I am not as old as you (I am in my early 20s), but I have come to the same conclusions independently.

If an interest or proficiency in rationality is related to cognitive or personality traits that show sex differences in mean or variance, such as systemizing or Openness to Ideas, then the pool of female rationalists would be lower that the pool of male rationalists. Consequently, barring polyandry, not all male rationalists can date female rationalists.

Yet even though a female rationalist might be a good match for a male rationalist in many ways, it is not self-evident that a male rationalist will only be compatible with females with a similar interest in rationality. What types of women he will be compatible with is an empirical question, that can only be answered through experimentation (i.e. dating women with different types of personalities).

Even though many male rationalists might think that they would be ideally matched with someone who thinks like them and inhabits an attractive female body, in practice, this may not happen. In females, an interest in rationality may be correlated with other masculine features, personality traits, body language, etc... which may or may not be attractive to the male rationalist, depending on the degree. While commonality due to similar thought processes might increase compatibility, there might be less chemistry. Or the chemistry might be just fine, and they might drive each other crazy for other reasons, especially if they have unresolvable philosophical differences and they both have a need to be right.

If a male rationalist cannot date a female rationalist, either due to scarcity or incompatibility, there are other more common types of women he might be quite compatible with. Specifically, I recommend women who are high in Openness to Experience. She will be more open-minded and interested in your views of the world, and if you are also high in Openness, you will be more interested in hers, and you both will be more understanding of the other in the event of disagreement.

Female rationalists may well be great matches for male rationalists. But they are rarer, and they don't hold a monopoly as good matches for a male rationalist. Consequently, a male rationalist is best off dating a variety of women until he discovers through actual experience what types of women he is best matched with.

Female rationalists may well be great matches for male rationalists. But they are rarer

Is that really true? It could easily be an availability bias on my part, but I find most non-airheaded women to be supremely rational on the instrumental level. Much more level-headed and focused on results, and far less likely to get obsessed about some stupid thing the way men do, with the possible exception of a man or a social drama, and in both cases, those things are usually short-lived by comparison to male irrational obsessions, or so ISTM.

(Of course, most of the women I meet these days besides my wife are either at internet marketing conferences, or else customers of mine. So, could easily be some sort of bias factor there!)

This post assumes that the reader wants a long-term relationship. There is often talk here on Less Wrong about PUA techniques, but they seem to be oriented towards the short-term. So, as usual, the question to ask yourself is: what do you really want? If your preference is for the short-term then you should get to know someone who knows PUA techniques, or attend a bootcamp. If your preference is for the long-term there are plenty of dating sites that claim to be able to match you with people of your type.

They are two entirely different statements, and, while there are cases where both apply, by no means are they equivalent.

They're obviously not completely equivalent, but in cases where your measurements form some Gaussian (or similar) distribution, which is very common, the you have the choice of saying things like (to use the water-purifying example), "we're 85% confident it's at least 99.97% pure", "we're 97.7% confident it's at least 99.3% pure", "We're 99.9% confident it's at least 98.5% pure", etc., etc., each of which represents a different part of the curve. Now obviously the most complete answer here would be to say "our data are decribed by a Gaussian of mean X and st. dev. Y", but people don't frequently do that in informal contexts, so how do you reduce it to one claim with one confidence?

In the relationship context, "better off" tends to come in large, uncertain chunks, so what rhollerith said is reasonable, what you suggested he might say seems very unlikely to be the case.

Would you go into why that is? It doesn't seem intuitive to me at all. Why shouldn't a relationship improve your life by just a small amount?

I think these are all pretty good points, but I have to wonder if female rationality is very important to most male rationalists. This implies that rationalist (Rationalist?) men are very, very, different from most men in the qualities they look for in a partner.

I need relationship advice and I trust the wisdom and honesty of this community more than most of my friends. I created a new account to ask this question.

I'm with an incredibly compassionate, creative woman. She excels at her job, which is a "helping profession," and one which I believe improves social welfare far more than most. The sex is outstanding.

But she loves magical thinking, she is somewhat averse to expected-utility calculations, my atheism, etc. She is, by her own admission, subject to strong swings of emotion and at greater than average risk of longer-lasting depression. We love each other but are scared that our differences may be too great.

How would you personally feel about a relationship like this? How should I go about deciding whether to continue this?

Added: We have been together more than 6 months. She has learned a decent amount about my way of thinking, but I have not pushed it on her. I frequently mention how great rationality is (but also mock myself to make sure we're all having fun).

I wish I had confidence that trying to convert her to my way of thinking would have net-benefits for her and for the world long-term, but I don't. Not that I'm convinced trying to convert her is a bad idea on utilitarian grounds either, it just seems risky.

But how many altruists can there really be, relative to status seekers?

i'm genuinely curious about how other less wrong readers feel about UR.

Huge fan here. Not sure that Moldbug is necessarily the most reliable thinker of good thoughts, but his good thoughts have almost no overlap with other people's good thoughts, which makes them especially informative.

Helping to rescue marine mammals is a more effective way for a straight guy to signal high status to prospective sex partners than addressing existential risks is. I always considered that a feature, not a bug, because I always thought that people doing something to signal status do not do as good a job as people motivated by altruism, a desire to serve something greater than oneself or a sense of duty -- or even people motivated by a salary.

I get up most easily when I've slept enough. If I get 8 hours of sleep, I don't even have to try getting up. I feel refreshed and am happy to get up. I'm not sure if the number of hours is 8, but from memory it seems to be around that much.

Does anyone else have the same experience?