I had fun reading this post. But as someone who has a number of meaningful relationships but doesn’t really bother dating, I was also confused of what to make of it.
Also, given that this is Rationalism-Land, its worth keeping in mind that many people who don’t date got there because they have an unusually low prior on the idea that they will find someone they can emotionally connect with. This prior is also often caused by painful experience that advice like “date more!” will tacitly remind them of.
Anyway, things that I agree with you on:
Dating is hard
Self-improvement is relatively easy compared to being emotionally vulnerable
I hate the saying “you do you.” I emotionally interpret it as “here’s a shovel; bury yourself with it”
Things I disagree with you on:
We aren’t more lonely because of aggressively optimizing relationships for status rather than connection; we’re more lonely because the opportunity cost of going on dates is unusually high. Many reasons for this:
It’s easier than ever to unilaterally do cool things (ie learn guitar from the internet, buy arts and crafts off Amazon). And, as you noted, there’s a cottage industry for making this as awesome as possible
This causes a feedback loop that reduces the people looking to date, which increases the effort it dates to date, which reduces the number of people looking to date. Everyone is else defecting so I’m gonna defect too
I think the general conflation of “self-improvement” with “bragging about stuff on social media” is odd in the context you’re discussing. People who aren’t interested in the human connection of dates generally don’t get much out of social media. At least in my bubble, people who are into self-improvement tend to do things like delete facebook.
If you’re struggling to build financial capital, the goal is to keep doing that until you’re financially secure. The goal very much isn’t to refocus your efforts on going on hundreds of dates to learn how to make others happy.
I had fun reading this post. But as someone who has a number of meaningful relationships but doesn’t really bother dating, I was also confused of what to make of it.
Also, given that this is Rationalism-Land, its worth keeping in mind that many people who don’t date got there because they have an unusually low prior on the idea that they will find someone they can emotionally connect with. This prior is also often caused by painful experience that advice like “date more!” will tacitly remind them of.
Anyway, things that I agree with you on:
Dating is hard
Self-improvement is relatively easy compared to being emotionally vulnerable
I hate the saying “you do you.” I emotionally interpret it as “here’s a shovel; bury yourself with it”
Things I disagree with you on:
We aren’t more lonely because of aggressively optimizing relationships for status rather than connection; we’re more lonely because the opportunity cost of going on dates is unusually high. Many reasons for this:
It’s easier than ever to unilaterally do cool things (ie learn guitar from the internet, buy arts and crafts off Amazon). And, as you noted, there’s a cottage industry for making this as awesome as possible
It’s easier than ever to defect from your local community and hang out with online people who “get” you
This causes a feedback loop that reduces the people looking to date, which increases the effort it dates to date, which reduces the number of people looking to date. Everyone is else defecting so I’m gonna defect too
I think the general conflation of “self-improvement” with “bragging about stuff on social media” is odd in the context you’re discussing. People who aren’t interested in the human connection of dates generally don’t get much out of social media. At least in my bubble, people who are into self-improvement tend to do things like delete facebook.
If you’re struggling to build financial capital, the goal is to keep doing that until you’re financially secure. The goal very much isn’t to refocus your efforts on going on hundreds of dates to learn how to make others happy.