I wasn’t lucky enough to get someone extremely compatible
could you explain your policy of requiring extreme compatibility and breaking up if that requirement is not met?
I think this is a communication error. I didn’t mean that I require extreme compatibility—my phrasing was perhaps a bit idiomatic or even idiolectic. My very vague and silly guess is that among women in my age range, she was more compatible than about 49⁄50 of the others. And what I’m looking for is more like 1⁄300 or 1⁄400. Is that level of compatibility extreme? Am I being too picky? Well, if I thought that, I would be less picky, obviously, so I give it a .5 chance. As I implied above, my estimate of her compatibility has risen a lot since when I broke up with her.
I would not break up with a woman just because we are not “extremely compatible”. [...] Having a girlfriend or a wife makes a man significantly more resilient. [...] And having the knowledge of a few yares of experience—knowledge about, e.g., which sort of woman is likely to bond strongly to you and how to create and maintain that bond
I would now agree, and regard my breaking up that soon a mistake, though I didn’t ever believe that we had anything long-term. Due to my own issues, the bond was quite asymmetrical, heavier on her side, which is how I could have overlooked its value.
My very vague and silly guess is that among women in my age range, she was more compatible than about 49⁄50 of the others. And what I’m looking for is more like 1⁄300 or 1⁄400.
Thank you for clarifying what you mean by extreme compatability. I did not misinterpret what you meant.
Consider all the women between 22 and 60 in the eastern part of Marin County, California. Note the extremely broad defintion of “my age range.” (Again I’m 49) Not all the single women, but all the women, single and looking, single and not looking or married. My next girlfriend will come from this set with probability .9 or more unless I move, which is very unlikely. (Of course she is more likely to come from the subset of those not now married.)
Now (using Pearl’s language for causal models) do surgery on my model of reality so that I am already in a sexual relationship with one of these women picked at random. Do additional surgery so that she and I already know each other at least as well as couples usually do. Acquiring this knowledge is very time consuming and entails costs like dinners and entrance fees to cultural events. Note that this second bit of surgery allows me to consider the merits of the woman picked at random without regard to whether those cost (again, mostly my time and attention but also entrance fees, etc) are better spent on a different woman.
Marin County is among the top 3 most affluent counties in California. Demographics similar to Silicon Valley, but replace the nerdy component with earthy-crunchy and new-age components. Probably .1 (10%) of these women work out with weights regularly and a significant fraction employ personal trainers to help them keep in shape. (An ordinary trip to the supermarket is often a very distracting and very vivid experience for me )
There is a higher than .5 probability that I would choose to stay in the relationship until she dumped me or 36 months have gone by. The only reason the 36 months is in there is so that I do not have to consider the effects on my attractiveness to women (and consequently, my dating options) of a significant change in my circumstances.
The most likely reason I would choose to dump the woman is that her thinking is significantly distorted by some ideology, and I consider progressive political beliefs an ideology—in fact, it is IMHO the most common ideology in these parts. Or maybe what I am reacting to is just a high amount of the Big Five personality trait agreeableness. (I am quite low in agreeableness.) Speaking of Big Five, I am an extreme introvert, so strong extraversion is probably something else that would drastically lower the probability that I would choose to try to keep the relationship going as long as possible (inside this 36-month interval that defines our current universe of discourse). I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Would I prefer that she has read all of Eliezer’s writing on the art of human rationality? Of course.
But I would be delighted, overjoyed, elated if she just knew the correct definition of “sexual selection” or understood that the poor people in the England of Charles Dickens were in fact materially better off than almost any other poor population at that time or at any previous time in history. (Define “poor population” as the first seven deciles of individuals distributed by material welfare in some natural category of people, e.g., residents of a nation state or linguistic community.) In other words, delighted, etc, if she had enough rationality, basic knowledge of things like the timing of the Industrial Revolution, and curiosity to seek out the hard numerical data which contradicts and overrides the fictional evidence of dramatizations on PBS of Charles Dickens novels. I just ended a 5-year relationship with a woman who did not know these 2 things. (She dumped me.)
