I would prefer to hear all the reasons, myself and am ten times more likely to choke on fluff like “It’s not you, it’s me.” than burst into flames because somebody criticized me. I need closure and feedback and for my life events to make sense. For those purposes, the only information I’d deem good enough is a serving of reality.
Shminux’s point, and the rest of this thread, is about predicting the behavior of typical women in order to make an accurate assessment about what breakup approach is best. Do you think that your preferences are typical for women, or even typical for women-who-LW-folks-date, many of whom are not themselves LWers?
According to Vladimir, LessWrong has somewhere in the ballpark of 600-1000 active users. According to Yvain’s 2011 survey, 92 of the 1090 respondents were female. If I alone would respond well, that increases the chances of a good response by an LW woman by over 1% (unless you want to include inactive members). Since Dave’s point is not “You’re more likely to get a good response from an LW woman than not.” and was “You’re more likely to get a good response from an LW woman than a random woman.” me saying that actually gives a potentially significant support to his point. If you calculate the chances of a random woman responding well to be under 1% (seems reasonable) and don’t consider inactive users to be an “LWer”, then I totally supported his point. If not, then all Dave needs to do to figure out whether he’s right is to count the number of LW women he is sure would respond well and compare the ratio with his estimate of how many random women would respond well. I doubt anyone here thinks the percentage of random women that would respond well is beyond the single digit percents. If that’s right, my saying so gave 10% or more of the support needed to think that he’s right. As for the behavior of the average LW woman, I have no idea. That I would respond well confirms that at least some LW women would respond well, which might help people figure out if it’s worthwhile to find out exactly how many of us there are.
Which doesn’t contradict Dave’s idea that LW women / the women that LW members date might be more likely to respond well.
Are you sure you know how you would react...
Totally sure. My last boyfriend attempted to give me fluff and I tore through it. I always want to get down to the bottom of why a relationship did not work. Even if reality is devastating, I want reality. You can tell I’m strong enough to deal with criticism because I invite it often. You can tell I’m strong enough to swallow criticism because of my elitism thread—check out the note at the top. I feel kind of dumb for not seeing these problems in advance (hindsight bias, I guess?). Now that I do see how awful my thread was—in public of all places—have I vanished, or gone crybaby or begged anybody for emotional support?
Dave’s idea that LW women / the women that LW members date
Just for clarity, I did not suggest the latter. What I suggested was that this sort of thing, initiated by the partner of an LW member, is more likely to work out well… put differently, that LW members are more likely to respond well (or at least less likely to respond poorly)… than for non-LWers.
The gender of the LW member, and the gender of the partner, is not strictly irrelevant but is largely screened off by their membership.
I make no such claims about the partners of LWers.
Since your initial (and highly promising) arrival, I must admit that I lost respect for you faster than I have for any other poster in the history of LessWrong.
I would prefer to hear all the reasons, myself and am ten times more likely to choke on fluff like “It’s not you, it’s me.” than burst into flames because somebody criticized me. I need closure and feedback and for my life events to make sense. For those purposes, the only information I’d deem good enough is a serving of reality.
Shminux’s point, and the rest of this thread, is about predicting the behavior of typical women in order to make an accurate assessment about what breakup approach is best. Do you think that your preferences are typical for women, or even typical for women-who-LW-folks-date, many of whom are not themselves LWers?
According to Vladimir, LessWrong has somewhere in the ballpark of 600-1000 active users. According to Yvain’s 2011 survey, 92 of the 1090 respondents were female. If I alone would respond well, that increases the chances of a good response by an LW woman by over 1% (unless you want to include inactive members). Since Dave’s point is not “You’re more likely to get a good response from an LW woman than not.” and was “You’re more likely to get a good response from an LW woman than a random woman.” me saying that actually gives a potentially significant support to his point. If you calculate the chances of a random woman responding well to be under 1% (seems reasonable) and don’t consider inactive users to be an “LWer”, then I totally supported his point. If not, then all Dave needs to do to figure out whether he’s right is to count the number of LW women he is sure would respond well and compare the ratio with his estimate of how many random women would respond well. I doubt anyone here thinks the percentage of random women that would respond well is beyond the single digit percents. If that’s right, my saying so gave 10% or more of the support needed to think that he’s right. As for the behavior of the average LW woman, I have no idea. That I would respond well confirms that at least some LW women would respond well, which might help people figure out if it’s worthwhile to find out exactly how many of us there are.
Two comments:
First, you clearly are not an average female.
Are you sure you know how you would react in both cases? People are notoriously bad at predicting their own behavior.
Which doesn’t contradict Dave’s idea that LW women / the women that LW members date might be more likely to respond well.
Totally sure. My last boyfriend attempted to give me fluff and I tore through it. I always want to get down to the bottom of why a relationship did not work. Even if reality is devastating, I want reality. You can tell I’m strong enough to deal with criticism because I invite it often. You can tell I’m strong enough to swallow criticism because of my elitism thread—check out the note at the top. I feel kind of dumb for not seeing these problems in advance (hindsight bias, I guess?). Now that I do see how awful my thread was—in public of all places—have I vanished, or gone crybaby or begged anybody for emotional support?
No.
I am stronger than that.
Just for clarity, I did not suggest the latter. What I suggested was that this sort of thing, initiated by the partner of an LW member, is more likely to work out well… put differently, that LW members are more likely to respond well (or at least less likely to respond poorly)… than for non-LWers.
The gender of the LW member, and the gender of the partner, is not strictly irrelevant but is largely screened off by their membership.
I make no such claims about the partners of LWers.
Since your initial (and highly promising) arrival, I must admit that I lost respect for you faster than I have for any other poster in the history of LessWrong.
But posts like this one give me hope.