moment is: This is good and must be protected. And at that moment, even if it's subconscious, you start getting group effects. And the effects that we've seen come up over and over and over again in online communities...
The first is sex talk, what he called, in his mid-century prose, "A group met for pairing off." And what that means is, the group conceives of its purpose as the hosting of flirtatious or salacious talk or emotions passing between pairs of members...
The second basic pattern that Bion detailed: The identification and vilification of external enemies. This is a very common pattern. Anyone who was around the Open Source movement in the mid-Nineties could see this all the time...
The third pattern Bion identified: Religious veneration. The nomination and worship of a religious icon or a set of religious tenets. The religious pattern is, essentially, we have nominated something that's beyond critique. You can see this pattern on the Internet any day you like...
I think you Less Wrong guys could find the kind of girl you're after if you trained yourself to be bold (take a public speaking class) and thought about where to look. I was talking to a girl at school today who told me all her heroes were named Richard: Branson, Feynman, and Dawkins.
Upvoted for a sensible analysis of the problem. Want girls? Go get them. My experience is that a common mistake amongst academically inclined people is to expect reality to reward them for doing the right thing - for example men on LW may (implicitly, without realizing that they are doing it) expect attractive, eligible women to be abundant in the risk-mitigation movement, because mitigating existential risks is the right* thing to do, and the universe is a just place which rewards good behavior.
The reality of the situation is that a male who spends time attempting to reduce existential risks will find himself in a community which is full of other males, which, relative to other hobbies he could have, will reduce his pool of available women.
Women who spend time attempting to reduce existential risks will find themselves surrounded by guys, who are preselected for intelligence and high ethical standards.
men on LW may (implicitly, without realizing that they are doing it) expect attractive, eligible women to be abundant in the risk-mitigation movement, because mitigating existential risks is the right* thing to do, and the universe is a just place which rewards good behavior.
Really? I find it hard to imagine that kind of naivety.
I have found that I have often had to rid myself of the same piece of naivety multiple times, for various parts of my mind, over the course of months or years...
I think I'll save the world first, then worry about a girlfriend.
Plus, the available dating pool should be that much larger with that accomplishment on my resume.
Issues like these motivated the development, at MIT in the 1960s, of a "Dateless Decision Theory", intended to provide a rigorous answer to questions like, If I'm single, should I do something about it, or just get on with serving the greater good? But the UN banned it after the publication of studies alleging that the accumulation of DDT in the intellectual food chain had a net negative effect on human reproductive fitness.
So ... that's what happened to Love and Life Just Before the Singularity. It never made sense to me to remove something that innocuous from the public web, but it all fits if that was the work of a global conspiracy!
This is extremely troubling news. With a shadowy world government agency clamping down on serious argument about no-mating strategies, one has to wonder how much the public discourse has been skewed by them. And would it be a good idea to attempt to replicate any of the suppressed research? There is a tricky tradeoff here between figuring out the truth about this critical question, and not rising to the attention of the suppressing agency.
Chances are, you with a girlfriend and you without a girlfriend are very nearly two different people. Which do you think has a better shot at saving the world?
(I don't mean to answer the question for you -- I don't know you that well.)
With a girlfriend, I care more about saving the world.
Without a girlfriend, I have more time to actually save it.
The best of both world is... polyandry?
More different than that:
When my last relationship was going well, I was far more centered, far more emotionally stable. I was definitely at least an SD above my current state as far as non-effortful nonverbal status signaling -- that is, I probably came off better in social situations, whether or not she was with me.
I live in Western Massachusetts. Being on this website at all filters for a lot of my criteria, so if somebody in commuting distance who is not more than five years older than me (I'm about to turn 21), doesn't smoke, and has not demonstrated him or herself to be a jerk in LW comments in the past would be interested in meeting, let me know.
Count me in. I'm 24 and moving to Hudson, MA in two weeks. I will temporarily bear the stigma of "unemployed and living with parents", but that should last a couple months at most.
