I have a very reductionist viewpoint, on everything
As a reductionist you utterly failed to even define the phenomenon you describe. There are huge variations in what people mean by love, even if you only include the so called “romantic love”. You probably have some vague model in mind, but without writing it down, giving a few examples and counterexamples to sharpen it up, you can hardly figure out whether the question you asked, “Is love a good idea?” is even meaningful.
You’re right. I wasn’t specific enough in what I was talking about, and I think that the model in my mind is indeed too vague (contributing to my confusion), and that writing it down and thinking through examples will help.
Anything “absolute” doesn’t make sense to me. Meaning intrinsically valuing the SO (rather than valuing them because they make you happy), permanently committing to this person “for better and for worse”, thinking that the SO is like the best person in the world and is perfect for you etc.
When I think of the alternative to these absolute scenarios, I get: “I like you a lot. You make me happy. But there’s probably at least tens of thousands of people in the world that can provide me with what you’re providing me. So you’re replaceable, and if we broke up, I’d get over it after a few days/weeks and find someone else. Also, I do like you and care about you (more than a big majority of things), but not nearly as much as I do about myself. And not nearly as much as I do about knowledge, understanding, and my ambitions. So I might get obsessed about these things, stop caring about you as much, and consequently, break up with you. In fact, there’s a lot I’m confused about and for that reason, I can’t make anything close to a commitment. I don’t know if I should be trying to be happy, being an effective altruist, combatting death, or trying to seek knowledge and understanding of the world we live in. So basically, I like and care about you now, and for that reason want to be with you, but there are things I care about much more than you, and I don’t know if they’ll end up pushing you out.”
That doesn’t sound like love to me. When I see people talk about love, it seems that they imply that they care about the SO more than any sort of other (non-human) interests, that the SO is special (that there aren’t tens of thousands of other potential SOs), that they are committed to their SO (barring any unusual circumstances), and that they stop being strategic because they stop considering alternatives to the monogamous relationship they have with their SO. None of this seems rational to me.
“I like you a lot. You make me happy. But there’s probably at least tens of thousands of people in the world that can provide me with what you’re providing me. So you’re replaceable, and if we broke up, I’d get over it after a few days/weeks and find someone else.
Mr. Zerner, a problem with your counter-argument is that you aren’t actually going to meet the tens of thousands of hypothetical people who could satisfy all the same desires and needs as a current romantic partner is meeting. You won’t even meet one hundred, or, like, thirty. If you’re lucky, you could meet a dozen other people who satisfy you romantically as much as any one romantic partner you loved the most satisfied you. . You could take an approach of shallowly connecting with as many women you think are very compatible with you as you can find. However, unless you’re some Casanova, that seems like a poor strategy for creating a loving relationship, or several of them (rapidly). So, that doesn’t seem like a sound argument for “sorry, my darling, but you’re replaceable”. I believe this would hold true for almost everyone who would make this case.
Also, it doesn’t seem like you qualify how much you (would) love a given significant other. Depending on how much value the person brought into your life, it could take months, or even years, to overcome the loss of their companionship, rather than days, or weeks. It could also take you that long to find someone to replace her with, who provides just as much value to your life. I could generalizing too much from the example of my own experience, but it’s the rare person who replaces the most significant romantic partner they’ve had previously with another in the span of only a few weeks, or a couple of months. I wouldn’t be surprised that some people are quicker, or better, at this task, than the average. So, Mr. Zerner, unless you have great reason to believe you’re above-average in this regard, don’t discount the expected costs of finding a new partner so much.
Also, I do like you and care about you (more than a big majority of things), but not nearly as much as I do about myself. And not nearly as much as I do about knowledge, understanding, and my ambitions. So I might get obsessed about these things, stop caring about you as much, and consequently, break up with you. In fact, there’s a lot I’m confused about and for that reason, I can’t make anything close to a commitment. I don’t know if I should be trying to be happy, being an effective altruist, combatting death, or trying to seek knowledge and understanding of the world we live in.
You’re signaling that you have ambitions in life which are more praiseworthy, or laudable, or of a higher caliber, than just pursuing purely selfish ends. You’re explaining to a hypothetical romantic partner what else you want to do in life. It seems like you’re also trying to explain that to us as readers as well. The way you’re asking if love is a ‘good idea’ seems to be about if committing all the time and effort to something like marriage would require is worth the opportunity cost of not being able to spend that time and effort (trying) to save the world.
I’m suspecting you’re asking “how do I balance a commitment to such a lifestyle, while still appearing and being normal enough to do (many of) the typical things typical humans do to be happy?” I suspect you’re asking these questions, not only in the interest of playing out an argument, but because, probably judiciously so, you don’t have a ‘gung-ho’, confident solution to this personal conundrum.
You’re not the only person with such concerns. I’m a nerd interested in saving the world while being awesome as well. I have similar concerns about committing too much to a single person, or to my family, at the expense of saving thousands of other lives, or whatever. Your concerns are shared by others in this community, and we don’t have all the answers. It seems that other folks ‘well on their way’ to saving the world have encountered this problem as well, yet they haven’t given up on making commitments to love others, or without giving up other things which don’t broadly benefit others. We could learn much from them.
Ideally, I would prefer that the practical conclusions resulting from discussions on Less Wrong could generalize to, and be implemented within, as many of its readers’ lives as possible. So, I don’t mean for this response to be critical of your personality, and I hope me raising these points hasn’t offended you. I believe it would be better if you were to clarify what your true concern here is though,, and summon the gumption to address it to us more directly. This is because we could have a clearer discussion, that benefits, and interests, more of us.
they stop being strategic because they stop considering alternatives to the monogamous relationship they have with their SO. None of this seems rational to me.
