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.
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.
*