I think it’s pretty relevant that the pool I was talking about was in rural northeast Texas. I’d say the selectivity would be much smaller in a liberal metro like Austin (where I now live). I’m not even including things like being even familiar with the words “transhumanism” or “rationalism”. My standards are even less than you talk about having. (Which is why selectivity numbers suck as a way of communicating about this subject.)
Additionally, I’m on the verge of resigning myself to the possibility of remaining single indefinitely. This definitely has the effect of raising my standards.
The above analysis neglects IQ. One of my girlfriends was definitely above one standard deviation above the mean in IQ and the other 2 were probably above that line. The math of the normal distribution is such that only 16% of the population is above one s.d. above the mean. (The mean IQ in Marin County is probably higher than the national mean, but I am using the population here, not the national population, as my standard of reference for thinking about IQ.) One s.d. above the mean BTW is defined as an IQ of 115.
So multiply the .5 figure in my original comment by .16 or so, pushing us down to 1⁄12 of the women in the set defined above. And since it took me several hours to realize I had overlooked such a crucial factor (.16 -- that’s 2.6 bits of entropy!) there are probably other factors I’ve overlooked, so push the figure down some more.
The reason IQ has 2.6 bits or so of “importance” is that (again) the usefulness of the girlfriend is roughly the ability of the girlfriend to achieve goals and make good decisions in her own life multiplied by “caring”, and that first factor is very heavily reliant on IQ—more so than for example income is reliant on IQ IMHO.
And now my attention is caught by that second factor in the equation usefulness_to_me == rationality * caring: how much she really cares about me relative to how much she cares about herself. One of my girlfriend was above .5 on that measure, another probably above it or approaching it. (The third was below .1 -- definitely below .15 -- and I only got involved with her because she was very nearby and conveniently at hand during a time in my life when for me to have to travel even a few miles to get together probably would have been a dealbreaker. And she was spontaneous and childlike and fun and pretty.)
Knowing that prospective girlfriends who pull above .5 on the caring measure are available, I probably will not settle for one who does not (unless there is some countervailing consideration, but let us forget about that possibility and hope it all comes out in the wash). So that adds another requirement for my next girlfriend, and I would say that out the set of women defined above, .25 meet this latest requirement given of course that I could win the women, which in most case I cannot. (It would be higher if I were pursuing a more conventional life path. For certain life paths that women identify with or approve of, like doctoring, say, that number might go as high as .4. Nonremunerative blogging about the far future, not so much.) (“Win the woman” by the way is polite language for “persuade the woman to have sex with me and to keep having sex with me or at the very least spending a large fraction of her time with me and promising not to have sex or even seriously discuss having sex with anyone else. The reason it is defined that way is that those condition are almost always necessary for the caring factor to approach anything like .5) OK, so now the figure—the “compatability quotient” we might call it—is down to 1⁄48, and (like I said above) there are probably factors I have not taken into account yet.
In all this multiplying (.5 times .16 times .25) by the way I have been remembering to search my model of reality for reasons to expect a significant conditional dependence of one factor on a different one, but I have not found anything really worth reporting or taking into account.
Hey, pdf23ds, please speak up if you do not welcome attempts by me to help you, and I will shut right up, but could it be that the reason you feel the need for such a high level of compatability is that you consider it necessary for you to understand her and for her to understand you sufficiently well? Women are quite different than you and I! They are from a different planet! (Not really, of course, but it is an apt metaphor.) But I think I understood my girlfriends well enough to steer the future into quite wonderful territory even though they’re from another planet. The best roads to understanding are the study of evolutionary psychology and simple experience being in a relationship. (Again I have 8 years.)
Women are quite different than you and I! They are from a different planet!
This is called “othering”. It is not nice. Certain amounts may be required for accuracy, but this much is uncalled for.
Edit: If you think something is wrong with my identification and/or evaluation of othering, I’d be interested to hear it. I brought it up because the parent commenter has mentioned wishing to speak more sensitively in the past.
Voters: since I explicitly asked Alicorn to point out objectifying language to me, and that sort of thing, it pains me that her doing what I asked is currently costing her 3 karma. Yeah, I think some of the writers who favor terms like “objectifying language” and “othering” are silly and counterproductive, but Alicorn strikes me as quite sensible and a good person to teach me concepts that will help me get along better with people high the Big Five personality trait agreeableness.
