Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

waitbutwhy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 222 posts

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#151

Post by mkstowegnv »

fizixer wrote: post #46

Marriage, monogamy, and (romantic) love are conservative notions that are close to being (or should be) marginalized in my opinion. Romantic love, especially, is an extremely superficial and hollow idea exalted to high heavens by the group-think of the masses. I gave up religion, and over the years realized that love is the second, way more sneaky and no less damaging, delusion that humanity indulges in. It has to go…

Fortunately for those who are generally considered unattractive you are correct for most people most of the time but 'the race is not always won by the swift'. As I try to impress on particularly lonely young people - the best way to win over a stranger is to make them feel your fire, and that fire - that one of the things you are deeply passionate about - might be music it might be dancing it might be poetry it might be mountain climbing it mostly doesn't matter. Because in romance and sex enthusiasm trumps appearances and with time a person you like more and more starts to appear more and more attractive. If you are introverted it will take more time and more luck but it you can eventually share your excitement with someone there is a good chance they will find you exciting. And if you have imagination and persistence it can last a lifetime.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#152

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

qbrass wrote: post #52
twic wrote: post #12

The article attempts to presents a framework for making this decision rationally, but ultimately, it's the heart that chooses between FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

Nah, the heart chooses OpenBSD, but you stick with FreeBSD out of convenience. The real tragedy is NetBSD being forever alone.

Or you can be unfaithful like me: run FreeBSD bare-metal and OpenBSD under bhyve! And in a few years I'll switch it around and try runing OpenBSD bare-metal and FreeBSD under vmm. :-)

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#153

Post by true_religion »

gehwartzen wrote: post #103
mikebenfield wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to understand the difference between a proposition and its converse. "If a person wants to get married, s/he wants to share his/her life with someone" is (more or less) true, and is the premise everyone is working under. The converse of that proposition is "If a person wants to share his/her life with someone, s/he wants to get married." That is what you for some reason appear to believe is the premise…

I don't think he is trying to state the converse of your original quote. Seems clear all he is saying is that you can share your life with someone regardless of being married. You can live with a boyfriend/girlfriend and experience sharing life all the same without the religious or legal institution of marriage. Unless the assertion is that things like filing taxes together somehow prevent this

In many cultures, as soon as you're living like boyfriend/girlfriend together in the same building for more than 3 months, you're considered married unless you go out of your way to actively deny it.

In the US/UK, you don't have to preemptively deny it, but if people begin to assume you're married and you don't correct them... then you're married under common-law.

I have a dear friend who has been 'dating' his girlfriend for almost twenty years. Their eldest child is 14, and they own a home together. As far as sharing their lives together, they've done it without being married legally---but in the eyes of all their friends and their kids? Oh those two are so married.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#154

Post by projektir »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #48
xupybd wrote: post #20

Sounds great if you have lots of options. Some of us are getting older and haven't made it past anyone else's filter. At some point your will to just try and make it work regardless of the match.

The only place I think that really applies is if you're in a small town. If you can't get past the first few dates after trying with 10-20 candidates in a big city (requiring 100-200 solicitations), you're probably facing one of a few very solvable problems, off the top of my head: - fails at basic hygiene (solved by showers, haircuts, clothes, cleaning your room, home improvement projects, eating vegetables, etc) -…

I find it interesting that you consider all these problems "solvable", almost in a sense of being trivially solvable, while I feel that most people wrestle with at least one of these for their entire lives.

And people with these problems nonetheless have or had SOs. :P And people with... much deeper problems also have SOs. And then some people just can't find SOs, even if everything looks good on paper. I don't think it's so simple.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#155

Post by true_religion »

tluyben2 wrote: post #53
jogjayr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most marriages result in children. Most people want to have children. It's not an unreasonable assumption to make that most people who read the article will fall into that camp.

> Most people want to have children. How do you know? My friends who did have kids had intricate dynamics around that where 'want to have' was not really a big part of the equation. Pressure, religion, 'that is what you do', 'my spouse wants to', 'maybe now life gets better' etc are often part of the equation. For the 'want to have' you will need to look inside people's heads.

'my spouse wants to' is exactly fitting into "most people want to have children". Your spouse is part of the marriage, hence their views within the marriage are pretty paramount.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#156

Post by true_religion »

tluyben2 wrote: post #62
wnissen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

85% of women have children at some point in their lives. This is just a fact. You may know that you're not having kids, but the vast, vast majority of people don't make that choice.

Ofcourse, but he said 'want'. Want to me implies something that is not automatic. Or maybe i'm reading that wrong. And where is that 85% from? Must be per country because in some countries it must be far lower.

Sure it's not automatic, but as you can imagine there's an extreme selective pressure towards wanting children.

After all, all the people who didn't want kids, and had a choice about the matter died childless and never passed on their anti-replication genes.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#157

Post by wu-ikkyu »

fizixer wrote: post #46

Marriage, monogamy, and (romantic) love are conservative notions that are close to being (or should be) marginalized in my opinion. Romantic love, especially, is an extremely superficial and hollow idea exalted to high heavens by the group-think of the masses. I gave up religion, and over the years realized that love is the second, way more sneaky and no less damaging, delusion that humanity indulges in. It has to go…

Define love

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#158

Post by true_religion »

vilmosi wrote: post #66
bllguo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But from a biological/evolutionary/whatever perspective, isn't not wanting children definitely "wrong"?

Well so is eating meat everyday or looking at a screen 30cm away most of the day or not dying from an infection or having hot showers... Who cares at this point, just live your life, you owe nothing to "evolution".

Evolution is just a methodology, not living entity with desires and goals. If your genes allow you at the age of 20, to look so stunning that you have 10 children before you sadly die from the effort expended to look so swimmingly handsome, then your genes will soon proliferate to every corner of the globe. We'll call that successful 'evolution', even though most people today would be horrified that you only lived 20 years.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#159

Post by sjg007 »

sjg007 wrote: post #85
mikebenfield wrote: post #8

1. I have always hated the notion that having a happy marriage is about filtering through many candidates to find the one perfect partner. Although I do think it's reasonable to try to learn early on what you're looking for, this idea that we should all be dramatically expanding our dating pool to find the perfect person is abominable. Look at a city with a massive population of eligible young people, like say NYC..…

People should just follow math and the optimal marriage problem, if they want to get married. This probably operates in phases as well in the event you do get divorced. Early adulthood, middle age, later. This may skew in NYC due to older NYC men when they want to marry and have kids can find a younger women.

To qualify this, only if you have break ups.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#160

Post by true_religion »

Mahn wrote: post #133
fizixer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought experiment: Imagine you are not dependent on your current partner in any way. You are financially stable (let's say you a multi-millionaire). Either you don't have kids or if you do, somehow they're not dependent on you (or something). Now think of your favorite media personalities that you have a crush on, and imagine one of them meets you in person and takes an elevated level of interest in you. If you don'…

Would I have consensual sex with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Sure. Would I fall in love with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Well, no, not automatically anyway, I would have to get to know this person first and see how I feel about spending time and do things together. I'd definitely not dump a person I've known and loved for years over a fling with an attractive ce…

My perspective is that falling in love with someone doesn't mean having to replace your current lover.

That's only true in a society that enforces monogamy.

My birth culture is plainly polygamous. My grandfather had five wives. My uncle has 4 and a half. My brother has 2.

Post reply on HN