An update for curious onlookers: this panned out. Tuesday was our first "luniversary", if I may employ a nonce. :)
For any future biographers eagerly following this thread to learn of Alicorn's relationship history, we got back together on July 30th at 9:30 PM PDT, when her plane landed.
For any present day folk (especially those in/around Berkeley) eagerly following this thread in order to learn when/whether it is appropriate to hit on Alicorn: go for it =)
I assign a 99.9% probability to there being more male readers than female readers of LW, The most recent LW meetup that I attended had a gender ratio of roughly 20:1 male:female.
Males who feel that they are competing for a small pool of females will attempt to gain status over each other, diminishing the amount of honest, rational dialogue, and replacing it with oneupmanship.
Hence the idea of mixing LW - in its current state - with dating may not be good.
However, there is the possibility of re-framing LW it so that it appeals more to women. Perhaps we need to re-frame saving the world as a charitable sacrifice?
I would love to know what the gender ratio looks like within the atheist movement; I think we should regard that as a bound on what is achievable.
"I assign a 99.9% probability to there being more male readers than male readers of LW"
I expect that you have a VERY GOOD reason. As it is, I cannot help but disagree.
I assign a 99.999999% probability to the same thing, i.e. that there are more male readers in the world, than there are male readers of LW in the world.
Should I be embarrassed to admit my own lack of ambition on this site?
Saving the world sounds like it involves a lot of painful work. I don't like the world very much, and would prefer to escape from it instead of save it.
Addressing the topic at hand more directly, I usually assume that most of the girls here are probably located outside of convenient driving distance and aren't here to be hit on anyway. Furthermore, after considering the extent of my personal problems, I've come to the conclusion that I'd be more trouble than I'm worth to any woman who might be convinced to date me, and taken myself off the market.
2:57:55 PM Katja Grace: Maybe there is a dating site for smart ambitious nerds somewhere
OkCupid seems adequate for that purpose. At least, I seem to find more nerdy ambitious girls in my area than I want to make time for and I imagine it would be even easier for a girls finding guys.
One problem, however, is that confessing a nerdy ambition of saving the world is, in general, the wrong thing to do in a dating profile. Many nerds may have reluctantly conformed their signalling to something more appropriate.
I'm curious about your indication that you don't want to get married until gay marriage is legal in your state. Not that it's not a fine sentiment, but do you have reason to believe that this makes any of your friends feel better, or that it's going to speed up the overturning of Prop 8, or otherwise accomplish anything other than leaving you a bachelor until said overturning? I had been aware of the existence of straight/bi people with this stance before but have not had the chance to quiz one, so - you're it!
Honestly? My family has a fair few conservatives, and I suspect they care when/whether they get to see me get married. Call it extortion of you like, but I do anticipate that change on this scale gets things done.
This prompted me to write about the related situation in my country. It's something I've had occasion to feel strongly about (my two best friends got married last month), but isn't related to ordinary LW discussions. (This thread feels a lot more open than the "official" Open Threads :-)
I live in Israel. The law here forbids "mixed marriage", i.e. miscegenation. Citizens have an "ethnicity" listed in their state IDs, and must be married (and divorced) by a priest from the matching brand of religion. My ID card says "Jewish"; that means I can only be legally married by a Jewish priest recognized by the state, an Orthodox rabbi - Reform and other Jewish communities not being recognized. I must marry under the Orthodox marriage code, which means I can only marry another state-certified Jew.
There are other rules. Some are painful for those who have to deal with them: the pair being married must not have ancestors known to be bastards; a man named Cohen (a common surname literally meaning 'priest') cannot marry a divorced woman. Other rules are mere nuisances: a woman cannot marry within some days of her monthly period...
So I can't marry at least...
I am very surprised to learn that Katja lacks for sexual attention from nerds who want to improve the world. My being more than twice her age is the only reason I have not tried to start something sexual with Katja. Even then I have more than once suggested we get together for the pleasure of intellectual conversation and friendship.