Maybe you really will need a significant other to rely on you less, lest they meet stringent conditions, or you cannot commit to them deeply. A small minority of people who commit themselves greatly to a cause are capable of that. It seems most people don’t, not because they hate the idea, but because forgoing strong social bonds that most everyone else acquires makes them miserable. So, maybe loving someone so much seems irrational when that effort could be spent on other ideas which seem so much more valuable, on paper, than just loving one person.
We can discuss committing to both personally love others, and to making great accomplishments. That seems like a different discussion than this one, though.
Side note/joke/context—I hope you didn’t get your username from the ending to Annie Hall. When I watched it, I was about as frustrated and angry as I have ever been.
It’s saying that there’s a guy with a psychotic brother who thinks he’s a chicken, and he doesn’t want to turn his brother in because “he needs the eggs”. So eggs are something that is clearly not real, and yet, the guy needs them. Then Woody Allen says that love is like that—it’s crazy and irrational, but we go through with it because “we need the eggs”. The way I see it, he’s saying that we need the irrational to make us happy.
I think Paul Graham once said that the things that make us truly angry are things that we think might be true (you wouldn’t get infuriated if I said that it’s going to rain bananas tomorrow). I think that the reason I was so angry was because despite my tremendous commitment to truth, I suspected that truth might lead to net unhappiness. I also suspected that happiness might matter more than truth, and thus, being irrational… might… be… rational.
At the time, there was a girl I liked, which doesn’t happen too often for me. I was sort of contemplating asking her out, which I have never seriously contemplated before. I decided not to because I knew that my liking of her was a product of some primitive brain structures, rather than actual compatibility, and that a relationship that isn’t based off of real compatibility wouldn’t be good (I know that you’re probably thinking that this conclusion of mine was probably wrong and based on naive and impulsive thinking. I can assure you that it wasn’t. I could tell what it would be like to be actually compatible with someone, and I wasn’t actually compatible with her.). Anyway, I was finally becoming comfortable with the conclusion that I should forget about her, and when I watched this movie, it made me second guess.
“I like you a lot. You make me happy. But there’s probably at least tens of thousands of people in the world that can provide me with what you’re providing me. So you’re replaceable, and if we broke up, I’d get over it after a few days/weeks and find someone else.
Yes, there are transaction costs (getting over it + finding someone new). But the point remains that people are replaceable, not just in the theoretical sense, but in a very practical sense. At some point in their lives, mostly everyone goes through a rather serious relationship, ends it, and starts a new rather serious relationship. So then, I don’t think that it makes sense to pretend that they’re “the one”.
Best case scenario, your SO is an admirable person who you’re compatible with and who brings happiness to your life. I think that this is fine, but that it strays from the absolute and romantic idea that people seem to have about love. I can’t imagine any guy saying to his wife, “I love you. You’re great. But you know, there are probably a good handful of people I’ve met in my life who I could have grown to love the way that I love you if I really got to know them. And there’s probably many more people in this world who I could have grown to love the way I love you if I got to know them well enough. In fact, there are probably people in the world that I would be more compatible with than I am with you. You’re great, but you’re not the only one in this universe that is capable of providing me with what you provide me. That doesn’t mean that I want to break up with you. I’m content with what you provide me, and I think that you’re pretty good. The point is just that you probably aren’t the best, and that you probably aren’t the only one. Absolutes are rarely true.”
The way society defines it, I don’t imagine someone who thinks these things as in love. I don’t see any relationships where people are open and honest about these facts. Some people in relationships might know these things. Sometimes both people in the relationship will. But it never seems acceptable (let alone comfortable) for them to be open about it.
So then, it seems to me that love involves thinking and acting like these ridiculous absolutes are true (or at the very least, pretending to think/act this way). Maybe I’m wrong though. Hopefully I’m wrong!! Are people really as committed to these absolute ideas as they seem? Are there relationships where both parties are comfortable admitting to each other that there are probably other people who they’re compatible with, and that there are probably other people who they’re more compatible with, but that they’re deciding to satisfice with their love life? (A reducto ad absurdum argument seems most concise—thinking that there isn’t anyone else who you would be more compatible with if you got to know them would mean that you found the 1 person in however many billion, which seems unlikely.)
You’re signaling that you have ambitions in life which are more praiseworthy, or laudable, or of a higher caliber, than just pursuing purely selfish ends.
I don’t know what my terminal value should be, but I suspect that it’s my own happiness. Fortunately, my happiness is tied closely with doing good things. I see opportunity to do hugely great things. So I plan on doing them. If I’m right that I should be pursuing happiness… it’ll accomplish that goal. And if I’m wrong and I should be acting as altruistically as possible, I’m doing that as well. That doesn’t address knowledge and death though—I could be sacrificing those by pursuing altruistic causes. So I’ll have to think this through some more, but I suspect that the right approach is to live a happy life, and divide my time between altruism and science.
It seems like you’re also trying to explain that to us as readers as well.
Sort of, but not really. I think out loud a lot and don’t have much of a filter.
I’m suspecting you’re asking “how do I balance a commitment to such a lifestyle, while still appearing and being normal enough to do (many of) the typical things typical humans do to be happy?”
It’s a concern, but not a major one. I don’t care about altruism enough to sacrifice my happiness for it (well, I’d make some sacrifices, but I wouldn’t live an altogether unhappy life).
The real objection is that love seems to dictate that your SO has to be the most important thing in the world to you. I can’t imagine a husband saying to his wife, “I love you, and you bring me a lot of happiness, but I care more about my job than you. And I care more about science and technology than I do about you. But other than those couple of things, I think that I care more about you than anything else.” So this is another aspect of love that seems nonsensical to me.
With that said, I do think that there should be some reasonable floor. Like you probably shouldn’t care about more than a handful of things than you do about your SO.
