Crossposted from Optimized Dating. I. Imagine that you are a human xeno-sociologist studying the society of insectoid aliens on another planet. To you, they all look alike the same way two ants look alike. Yet when talking about each other, they often use words that translate closely to “beautiful”, “attractive”,...
Crossposted from Optimized Dating. Imagine you want to improve your performance at some task, hobby or a job. You get offered a choice of two courses: Course A is really vague and undefined, with no clear program. You don't get graded on your performance, but it's broadcasted to your community...
Crossposted from Optimized Dating.
I.
Imagine that you are a human xeno-sociologist studying the society of insectoid aliens on another planet. To you, they all look alike the same way two ants look alike. Yet when talking about each other, they often use words that translate closely to “beautiful”, “attractive”, “plain” and “ugly”, indicating that they see an aesthetic quality in each other that you don’t see. How do you learn which specific insectoid individuals are attractive and which ones are not?
The Ant and the Grasshopper, J. J. Grandville, 1838 (!!!)
First thing you could try is to take photos of many aliens – let’s say a hundred of them. Then you make a survey... (read 1787 more words →)
Crossposted from Optimized Dating.
Imagine you want to improve your performance at some task, hobby or a job. You get offered a choice of two courses:
Course A is really vague and undefined, with no clear program. You don't get graded on your performance, but it's broadcasted to your community so everyone can silently judge you every time you fail. Your early choices are locked in, and you can't radically change your approach without raising many eyebrows. And it's long.
Course B, in contrast, offers clear performance indicators, tight feedback loops and sensible intermediate milestones. You wouldn't become a master on day 1, but you get told what are you doing wrong and what do... (read 1024 more words →)
One problem I see with your insect alien example, which also, in a much greater way, influences human attractiveness, is that there are not just four, or five, or a dozen of physical attractiveness factors, but hundreds of them.
Absolutely. Some are simple, legible, and included in our morphometric models explicitly as measurements (height, skin color). Some are highly compound, perceived on a subconscious level and can only be modeled via data science ("aggressiveness").
- height on a man is considered attractive
- low body fat on a man is considered attractive, but;
- a combination of too much height and too little body fat would be unattractive.
Yes, for each flawlessness model there's a maximum point with no flaws,... (read more)
As a photographer, I got excited at first by the inclusion of the word "visible", but I guess today is not my day. Is there any chance for me to participate in training ML models by collecting a dataset of photos? I'm in the process of relocating to Singapore, but getting a work visa takes a while so I have a lot of free time now.
"Everybody" is a very strong claim, since there needs to only be one person who didn't find it disappointing for the claim to be false. I am that person. I started off barely getting any matches, but after putting in effort in my photography, style, conversation and flirting I now have a happy casual dating lifestyle. I recommend other people to do the same.
Can confirm, I also didn't have good experience with open-ended questions on dating apps. I get more responses with binary choice questions that invite elaboration, e.g. "Are you living here or just visiting?" and "How was your Friday night, did you go out or stay in?".
Outside of dating, another example that comes to my mind are questions like "What's your favorite movie?". I now avoid the "what's your favorite" questions because they require the respondent to assess their entire life history and make a revealing choice as if I'm giving them a personality test – not everyone is prepared and vulnerable enough to do that. It's also impossible to decline to answer... (read more)
I often do physical escalation on online dates with minimal or no alcohol (as a straight man). In my experience, the way it happens is not her "matching" or "climbing" the ladder with me, but rather "approving" or "disapproving" of my moves. If I sense she's disapproving, I stop, and if she seems to passively approve, I slowly escalate further. In many cases, this leads all the way to the top of the ladder without a single active move on her part.
So, your read of "women do not respond to mild escalation with mild escalation" is often correct, but they do notice and climb it as a receptive participant. The active climber just needs to give something to be receptive to.
Large breed dogs often die of heart disease which is often due to dilated cardiomyopathy (heart becomes enlarged and can't pump blood effectively). This enlargement can come from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (overgrowth of the heart muscle).
Dilated cardiomyopathy and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy are two different conditions that I've not seen co-occur. They are basically sign-flipped versions of each other.
Dilated cardiomyopathy is when heart tissue becomes weaker and thinner. It stretches out like an overfilled balloon, and can't beat with the same strength. Symptoms include tiredness, shortness of breath, in severe cases progressing into inability to circulate blood (heart failure).
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is when the heart tissue becomes stronger and thicker. The inner heart space becomes too... (read more)
Well done, however it's one of the more convoluted correct answers that I've seen.
I guess it works with the riddle as formulated, but the true solution has to use the actual switch function.
You are on a circular train, with carriages connecting so that they form a closed loop. There is a lightbulb in each carriage which is randomly set either on or off. You can find a switch to each lightbulb in the same carriage. You can only interact with switches and nothing else. You have infinite time, the train is not infinite but arbitrarily long. How do you determine, with 100% certainty, how many carriages are there in a loop?
Since you've mentioned you're also interested in non-romantic relationships, I (late 20s M) have been casual dating on Tinder for four years. I tend to select my matches based on how attractive they look to me. Most of my dates are students in humanities or arts, service workers, or working professionals in non-STEM fields such as hospitality or translation. Programmers, models and blue collar workers are rarer.
On the first date I typically start with FORD smalltalk topics (family, occupation, recreation, dreams). I discovered that this approach doesn't always need to be boring - I can ask my date about what would she do with a billion dollars, or tell her about the... (read 359 more words →)