The missing piece is that I have a basically-100% retention rate, at least insofar as I want to. I don’t have lots of willing sexual partners; those opportunities come along at a trickle. But those who do, are consistently eager for more. That doesn’t require long term commitment on my part, it just requires them to keep wanting more.
… if you hope to find a partner with specific rare characteristics without it being a matter of blind luck, you’ll have to do the work of clearly articulating what you want and what you offer, and “tell your friends you’re looking” isn’t hard.
My friends do know that I’m looking and what I’m looking for (as far as I’ve figured that out myself); the consensus response from them is “oof, that’s tough”. Relying on friends is a fine strategy when the characteristics one wants are, say, 1-in-10 rare (bearing in mind that they’ll probably be more rare than that among single people because adverse selection), up to maybe 1-in-100. My fermi estimates say that the things I’d be willing to marry for are more like 1-in-10k at most, and probably more rare than that.
Ok, that does clarify my mistake, and I don’t have a lot to add. Except: it seems to me like the smarter someone is, the more willing they will be to trust their own judgment and ask sensible questions rather than just say “nope” if being asked to do something different than a standard relationship template. And also, the smarter someone is, the more likely they are able to manage the complications of something like nonmonogamy, or various relationship or personality quirks you might have. So, conditional on your suitable match being quite smart, the base rates of things like “will accept nonmonogamy” in the population in general won’t apply. In general, make sure you’re doing chained conditional probabilities, not multiplying your estimate of various traits in the population to get a small number. Weirdnesses correlate! :). And if your ideal partner is a genius alignment researcher or something similar, your geographic location is already doing a lot of filtering for you. But, probably you and your friends have accounted for all that and still got “oof, that’s tough” as the result, so… good luck! You seem good, and I hope things work out for you.
The missing piece is that I have a basically-100% retention rate, at least insofar as I want to. I don’t have lots of willing sexual partners; those opportunities come along at a trickle. But those who do, are consistently eager for more. That doesn’t require long term commitment on my part, it just requires them to keep wanting more.
My friends do know that I’m looking and what I’m looking for (as far as I’ve figured that out myself); the consensus response from them is “oof, that’s tough”. Relying on friends is a fine strategy when the characteristics one wants are, say, 1-in-10 rare (bearing in mind that they’ll probably be more rare than that among single people because adverse selection), up to maybe 1-in-100. My fermi estimates say that the things I’d be willing to marry for are more like 1-in-10k at most, and probably more rare than that.
Ok, that does clarify my mistake, and I don’t have a lot to add. Except: it seems to me like the smarter someone is, the more willing they will be to trust their own judgment and ask sensible questions rather than just say “nope” if being asked to do something different than a standard relationship template. And also, the smarter someone is, the more likely they are able to manage the complications of something like nonmonogamy, or various relationship or personality quirks you might have. So, conditional on your suitable match being quite smart, the base rates of things like “will accept nonmonogamy” in the population in general won’t apply. In general, make sure you’re doing chained conditional probabilities, not multiplying your estimate of various traits in the population to get a small number. Weirdnesses correlate! :). And if your ideal partner is a genius alignment researcher or something similar, your geographic location is already doing a lot of filtering for you. But, probably you and your friends have accounted for all that and still got “oof, that’s tough” as the result, so… good luck! You seem good, and I hope things work out for you.