it is strategically relevant to figure out this part of my world-model.
One big example application: when it comes to dating, there’s a pareto frontier of (kinds of relationships I could get and how valuable I’d find them) vs (how much effort it would take), and I notice that nearly all of that curve looks to me like the value is not worth the effort
Ah, ok. My experience was similar. For the first part of my life I was quite insecure and felt that I needed to work on myself first before attempting to partner with someone. That part is probably not similar, and may not be relevant. Once I got myself in order, I found that relationships seemed like a lot of effort for not very much benefit. It seemed to me like a lot of people were chasing after sex as if masturbation was not an option (I mean, sex is better, but not that much better, to the point where it would be worth it to put a significant portion of my available time and energy towards chasing it as a sole motivator) or validation (I speculated that people who hadn’t done the work on themselves and their own emotional state that I had might feel a greater need for external validation than I do), or… something else I hadn’t identified? Anyway, I went the low-effort route. How I operationalized that was, I’d consider dating someone if they showed an interest, but wasn’t going out looking for dates. And that did lead to several multi-year relationships, which mostly confirmed my sense that in retrospect they had been more effort than they were worth.
In the standard story, this is where the author goes “and then I met my current partner and everything was different, there were sunshine and rainbows and I finally understood what I had been missing, I felt something I’d never felt before, or something”. But this is real life, so it doesn’t follow that path, obviously. But, then I met my current partner, and the downsides in my other relationships basically don’t exist in this one, the benefits are significantly greater than the costs. What I had figured were properties of most people, were actually properties of dysfunctional people (which… may be most people?), and she just… didn’t have those issues. We get along great, when we have a disagreement we can talk about it like adults who are on the same team, when we need something we say so and then we each get what we need from the other. She feels like she’s high-maintenance because she occasionally struggles and I get to give her emotional support in those times, and I’m like “you do not understand what the words ‘high maintenance’ even mean, I could do this all day, it is actively pleasant to be helpful and appreciated for helping”.
Anyway, your strategic situation is different from mine because your values and personality are different from mine, but I am one data point of a person who thought that the effort required to have a relationship was generally not worth the cost, learned that with the right person this isn’t true, but didn’t have some kind of storybook epiphany or emotional conversion to a different sort of person. My advice would be, filter hard, and only invest in a relationship when it seems like it might be worth it, even if that’s rare or doesn’t ever happen. But my advice might be wrong for you.
That is indeed one of the points on the pareto curve where I’m like “yup, that would be nice, but the expected effort to get there is not enough for the payoff, for me”. Filtering hard means one has to go through a lot of candidates, and I’d need to make large changes to my life and probably invest thousands of hours in order to do that. (Bear in mind I’m in the Bay Area and my social circle is mostly rationalists; the supermajority of my current social circle is male and the whole geographical area is disproportionately male. So I’m not just facing unusually low benefits, but also unusually high costs.) Especially since that’s not a value prop I’d be willing to go monogamous and get married over, which would likely be a deal breaker for most such women.
For now, the low effort route is at least enough to get my sexual needs met and then some, even when I’m being transparent about not wanting much more than that with the women in question. (To be clear, I’m definitely not one of those guys who will kick a girl out as soon as he’s done, but I am explicit about not having any intention of climbing the relationship ladder past the lots-of-sex-and-some-fun-outings point.) That much, at least, is clearly net positive for me.
Ah, ok. My experience was similar. For the first part of my life I was quite insecure and felt that I needed to work on myself first before attempting to partner with someone. That part is probably not similar, and may not be relevant. Once I got myself in order, I found that relationships seemed like a lot of effort for not very much benefit. It seemed to me like a lot of people were chasing after sex as if masturbation was not an option (I mean, sex is better, but not that much better, to the point where it would be worth it to put a significant portion of my available time and energy towards chasing it as a sole motivator) or validation (I speculated that people who hadn’t done the work on themselves and their own emotional state that I had might feel a greater need for external validation than I do), or… something else I hadn’t identified? Anyway, I went the low-effort route. How I operationalized that was, I’d consider dating someone if they showed an interest, but wasn’t going out looking for dates. And that did lead to several multi-year relationships, which mostly confirmed my sense that in retrospect they had been more effort than they were worth.
In the standard story, this is where the author goes “and then I met my current partner and everything was different, there were sunshine and rainbows and I finally understood what I had been missing, I felt something I’d never felt before, or something”. But this is real life, so it doesn’t follow that path, obviously. But, then I met my current partner, and the downsides in my other relationships basically don’t exist in this one, the benefits are significantly greater than the costs. What I had figured were properties of most people, were actually properties of dysfunctional people (which… may be most people?), and she just… didn’t have those issues. We get along great, when we have a disagreement we can talk about it like adults who are on the same team, when we need something we say so and then we each get what we need from the other. She feels like she’s high-maintenance because she occasionally struggles and I get to give her emotional support in those times, and I’m like “you do not understand what the words ‘high maintenance’ even mean, I could do this all day, it is actively pleasant to be helpful and appreciated for helping”.
Anyway, your strategic situation is different from mine because your values and personality are different from mine, but I am one data point of a person who thought that the effort required to have a relationship was generally not worth the cost, learned that with the right person this isn’t true, but didn’t have some kind of storybook epiphany or emotional conversion to a different sort of person. My advice would be, filter hard, and only invest in a relationship when it seems like it might be worth it, even if that’s rare or doesn’t ever happen. But my advice might be wrong for you.
That is indeed one of the points on the pareto curve where I’m like “yup, that would be nice, but the expected effort to get there is not enough for the payoff, for me”. Filtering hard means one has to go through a lot of candidates, and I’d need to make large changes to my life and probably invest thousands of hours in order to do that. (Bear in mind I’m in the Bay Area and my social circle is mostly rationalists; the supermajority of my current social circle is male and the whole geographical area is disproportionately male. So I’m not just facing unusually low benefits, but also unusually high costs.) Especially since that’s not a value prop I’d be willing to go monogamous and get married over, which would likely be a deal breaker for most such women.
For now, the low effort route is at least enough to get my sexual needs met and then some, even when I’m being transparent about not wanting much more than that with the women in question. (To be clear, I’m definitely not one of those guys who will kick a girl out as soon as he’s done, but I am explicit about not having any intention of climbing the relationship ladder past the lots-of-sex-and-some-fun-outings point.) That much, at least, is clearly net positive for me.