In the process of trying to rewrite what I said, I realized that I had no insight into pdf23ds’s reasons for adopting the (1/300 to 1⁄400) compatability target, so I should have kept silent.
(I would have deleted my comment, but now it is the subject of responses.)
Hmm, long comment. Let me start at the end.
I think this is a communication error. I didn’t mean that I require extreme compatibility—my phrasing was perhaps a bit idiomatic or even idiolectic. My very vague and silly guess is that among women in my age range, she was more compatible than about 49⁄50 of the others. And what I’m looking for is more like 1⁄300 or 1⁄400. Is that level of compatibility extreme? Am I being too picky? Well, if I thought that, I would be less picky, obviously, so I give it a .5 chance. As I implied above, my estimate of her compatibility has risen a lot since when I broke up with her.
I would now agree, and regard my breaking up that soon a mistake, though I didn’t ever believe that we had anything long-term. Due to my own issues, the bond was quite asymmetrical, heavier on her side, which is how I could have overlooked its value.
Thank you for clarifying what you mean by extreme compatability. I did not misinterpret what you meant.
Consider all the women between 22 and 60 in the eastern part of Marin County, California. Note the extremely broad defintion of “my age range.” (Again I’m 49) Not all the single women, but all the women, single and looking, single and not looking or married. My next girlfriend will come from this set with probability .9 or more unless I move, which is very unlikely. (Of course she is more likely to come from the subset of those not now married.)
Now (using Pearl’s language for causal models) do surgery on my model of reality so that I am already in a sexual relationship with one of these women picked at random. Do additional surgery so that she and I already know each other at least as well as couples usually do. Acquiring this knowledge is very time consuming and entails costs like dinners and entrance fees to cultural events. Note that this second bit of surgery allows me to consider the merits of the woman picked at random without regard to whether those cost (again, mostly my time and attention but also entrance fees, etc) are better spent on a different woman.
Marin County is among the top 3 most affluent counties in California. Demographics similar to Silicon Valley, but replace the nerdy component with earthy-crunchy and new-age components. Probably .1 (10%) of these women work out with weights regularly and a significant fraction employ personal trainers to help them keep in shape. (An ordinary trip to the supermarket is often a very distracting and very vivid experience for me )
There is a higher than .5 probability that I would choose to stay in the relationship until she dumped me or 36 months have gone by. The only reason the 36 months is in there is so that I do not have to consider the effects on my attractiveness to women (and consequently, my dating options) of a significant change in my circumstances.
The most likely reason I would choose to dump the woman is that her thinking is significantly distorted by some ideology, and I consider progressive political beliefs an ideology—in fact, it is IMHO the most common ideology in these parts.
Or maybe what I am reacting to is just a high amount of the Big Five personality trait agreeableness. (I am quite low in agreeableness.) Speaking of Big Five, I am an extreme introvert, so strong extraversion is probably something else that would drastically lower the probability that I would choose to try to keep the relationship going as long as possible (inside this 36-month interval that defines our current universe of discourse). I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Would I prefer that she has read all of Eliezer’s writing on the art of human rationality? Of course.
But I would be delighted, overjoyed, elated if she just knew the correct definition of “sexual selection” or understood that the poor people in the England of Charles Dickens were in fact materially better off than almost any other poor population at that time or at any previous time in history. (Define “poor population” as the first seven deciles of individuals distributed by material welfare in some natural category of people, e.g., residents of a nation state or linguistic community.) In other words, delighted, etc, if she had enough rationality, basic knowledge of things like the timing of the Industrial Revolution, and curiosity to seek out the hard numerical data which contradicts and overrides the fictional evidence of dramatizations on PBS of Charles Dickens novels. I just ended a 5-year relationship with a woman who did not know these 2 things. (She dumped me.)
I think it’s pretty relevant that the pool I was talking about was in rural northeast Texas. I’d say the selectivity would be much smaller in a liberal metro like Austin (where I now live). I’m not even including things like being even familiar with the words “transhumanism” or “rationalism”. My standards are even less than you talk about having. (Which is why selectivity numbers suck as a way of communicating about this subject.)
