All of snog toddgrass's Comments + Replies

Thanks for this well researched comment.

I'm growing to think that a lot of health experts had an implicit understanding that the systems around them in the west were not equipped to carry out their best plans of action. In other words, they saw the smoke under the door, decided that if they yelled 'fire' before it had filled up the room nobody would believe them and then decided to wait a bit before yelling 'fire'.

I believe you that the experts rationalize their behavior like so. The problem is that underselling a growing emergency was a terrible advoc... (read more)

David Roodman was fired from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for his poor office politics skillS. He’s my greatest role model so you’re in good company.

He talks about it on his 80k interview, iirc.

Much of this thread is long time rationalists talking about the experience of new people like me. Here's my experience as someone who found rationality a year ago. It bears more closely on the question than the comments of outliers. I read the sequences then applied rat ideas to dating, and my experience closely resembles Jacobians model. Note that LW has little dating advice, so I did the research and application myself. I couldn't just borrow techniques, had to apply rationality[^1]. My experience is evidence that rationality is improving our outcomes.

I... (read more)

Do you believe that unpopular statements, supported by novel arguments, damage the commons? I think having more voices particularly voices that challenge our preconceived notions and values is good for the commons.

I don't agree that I should be required to anticipate all counterarguments. That seems a bit silly.

The main complaint people make about shittesting is that its irrational or unfair. That complaint was addressed by my post by reframing it from the perspective of the tester and their goals. I did not make that argument explicit to avoid insulting the reader and to stay within my own experience (robustness).

People have raised an additional claim that some forms of shittesting are used for abuse. This is a rare complaint and I was interested to learn it, but I was not obligated to scour the interwebs for complaints before pointing out the value of an oft-maligned behavior.

Those are some cool phrases to pull apart different types of testing partners. I think using that phrase would change people's moral attachments to the same behavior. I also think they are generally more precise which is cool.

Woah woah woah, I don't think my title is "simply wrong". I could have been more sensitive to your concern, but I'm not endorsing such sweeping moral generalizations about complicated courtship behaviors at all. Let's break it down in a couple ways.

Firstly, you've asserted a pretty narrow definition of the word shittest, where it means "loyalty test". In the usage cases I've seen, a minority of uses of shittest refer to loyalty testing. The most common usage case is shittesting of a man's status or social skills. So if you are asserting that loyalty tests ... (read more)

Mate is very good. I should write an entire post reviewing the book.

Much of the value from Mate is that it helps you understand your own experience. The most valuable single chapter in Mate is the chapter on mating markets. The effect size of moving mating markets is so huge that its obvious to me. Of the five mating markets I've explored, by far the largest factor is the demographic ratios. When I was 24 and in a terrible mating market, my friends really did tell me the market didn't matter and the problem was my behaviors. I felt so unnatractive and stup... (read more)

I'm sorry that your ex hurt you like that. It sounds terrible.

I also apologize for the way I titled and framed the ideas of this post. I was aware that it would provoke strong emotional responses, and intended that. Many people respond to slightly edgey dating posts with strong norm-enforcing comments. I like these comments because they highlight places where readers misunderstand my arguments, they tend to come with compelling advice, and I can evaluate the moral content of dating strategies.

It did not occur to me that I would hurt people by reminding them of the pain that so many of us carry from our romantic lives. But that was reasonably foreseeable from my perspective. You deserve an apology.

Hmmm. That's an interesting thought. In part I gave it this title to get responses, because responses improve my communications skills. But also I had no regular word for testing someone on a date. The concept of shittesting probably taught me that testing people was possible. But I probably would have figured it out from signaling theory.

As an aside, for a woman who shittests in the classic sense, are you saying that the behavior is not selfishly instrumentally rational (SIR)? I would still argue that it is, but am very unconfident.

the average person seems to be 100% against the idea of shaping behaviour and providing reinforcements, but 100% for showing appreciation and providing positive feedback, the term and frame used really makes a world of difference even if you are describing the same process, applied to the same goals and with the same methods.