Ideally, I would prefer that the practical conclusions resulting from discussions on Less Wrong could generalize to, and be implemented within, as many of its readers’ lives as possible. So, I don’t mean for this response to be critical of your personality, and I hope me raising these points hasn’t offended you. I believe it would be better if you were to clarify what your true concern here is though,, and summon the gumption to address it to us more directly. This is because we could have a clearer discussion, that benefits, and interests, more of us.
I have the same goals. No offense taken. I apologize for any lack of clarity in my comments.
My main point is this: there seems to be this thing called love that society has invented. It requires a bunch of “absolutist” ways of thinking and acting. I think that these absolutist ways of thinking and acting are irrational, and thus I don’t think that it makes sense to think and act in these ways. However, it seems that if you don’t think and act in these ways, you aren’t “relationship material”. So then, in order to be “relationship material”, you have to think and act in these ways. Which means that in order to be relationship material, you have to think and act irrationally. Relationship material ~ love. So then, in order to love, it seems that you have to think and act irrationally.
(This could have been a reply to a couple of your comments, but I was reading this one just now, so it goes here.)
Best case scenario, your SO is an admirable person who you’re compatible with and who brings happiness to your life. I think that this is fine, but that it strays from the absolute and romantic idea that people seem to have about love. I can’t imagine any guy saying to his wife, “I love you. You’re great. But you know, there are probably a good handful of people I’ve met in my life who I could have grown to love the way that I love you if I really got to know them. And there’s probably many more people in this world who I could have grown to love the way I love you if I got to know them well enough. In fact, there are probably people in the world that I would be more compatible with than I am with you. You’re great, but you’re not the only one in this universe that is capable of providing me with what you provide me. That doesn’t mean that I want to break up with you. I’m content with what you provide me, and I think that you’re pretty good. The point is just that you probably aren’t the best, and that you probably aren’t the only one. Absolutes are rarely true.”
You seem to be both critiquing the “Hollywood” view of romance and love, while at the same time using it as your own view on how love and romance work.
Romance and love can be about total dedication to a single person, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s perfectly possible to be in a committed romantic relationship while both parties know (and are willing to discuss) that the fact that they’re together is a rather random event, which has been influenced by a lot of factors and that if those factors were different, they would have ended up with different people.
So I can perfectly imagine a man saying that to his wife, and his wife accepting the explanation perfectly and it doesn’t require two rationalists in a relationship. I’m pretty sure me and my girlfriend have had a conversation of that nature (anecdotal evidence alert).
While others have remarked that you’re responding to a “Hollywood” conception of romance, I also want to point out that you aren’t the only person who perceives romance this way. The surface perfection of romance is something people would like to signal about their relationships. Like, even in the cases where people are cheating on one another, or the relationship is falling apart, or mired by abuse, or conflict, they like to publicly signal that things are still going well, or at least not going horribly. If you searched for ‘romance’, or ‘relationships’, on Overcoming Bias, you could find some decent material on signaling within sexual relationships. Additionally, media besides Hollywood movies are shoving an archetype of romantic relationships down our throats all the time. So, only mostly perceiving all this, there are a great many people who view relationships in this manner. This is probably skewed towards younger people, although it’s also been remarked in this thread that some people go through this for decades.
Mr. Zaman’s comment seems to point out that a key to finding a relationship that avoids all these things about love which would frustrate you is that you can find the right person to do so. I don’t know how to do that myself, per se, other than suggesting you try OKCupid, or altering your social circle to include more people who have a similar mindset, and then dating from within there.
I believe you’re correct in that a substantial portion of relationships, one partner coming out to another, and stating (realistically) that they’re not the best possible person, and that it could be quite possible to find another one, would be hurtful. I believe that might be hurtful in some relationships only because the other interlocutor won’t understand why you’re stating obvious but hurtful facts, like you’re signaling something mysterious. I wouldn’t worry about that, though. So, there are people who have fooled themselves into thinking relationships ought to be like an idealized romance. Perhaps you could try observing other relationship styles where you can, or read about them on some blog which is, I don’t know, contra-romantic, and that could change your perception of people practically love one another.
I can’t imagine any guy saying to his wife, “I love you. You’re great. But you know, there are probably a good handful of people I’ve met in my life who I could have grown to love the way that I love you if I really got to know them. And there’s probably many more people in this world who I could have grown to love the way I love you if I got to know them well enough. In fact, there are probably people in the world that I would be more compatible with than I am with you. You’re great, but you’re not the only one in this universe that is capable of providing me with what you provide me. That doesn’t mean that I want to break up with you. I’m content with what you provide me, and I think that you’re pretty good. The point is just that you probably aren’t the best, and that you probably aren’t the only one. Absolutes are rarely true.”
My point is that it isn’t acceptable for parties to relationships to admit/accept these truths.
I agree that it has some bad connotations, but you could override those connotations by saying that you don’t mean anything further than what you explicitly said.
If you try starting such a conversation, I suggest using more examples than you have thus far. If you don’t feel comfortable providing personal anecdotes as examples, feel free to PM me. In that case, I’ll start the conversation, because I do have anecdotes/examples I am willing to, and can, share.
I appreciate your consideration, thoughtfulness, and patience. I’m comfortable though.
And you’re right, I should have used more examples. I just was having trouble articulating them, and I just wanted to get the conversation started. In hindsight, I should have took the time to think it through in order to make the subsequent conversation more productive.
I know, I know...I tend to write in a superfluous, and long-winded manner. Like, longer than the above comment. It was about 20% longer, so I edited out the material that I didn’t believe would actually clarify the questions I was asking, or that I believed wouldn’t be at all valuable to adamzerner. I was at a lack of words other than ‘edited for brevity’. In terms of writing, I believe I’m decent at getting my thoughts out of my head. However, my ability to write more compactly is a skill I need to improve upon, and I intend to do so.
