I would like to highlight that the advice is sexist and not unisex as stated. All these steps for a guy to meet as many partners as they can in order to really find one which fit their goal, and the advice for the woman is only to actively pursue people they are attracted too ? If the goal was really for any person to meet the best partner for them, it would ensue that women, as rational agents, should also try to maximize their encounters with men, to maximize the chance to find a man who is a great fit to their preference. The advice given here for women (while helpful, I am all for expressing your interest to people you’re interested in) would be optimal if the goal was to help the men they’re interacting with find a good partner, not to help these women themselves.
Overall, this text has a bad vibe, I have the sense that this approach taken too literally and without concern on how the person you’re considering to date would feel could easily lead to creepy behaviors and interactions. If you want to give dating advice to men (given the writing of this text, I would assume that’s what you typically do), you would benefit from talking to women to get their perspective, reading feminist texts, queer ones even. Finding a good partner while making people you’re interacting with having pleasant experiences is highly preferable than doing it at the cost making dozens of people uncomfortable or even feeling unsafe with your approach. The later is ethically questionable.
I’m not sure why this got downvotes, except that its core point seems to be “be rational about dating” and just about every single reader on LessWrong identifies as a rationalist, so already believes this about everything. Thus, they’ve tried to be rational about dating, and either derived or been exposed to most of these points already. Thus, it seems LessWrong just isn’t the ideal outlet for this.
I might also suggest a slightly less wordy and faster-start version of this essay (and most essays). I don’t care what your qualifications are much, so “I’ve been a dating coach” would do, with maybe more qualifications in a footnote.
I’ve seen a bunch of dating advice, and most of this is common advice. But I found your “to-do before entering a relationship” to have some novel points and framings, so I particularly liked that.
I will tell you this: although this ideally would be common sense stuff, I have yet to see a single self-identitying clever person (including subset rational) actually apply these ideas instead of winging his/her love life, at the first instant the primal drivers fully kick in. I have heard this echoed elsewhere too, by very successful “dating coaches”.
(This is where observation and experience matter. As I wrote, there is no real, formal authority on dating and you can’t find much peer reviewed research on this.)
There is also the whole topic of “you don’t know what you don’t know”, but it’s outside the scope of this primer. There is perhaps more to this text though, than meets they eye at the first read.
I am glad to hear you have seen some of this advice before, because it is supposed to be fundamental, not novel. (If you want significantly more novel stuff, I have a book in editing atm.) I love to find basic advice that actually makes sense. Humanity needs much more of that “common sense”.
PS. The second part of the intro had a header with the words SKIPPABLE. I see that it didn’t do its job too well.
Clever people are different than rationalists. Here we not only fancy ourselves to be clever, but rationalists. Thus, this advice to be rational about dating is less relevant here than to other groups of “clever” people.
I missed “skippable” because I was already impatient and skimming :) I don’t wait for an invitation to skip, because time is scarce.
I know you did ;) I liked your comment. But do notice, this is not a post about being rational (allthough it constantly references the sequences and the pinned material). I updated the intro now thanks to your excellent feedback!
Oh and I should’ve said- I very much agree that the world needs more common-sense, basic advice because what’s basic and common sense isn’t totally obvious to everyone if they haven’t thought about it quite that way. So I very much support your project, including posting on LessWrong as well as other spots for clever, interested daters.
I would like to highlight that the advice is sexist and not unisex as stated. All these steps for a guy to meet as many partners as they can in order to really find one which fit their goal, and the advice for the woman is only to actively pursue people they are attracted too ? If the goal was really for any person to meet the best partner for them, it would ensue that women, as rational agents, should also try to maximize their encounters with men, to maximize the chance to find a man who is a great fit to their preference. The advice given here for women (while helpful, I am all for expressing your interest to people you’re interested in) would be optimal if the goal was to help the men they’re interacting with find a good partner, not to help these women themselves.
Overall, this text has a bad vibe, I have the sense that this approach taken too literally and without concern on how the person you’re considering to date would feel could easily lead to creepy behaviors and interactions. If you want to give dating advice to men (given the writing of this text, I would assume that’s what you typically do), you would benefit from talking to women to get their perspective, reading feminist texts, queer ones even. Finding a good partner while making people you’re interacting with having pleasant experiences is highly preferable than doing it at the cost making dozens of people uncomfortable or even feeling unsafe with your approach. The later is ethically questionable.
I’m not sure why this got downvotes, except that its core point seems to be “be rational about dating” and just about every single reader on LessWrong identifies as a rationalist, so already believes this about everything. Thus, they’ve tried to be rational about dating, and either derived or been exposed to most of these points already. Thus, it seems LessWrong just isn’t the ideal outlet for this.
I might also suggest a slightly less wordy and faster-start version of this essay (and most essays). I don’t care what your qualifications are much, so “I’ve been a dating coach” would do, with maybe more qualifications in a footnote.
I’ve seen a bunch of dating advice, and most of this is common advice. But I found your “to-do before entering a relationship” to have some novel points and framings, so I particularly liked that.
Hi Seth, thank you for voicing this.
I will tell you this: although this ideally would be common sense stuff, I have yet to see a single self-identitying clever person (including subset rational) actually apply these ideas instead of winging his/her love life, at the first instant the primal drivers fully kick in. I have heard this echoed elsewhere too, by very successful “dating coaches”.
(This is where observation and experience matter. As I wrote, there is no real, formal authority on dating and you can’t find much peer reviewed research on this.)
There is also the whole topic of “you don’t know what you don’t know”, but it’s outside the scope of this primer. There is perhaps more to this text though, than meets they eye at the first read.
I am glad to hear you have seen some of this advice before, because it is supposed to be fundamental, not novel. (If you want significantly more novel stuff, I have a book in editing atm.) I love to find basic advice that actually makes sense. Humanity needs much more of that “common sense”.
PS. The second part of the intro had a header with the words SKIPPABLE. I see that it didn’t do its job too well.
Clever people are different than rationalists. Here we not only fancy ourselves to be clever, but rationalists. Thus, this advice to be rational about dating is less relevant here than to other groups of “clever” people.
I missed “skippable” because I was already impatient and skimming :) I don’t wait for an invitation to skip, because time is scarce.
I know you did ;) I liked your comment. But do notice, this is not a post about being rational (allthough it constantly references the sequences and the pinned material). I updated the intro now thanks to your excellent feedback!
Oh and I should’ve said- I very much agree that the world needs more common-sense, basic advice because what’s basic and common sense isn’t totally obvious to everyone if they haven’t thought about it quite that way. So I very much support your project, including posting on LessWrong as well as other spots for clever, interested daters.