So true. What I really want is a woman smart/rational enough to notice this without having to incept it.

So what I really want to sort for is.

• Low Need For Closure
• Low emotional lability
• Creative problem solving skills
• Instrumental

Thanks for bringing up Goodhart's law. It's a real problem. Rwanda girl probably did figure out intuitively that I wanted low NFC and respond to it. Fortunately for me, those attributes are hard to fake. Honestly I wouldn't trust myself to shittest for fakable attributes like affection, loyalty, interest and social status.

Is testing anti-correlated with self respect and competence? That seems likely. If I had greater social intelligence I would shittest less because I would be more confident to assess attributes naturally. And I should assume my partners h... (read more)

Firstly, thanks for you comments and for taking the time to think through this.

Firstly, I contest your underlying assumption that the natural state of the mating market is free of manipulation. The natural state of courtship is full of probing, testing, manipulation, assessment and generally devious 0-sum fuckery. We just don't notice because most of these behaviors are subconscious. So at a basic level, there's no consequentialist reason to think the subconscious manipulations are more ethical than conscious manipulations. There is reason to think the opp... (read more)

I agree with all of those points.

Depends on whether the specific woman finds dominance attractive. And that probably also depends on the type/degree of dominance, her mood, and how well you know each other. Yes, this "partially agree, partially disagree" strategy seems like the golden middle way between being disagreeable and boring.

I think many women, perhaps a majority, find a more dominant man attractive. Basically ensure any fact-based dominance display doesn't make the other person feel stupid. Good rule for lots of interactions.

True. I should rephrase my thesis "What people often mean when they say "mansplaining" is explanations which are intended to express dominance rather than to mutually arrive at better understanding".

The problem with mansplaining -

Why do men mansplain and why do people (particularly women) hate it? People sometimes struggle to articulate what mansplaining is and why they dislike it, but I'm surely not the discoverer of this argument.

Recently I was talking to a colleage during a strategy game session. He said "You are bad because you made these mistakes" and I said "yes I am bad at these aspects of the game. Alsol, you should have invested more into anti-aircraft guns". He immediately began repeating a list of mistakes I had mad... (read more)

My response

1. Ew gross worms

2. That logic holds up, Greater expected value in worm world.

Thanks for the comments, I suspect they would speed up finding relationships. A few notes

The "mating market" section of the mating plan is now quite trivial due to the absolute dominance of the dating app option for anyone who isn't strongly extroverted or already connected to a strong social network.

This could be misinterpreted as saying that mating markets are no longer relevant, which is false. I believe you mean that the apps have collapsed whole cities into one big mating market. That's probably true. For other readers, still think... (read more)

Thanks for the informative post. Oregon's referendum system has borrowed the information element of Switzerlands - check it out here https://scholars.org/contribution/how-citizens-initiative-review-can-improve-elections-where-voters-directly-decide

I mentioned "gold digging" as an ideological label, not to imply that being attracted to high-status suitors is the same as gold-digging. Personally, what turns you on cannot be unethical. I wouldn't judge a woman who has more crushes on captains than skippers or a man who has more crushes on large-breasted women. So if "gold-digging" implies marrying someone for money, in the absence of attraction, that is a different issue. No comment on if gold-digging is ethical, but its a separate question.

This distinction between preferences and behaviors helps escape the ideological traps of discussing romance.

Lol mating was not my best choice of word. But hey I’m here to improve my writing.

I'll comment on this post from Geoffrey Miller's perspective (which I still believe is the closest map to the territory for heterosexual men)

1. Examining your goals is really valuable. I agree you should start by exploring your goals and your ethics.

take the simplistic belief "women prefer rich men". Assuming that you believe that, and therefore you want to become rich;

This is good advice. To clarify neither I nor Miller believe that women prefer rich men. Financial success is probably correlated with extrovertion, intelligence, consci... (read more)

There's a bunch here to respond to, I'll take them in order of how relevant they are to my empirical questions, and put the infohazard stuff at the bottom.