Also, I aim to be quite precise with my language, so I tend to provide more detail in my examples than I believe might be necessary, in an attempt to prevent as much confusion for the reader as I can.
But there’s probably at least tens of thousands of people in the world that can provide me with what you’re providing me. So you’re replaceable, and if we broke up, I’d get over it after a few days/weeks and find someone else.
For those of us with more peculiar tastes, this isn’t actually true.
For example there really aren’t that many IQ 145+ reasonably fit/attractive men around my age who happen to be sympathetic to transhumanist values and also click with me personally out there in the world, let alone among those I’m likely to ever meet. I’m in college right now where the concentration of such men is the highest it will ever be in my life and I’ve met <10 of them, most of whom are disqualified for a relationship for various reasons.
IQ 145+ reasonably fit/attractive men around my age who happen to be sympathetic to transhumanist values
You’re not me, but if you are anything like me, this will probably be one of the things you change your mind about in the future.
After switching “men” to “women”, everything in your comment would have rung true for me from a younger age (15-19) - I was primarily looking for someone highly intelligent (though my cut-off was more like 95% than your 99.9%) reasonably attractive, socially liberal and sex positive...and even though my requirements were way less stringent than yours, I still was turning down advances from people who, had I got to know them better, might have turned out to be perfectly acceptable. I’d say I considered maybe 1% of the people I knew well enough to judge as acceptable partners.
Once I actually started having experience with real relationships, everything changed. I’m equally picky for serious long term relationships now (though I’m more willing to do casual stuff now than I was in the past) but today my “bottleneck” criteria that most people fail have mostly have to do with kindness, communicative skills, and emotional resilience. I still care about things like intelligence and attractiveness, but not nearly as much. To me, intelligence is sexy signalling in the same way a fit body is—I’m instinctively drawn to it and a total lack of it will turn me off, but I don’t attempt to consciously evaluate it as a relationship criteria anymore. As for ideology, I find that most people who possess the qualities I care about either already have worldviews which I find acceptable, or tend to alter their worldviews after discussion.
I wouldn’t say my actual criteria changed, only my knowledge of what my true preferences actually were. Regardless of the criteria you think you have, your true preferences will shine through eventually in the form of break-ups and relationships that fizzle out before they start. But if you’re working with a layer of false criteria on top of the true preferences, you might turn down the opportunity to connect with someone who does not meet your false criteria but does satisfy your true preferences.
(For reference on how to weigh this info, I’m 23, I’ve been in a happy relationship for 4 years with several shorter non-consummated interactions before and during, and the only major stumbling block has been different monogamy/polyamory related preferences)
Hmm...I would very much like to know if my very stringent criteria for basic-possibility-of-a-relationship will change with time. I suppose I should evaluate my goals and why I have those criteria.
Transhumanist values are probably higher than average in that group, but I have no idea of numbers there. Clicking with you and a more refined definition of attraction I can’t speak to, but if you’ve come in contact with 5 in your time at college… There’s still lots.
I’m guessing that’s from a base of 100? If so, you’re off by almost a standard deviation there: the mean world IQ is very far from Western normed 100s. IIRC, the population weighted estimate from the Lynn national IQ estimates puts the global mean at maybe 90. That’s going to affect the tails like 145+ a lot.
Of course… I thought 100 was meant to be the global mean. Lynn set Great Britian’s mean, nothing like a flexible definition!
The (not very good) data doesn’t bear out a 90ish global mean though, the sub-90 IQ countries are much lower population than over 90. To be pessimistic I’d take another half sigma. (92.5)
World Population: 7 billion
145+ IQ (1/4200): 17 million
Male (1/2): 8 million
College-aged (1/10): 800 thousand
Normal weight (3/5): 480 thousand
Actually useful numbers may be able to be obtained by using more locale specific filters.
Who exactly cares about intelligent people half-way across the globe anyway, when personal relationships (and the possibility of finding people with whom those are possible) are the issue?
You can meet them online, or move to other countries. Personally, for such an estimate I’d be looking only at Anglophones: learning a language just to increase one’s dating pool seems pretty far to go for love.
Hence the actually useful numbers bit! Yet I do care to some extent, if for some reason I end up there in future, just less then everyone here and now. Maybe one could weight populations by inverse distance?
OTOH, a linear combination of Gaussians with a standard deviation of 15 and different means will not be a Gaussian and will have a standard deviation larger than 15. So a naive calculation as in trist’s comment below will be an underestimate.
but if you’ve come in contact with 5 in your time at college… There’s still lots
Given that a couple were taken and a couple were incompatible for various other reasons, that I expect a higher proportion of guys to be taken as I get older, and that I will never be in such a high-density environment again… I really don’t think 1 real prospect every couple of years, who may or may not work out as an actual relationship, is a high hit rate at all. Certainly not high enough that I would ever consider someone I was in a successful relationship with to be “easily replaceable.”
I have a hard time seeing people as replaceable, much less easially. Even between two people who fit some abstracted ideal, one won’t replace another. Leaving that aside though, I think that the difficulty is more in finding the people who fit that ideal than their actual existence.
(Though this graph from The Case For An Older Woman on OkTrends suggests otherwise—but I’m not sure a 40-year-old single guy is as likely to be on OkCupid as a 20-year-old one is.)
Supposedly, the mean IQ on Lesswrong is around 140. (Assuming that there is some relationship between median and mean in these rather unusual environs,) do you really consider more than half of the participants on this site too stupid to engage in intellectually stimulating discussions with you? I mean, what’s with the 145+ cutoff for IQ? Even granting that you have, arguendo, a 155 IQ, do you really think someone with an IQ of 130 is to much of a dullard for romance?
