My gut feel is similar to yours—dating is similar to politics in that it’s excellent to apply rationality to it, but many people go funny in the head, and it’s a difficult topic to use in talking about rationality. Also, it can attract unwanted attention from outsiders with non-aligned motivations for the conversation.
My hesitation is that I don’t know exactly how to draw the line between dating and other forms of personal advice around pragmatic approach to real-life behaviors. Unlike politics, this is individual (or duo or small-group) rationality. I think it’s valuable to have concrete explorations of how to apply the very general bounded-rationality technique “Examine your goals, understand and improve your capabilities, strategize your behavior over longer terms”. I think it’s very valuable to have discussions around emotions and interactions so complex that one can’t partition it to Bayesean-suitable propositions.
It’s probably worth asking a top-level question to see if there’s any general consensus.
The wrong kind of debate (about dating, politics, etc.) is when people already come with their ideologies fully formed, and try to get the majority of the audience on their side. The kind of debate which in real life would quickly evolve into a shouting contest.
Examining your goals, that would be a valuable thing to do. For example, in the context of dating, are you even aware of what exactly you are trying to achieve? Is it the physical aspects of sex? The emotional connection? Inspiring conversations? Shared values? The ability to plan your future together with someone? How important is it go get all of these from the same person? Is that even realistic? If you had to make a compromise, what is the relative importance of these things? What would be an absolute deal-breaker for you? When you observe people around you, in whose place would you like to be? Why?
But sometimes you don’t even know, unless you already tried. Sometimes you want something because other people are saying it’s good, and only when you try it, you realize it doesn’t make you happy.
So, talking about experience is better than talking about beliefs. But with dating, often the less experience people have, the stronger beliefs they express. Again, that’s like politics: those who have strongest opinions on how to run the country, usually never tried to organize even something small.
Understanding and improving your capabilities—this is often better discussed without discussing dating. I mean, as an example, let’s take the simplistic belief “women prefer rich men”. Assuming that you believe that, and therefore you want to become rich; how exactly would you do that? And suddenly the debate turns to compound interest, passively managed index funds, frugality, etc., and we are not debating dating anymore. Similarly, if you believe the success in dating is mostly about your conversation skills, then we can discuss conversation skills, without ever mentioning dating. Generally, if you believe that X helps at dating, focus on X, and stop talking about dating. Either X will solve your problems, or you were wrong.
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, conscientiousness, social skills, the ability to provide, an effective degree of assertiveness, which are all attributes women have evolved to be attracted to.
But AB testing out the preferred attributes yourself would take a lifetime. The evopsych approach is to get a prior for which traits are attractive from evolutionary thought experiments, then test the beliefs with psych methods. I decided to get my priors from Miller because his epistemology seems sound in interviews and writing. Then I a/b tested his theories by posing hypotheticals to female friends and trying to guess which behavior they would label more attractive. I found Miller’s theories generalize pretty well, much better than my own mind projection. So I went with it. So beliefs about what women prefer are empirical, use you scholarship and low-cost tests.
Generally, if you believe that X helps at dating, focus on X, and stop talking about dating.
I agree with this too. My strategy is hyperfocusing on dating theory for a month, then writing up what you learned for comprehension. Now I can stop talking about dating moving forward, which is awesome!
The wrong kind of debate (about dating, politics, etc.) is when people already come with their ideologies fully formed, and try to get the majority of the audience on their side.
This is usually true. For my part, my orginal ideology a month ago said that women do not prefer high-status men. I realized I was in conflict with the data and my incorrect belief was hurting me. So I changed it. Unfortunately, new readers may assume my original ideology was “women are gold diggers”. Se la vie!
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.
My gut feel is similar to yours—dating is similar to politics in that it’s excellent to apply rationality to it, but many people go funny in the head, and it’s a difficult topic to use in talking about rationality. Also, it can attract unwanted attention from outsiders with non-aligned motivations for the conversation.
My hesitation is that I don’t know exactly how to draw the line between dating and other forms of personal advice around pragmatic approach to real-life behaviors. Unlike politics, this is individual (or duo or small-group) rationality. I think it’s valuable to have concrete explorations of how to apply the very general bounded-rationality technique “Examine your goals, understand and improve your capabilities, strategize your behavior over longer terms”. I think it’s very valuable to have discussions around emotions and interactions so complex that one can’t partition it to Bayesean-suitable propositions.
It’s probably worth asking a top-level question to see if there’s any general consensus.
The wrong kind of debate (about dating, politics, etc.) is when people already come with their ideologies fully formed, and try to get the majority of the audience on their side. The kind of debate which in real life would quickly evolve into a shouting contest.
Examining your goals, that would be a valuable thing to do. For example, in the context of dating, are you even aware of what exactly you are trying to achieve? Is it the physical aspects of sex? The emotional connection? Inspiring conversations? Shared values? The ability to plan your future together with someone? How important is it go get all of these from the same person? Is that even realistic? If you had to make a compromise, what is the relative importance of these things? What would be an absolute deal-breaker for you? When you observe people around you, in whose place would you like to be? Why?
But sometimes you don’t even know, unless you already tried. Sometimes you want something because other people are saying it’s good, and only when you try it, you realize it doesn’t make you happy.
So, talking about experience is better than talking about beliefs. But with dating, often the less experience people have, the stronger beliefs they express. Again, that’s like politics: those who have strongest opinions on how to run the country, usually never tried to organize even something small.
Understanding and improving your capabilities—this is often better discussed without discussing dating. I mean, as an example, let’s take the simplistic belief “women prefer rich men”. Assuming that you believe that, and therefore you want to become rich; how exactly would you do that? And suddenly the debate turns to compound interest, passively managed index funds, frugality, etc., and we are not debating dating anymore. Similarly, if you believe the success in dating is mostly about your conversation skills, then we can discuss conversation skills, without ever mentioning dating. Generally, if you believe that X helps at dating, focus on X, and stop talking about dating. Either X will solve your problems, or you were wrong.
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.
This is good advice. To clarify neither I nor Miller believe that women prefer rich men. Financial success is probably correlated with extrovertion, intelligence, conscientiousness, social skills, the ability to provide, an effective degree of assertiveness, which are all attributes women have evolved to be attracted to.
But AB testing out the preferred attributes yourself would take a lifetime. The evopsych approach is to get a prior for which traits are attractive from evolutionary thought experiments, then test the beliefs with psych methods. I decided to get my priors from Miller because his epistemology seems sound in interviews and writing. Then I a/b tested his theories by posing hypotheticals to female friends and trying to guess which behavior they would label more attractive. I found Miller’s theories generalize pretty well, much better than my own mind projection. So I went with it. So beliefs about what women prefer are empirical, use you scholarship and low-cost tests.
I agree with this too. My strategy is hyperfocusing on dating theory for a month, then writing up what you learned for comprehension. Now I can stop talking about dating moving forward, which is awesome!
This is usually true. For my part, my orginal ideology a month ago said that women do not prefer high-status men. I realized I was in conflict with the data and my incorrect belief was hurting me. So I changed it. Unfortunately, new readers may assume my original ideology was “women are gold diggers”. Se la vie!
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.