I’m actually doing this. I don’t feel suicidal (never would) but I do feel that people around me were so different that if I stay here, my Self will implode socially.
A suggestion for people who are at the point where moving seems like a decent alternative: In OKCupid, the match-making website, there is a long set of questions you can respond about yourself. If you fill those up (say 90 out of hundreds) you can ask the algorithm to find people who are high matches to you as Friend, and high matches to your romantically (correlated but distinct measurements).
If you ask the match making algorithm for those who are similar everywhere, you’ll see where you may fit in better.
The vast majority of people that show 90% or more correlation with me are concentrated in 2 areas of the world, New York city and California (SF Bay in particular), this is one of the indicators I choose for where I’ll try to live.
The vast majority of people that show 90% or more correlation with me are concentrated in 2 areas of the world, New York city and California (SF Bay in particular), this is one of the indicators I choose for where I’ll try to live.
Maybe you checked, but is it possible that the vast majority of OK Cupid users overall are in SF or NYC? This wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Had not checked. Easier way to check was to look for my enemies. (there is an enemy match)
Seems that I’ll have a bad bad time in Greece, India, Southeast Asia, Florida and all those american states that when you are from outside the USA, you have no idea where they are.
I do have enemies in California, so I’m guessing Cali does indeed have many cupid people. None of them is the Bay Area though.
The vast majority of people that show 90% or more correlation with me are concentrated in 2 areas of the world, New York city and California (SF Bay in particular)
I tried the same experiment and got the same results, modulo London. That seemed odd to me, so I punched in a couple of smaller cities where I’ve met reasonably interesting people and asked for match results back. Sure enough, it returned a few screens of 90+% matches in both cases—comparable to the “everywhere” results, in fact.
Although I don’t feel like putting enough effort into this to figure out exactly what’s going on, it seems clear that the “everywhere” query isn’t searching the entire database. I’m located in the SF Bay Area, so I’m guessing local results are overrepresented in what I’m getting back; it seems excessively convenient that I’d just happen to be living in my best possible social scene. NY and London are both among the largest English-speaking cities, though, so not much surprise there.
If I’m right, it’d be hard to use these results to gauge social compatibility unless you could correct for the missing matches. If it’s dropping some geographically or demographically asymmetrical subset of possible matches, it might not be possible at all.
A quick note: there are a good number of LWers in SFbay and NYC. I am guessing that OKC would match you closely with them (especially as there are a whole-frakkin-lot of questions about “spirituality” and the “supernatural”—I am guessing that many LWers would mark their answers to these questions as high-importance, also.) So having lots of 90+% may mean that there is a small sub-community that you might get along well with while not being super indicative of the flavor of the city/region as a whole.
Actually I don’t respond most spirituality questions in OKcupid, only those that deal with absolutely impossible to accept levels of stupidity (anti-evolution).
If I did, I would only get really bad matches in Brazil, since most women here are spiritual, religious etc… This is a country where you can’t afford to select for atheism if you want to select for other awesome traits. (See why am I leaving?)
Does OKCupid let you weight the importance/willingness to change these factors? If so, it seems like it could potentially be an extremely useful tool for finding optimal places to live.
Completely agree. For example, if you’re feeling suicidal, please don’t kill yourself at least until you have moved to another country.
William Gibson
I’m actually doing this. I don’t feel suicidal (never would) but I do feel that people around me were so different that if I stay here, my Self will implode socially.
A suggestion for people who are at the point where moving seems like a decent alternative: In OKCupid, the match-making website, there is a long set of questions you can respond about yourself. If you fill those up (say 90 out of hundreds) you can ask the algorithm to find people who are high matches to you as Friend, and high matches to your romantically (correlated but distinct measurements).
If you ask the match making algorithm for those who are similar everywhere, you’ll see where you may fit in better. The vast majority of people that show 90% or more correlation with me are concentrated in 2 areas of the world, New York city and California (SF Bay in particular), this is one of the indicators I choose for where I’ll try to live.
Maybe you checked, but is it possible that the vast majority of OK Cupid users overall are in SF or NYC? This wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Had not checked. Easier way to check was to look for my enemies. (there is an enemy match) Seems that I’ll have a bad bad time in Greece, India, Southeast Asia, Florida and all those american states that when you are from outside the USA, you have no idea where they are.
I do have enemies in California, so I’m guessing Cali does indeed have many cupid people. None of them is the Bay Area though.
I tried the same experiment and got the same results, modulo London. That seemed odd to me, so I punched in a couple of smaller cities where I’ve met reasonably interesting people and asked for match results back. Sure enough, it returned a few screens of 90+% matches in both cases—comparable to the “everywhere” results, in fact.
Although I don’t feel like putting enough effort into this to figure out exactly what’s going on, it seems clear that the “everywhere” query isn’t searching the entire database. I’m located in the SF Bay Area, so I’m guessing local results are overrepresented in what I’m getting back; it seems excessively convenient that I’d just happen to be living in my best possible social scene. NY and London are both among the largest English-speaking cities, though, so not much surprise there.
If I’m right, it’d be hard to use these results to gauge social compatibility unless you could correct for the missing matches. If it’s dropping some geographically or demographically asymmetrical subset of possible matches, it might not be possible at all.
Related xkcd comic
A quick note: there are a good number of LWers in SFbay and NYC. I am guessing that OKC would match you closely with them (especially as there are a whole-frakkin-lot of questions about “spirituality” and the “supernatural”—I am guessing that many LWers would mark their answers to these questions as high-importance, also.) So having lots of 90+% may mean that there is a small sub-community that you might get along well with while not being super indicative of the flavor of the city/region as a whole.
Actually I don’t respond most spirituality questions in OKcupid, only those that deal with absolutely impossible to accept levels of stupidity (anti-evolution).
If I did, I would only get really bad matches in Brazil, since most women here are spiritual, religious etc… This is a country where you can’t afford to select for atheism if you want to select for other awesome traits. (See why am I leaving?)
Does OKCupid let you weight the importance/willingness to change these factors? If so, it seems like it could potentially be an extremely useful tool for finding optimal places to live.