Further… most people don’t emerge from the womb committed transhumanists. Presumably, someone had to persuade most of them at some point. Perhaps you should be concentrating, not on men who are transhumanists, but on men who score high on the “openness to ideas” part of the Big Five?
ETA: The above reads sort of plaintive, in hindsight. So, in case it’s necessary to spell it out, I’m neither looking for a companion nor in your age bracket. Just making suggestions in the form of questions.
For those of us with more peculiar tastes, this isn’t actually true.
Good point. Personally, I’m the same as you—my tastes are particular enough where I’ve never even met anyone who I’ve felt compatible with. But I think that tens of thousands is a reasonable estimate for the general population.
I’m in college right now where the concentration of such men is the highest it will ever be in my life
I don’t think that that’s true. I’m in college now too (Pitt), and people all seem very average to me. I think that for you, it’s more likely to meet people you’re looking for by doing things you’re interested in (rationality and transhumanist stuff), and you’ll probably do more of that stuff once you graduate.
that the SO is special (that there aren’t tens of thousands of other potential SOs),
Doesn’t it matter how few of said other “potential” SOs live reasonably near you, aren’t already taken, and in turn view you as a potential SO for them?
My point was that it seems to me that people try to treat SOs as if they’re the only one on the planet for them, which clearly isn’t true.
But I agree, in a practical sense, the amount of potential SOs is definitely limited by those factors. For most people, I still think that there’s enough of them where most people would find one in a reasonable amount of time. But for people with more particular tastes, it could definitely be the case that you’ve found someone who you’re pretty unlikely to ever find someone like again.
As a reductionist you utterly failed to even define the phenomenon you describe. There are huge variations in what people mean by love, even if you only include the so called “romantic love”. You probably have some vague model in mind, but without writing it down, giving a few examples and counterexamples to sharpen it up, you can hardly figure out whether the question you asked, “Is love a good idea?” is even meaningful.
You’re right. I wasn’t specific enough in what I was talking about, and I think that the model in my mind is indeed too vague (contributing to my confusion), and that writing it down and thinking through examples will help.
Anything “absolute” doesn’t make sense to me. Meaning intrinsically valuing the SO (rather than valuing them because they make you happy), permanently committing to this person “for better and for worse”, thinking that the SO is like the best person in the world and is perfect for you etc.
When I think of the alternative to these absolute scenarios, I get: “I like you a lot. You make me happy. But there’s probably at least tens of thousands of people in the world that can provide me with what you’re providing me. So you’re replaceable, and if we broke up, I’d get over it after a few days/weeks and find someone else. Also, I do like you and care about you (more than a big majority of things), but not nearly as much as I do about myself. And not nearly as much as I do about knowledge, understanding, and my ambitions. So I might get obsessed about these things, stop caring about you as much, and consequently, break up with you. In fact, there’s a lot I’m confused about and for that reason, I can’t make anything close to a commitment. I don’t know if I should be trying to be happy, being an effective altruist, combatting death, or trying to seek knowledge and understanding of the world we live in. So basically, I like and care about you now, and for that reason want to be with you, but there are things I care about much more than you, and I don’t know if they’ll end up pushing you out.”
That doesn’t sound like love to me. When I see people talk about love, it seems that they imply that they care about the SO more than any sort of other (non-human) interests, that the SO is special (that there aren’t tens of thousands of other potential SOs), that they are committed to their SO (barring any unusual circumstances), and that they stop being strategic because they stop considering alternatives to the monogamous relationship they have with their SO. None of this seems rational to me.
Mr. Zerner, a problem with your counter-argument is that you aren’t actually going to meet the tens of thousands of hypothetical people who could satisfy all the same desires and needs as a current romantic partner is meeting. You won’t even meet one hundred, or, like, thirty. If you’re lucky, you could meet a dozen other people who satisfy you romantically as much as any one romantic partner you loved the most satisfied you. . You could take an approach of shallowly connecting with as many women you think are very compatible with you as you can find. However, unless you’re some Casanova, that seems like a poor strategy for creating a loving relationship, or several of them (rapidly). So, that doesn’t seem like a sound argument for “sorry, my darling, but you’re replaceable”. I believe this would hold true for almost everyone who would make this case.
Also, it doesn’t seem like you qualify how much you (would) love a given significant other. Depending on how much value the person brought into your life, it could take months, or even years, to overcome the loss of their companionship, rather than days, or weeks. It could also take you that long to find someone to replace her with, who provides just as much value to your life. I could generalizing too much from the example of my own experience, but it’s the rare person who replaces the most significant romantic partner they’ve had previously with another in the span of only a few weeks, or a couple of months. I wouldn’t be surprised that some people are quicker, or better, at this task, than the average. So, Mr. Zerner, unless you have great reason to believe you’re above-average in this regard, don’t discount the expected costs of finding a new partner so much.
You’re signaling that you have ambitions in life which are more praiseworthy, or laudable, or of a higher caliber, than just pursuing purely selfish ends. You’re explaining to a hypothetical romantic partner what else you want to do in life. It seems like you’re also trying to explain that to us as readers as well. The way you’re asking if love is a ‘good idea’ seems to be about if committing all the time and effort to something like marriage would require is worth the opportunity cost of not being able to spend that time and effort (trying) to save the world.
I’m suspecting you’re asking “how do I balance a commitment to such a lifestyle, while still appearing and being normal enough to do (many of) the typical things typical humans do to be happy?” I suspect you’re asking these questions, not only in the interest of playing out an argument, but because, probably judiciously so, you don’t have a ‘gung-ho’, confident solution to this personal conundrum.
