I think that just trying it is particularly important in asking someone out, because it allows you to refine your approach.
For instance, let’s say you know absolutely nothing whatsoever about asking people out and you ask someone out with some sappy love poetry, and they respond “I’m sorry, I have a boyfriend right now.”
After some apologies to her and her boyfriend, you now know “Make sure people don’t have boyfriends before asking them out.”
Next you ask someone out, after determining that they are single, only to find out that “I’m not looking for a boyfriend right now.” Now you know to determine that people are looking for boyfriends before asking them out.
So you take this additional piece of information and then maybe you’ll have a conversation like this:
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Are you looking for a boyfriend?”
“Are you asking me out?”
“Yes.”
“Okay!”
As a secondary example which is a bit meta, has anyone else considered not posting a response in discussion threads. (not just on Less Wrong, but on any site) because you were afraid it was going to get piled for being a poor post?
Because it occurs to me that a much better approach might be to simply post your response and if it’s critiqued for valid errors, then you can admit them and fix it accordingly. I’ve spent hours rewriting responses sometimes and after reading this I’m thinking I might want to take a simpler approach. While some reviewing before posting is reasonable, I think hours on a few paragraphs in a casual discussion setting might be unreasonable of me.
Next you ask someone out, after determining that they are single, only to find out that “I’m not looking for a boyfriend right now.” Now you know to determine that people are looking for boyfriends before asking them out.
“I’m not looking right now” might as well be an excuse, what she really wants to say may be “You are not really interesting enough for me to consider you as a potential boyfriend.” In that case the correct answer would be to become more interesting, and here you have one of the basic ideas of pick up.
My experience is that the bar for comments is not that high. I comment relatively frequently, don’t have a lot of deep insights or anything, but have gotten few downvotes (AFAIK), and net karma 97 as of this writing.
I think that just trying it is particularly important in asking someone out, because it allows you to refine your approach.
For instance, let’s say you know absolutely nothing whatsoever about asking people out and you ask someone out with some sappy love poetry, and they respond “I’m sorry, I have a boyfriend right now.”
After some apologies to her and her boyfriend, you now know “Make sure people don’t have boyfriends before asking them out.”
Next you ask someone out, after determining that they are single, only to find out that “I’m not looking for a boyfriend right now.” Now you know to determine that people are looking for boyfriends before asking them out.
So you take this additional piece of information and then maybe you’ll have a conversation like this:
“Do you have a boyfriend?” “No.” “Are you looking for a boyfriend?” “Are you asking me out?” “Yes.” “Okay!”
As a secondary example which is a bit meta, has anyone else considered not posting a response in discussion threads. (not just on Less Wrong, but on any site) because you were afraid it was going to get piled for being a poor post?
Because it occurs to me that a much better approach might be to simply post your response and if it’s critiqued for valid errors, then you can admit them and fix it accordingly. I’ve spent hours rewriting responses sometimes and after reading this I’m thinking I might want to take a simpler approach. While some reviewing before posting is reasonable, I think hours on a few paragraphs in a casual discussion setting might be unreasonable of me.
“I’m not looking right now” might as well be an excuse, what she really wants to say may be “You are not really interesting enough for me to consider you as a potential boyfriend.” In that case the correct answer would be to become more interesting, and here you have one of the basic ideas of pick up.
My experience is that the bar for comments is not that high. I comment relatively frequently, don’t have a lot of deep insights or anything, but have gotten few downvotes (AFAIK), and net karma 97 as of this writing.