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JoshuaZ comments on Love and Rationality: Less Wrongers on OKCupid - LessWrong
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Hey, I'd like some advice.
When I hang out in nightclubs, I seem to have two discrete states with a very abrupt transition between them: an "off" state where I'm almost invisible to girls, and an "on" state where they suddenly hang on me in twos and threes. But the "on" state happens rarely (once or twice a month for several hours, max) and I'm still not sure how to trigger it, even though I've spent months on experimenting. I've established that it doesn't depend on clothing, haircut, posture or the other obvious controllable factors - it must be some aspect of "inner game" that I sometimes achieve spontaneously but can't put a finger on. I also know that it's easier to reach the "on" state after a random girl smiles at me: it becomes a little easier to make the next random girl smile at me, and (with luck) it escalates like runaway AI. Does this match your experience? What is this thing, and do you know any tricks for "switching"?
How do you know that this apparent state difference isn't due to confirmation bias and standard tendencies for humans to see clustering where it doesn't exist?
Good question, made me think. At any given moment, except the short period of ramp-up, I can tell whether I'm "on" or "off" - from the inside it feels like it's binary. But it's true that on the outside my success varies on a continuous scale, because when I'm "off" I still have some tricks up my sleeve. But these tricks require a lot of willpower to use. When I'm "on", everybody likes me and willpower becomes irrelevant. Maybe it's about dynamics: when I'm close to "on", I gravitate toward "on" as I get more validation from others, but when I'm close to "off", I slide toward "off" for the same reason.