You’re not the only person with such concerns. I’m a nerd interested in saving the world while being awesome as well. I have similar concerns about committing too much to a single person, or to my family, at the expense of saving thousands of other lives, or whatever. Your concerns are shared by others in this community, and we don’t have all the answers. It seems that other folks ‘well on their way’ to saving the world have encountered this problem as well, yet they haven’t given up on making commitments to love others, or without giving up other things which don’t broadly benefit others. We could learn much from them.
Ideally, I would prefer that the practical conclusions resulting from discussions on Less Wrong could generalize to, and be implemented within, as many of its readers’ lives as possible. So, I don’t mean for this response to be critical of your personality, and I hope me raising these points hasn’t offended you. I believe it would be better if you were to clarify what your true concern here is though,, and summon the gumption to address it to us more directly. This is because we could have a clearer discussion, that benefits, and interests, more of us.
Maybe you really will need a significant other to rely on you less, lest they meet stringent conditions, or you cannot commit to them deeply. A small minority of people who commit themselves greatly to a cause are capable of that. It seems most people don’t, not because they hate the idea, but because forgoing strong social bonds that most everyone else acquires makes them miserable. So, maybe loving someone so much seems irrational when that effort could be spent on other ideas which seem so much more valuable, on paper, than just loving one person.
We can discuss committing to both personally love others, and to making great accomplishments. That seems like a different discussion than this one, though.
Note: edited for brevity.
Side note/joke/context—I hope you didn’t get your username from the ending to Annie Hall. When I watched it, I was about as frustrated and angry as I have ever been.
It’s saying that there’s a guy with a psychotic brother who thinks he’s a chicken, and he doesn’t want to turn his brother in because “he needs the eggs”. So eggs are something that is clearly not real, and yet, the guy needs them. Then Woody Allen says that love is like that—it’s crazy and irrational, but we go through with it because “we need the eggs”. The way I see it, he’s saying that we need the irrational to make us happy.
I think Paul Graham once said that the things that make us truly angry are things that we think might be true (you wouldn’t get infuriated if I said that it’s going to rain bananas tomorrow). I think that the reason I was so angry was because despite my tremendous commitment to truth, I suspected that truth might lead to net unhappiness. I also suspected that happiness might matter more than truth, and thus, being irrational… might… be… rational.
At the time, there was a girl I liked, which doesn’t happen too often for me. I was sort of contemplating asking her out, which I have never seriously contemplated before. I decided not to because I knew that my liking of her was a product of some primitive brain structures, rather than actual compatibility, and that a relationship that isn’t based off of real compatibility wouldn’t be good (I know that you’re probably thinking that this conclusion of mine was probably wrong and based on naive and impulsive thinking. I can assure you that it wasn’t. I could tell what it would be like to be actually compatible with someone, and I wasn’t actually compatible with her.). Anyway, I was finally becoming comfortable with the conclusion that I should forget about her, and when I watched this movie, it made me second guess.
Yes, there are transaction costs (getting over it + finding someone new). But the point remains that people are replaceable, not just in the theoretical sense, but in a very practical sense. At some point in their lives, mostly everyone goes through a rather serious relationship, ends it, and starts a new rather serious relationship. So then, I don’t think that it makes sense to pretend that they’re “the one”.
Best case scenario, your SO is an admirable person who you’re compatible with and who brings happiness to your life. I think that this is fine, but that it strays from the absolute and romantic idea that people seem to have about love. I can’t imagine any guy saying to his wife, “I love you. You’re great. But you know, there are probably a good handful of people I’ve met in my life who I could have grown to love the way that I love you if I really got to know them. And there’s probably many more people in this world who I could have grown to love the way I love you if I got to know them well enough. In fact, there are probably people in the world that I would be more compatible with than I am with you. You’re great, but you’re not the only one in this universe that is capable of providing me with what you provide me. That doesn’t mean that I want to break up with you. I’m content with what you provide me, and I think that you’re pretty good. The point is just that you probably aren’t the best, and that you probably aren’t the only one. Absolutes are rarely true.”
The way society defines it, I don’t imagine someone who thinks these things as in love. I don’t see any relationships where people are open and honest about these facts. Some people in relationships might know these things. Sometimes both people in the relationship will. But it never seems acceptable (let alone comfortable) for them to be open about it.
So then, it seems to me that love involves thinking and acting like these ridiculous absolutes are true (or at the very least, pretending to think/act this way). Maybe I’m wrong though. Hopefully I’m wrong!! Are people really as committed to these absolute ideas as they seem? Are there relationships where both parties are comfortable admitting to each other that there are probably other people who they’re compatible with, and that there are probably other people who they’re more compatible with, but that they’re deciding to satisfice with their love life? (A reducto ad absurdum argument seems most concise—thinking that there isn’t anyone else who you would be more compatible with if you got to know them would mean that you found the 1 person in however many billion, which seems unlikely.)
I don’t know what my terminal value should be, but I suspect that it’s my own happiness. Fortunately, my happiness is tied closely with doing good things. I see opportunity to do hugely great things. So I plan on doing them. If I’m right that I should be pursuing happiness… it’ll accomplish that goal. And if I’m wrong and I should be acting as altruistically as possible, I’m doing that as well. That doesn’t address knowledge and death though—I could be sacrificing those by pursuing altruistic causes. So I’ll have to think this through some more, but I suspect that the right approach is to live a happy life, and divide my time between altruism and science.
Sort of, but not really. I think out loud a lot and don’t have much of a filter.
It’s a concern, but not a major one. I don’t care about altruism enough to sacrifice my happiness for it (well, I’d make some sacrifices, but I wouldn’t live an altogether unhappy life).
