I, speaking from whatever position of expertise you care to suspect of me based on my gender, have the following input:
While not all women find intelligence an appealing trait, the ones who do (and these are probably the ones people here should be pursuing) tend to avoid (or break up with) adequately smart guys not because they aren't smart enough, but because they are lacking in some other dimension (niceness, attentiveness, ideological conflict, and lack of indefinable romantic spark are some of the ones I've heard). There seems to be a general tendency to suspect that if a girl likes that her boyfriend is intelligent, and then the relationship cools, the solution is for him to try to become smarter/more knowledgeable (or signal smartness/knowledge more strongly). I have never seen this work.
It is my suspicion that the audience of Less Wrong is near-universally already smart enough to meet the minimum intelligence standards of anyone who finds intelligence appealing and isn't aiming outrageously high. While becoming smarter is a great thing to do for other reasons, if the idea is to locate a girlfriend, your time as a single male rationalist might be better spent concentrating on not being a jerk, preserving and consolidating spare time to spend on a girlfriend, and looking through the available females in your area to find one who is basically agreeable and spark-y with you in particular.
I notice all advice on finding a girlfriend glosses over the actual nuts-and-bolts of it. In Alicorn's post here, the assumption seems to be that there's an immense pool of women receptive enough to me (e.g. by common acquaintances, organizations, etc.) and I can just roll the dice until I find one, and all the supposed problems for rationalists worth getting advice on, arise ... er, sometime later.
Where am I supposed to find this pool of bachelorettes? And if it's common interest organizations, which should it be, since we've ruled out those related to rationality? And isn't it strongly advised not to show romantic interest soon upon joining such an organization? In which case, how does your advice differ from "Join a random group ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait"?
FWIW I recently joined a group (actually a subgroup of a larger group which is not held in high regard here) and did click with one of the women there, and asked her out, but we only went out for a few days before she lost interest. And then I found out there's a taboo against dating within the subgroup (though I don't think that had anything to do with her calling it off), which puts me right back to square one in terms of being expected to start relationships with near-complete strangers.
With apologies, it gets a bit annoying constantly getting dating advice that assumes away the most critical problems, and I can't be the only one in this position.
If you do not know any women, something is wrong.
This isn't quite Silas' complaint. Clearly, he does know some women. What he is looking for is women who are receptive to his attempts to date them. This means he needs to know them in a context where he can actually make advances, and he needs to know how to actually make advances (which are appropriate to that context). His other complaint was that he was getting a date, but then it fizzled because she lost interest.
I won't speak of Silas' specific situation, but I will emphasize that there are many men who are decent guys from the standpoint of society, and who don't have anything major wrong with them psychologically, physically or financially, but who don't have significant options with women. This isn't because they don't know women, but because the women they know aren't available to them because the women don't find them attractive enough (since women are more selective, the average women is going after men with above average attractiveness, not after her average male friends), and/or because they are insufficiently knowledgeable of all the societal rituals around dating. Those rituals place a higher burden on the male for...
Who is going to teach them all the dating rituals that they missed during adolescence, and give them back the self-confidence that they lost? Society isn't.
Society used to teach some of this explicitly in the form of cotillion classes. One modern analogue for adults is PUA workshops. I took The Art of Attraction class from Pickup101 a few years ago and found it extremely worthwhile. My favorite part of the class was learning how to improve my body language in various ways. Confidence is a lot about physical behaviour - how to stand, how to walk, how to look at people... The most interesting and persistently useful part was learning how to touch someone one doesn't know well and have this come across as friendly rather than creepy or awkward. Some people are naturally physically demonstrative - they find it easy to give a reassuring pat on the shoulder or the wrist or the back, or a hug. Most women have this ability; many men don't. But being able to touch people in an appropriately friendly and comforting way is a physical skill which can be acquired with training and practice. Now that I have had this training, I even find it easier to touch or hug my own parents than before I took the class.
Another option is dance classes - you can learn Salsa at any age. Anything that gives you lots of practice comfortably standing and moving in close physical proximity to members of the opposite gender can't help but help.
I feel the need to say that this is a superb comment -- perhaps the best I have seen on this topic.
I particularly appreciated the following passages:
Those rituals place a higher burden on the male for initiating things, and men don't have that stuff encoded in their DNA. It's something that the cooler kids learned in adolescence, and the less cool ones didn't.
(...)
there are a million more ways for the male to bungle than for the female to bungle it (again, women are more selective, and male behavior is a larger factor in female attraction than female behavior is in male attraction... just think about the ways women use words like "weird" or "creepy" in describing potential suitors),
(...)
Who is going to teach them all the dating rituals that they missed during adolescence, and give them back the self-confidence that they lost? Society isn't.
I would just add that this is one of those subjects on which people are particularly prone to other-optimizing.
"The correlation between liking of the date and evaluation of the date's physical attractiveness is .78 for male subjects and .69 for female subjects. . . Sheer physical attractiveness appears to be the overriding determinant of liking."
Also interesting: "The correlation between how much the man says he likes his partner and how much she likes him is virtually zero: r = .03."
"Male's MSAT scores correlate .04 with both the woman's liking for him and her desire to date him." (For females the equivalent figure was around -.06.)
"Importance of Physical Attractiveness in Dating Behavior", Elaine Walster, et al., p. 514-515 http://www2.hawaii.edu/~elaineh/13.pdf
I trust this data more than folk psychology or self-reports, but I would be interested if anyone knows of any subsequent studies confirming or disconfirming these types of figures, or assessing its generalizability from 18 year olds on blind dates.