Additionally, I’m on the verge of resigning myself to the possibility of remaining single indefinitely. This definitely has the effect of raising my standards.
The above analysis neglects IQ. One of my girlfriends was definitely above one standard deviation above the mean in IQ and the other 2 were probably above that line. The math of the normal distribution is such that only 16% of the population is above one s.d. above the mean. (The mean IQ in Marin County is probably higher than the national mean, but I am using the population here, not the national population, as my standard of reference for thinking about IQ.) One s.d. above the mean BTW is defined as an IQ of 115.
So multiply the .5 figure in my original comment by .16 or so, pushing us down to 1⁄12 of the women in the set defined above. And since it took me several hours to realize I had overlooked such a crucial factor (.16 -- that’s 2.6 bits of entropy!) there are probably other factors I’ve overlooked, so push the figure down some more.
The reason IQ has 2.6 bits or so of “importance” is that (again) the usefulness of the girlfriend is roughly the ability of the girlfriend to achieve goals and make good decisions in her own life multiplied by “caring”, and that first factor is very heavily reliant on IQ—more so than for example income is reliant on IQ IMHO.
And now my attention is caught by that second factor in the equation usefulness_to_me == rationality * caring: how much she really cares about me relative to how much she cares about herself. One of my girlfriend was above .5 on that measure, another probably above it or approaching it. (The third was below .1 -- definitely below .15 -- and I only got involved with her because she was very nearby and conveniently at hand during a time in my life when for me to have to travel even a few miles to get together probably would have been a dealbreaker. And she was spontaneous and childlike and fun and pretty.)
Knowing that prospective girlfriends who pull above .5 on the caring measure are available, I probably will not settle for one who does not (unless there is some countervailing consideration, but let us forget about that possibility and hope it all comes out in the wash). So that adds another requirement for my next girlfriend, and I would say that out the set of women defined above, .25 meet this latest requirement given of course that I could win the women, which in most case I cannot. (It would be higher if I were pursuing a more conventional life path. For certain life paths that women identify with or approve of, like doctoring, say, that number might go as high as .4. Nonremunerative blogging about the far future, not so much.) (“Win the woman” by the way is polite language for “persuade the woman to have sex with me and to keep having sex with me or at the very least spending a large fraction of her time with me and promising not to have sex or even seriously discuss having sex with anyone else. The reason it is defined that way is that those condition are almost always necessary for the caring factor to approach anything like .5) OK, so now the figure—the “compatability quotient” we might call it—is down to 1⁄48, and (like I said above) there are probably factors I have not taken into account yet.
In all this multiplying (.5 times .16 times .25) by the way I have been remembering to search my model of reality for reasons to expect a significant conditional dependence of one factor on a different one, but I have not found anything really worth reporting or taking into account.
Hey, pdf23ds, please speak up if you do not welcome attempts by me to help you, and I will shut right up, but could it be that the reason you feel the need for such a high level of compatability is that you consider it necessary for you to understand her and for her to understand you sufficiently well? Women are quite different than you and I! They are from a different planet! (Not really, of course, but it is an apt metaphor.) But I think I understood my girlfriends well enough to steer the future into quite wonderful territory even though they’re from another planet. The best roads to understanding are the study of evolutionary psychology and simple experience being in a relationship. (Again I have 8 years.)
This is called “othering”. It is not nice. Certain amounts may be required for accuracy, but this much is uncalled for.
Edit: If you think something is wrong with my identification and/or evaluation of othering, I’d be interested to hear it. I brought it up because the parent commenter has mentioned wishing to speak more sensitively in the past.
Voters: since I explicitly asked Alicorn to point out objectifying language to me, and that sort of thing, it pains me that her doing what I asked is currently costing her 3 karma. Yeah, I think some of the writers who favor terms like “objectifying language” and “othering” are silly and counterproductive, but Alicorn strikes me as quite sensible and a good person to teach me concepts that will help me get along better with people high the Big Five personality trait agreeableness.
In the process of trying to rewrite what I said, I realized that I had no insight into pdf23ds’s reasons for adopting the (1/300 to 1⁄400) compatability target, so I should have kept silent.
(I would have deleted my comment, but now it is the subject of responses.)