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helldalgo comments on A Rationalist Guide to OkCupid - Less Wrong
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"Why are people seduced by the pernicious meme that finding love requires no deliberate effort?"
Possibly because relaxing about their dating prospects makes them more attractive. For people whose effort looks like desperation, they may have better results if they stop trying so hard.
EDIT: I think I just did the thing that has been annoying people. I searched for the contrarian statement I could make, rather than any other type of commentary or response. I'm sorry.
I think we may mean different things by "effort".
I referred as effort to the invisible things you do behind the scenes to maximize your odds, like spending hours reading profiles, crafting strong messages and analyzing your matches. I broadly agree that when you get to the visible part, i.e. going on the actual date, you probably shouldn't treat it as intense labor and relax into who you actually are - more on that in Part 2.
That's a good distinction, and obvious in retrospect. Thank you!
I'm interested in Part 2; I'll keep my eye out.
Wow, you really hit the nail on the head!
No, I think it's reasonable. This is good advice for correcting the particular failure mode most people engage in, but it lacks sufficient... specificity, and results in a different mode if applied without discernment (which Jacobian's response does, quite usefully). So your comment furthered the debate, and added information.
I think you're misunderstanding. "Deliberate" need not be "desperate". There is a big difference.
"For people whose effort looks like desperation."
I think we're having an inferential gap issue here. There is "High effort, no skill" and "Desperate." These look very similar. Then there's "Low effort, low skill," and "no desperation," which also look similar. These often result in a massive improvement over "High effort, no skill." I'd bet on many people seeing that improvement and thinking it's enough; maybe they're satisfied with their results, or maybe they don't realize that better results could be had. Hence, the proliferation of the meme.
Then, of course, there's deliberate effort, which requires actual skill. "High effort, high skill" probably delivers better results than "no effort, low skill," and this article seems to be a good example of that.