1. Buzzwords -

If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it. Imagine instead:

I disagree, the Yudkowsky quote is too vague and you misinterpret it. If you talk about being "rational" you will not achieve the way. But if you talk about specific individual epistemic tools with a defined empirical goal and a desire to know and grow stronger, you will better map the territory. ... (read more)

OP here to clarify.

Was the edit just to add the big disclaimer about motivation at the top?

Edits - Added disclaimer at the top; changed every instance of "mating" to "dating"; replaced personal details with <anonymized>

I honestly don't see what is so objectionable about the original version either. I like your last sentence, will add that as well.

Thank you for the apology. I understand your motivations better now.

I disagree that the dating world cannot get any better. I think this is an incredibly neglected and moderately tractable area.

Here's why I still think there is positive utility to discussing this -

1. The association exists because of Scott Alexander's post. That post gets tons of views and is frankly a terrible introduction to rationalist thinking. A new reader can easily see it as an identity politics post and dismiss rationalism.

2. We best sell rationalism by showing how we th... (read more)

If you notice the cologne your doing it wrong. It could still be true that a small amount of cologne provides a benefit that is too small to notice.

There's tons about female mating choices that has an effect size small enough that the academic studies find it but introspection does not. The literature has consistently found that smell is important to mate selection (although cologne specifically is unkown).

Oh no totally, you didn't say either of those things. I think addressing ethics up front will just help people not judge by availability bias.

And I mean honesty about your relationship goals. Definitely radical honesty will destroy your romantic life. Clarifying that now.

I'm sad that so many are alone and don't know why. I was lonely for much of my life and lacked tools to understand or change my romantic life. Talking about these issues with my friends and siblings taught me that our society fails to equip lonely people with useful tools to become more attractive, particularly for men. I mean attractive behaviorally and physically.

The conventional advice is terrible; "be yourself" and "be honest, tell her how you feel" are so easily misinterpreted that they make things worse. Meanwhile pick ... (read more)

1. Obviously I'm not trying to date the homeless women, for plenty of reasons.

2. Why do you assume women who volunteer at a homeless shelter prefer long-term relationships. Is the argument "good girls volunteer" and "good girls want to get married", seems a bit like availability bias. I wouldn't predict off of that logic, in my experience women are more diverse than that.

3. It's a reference to LOTR. I'm not sorry that I overthink things, I'm not sorry that I experience horniness. LessWrong isn't about prete... (read more)

I disagree. The dating world doesn't get better if we never think about it. I recommend listening to Dr. Diana Fleischman's talk on rationally speaking for a transhumanist perspective.

I post on LessWrong because I want people to evaluate my arguments on whether they will make the world better or not. I agree that there are many parts of the internet where I can post and people will play the "does this word give me the bad feels" game. I post on LessWrong to get away from that nonsense.

Actually improving your lives and the lives of oth... (read more)

Thanks and I love that we can call ourselves rats!

After finishing Geoffrey Miller's Mate, I arrived at a similar position. If someone did not understand courtship more broadly and the classic PUA failure modes, my advice would probably make them worse. But if you have a good model and are already okay at conversation, reminding yourself to have open gestures and make confident eye contact provides net benefit. Your toddler analogy is helpful.

Thanks for the informative comment. My observations also support this claim.

Lol if I was socially savvy. I would not be asking these questions. 9 years of the wrong moves in the dating game have brought me here.

In your own example of dating, this last technique can help you see that your desirability function for women probably is quite disaligned with your actual values, and you'll gain a lot by meditating on what you really value and fixing your desirability function. The technique can be quite helpful in fixing your nutrition as well.

Can you explain this in greater detail?

True. Interesting point.

