IQ 145+ reasonably fit/attractive men around my age who happen to be sympathetic to transhumanist values
You're not me, but if you are anything like me, this will probably be one of the things you change your mind about in the future.
After switching "men" to "women", everything in your comment would have rung true for me from a younger age (15-19) - I was primarily looking for someone highly intelligent (though my cut-off was more like 95% than your 99.9%) reasonably attractive, socially liberal and sex positive...and even though my requirements were way less stringent than yours, I still was turning down advances from people who, had I got to know them better, might have turned out to be perfectly acceptable. I'd say I considered maybe 1% of the people I knew well enough to judge as acceptable partners.
Once I actually started having experience with real relationships, everything changed. I'm equally picky for serious long term relationships now (though I'm more willing to do casual stuff now than I was in the past) but today my "bottleneck" criteria that most people fail have mostly have to do with kindness, communicative skills, and emotional resilience. I still care about things like intelligence and attractiveness, but not nearly as much. To me, intelligence is sexy signalling in the same way a fit body is - I'm instinctively drawn to it and a total lack of it will turn me off, but I don't attempt to consciously evaluate it as a relationship criteria anymore. As for ideology, I find that most people who possess the qualities I care about either already have worldviews which I find acceptable, or tend to alter their worldviews after discussion.
I wouldn't say my actual criteria changed, only my knowledge of what my true preferences actually were. Regardless of the criteria you think you have, your true preferences will shine through eventually in the form of break-ups and relationships that fizzle out before they start. But if you're working with a layer of false criteria on top of the true preferences, you might turn down the opportunity to connect with someone who does not meet your false criteria but does satisfy your true preferences.
(For reference on how to weigh this info, I'm 23, I've been in a happy relationship for 4 years with several shorter non-consummated interactions before and during, and the only major stumbling block has been different monogamy/polyamory related preferences)
Hmm...I would very much like to know if my very stringent criteria for basic-possibility-of-a-relationship will change with time. I suppose I should evaluate my goals and why I have those criteria.
I've searched around on LW for this question, and haven't seen it brought up. Which surprises me, because I think it's an important question.
I'm honestly not sure what I think. One one hand, love clearly leads to an element of happiness when done properly. This seems to be inescapable, probably because it's encoded in our DNA or something. But on the other hand, there's two things that really make me question whether or not love is a good idea.
1) I have a very reductionist viewpoint, on everything. So I always ask myself, "What am I really trying to optimize here, and what is the best way to optimize it?". When I think about it, I come to the conclusion that I'm always trying to optimize my happiness. The answer to the question of, "why does this matter?" is always, "because it makes me happy". So then, the idea of love bothers me, because you sort of throw rational thinking out the window, stop asking why something actually matters, and just decide that this significant other intrinsically matters to you. I question whether this type of thinking is optimal, and personally, whether or not I'm even capable of it.
2) It seems so obsessive, and I question whether or not it makes sense to obsess so much over one thing. This article actually explores the brain chemicals involved in love, and suggests that the chemicals are similar to those that appear in OCD.
Finally, there's the issue of permanence. Not all love is intended to be permanent, but a lot of the time it is. How can you commit to something so permanently? This makes me think of the mind projection fallacy. Perhaps people commit it with love. They think that the object of their desire is intrinsically desirable, when in fact it is the properties of this object that make it desirable. These properties are far from permanent (I'd go as far as to say that they're volatile, at least if you take the long view). So how does it make sense to commit to something so permanently?
So my take is that there is probably a form of love that is rational to take. Something along the lines of enjoying each others company, and caring for one another and stuff, but not being blindly committed to one another, and being honest about the fact that you wouldn't do anything for one another, and will in fact probably grow apart at some point.
What do you guys think?