mikko

Summary: I organized two speed friending sessions that were formatted as social experiments. The first speed friending experiment was organized at the 2022 Less Wrong Community Weekend. More than 50 participants filled a matchmaking survey before the event and were randomly assigned into two groups: one where participants were matched with each other randomly, and the other where I tried my best to match people with each other using their survey answers. Analysis comparing the two groups did not indicate a difference in match quality. A second experiment was organized at the 2023 event. This time, there was no matchmaking and instead participants were split into two groups within which they could freely match up with each other. For the experimental part, the two groups were given two different discussion prompts. As prompts, one group was given only the classic and succinct "FORD" — "family, occupation, recreation, and dreams", while the other group was given a version of the 36 love questions[1]. Again, the results showed no difference between the two groups. The average match rating for the first experiment was 3.68 while for the second it was 3.96. This difference may suggest that either providing discussions prompts in general improves matches, or that giving people the opportunity to choose their own match (even if based on a first impression of some seconds) improves match quality. A third experiment could test this. The data overall suggests that people had many positive encounters and almost everyone involved had fun. I recommend running similar experiments in the future. Acknowledgments: I hired Santeri Koivula to do some of the writing and analysis — thanks! Thank you also to all the participants and everyone who gave me ideas & feedback. In the first experiment, participants filled a matchmaking survey consisting of the following questions: * Create a pseudonym (I personally didn't want to connect the su