I have no time to wade into evopsych debates, so I am just reading Geoffery Miller's "Mate"

Hmmm, I have a few thoughts about that

1. If true, all of my reading should be useless. Depressing, but possible!

2. That contradicts some of my data. I have dated <anonymized other culture> women and American women and a few mediteranean catholic women. Some aspects of their tastes were maybe different, like for monogamy vs. polyamory. American women were more likely to leave the relationship after having sex than both catholic med and <anonymized>. Other than that, they both prefered high status men. The <anonymized> women seemed to like ... (read more)

Ooops, I thought this comment was on my evo psych question earlier.

I have heard LWers mention their IQ's or talk about IQ surveys a couple of times in passing. Intuitively, if you feel insecure about your intelligence the sequences on confusion and double think suggest just finding the answer.

I'm gonna talk to cute girls in the park. If maintaining them distracts me form small talk I'll stop doing it.

You are implying I won't do the other practices. I agree that Luke Progs other points are higher cost-benefit and should be done first. But just because other things pass cost-benefit does not mean the body language changes also do not.

Anyway, we've presented our pro and con arguments. I'm gonna go test it. Will report back.

Hard to parse you question. I think you mean "how do you know that the behaviors you will be learning into habit are attractive to women". I'm just using conventional wisdom on that one. I'm getting the list of behaviors here - https://relationshiphero.com/blog/what-does-your-body-language-say-to-your-date

The article says to try them on your next date. But learning a bunch of habits is hard, and you want to do them all at the same time. So hiring an acting coach I can practice a bunch of fake interactions to ingrain the habits, move t... (read more)

For someone who struggles with being playful, I might not recommend this approach. I'really good at being playful. I am bad at displaying status. Generic problem of advice.

Maybe, maybe not. None of your comments are strong evidence it won't work. It's a few bits of weak evidence. Also you strawmaning my post by saying "that completely ignores your own emotions".

1. Immediate reaction times are necessary to receive any benefits - immediate reactions can be trained, even highly sophisticated and creative ones. Improv comedy is great e... (read more)

So the biggest change was to make wayyy simpler questions. I'm like... mad at myself for not noticing that earlier. But also like, if someone ghosts you have no idea why, so...

At least we know reductionism is a good philosophy. Occams razor: because it works.

Update on day 3 - I altered the treatment variable on advice from a colleague. In the treatment case I only write messages that can be responded to in 5 seconds. Steer the conversation to something vaguely praiseworthy about the other person. Reward them for the statement. Try to repeat that a couple times

For the control group I just use my old tinder convos, that's easier.

So far the results show massive increases in response rates. I'm stunned.

Yeah I observed that as well. Why have a rationalist community if you accept motivated reasoning or have an ideological standard. Like being woke is still an ideology. You did not become woke by evaluating every assumption your ideology supports and finding all of them true. So why use that to write answers at the bottom of the page. Whatever, Dagon is right.

This does update me toward thinking rationality has many many failure modes which are hard to avoid. Tsuyoku Naratai is important. Having external goals to our rationalism is important.

Even in the deepest darkness, there are warriors for truth.

Interested

Forecast- Conditional on the results being conclusive - 2:1 odds in favor of Aloof Alfie

Preregister a Tinder Randomized Control Tiral:

In a previous post I suggested that early in a relationship hetero women prefer men who show only slight interest. I argued the optimal early dating strategy is to show only as much interest as she does and cultivate a state of "Is he into me or does he just want to be friends". This RCT is intended to test the theoretical issue, and advise future Tinder and Bumble policy specifically.

Method:

I will randomly select Tinder/Bumble matches to receive disinterested, low-energy messages and the rest will re... (read more)

Seeing if I understand. If Christiano is right about the pandemic we will see continued panic and lockdowns leading to high savings. High savings decrease the cost of fincap => stonks go up. So until we observe increased consumption (barring other crazy shit) we can expect continued high stock prices. So lockdowns continuing suggests a higher future SPY, lower.

I personally am investing in the long term (I'm young), so I am cool with risk. I do not want to buy into the SPY right now because it is so high. I'm considering buying stocks that have been hit hard in the short term but with have higher longterm expected value.