Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Optimizing for attractiveness - Less Wrong

13 Post author: MrMind 31 May 2013 09:14AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 June 2013 06:39:31PM 9 points [-]

High status, enough fame to broadcast across many possibilities, and sufficiently good Harry Potter fanfiction to convey a sense of my personality. (If you like HJPEV's personality you will probably like mine, though we are not the same person.) Currently down to 2 local and 1 East Coast girlfriend, btw. This pathway is not tremendously duplicable, but it was easier for me than learning to dress well or studying light-side pickup because I needed to do the work for other reasons anyway.

Fat is a problem for me because of how it affects things like sleep, and energy during daily work - having your fat cells suck out all the glucose you need is not helpful. If you can lose weight, you should obviously do so. If you haven't yet tried low-carb and Shangri-La, both seem relatively obvious things to attempt; the first seems to have a high success rate and the second is very easy. It's the people telling you to buckle down and use willpower who should be ignored - I know of exactly one case of that working, all other cases of weight loss in my personal experience did not involve what I would consider to be significant willpower.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 04 June 2013 05:56:34PM 4 points [-]

Some years back, I believe you said that working on FAI was too important to leave time for a girlfriend. How has that worked out? Have you found that romantic entanglements detract from your work, or enhance it?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 June 2013 06:06:36PM 3 points [-]

"I ran out of ability to not have a girlfriend" would be the real answer. Some labor complementarity, some time costs, doesn't matter much from my perspective because I ran out of ability not to have a girlfriend. I don't regret the dedicated labor I put in up until that point, back when being alone didn't seem like much of a problem.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 June 2013 06:42:18PM 0 points [-]

No time for hedonism except exactly enough to maintain the meat.

Comment author: MrMind 04 June 2013 08:38:03AM 4 points [-]

High status, enough fame to broadcast across many possibilities, and sufficiently good Harry Potter fanfiction to convey a sense of my personality.

Huh, I see. May I ask you if those girls just proposed them to you, or did you actively searched and seduced them? I understand that's a fairly personal question, I'm just trying to understand if I can copy a portion of your behaviour.

Currently down to 2 local and 1 East Coast girlfriend, btw.

Poor Eliezer :p

This pathway is not tremendously duplicable, but it was easier for me than learning to dress well or studying light-side pickup because I needed to do the work for other reasons anyway.

Yes, I've read HPMOR up to chapter eighty-something and I really liked it, maybe one day you should tell other people who want to start writing how to do it correctly.

f you can lose weight, you should obviously do so. If you haven't yet tried low-carb and Shangri-La, both seem relatively obvious things to attempt

I will certainly try, with even more focus. But I doubt Shangri-la can work for people who have been overweight for a long time, their leptin loop is far too off-track to be changed by such weak stimuli. I don't remember where but I've read that hypothalamus can develop leptin resistance.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 June 2013 08:46:49AM 4 points [-]

I brute-forced the other side of the problem (status/fame/impression) hard enough that I never learned to search and seduce. Sometimes contemplating this makes me feel very lazy, but heck, brute-forcing the other side of that took a lot of work. It was not the minimum-effort pathway if that had actually been the primary goal.

I was overweight for a long time before I lost 20 pounds on Shangri-la, after which it never worked again, but they were a nice 20 pounds to lose.

Comment author: wedrifid 04 June 2013 02:26:41PM 3 points [-]

Currently down to 2 local and 1 East Coast girlfriend, btw.

Oh no! Eliezer no longer has one girlfriend for each of the Harry Potter houses. I wonder which one he is missing.