All of Vlad Loweren's Comments + Replies

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 ... (read more)

6Liron
Yeah nice. A statement like "I'm looking for something new to watch" lowers the stakes by making the interaction more like what friends talk about rather than about an interview for a life partner, increasing the probability that they'll respond rather than pausing for a second and ending up tapping away. You can do even more than just lowering the stakes if you inject a sense that you're subconsciously using the next couple conversation moves to draw out evidence about the conversation partner, because you're naturally perceptive and have various standards and ideas about people you like to date, and you like to get a sense of who the other person is. If done well, this builds a curious sense that the question is a bit more than just making formulaic conversation, but somehow has momentum to it. The best motivation for someone to keep talking to you on a dating app is if they feel they're being seen by a savvy evaluator who will reflect back a valuable perspective about them. The person talking to you can then be subconsciously thinking about how attractive/interesting/unique/etc they are (an engaging experience). Also, everyone wants to feel like they're maximizing their potential by finding someone to date who's in the upper range of their "league", and there are ways to engage in conversation that are more consistent with that ideal. IMO the best type of conversation to have after a few opening back&forths, is to get them talking about something they find engaging, which is generally also something that reflects them in a good light, which makes it fun and engaging for them while also putting you in a position to give a type of casual "feedback", ultimately leading up to a statement of interest which shows them why you're not just another random match but rather someone they have more reason to meet and not flake on. Your movie question could be a good start toward discovering something like that, but probably not an example of that unless they're a big movie

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... (read more)

3harsimony
Thanks for the clarification! Do you know if either condition is associated with abnormal levels of IGF-1 or other growth hormones? 

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
... (read more)

Well done, however it's one of the more convoluted correct answers that I've seen.

3Randomized, Controlled

I guess it works with the riddle as formulated, but the true solution has to use the actual switch function.

2Richard_Kennaway
If the dating partner solves it, then for extra credit, have them give a solution taking time proportional to the length of the loop.

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?

1Mary Chernyshenko
Break a switch and go counting the carriages until you see it again?
4philip_b
Solution:
Answer by Vlad Loweren80

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 al... (read more)

8Randomized, Controlled
what was the riddle?

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.

2Gunnar_Zarncke
Well, it is not the "every element of the set" everybody.  Thank you for your feedback. I agree that dating is a skill that improves with practice either way. That sounds like it is more a lifestyle than a way to find a partner once, like a mutually shared understanding that dating is a domain like the job or vacation where one behaves differently.  

Great post! A few months ago I realized that when playing League of Legends, I have a problem losing the sight of my character in chaotic 5v5 teamfights. At the same time, I never had this problem in a casual ARAM mode. It took me some time to realize that in ARAM my camera was fixed on the character, while the regular mode had it floating free. Nowadays when the teamfight is coming, I lock my camera on my character so I can play the game like it's Hades.