rhollerith_dot_com comments on The First Step is to Admit That You Have a Problem - Less Wrong

53 Post author: Alicorn 06 October 2009 08:59PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (86)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: rhollerith_dot_com 08 October 2009 12:01:27AM *  1 point [-]

My very vague and silly guess is that among women in my age range, she was more compatible than about 49/50 of the others. And what I'm looking for is more like 1/300 or 1/400.

Thank you for clarifying what you mean by extreme compatability. I did not misinterpret what you meant.

Consider all the women between 22 and 60 in the eastern part of Marin County, California. Note the extremely broad defintion of "my age range." (Again I'm 49) Not all the single women, but all the women, single and looking, single and not looking or married. My next girlfriend will come from this set with probability .9 or more unless I move, which is very unlikely. (Of course she is more likely to come from the subset of those not now married.)

Now (using Pearl's language for causal models) do surgery on my model of reality so that I am already in a sexual relationship with one of these women picked at random. Do additional surgery so that she and I already know each other at least as well as couples usually do. Acquiring this knowledge is very time consuming and entails costs like dinners and entrance fees to cultural events. Note that this second bit of surgery allows me to consider the merits of the woman picked at random without regard to whether those cost (again, mostly my time and attention but also entrance fees, etc) are better spent on a different woman.

Marin County is among the top 3 most affluent counties in California. Demographics similar to Silicon Valley, but replace the nerdy component with earthy-crunchy and new-age components. Probably .1 (10%) of these women work out with weights regularly and a significant fraction employ personal trainers to help them keep in shape. (An ordinary trip to the supermarket is often a very distracting and very vivid experience for me )

There is a higher than .5 probability that I would choose to stay in the relationship until she dumped me or 36 months have gone by. The only reason the 36 months is in there is so that I do not have to consider the effects on my attractiveness to women (and consequently, my dating options) of a significant change in my circumstances.

The most likely reason I would choose to dump the woman is that her thinking is significantly distorted by some ideology, and I consider progressive political beliefs an ideology -- in fact, it is IMHO the most common ideology in these parts.
Or maybe what I am reacting to is just a high amount of the Big Five personality trait agreeableness. (I am quite low in agreeableness.) Speaking of Big Five, I am an extreme introvert, so strong extraversion is probably something else that would drastically lower the probability that I would choose to try to keep the relationship going as long as possible (inside this 36-month interval that defines our current universe of discourse). I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Would I prefer that she has read all of Eliezer's writing on the art of human rationality? Of course.

But I would be delighted, overjoyed, elated if she just knew the correct definition of "sexual selection" or understood that the poor people in the England of Charles Dickens were in fact materially better off than almost any other poor population at that time or at any previous time in history. (Define "poor population" as the first seven deciles of individuals distributed by material welfare in some natural category of people, e.g., residents of a nation state or linguistic community.) In other words, delighted, etc, if she had enough rationality, basic knowledge of things like the timing of the Industrial Revolution, and curiosity to seek out the hard numerical data which contradicts and overrides the fictional evidence of dramatizations on PBS of Charles Dickens novels. I just ended a 5-year relationship with a woman who did not know these 2 things. (She dumped me.)

Comment author: rhollerith_dot_com 08 October 2009 12:36:08AM 1 point [-]

Hey, pdf23ds, please speak up if you do not welcome attempts by me to help you, and I will shut right up, but could it be that the reason you feel the need for such a high level of compatability is that you consider it necessary for you to understand her and for her to understand you sufficiently well? Women are quite different than you and I! They are from a different planet! (Not really, of course, but it is an apt metaphor.) But I think I understood my girlfriends well enough to steer the future into quite wonderful territory even though they're from another planet. The best roads to understanding are the study of evolutionary psychology and simple experience being in a relationship. (Again I have 8 years.)

Comment author: Alicorn 08 October 2009 12:37:54AM *  9 points [-]

Women are quite different than you and I! They are from a different planet!

This is called "othering". It is not nice. Certain amounts may be required for accuracy, but this much is uncalled for.

Edit: If you think something is wrong with my identification and/or evaluation of othering, I'd be interested to hear it. I brought it up because the parent commenter has mentioned wishing to speak more sensitively in the past.

Comment author: rhollerith_dot_com 08 October 2009 01:37:43AM 4 points [-]

Voters: since I explicitly asked Alicorn to point out objectifying language to me, and that sort of thing, it pains me that her doing what I asked is currently costing her 3 karma. Yeah, I think some of the writers who favor terms like "objectifying language" and "othering" are silly and counterproductive, but Alicorn strikes me as quite sensible and a good person to teach me concepts that will help me get along better with people high the Big Five personality trait agreeableness.

In the process of trying to rewrite what I said, I realized that I had no insight into pdf23ds's reasons for adopting the (1/300 to 1/400) compatability target, so I should have kept silent.

(I would have deleted my comment, but now it is the subject of responses.)