Based on my (admittedly limited) experience, one relationship-breaker is a failure to model each other’s minds correctly, and, similarly, interpreting identical data in very different ways, which leads to serious communication problems. Also, along these lines is trust; it tends to be harder to trust someone if you can’t predict their reaction or you expect they may react with (what you percieve as) totally disproportional emotion to a minor (as you see it) event.
Rationalists should, in theory, be somewhat better at avoiding these pitfalls, both because they think in similar ways and because they’re rationalists and thus have a shared language to address these problems and some consciousness that they exist.
This may offer some explanation of why rationalists might prefer rationalist romantic partners, since it (may) increase the odds of effective communication and minimize both the frequency and magnitude of misunderstandings.
Additionally, it’s nice to be with someone who realizes that disagreements are likely over differing interpretations of the same data and thus be open to other possibilities. My current girlfriend is bad at considering other possibilities, which tends to cause friction in our relationship.
Based on my (admittedly limited) experience, one relationship-breaker is a failure to model each other’s minds correctly, and, similarly, interpreting identical data in very different ways, which leads to serious communication problems. Also, along these lines is trust; it tends to be harder to trust someone if you can’t predict their reaction or you expect they may react with (what you percieve as) totally disproportional emotion to a minor (as you see it) event.
Rationalists should, in theory, be somewhat better at avoiding these pitfalls, both because they think in similar ways and because they’re rationalists and thus have a shared language to address these problems and some consciousness that they exist.
This may offer some explanation of why rationalists might prefer rationalist romantic partners, since it (may) increase the odds of effective communication and minimize both the frequency and magnitude of misunderstandings.
Additionally, it’s nice to be with someone who realizes that disagreements are likely over differing interpretations of the same data and thus be open to other possibilities. My current girlfriend is bad at considering other possibilities, which tends to cause friction in our relationship.