[I deleted a paragraph here because many participants have opined that men should not use LW to meet women and no one opined otherwise.]
ADDED. I misinterpreted Katja's words in the original, top-level submission. Katja, in ...
Plenty of things that are not sex are 'sexual'. For example, any date that does not include at least some 'sexual tension' is a fairly lousy date. I presume rhollerith would at least plan to have dates with some sexual chemistry involved!
http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/selfdelusion.html
"This is kind of awkward, but, um, I've been noticing you in class—and, like, I'd really love to get to know you better, and I was just wondering"—his voice cracked—"if maybe this weekend you wanted to go see Hamlet at the Repertory Theater with me?"
Leaning against a locker with one hand, I chewed the thumbnail of the other, gazing at the blue-and-white checkered tiles on the floor. Despite his verbal ineptitude, at six-foot-two Eric is one of the more desirable seniors, and many sophomores would, I suppose, have been flattered by the attention. Removing my thumb, I replied—not, I don't think, with any malice in my voice, but genuinely, inquisitively, because I was seized by the problem and wanted to know the solution—"What you're saying is tantamount to saying that you want to fuck me. So why shouldn't I react with revulsion precisely as though you'd said the latter?"
Eric's cheeks reddened and his hands trembled; it was rather cute. "I just wanted to have a good time, just as friends!"
"You're asking me to accept that a first domino will be knocked over yet a hundredth will stand. Do chess masters continue playing when they see a mate—get it?—twenty moves ahead?"
The protagonist of that story is a Hollywood Rationalist. She doesn't really have any purpose behind most of her actions; it seems that (at least at the beginning), the only reason she uses rationality is to antagonize other people and make conversations awkward. Unsurprisingly, she becomes unhappy.
In that particular context, since "I'd like to take you to a show" and "I'd like to have sex with you" both demonstrate one common fact, that he wants to have sex with her, she considers them as being totally equivalent. Though it's still unclear why she would find the statement, "I'd like to have sex with you" offensive, given how she otherwise thinks, but since her purpose seems to be antagonizing people, it fits.
Hmm. I don't think this really works, because Eric brought up neither sex nor marriage. I think Ilyssa (the female protagonist) does pose an interesting question, but I have a hard time believing that she really feels repulsed or thinks she ought to. I'm not sure how to answer the question, but I'm pretty sure that it would be answered in the negative, and I have a strong feeling Ilyssa would agree.
The point of the passage seems simply to be that she has a tendency to say whatever pops into her head (and that those thoughts tend to be interesting and very intelligent), without any thought to the potentially negative social consequences. It's meant to elicit a desire in the (presumably male) reader to be in Eric's place and able to see past Ilyssa's awkwardness and to her great mind, perhaps to handle the situation with more rationalist grace, perhaps even winning the interest of the girl. I think the rest of the story supports this interpretation.
I've only been reading Open Threads recently, so forgive me if it's been discussed before.
A band called The Protomen just recently came out with their second rock opera of a planned triology of rock operas based on (and we're talking based on) the Megaman video game.
The first album tells the story of a people who have given up and focuses on the idea of heroism. The second album is more about creation of the robots and the moral struggles that occur. I suggest you start with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP2NePWJ2pQ
Unfortunately, I currently live in NE texas, so probably 300+ miles away from 95% of everyone on the site. OTOH, at the moment I have the ability to move pretty much anywhere in the country, so maybe all hope is not lost.
I'm scared of touching girls. Every interaction with women I see tends to be like Girl Gone.
But I'd rather get over that. If anyone reading this wants to bang and is familiar with my crazy history but okay with that, let’s meet offline to lower the odds of you being turned off by my shoddy grammar and punctuation.
From my experience with Lesswrong meetups, girls on Lesswrong tend to be socially incompetent, physically unhealthy, meta-contrarian hipsters, rather than, well, people like this babe from the Complice chatroom screenshot on the complice main post
-- Clay Shirky, "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy"
It's also a great description of early stage IRL dating.