I might be overextending here but what would you say if I think OKC stuff is specific to OKC (and online dating sites specifically) and could not apply to other places?
Also, does OKC define "physical compliments" more precisely? My real life experience says otherwise, and there's also the question of why women wouldn't like their appearance to be appreciated despite spending a non-minor amount of their time on it.
As for reasons, I can only offer some speculation since I'm 0/2 on being hot and/or a woman. First of all, I also spend a non-negligible amount of time on my appearance and I like people who are into my humor/intellect/interests/personality and not my looks. Commenting on appearance can also seem vulgar or indicate that you're only looking for sex. Finally, good looking women get complimented on their looks a lot, and not very beautiful women may be insecure about their appearance and question the sincerity of your compliments. I think this applies not just on OkCupid but in most online and offline situations.
Again, just speculating.
Facebook friends are a non-think button press or in other words, pretty much nothing (unless you keep in contact, and in that case they're just friends)
My idea for the next incidentgate is (and seems kinda silly when typing it) "Hi I remember you from HS and always thought you were kinda cute but I was too shy to talk, would you like to meet up sometime?"
PEDANT EDIT: There's also a few girls from middle school before I moved, (Same city, different school)
I would replace "thought you were kinda cute" with "thought you were really cool/interesting", OkCupid's data shows that women respond negatively to physical compliments.
I've never really tried using Facebook even though I have an active account with a good variety of people. I guess I don't think that "we went to the same middle school together" is a better criterion for a match than "your profile shows we have a ton of things in common". Also, if someone's on a dating site you know that they're actively looking, and the pool is much bigger.
If you are reaching out on FB to someone you're really into, I would recommend again writing about a unique interest ('Hey, I saw your dancing picture, is that Argentinian Tango?') and not appearance. I assume that good looking women on FB get unsolicited messages a lot, you always want to start a conversation and show that you looked at more than their pretty face.
"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.
I've enjoyed the article, and I look forward for the parts, though it required me three/fourth re-reads to dig out the actual tips, they are scattered and sort-of buried amidst jokes and story.
I get what you're saying.
My approach is that I'm a blog writer and not a dating consultant. My main goal is for my readers to enjoy what they are reading even if the topic isn't at the top of their interests. People who know nothing at all about soccer (like Scott Alexander) and certainly don't work in soccer development seemed to enjoy the Tails of Great Soccer Players series.
I see your comment as actually encouraging my style: people who care about the advice will dig a bit to isolate the tips, people who don't care about it will spend a fun 5 minutes and have a few chuckles. Do you think the writing would be better if it was more structured (i.e. adding an intro and conclusion with a clear list of tips)?
P.S. The day I start writing listicles, take me behind the shed a put a bullet in me.
There's a lot of data and research on what makes people successful at online dating, but I don't know anyone who actually tried to wholeheartedly apply this to themselves. I decided to be that person: I implemented lessons from data, economics, game theory and of course rationality in my profile and strategy and OkCupid. Shockingly, it worked! I got a lot of great dates, learned a ton and found the love of my life. I didn't expect dating to be my "rationalist win", but it happened.
Here's the first part of the story, I hope you'll find some useful tips and maybe a dollop of inspiration among all the silly jokes.
P.S.
Does anyone know who curates the "Latest on rationality blogs" toolbar? What are the requirements to be included?
Wasn't sure if should have stayed at a job or applied for grad school, so I quarter-assedly worked on school applications while quarter-assedly pretending to work until I got fired.
You're the author of putanumonit?? I'd like to take this opportunity to say that your blog is amazing and I love it. Please write more soon!
Thanks!
I previously explored some of the ideas I write about on LessWrong, and on more than one occasion I was corrected here on dumb mistakes in math and reasoning that I made. I was hoping that the same would be true for Putanumonit, I even promise a small gift to anyone correcting a major mistake I made. That hasn't really happened yet. Either I'm becoming more careful in my writing, or I was spoiled by the high level of the commenters on LW :)
I started a rationality-adjacent blog about applying math to life last year and a couple of weeks ago I achieved my first major goal for the blog: a place on Scott's blogroll which bumped my readership by around 10x.
This is something that I always found weird hanging out with LWers, how people almost take pride in being anti-sports. I'm not athletic at all and yet I play a dozen different sports and watch everything from figure skating to college football. Is this because the nerd/jock dichotomy actually happens in American schools and not in movies? All my friends from the math club in high school in Israel played soccer several times a week, every chance that we could.
I encourage everyone to try playing a sport, if you've never tried then something like ping pong or even throwing a frisbee around can be good entry level activities for people who think they're horrible athletes.
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Is it correct to say that your explicit goal is to create entertainment/“porn”? Do you optimize for entertainment more than you optimize for other forms of utility?
I certainly don't write well enough to be considered "porn" :)
It's true that my blog doesn't have a terminal value outside itself, although I will occasionally write about Effective Altruism topics.My goal is to have a popular blog with a lively discussion, my blog will be popular if people enjoy my writing. That's the goal in itself, I am not planning to turn it into a source of income or anything like that.
Different people enjoy vastly different things: I am getting overwhelmingly positive response on LessWrong, and overwhelmingly negative response on Reddit. That's a good thing: like a dating profile my goal is to find my specific audience and not write universal clickbait, and LW is definitely the audience I aspire to have.
To apply to a LW audience, I'm trying to:
Come up with genuine insights based on analysis rather than repeat common wisdom that's based on sounding plausible.
Be always willing to learn and be corrected, including offering a reward for people finding major errors in my posts. One person has deserved it so far for pointing out a serious factual mistake that I fell for because of confirmation bias.
Show my math. If you don't want to see me calculate the influence of outliers on a regression slope, the blog isn't for you ;) If I can't do the math myself, I won't take someone else's word for it.
Puns.
The above list is very different from what would apply to 90% of my Facebook friends, for example, and I'm OK with it. If I wanted 100,000 shares, I would write "27 ways how Bernie is actually a lot like Batman and Trump is like Lex Luthor".