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My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

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Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#81

Post by gorkonsine »

ice109 wrote: post #61
vertex-four wrote: post #30

Ehh... the issue is mostly that online dating doesn't go very well for the vast, vast majority of people. On the other hand, I know plenty of not-particularly-attractive people who've met partners through all sorts of weird and whacky situations. Fact of the matter is that finding potential partners, like finding anyone, is about constantly growing the network of people you interact with. I meet new people nearly eve…

>Also, speaking personally... the sort of person who thinks it's fun to spend their time automating personal interaction is not the sort of person I want to date. forgive me for waxing poetical but i've thought about this a lot - since i have tinder and okcupid accounts - online dating is one of the most nihilistic enterprises to come out of the digital revolution. take one of the most personally rewarding and edifyi…

>online dating is one of the most nihilistic enterprises

>approaching people you're attracted to (not on the street you pua twats) is one of the few "scary" things still available to us as denizens of modernity

Online dating is good for people who simply have NO other avenue to meet people. If you're not supposed to try to pick up people on the street, then where would you apply this advice? Work? I don't know about you, but I'm a software engineer, so there's no single women at my workplace. School? I graduated quite some time ago, and work now. Church? Like many technologists, I'm irreligious (and I wouldn't want to date a religious woman anyway; been there, done that). Extracurricular activities? Sure, but the number of single women at these things tends to be pretty small, so it's a LOT of effort for very low odds of success. Any many of my interests just don't have very many single women participating anyway.

The simple fact is, online dating offers a way for people to meet who otherwise simply wouldn't. This problem isn't new either; ever hear of "singles mixers"? Those were around long before the WWW came about. Online dating just moves that kind of thing online, and gives you a way of screening people before taking your time to meet them in person so you can make sure you're at least a little compatible. The main problem I personally see with online dating is that there aren't enough people using it (esp. female, they're far more reluctant to use it and see it as a point of shame), and there's too many different competing services. Oh yeah, and all the liars too. But that's nothing new, men picking up women in bars have been lying about themselves forever too.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#82

Post by udkl »

jeffwass wrote: post #52

>"I became an online dating magician who knew how to optimize a profile — A/B testing pictures and message. If I changed my profile picture and got more “likes” as a result, that meant it was better. I was tracking data, which made it easy to see what performed best. >This one worked, probably because it hides the bulging stomach and the balding head." No, your A/B test doesn't mean it's 'better', unless you're count…

My go-to resource for relationship and marriage advice is the waitbutwhy article - https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html and Mark Manson's website - https://markmanson.net/relationship-advice

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#84

Post by gorkonsine »

_m8fo wrote: post #36

From my friend group there are two types of individuals: 1. Individuals who date many people, breaking up if they find something non-optimal. These include minor things like, not cleaning up on occasion, or not liking something you do. 2. Someone who dates very few (1-3) individuals, sticking with them until a serious, fatal flaw appears, like being racist or physically harming others, etc. If you define a successful…

>1. Individuals who date many people, breaking up if they find something non-optimal. These include minor things like, not cleaning up on occasion, or not liking something you do.

There's a lot of iPhone users who fit this profile:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/single-iphone-owners-dont-w...

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#85

Post by gorkonsine »

notadoc wrote: post #31

Not a bad strategy even if it didn't work, dating is often purely a numbers game. Meet as many people as possible, be as social as possible, create as many opportunities to meet new people as possible. Also if you're a single male and you want to meet a female partner, I'd recommend moving away from the west coast. The south and midwest have far more women, and a generally friendlier culture which can make the entire…

The women in the South are generally far more religious and conservative. West-coast men might not be too interested in that stuff.

The "friendlier culture" of the South thing is a myth. They're not that friendly to people who don't fit their preferred mold.

Source: grew up in the South. There's a reason so many young people move out of the South as soon as they can.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#86

Post by gorkonsine »

45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #44
45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #40

I find this creepy and weird. How could you possibly tell the love of your life (if and when you found that person) that they were nothing more than a toy in your little data harvesting exercise.

Also -- here is a good moral thermometer: "PS: I will not open-source the code since it could be used to hurt people, but I might share it if you ask nicely." If you write code for fun (not commercially owned IP), and you are not willing to share it because 'it could hurt people', you might want to re-evaluate if you should write it in the first place.

Personally I think his approach here was really awful, but for this particular thing you could argue that the code is OK if used by one person, or a very tiny number of people, but if it were used by many people it'd be a big problem. There's a lot of things like that.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#87

Post by watty »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #80
watty wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not judging, I get every situation is different. It sounds like you're referring to a specific incident, 10 year+ relationship, things change, spouse is a drug user. Sounds awful. My opinion is still that one should leave the relationship ASAP, regardless of how difficult it is financially. Support groups, family, part time work, driving uber, whatever it takes. I think it's unethical to stay in a relationship fo…

Realistically, where would you suggest finding support to get you out of this situation? (I'm genuinely hopeful for an answer.)

* Friends / Family

* Divorce support groups

* Church (you don't really have to believe)

I imagine it's something I can't truly understand from the outside.

Probably an oversimplified article for a man/woman but it has some good points: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-patton/what-smart-women...

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#89

Post by tthisk »

vertex-four wrote: post #30

Ehh... the issue is mostly that online dating doesn't go very well for the vast, vast majority of people. On the other hand, I know plenty of not-particularly-attractive people who've met partners through all sorts of weird and whacky situations. Fact of the matter is that finding potential partners, like finding anyone, is about constantly growing the network of people you interact with. I meet new people nearly eve…

In my opinion going on a date is also too big of an investment to find out whether or not you 'match' with somebody. When you are at a party you can potentially speak to 10 (20 maybe even 30) women/men in one night, and probably find out that you do not match with 90% of them. If you are using apps like Tinder it will take you 10 nights to date 10 women/men, which is a significantly bigger time investment. Recently I was thinking about this figured out that this is probably the reason none of my friends, who actively use dating apps, have gained any significant relationships using them. This doesn't mean they are not good for anything. However people should be more aware of this and realise that though it seems easier to find meaningful relationships using these apps, it can also make it significantly harder.

Re: My Failed Attempt at Engineering Love

#90

Post by Someone »

monksy wrote: post #75
jeffwass wrote: post #52

>"I became an online dating magician who knew how to optimize a profile — A/B testing pictures and message. If I changed my profile picture and got more “likes” as a result, that meant it was better. I was tracking data, which made it easy to see what performed best. >This one worked, probably because it hides the bulging stomach and the balding head." No, your A/B test doesn't mean it's 'better', unless you're count…

You can't find "the one" without having a good conversion rate from your audience. Also, some of dating is about finding your hidden biases and becoming better the next time about being honest about them.

You need a both a good conversion rate from the part of the audience where you stand a decent chance of success in the long run and a sufficiently large number of 'samples'.

I think https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-... discusses somewhat the same problem in a different context. It concludes:

"Finally, this approach suggests an answer to the question in the title. Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives".

Difference here is that most people wouldn't get the false positive ratio that the typical scammer gets so you probably should try a bit harder to look good on a dating site. I think hiding your baldness goes too far, though.

I think those who have a large amount of false positives know this. If, say, you need a wheelchair to move around, almost everybody would know it doesn't make sense to hide that, if the goal is to get into a relationship.

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