The real objection is that love seems to dictate that your SO has to be the most important thing in the world to you. I can’t imagine a husband saying to his wife, “I love you, and you bring me a lot of happiness, but I care more about my job than you. And I care more about science and technology than I do about you. But other than those couple of things, I think that I care more about you than anything else.” So this is another aspect of love that seems nonsensical to me.
With that said, I do think that there should be some reasonable floor. Like you probably shouldn’t care about more than a handful of things than you do about your SO.
I have the same goals. No offense taken. I apologize for any lack of clarity in my comments.
My main point is this: there seems to be this thing called love that society has invented. It requires a bunch of “absolutist” ways of thinking and acting. I think that these absolutist ways of thinking and acting are irrational, and thus I don’t think that it makes sense to think and act in these ways. However, it seems that if you don’t think and act in these ways, you aren’t “relationship material”. So then, in order to be “relationship material”, you have to think and act in these ways. Which means that in order to be relationship material, you have to think and act irrationally. Relationship material ~ love. So then, in order to love, it seems that you have to think and act irrationally.
(This could have been a reply to a couple of your comments, but I was reading this one just now, so it goes here.)
You seem to be both critiquing the “Hollywood” view of romance and love, while at the same time using it as your own view on how love and romance work.
Romance and love can be about total dedication to a single person, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s perfectly possible to be in a committed romantic relationship while both parties know (and are willing to discuss) that the fact that they’re together is a rather random event, which has been influenced by a lot of factors and that if those factors were different, they would have ended up with different people.
So I can perfectly imagine a man saying that to his wife, and his wife accepting the explanation perfectly and it doesn’t require two rationalists in a relationship. I’m pretty sure me and my girlfriend have had a conversation of that nature (anecdotal evidence alert).
Bonus points for making it a popular song.
:D
Good to hear! If love doesn’t have to involve the things I critiqued, then I have no problem with it.
While others have remarked that you’re responding to a “Hollywood” conception of romance, I also want to point out that you aren’t the only person who perceives romance this way. The surface perfection of romance is something people would like to signal about their relationships. Like, even in the cases where people are cheating on one another, or the relationship is falling apart, or mired by abuse, or conflict, they like to publicly signal that things are still going well, or at least not going horribly. If you searched for ‘romance’, or ‘relationships’, on Overcoming Bias, you could find some decent material on signaling within sexual relationships. Additionally, media besides Hollywood movies are shoving an archetype of romantic relationships down our throats all the time. So, only mostly perceiving all this, there are a great many people who view relationships in this manner. This is probably skewed towards younger people, although it’s also been remarked in this thread that some people go through this for decades.
Mr. Zaman’s comment seems to point out that a key to finding a relationship that avoids all these things about love which would frustrate you is that you can find the right person to do so. I don’t know how to do that myself, per se, other than suggesting you try OKCupid, or altering your social circle to include more people who have a similar mindset, and then dating from within there.
I believe you’re correct in that a substantial portion of relationships, one partner coming out to another, and stating (realistically) that they’re not the best possible person, and that it could be quite possible to find another one, would be hurtful. I believe that might be hurtful in some relationships only because the other interlocutor won’t understand why you’re stating obvious but hurtful facts, like you’re signaling something mysterious. I wouldn’t worry about that, though. So, there are people who have fooled themselves into thinking relationships ought to be like an idealized romance. Perhaps you could try observing other relationship styles where you can, or read about them on some blog which is, I don’t know, contra-romantic, and that could change your perception of people practically love one another.
I can’t either, but not because those things are false.
My point is that it isn’t acceptable for parties to relationships to admit/accept these truths.
I agree that it has some bad connotations, but you could override those connotations by saying that you don’t mean anything further than what you explicitly said.
If you try starting such a conversation, I suggest using more examples than you have thus far. If you don’t feel comfortable providing personal anecdotes as examples, feel free to PM me. In that case, I’ll start the conversation, because I do have anecdotes/examples I am willing to, and can, share.
I appreciate your consideration, thoughtfulness, and patience. I’m comfortable though.
And you’re right, I should have used more examples. I just was having trouble articulating them, and I just wanted to get the conversation started. In hindsight, I should have took the time to think it through in order to make the subsequent conversation more productive.
:-|
I know, I know...I tend to write in a superfluous, and long-winded manner. Like, longer than the above comment. It was about 20% longer, so I edited out the material that I didn’t believe would actually clarify the questions I was asking, or that I believed wouldn’t be at all valuable to adamzerner. I was at a lack of words other than ‘edited for brevity’. In terms of writing, I believe I’m decent at getting my thoughts out of my head. However, my ability to write more compactly is a skill I need to improve upon, and I intend to do so.
Also, I aim to be quite precise with my language, so I tend to provide more detail in my examples than I believe might be necessary, in an attempt to prevent as much confusion for the reader as I can.
For those of us with more peculiar tastes, this isn’t actually true.
For example there really aren’t that many IQ 145+ reasonably fit/attractive men around my age who happen to be sympathetic to transhumanist values and also click with me personally out there in the world, let alone among those I’m likely to ever meet. I’m in college right now where the concentration of such men is the highest it will ever be in my life and I’ve met <10 of them, most of whom are disqualified for a relationship for various reasons.
You’re not me, but if you are anything like me, this will probably be one of the things you change your mind about in the future.
After switching “men” to “women”, everything in your comment would have rung true for me from a younger age (15-19) - I was primarily looking for someone highly intelligent (though my cut-off was more like 95% than your 99.9%) reasonably attractive, socially liberal and sex positive...and even though my requirements were way less stringent than yours, I still was turning down advances from people who, had I got to know them better, might have turned out to be perfectly acceptable. I’d say I considered maybe 1% of the people I knew well enough to judge as acceptable partners.
