Is it purely a numbers game though? Most people have this thing nerdy academics call a ‘mate value sociometer’ and they use it to help decide how hot a female to pursue. Of course, this sociometer has to be calibrated, so you really want to be rejected often enough to know where you stand. My point is, it might be better to keep this sociometer in mind (especially since non-neurotypicals tend not to have this instinct), to at first target your proposals to be as informative as possible, and then later on target those girls your mate value can buy. (this is in fact what studies have found neurotypicals to be doing)
It’s not purely a numbers game. However, it really helps if you can interact with a number of people that’s at least in double digits.
Get used to meeting new people. It’s good for you. You grew this great big brain to do chimp-chimp interaction better, after all—you have an aptitude for this sort of thing. MEET MORE PEOPLE!
If someone takes my point as an excuse not to meet people, that person is wrong. Because that is not what it says at all. And also, meeting girls and meeting new people are not quite the same. Though the point does apply to the latter.
Perhaps you are saying people already adjust their expectations in light of their successes and failures, in which case my pointing out that sociometer point does more harm than good.
Sorry, I was speaking more generally of “dating as numbers game”, not disagreeing with you. I find many people who worry about the idea of a “numbers game” see that as a problem rather than an opportunity.
I must note that I am almost pathologically gregarious and outgoing myself, and have an unfortunate habit of offering unhelpful advice on such to those who aren’t—and if I seem to you to have done that, I most sincerely apologise.
Ah ok. I was puzzled I guess as that didn’t seem otherwise very relevant. Yes, thinking of meeting many girls as a special case of meeting many people does make it seem less daunting to me!
Yes, thinking of meeting many girls as a special case of meeting many people does make it seem less daunting to me!
I do believe you’ve hit upon an important perspective trick. It’s meeting people. This also allows you to do the “don’t think about it” Zen mind trick.
I’m approximately 97% sure that at least one of the next five people I’ll meet will be a woman.
97% seems high. Same sex groups are relatively common. Even if the expected number of women out of the next five people is 2.5 there is probably more than 3% chance of the next five being male.
But then again, more of the people I meet are female than male; I guess those two effects roughly cancel out. Trying to remember when the last few times I met five males in a row were seems to confirm that the number is roughly in the right ballpark. (OTOH, the probability that none of the next five people I met is a man probably is a few times larger than the naive binomial model would predict.)
I mostly agree with this, although I suspect it might be more complicated than a single hot-or-not scale. Like, indie rock chicks are looking for a different kind of dude than cheerleaders are. Both the indie rock chick and the cheerleader might be blazing hot, but they’re going to pick out different boyfriends. So if a guy is making a lot of passes at certain kinds of girls and getting nowhere, perhaps he should consider targeting girls who are closer to his own “type.”
Is it purely a numbers game though? Most people have this thing nerdy academics call a ‘mate value sociometer’ and they use it to help decide how hot a female to pursue. Of course, this sociometer has to be calibrated, so you really want to be rejected often enough to know where you stand. My point is, it might be better to keep this sociometer in mind (especially since non-neurotypicals tend not to have this instinct), to at first target your proposals to be as informative as possible, and then later on target those girls your mate value can buy. (this is in fact what studies have found neurotypicals to be doing)
It’s not purely a numbers game. However, it really helps if you can interact with a number of people that’s at least in double digits.
Get used to meeting new people. It’s good for you. You grew this great big brain to do chimp-chimp interaction better, after all—you have an aptitude for this sort of thing. MEET MORE PEOPLE!
If someone takes my point as an excuse not to meet people, that person is wrong. Because that is not what it says at all. And also, meeting girls and meeting new people are not quite the same. Though the point does apply to the latter.
Perhaps you are saying people already adjust their expectations in light of their successes and failures, in which case my pointing out that sociometer point does more harm than good.
Sorry, I was speaking more generally of “dating as numbers game”, not disagreeing with you. I find many people who worry about the idea of a “numbers game” see that as a problem rather than an opportunity.
I must note that I am almost pathologically gregarious and outgoing myself, and have an unfortunate habit of offering unhelpful advice on such to those who aren’t—and if I seem to you to have done that, I most sincerely apologise.
Ah ok. I was puzzled I guess as that didn’t seem otherwise very relevant. Yes, thinking of meeting many girls as a special case of meeting many people does make it seem less daunting to me!
I do believe you’ve hit upon an important perspective trick. It’s meeting people. This also allows you to do the “don’t think about it” Zen mind trick.
I’m approximately 97% sure that at least one of the next five people I’ll meet will be a woman.
I’m also approximately 100% sure that at least five of the next five women I’ll meet will be people. :-)
97% seems high. Same sex groups are relatively common. Even if the expected number of women out of the next five people is 2.5 there is probably more than 3% chance of the next five being male.
But then again, more of the people I meet are female than male; I guess those two effects roughly cancel out. Trying to remember when the last few times I met five males in a row were seems to confirm that the number is roughly in the right ballpark. (OTOH, the probability that none of the next five people I met is a man probably is a few times larger than the naive binomial model would predict.)
I mostly agree with this, although I suspect it might be more complicated than a single hot-or-not scale. Like, indie rock chicks are looking for a different kind of dude than cheerleaders are. Both the indie rock chick and the cheerleader might be blazing hot, but they’re going to pick out different boyfriends. So if a guy is making a lot of passes at certain kinds of girls and getting nowhere, perhaps he should consider targeting girls who are closer to his own “type.”
Certainly.
I was just trying to acknowledge caveats. Of which there should be many.