Once I actually started having experience with real relationships, everything changed. I’m equally picky for serious long term relationships now (though I’m more willing to do casual stuff now than I was in the past) but today my “bottleneck” criteria that most people fail have mostly have to do with kindness, communicative skills, and emotional resilience. I still care about things like intelligence and attractiveness, but not nearly as much. To me, intelligence is sexy signalling in the same way a fit body is—I’m instinctively drawn to it and a total lack of it will turn me off, but I don’t attempt to consciously evaluate it as a relationship criteria anymore. As for ideology, I find that most people who possess the qualities I care about either already have worldviews which I find acceptable, or tend to alter their worldviews after discussion.
I wouldn’t say my actual criteria changed, only my knowledge of what my true preferences actually were. Regardless of the criteria you think you have, your true preferences will shine through eventually in the form of break-ups and relationships that fizzle out before they start. But if you’re working with a layer of false criteria on top of the true preferences, you might turn down the opportunity to connect with someone who does not meet your false criteria but does satisfy your true preferences.
(For reference on how to weigh this info, I’m 23, I’ve been in a happy relationship for 4 years with several shorter non-consummated interactions before and during, and the only major stumbling block has been different monogamy/polyamory related preferences)
Hmm...I would very much like to know if my very stringent criteria for basic-possibility-of-a-relationship will change with time. I suppose I should evaluate my goals and why I have those criteria.
*
World Population: 7 billion
145+ IQ (13/10000): 93 million
Male (1/2): 46 million
College-aged (1/10): 4 million
Normal weight (3/5): 2 million
Transhumanist values are probably higher than average in that group, but I have no idea of numbers there. Clicking with you and a more refined definition of attraction I can’t speak to, but if you’ve come in contact with 5 in your time at college… There’s still lots.
I’m guessing that’s from a base of 100? If so, you’re off by almost a standard deviation there: the mean world IQ is very far from Western normed 100s. IIRC, the population weighted estimate from the Lynn national IQ estimates puts the global mean at maybe 90. That’s going to affect the tails like 145+ a lot.
Of course… I thought 100 was meant to be the global mean. Lynn set Great Britian’s mean, nothing like a flexible definition!
The (not very good) data doesn’t bear out a 90ish global mean though, the sub-90 IQ countries are much lower population than over 90. To be pessimistic I’d take another half sigma. (92.5)
World Population: 7 billion
145+ IQ (1/4200): 17 million
Male (1/2): 8 million
College-aged (1/10): 800 thousand
Normal weight (3/5): 480 thousand
Actually useful numbers may be able to be obtained by using more locale specific filters.
Who exactly cares about intelligent people half-way across the globe anyway, when personal relationships (and the possibility of finding people with whom those are possible) are the issue?
You can meet them online, or move to other countries. Personally, for such an estimate I’d be looking only at Anglophones: learning a language just to increase one’s dating pool seems pretty far to go for love.
Hence the actually useful numbers bit! Yet I do care to some extent, if for some reason I end up there in future, just less then everyone here and now. Maybe one could weight populations by inverse distance?
OTOH, a linear combination of Gaussians with a standard deviation of 15 and different means will not be a Gaussian and will have a standard deviation larger than 15. So a naive calculation as in trist’s comment below will be an underestimate.
That’s not accurate; did you mean 13/10000?
Given that a couple were taken and a couple were incompatible for various other reasons, that I expect a higher proportion of guys to be taken as I get older, and that I will never be in such a high-density environment again… I really don’t think 1 real prospect every couple of years, who may or may not work out as an actual relationship, is a high hit rate at all. Certainly not high enough that I would ever consider someone I was in a successful relationship with to be “easily replaceable.”
Thanks, fixed.
I have a hard time seeing people as replaceable, much less easially. Even between two people who fit some abstracted ideal, one won’t replace another. Leaving that aside though, I think that the difficulty is more in finding the people who fit that ideal than their actual existence.
xkcd: Dating Pools
(Though this graph from The Case For An Older Woman on OkTrends suggests otherwise—but I’m not sure a 40-year-old single guy is as likely to be on OkCupid as a 20-year-old one is.)
Supposedly, the mean IQ on Lesswrong is around 140. (Assuming that there is some relationship between median and mean in these rather unusual environs,) do you really consider more than half of the participants on this site too stupid to engage in intellectually stimulating discussions with you? I mean, what’s with the 145+ cutoff for IQ? Even granting that you have, arguendo, a 155 IQ, do you really think someone with an IQ of 130 is to much of a dullard for romance?
Further… most people don’t emerge from the womb committed transhumanists. Presumably, someone had to persuade most of them at some point. Perhaps you should be concentrating, not on men who are transhumanists, but on men who score high on the “openness to ideas” part of the Big Five?
ETA: The above reads sort of plaintive, in hindsight. So, in case it’s necessary to spell it out, I’m neither looking for a companion nor in your age bracket. Just making suggestions in the form of questions.
Good point. Personally, I’m the same as you—my tastes are particular enough where I’ve never even met anyone who I’ve felt compatible with. But I think that tens of thousands is a reasonable estimate for the general population.
I don’t think that that’s true. I’m in college now too (Pitt), and people all seem very average to me. I think that for you, it’s more likely to meet people you’re looking for by doing things you’re interested in (rationality and transhumanist stuff), and you’ll probably do more of that stuff once you graduate.
*
Doesn’t it matter how few of said other “potential” SOs live reasonably near you, aren’t already taken, and in turn view you as a potential SO for them?
My point was that it seems to me that people try to treat SOs as if they’re the only one on the planet for them, which clearly isn’t true.
But I agree, in a practical sense, the amount of potential SOs is definitely limited by those factors. For most people, I still think that there’s enough of them where most people would find one in a reasonable amount of time. But for people with more particular tastes, it could definitely be the case that you’ve found someone who you’re pretty unlikely to ever find someone like again.