"The correlation between liking of the date and evaluation of the date's physical attractiveness is .78 for male subjects and .69 for female subjects. . . Sheer physical attractiveness appears to be the overriding determinant of liking."
You left out a really important factor, mentioned in the paragraph before this. These were the participants' ratings of their partners' physical attractiveness, and were not taken independently. The correlations were only half as good with an independent rating of physical attractiveness, made by four raters who were not going to be dating any of the subjects, and didn't interact with them for more than a few seconds.
In other words, the data of the study actually support a hypothesis that people find people they like more physically attractive, rather than the other way around... and it supports that hypothesis for both men and women, though more so for women than for men.
The correlations with independent ratings of attractiveness were still .44 and .39. Compared to .04 and -.06 for intelligence, that still supports the conclusion that "sheer physical attractiveness appears to be the overriding determinant of liking."
Speaking from a hypothetical PUA's point of view, there are still some uncontrolled-for factors:
Degree of a male's control over his rating of physical attractiveness (via choice of clothes, grooming, posture, voice tone, etc.)
Male's ability to display desirable characteristics through attitude, touch, story, listening, and other ways of creating mood, chemistry, or attraction.
Degree of interest shown in a male by other females (note that other studies have found that women are much more likely to perceive men to be attractive if it appears that other women are attracted to them)
These are just a few of the qualities that PUAs use to influence attraction, none of which were measured or controlled for by the study.
So, your summary is an overstatement: at .69 individual correlation, this means that even by a woman's own judgment of physical attractiveness is not an absolute factor. You can still come out ahead (or ...
I hate to make this recommendation (especially 2 years late), but figuring out how much alcohol you need to turn from an underconfident introvert to a comfortable socialite (without tipping too far in that direction) has helped me.
Again, you seem to assume away the problem. Does no one ever leave home for college or move to a different city in your world? And whenever you do find something that could move me into the situation that you see as normal, you assume away its problems as well: what's the standard method for addressing the (1), (2), and (3) you listed? You act like it's an easy step to just casually change my "choice of friends and associates".
In any case, like others mentioned, you misunderstand the situation. At my workplace, I do know women (not single) who could introduce me to women they know. As a matter of fact, they unsolicitedly remark about how "women must be all over you!" and "some lady's going to snatch you right up before you know it" (note the similarity of their assumptions to yours). But then they inevitably don't know anyone's they'd introduce me to.
We comprise more than half of the population. We are not hard to find.
Yes, and this was the point. Of course I can "find" women, but that doesn't mean I could follow your advice with those women. I could go to the supermarket, the mall, bars, etc. and see lots of women. Are these the...
the men you know themselves do not know any women, in which case something is wrong with them and you need to look into your choice of friends and associates
Nice casual, sweeping judgment there. Makes me wonder what the net effect of this attitude being widespread among females would be.
Makes me wonder what the net effect of this attitude being widespread among females would be.
You don't have to wonder. The net effect would be the propagation of the genes that led to the formation of this attitude. ;-)
In fact, you have your wondering backwards. Any time you find human behavior to be inexplicable, it would behoove you to work backward to any likely evolutionary cause. Not so that you can prove women (or people in general) are broken and bizarre, but so you can understand why they might feel that way, and accept their concerns and feelings as valid, within their own sphere of reference.
In this particular case, for example, consider what a guy being "creepy" (i.e., lacking social ties) would mean in our ancestral environment.
Likewise for blind prejudice.
So, if you prefer women with certain physical qualities, is that a blind prejudice, too?
If a woman prefers chocolate ice cream, does that mean she's blindly prejudiced against vanilla?
If a company says they prefer job applicants to have references, is that blind prejudice also?
I think you are confused, especially if you're connecting this to violence. To women in general (though not at all always for any particular woman) a man's social connections are his references... and for many, it's also his flavor.
Granted, Alicorn's way of expressing this fact was not especially PC from a male perspective. To a guy, caring about who you know can sound "elitist", in precisely the same way that guys' concerns about various female characteristics can sound "shallow" and un-PC to women.
However, if you understand and correctly translate this female preference to whatever preferences you have for your partners (that women in their turn don't necessarily understand or appreciate), then it would be easy to accept/forgive Alicorn's way of putting it.
Out of curiosity, what would you be inclined to say about a random woman who simply did not know any men and who socialized exclusively with women, none of whom knew any men either?
The mind boggles at such a concept. However, you probably mean a woman who did not know any men she considered potential partners, and who socialized with women, none of whom knew any men they considered introducing as potential partners... in which case, that sounds like a lot of women. ;-)
So, I'm not entirely sure where you meant to draw the line, there. But unless you were trying to imply that she's a nun or a lesbian, though, you need to understand that men (in general, though not always in every specific case) simply wouldn't care.
Likely male responses to this condition in reality would be things like, "Cool, a virgin", or "Great, she won't have anybody to compare me to", or "wow, so many women not knowing guys... think of the opportunities for me!"
In fact, my first joking response that I almost typed at the beginning of this comment was that I'd say, "Welcome to Fantasy Island!" -- because that's more or less the evolutionary-instinctual male response...
While becoming smarter is a great thing to do for other reasons, if the idea is to locate a girlfriend, your time as a single male rationalist might be better spent concentrating on not being a jerk,
Agreed, but "trying not to be a jerk" might not be the most productive approach for those who need that advice the most, if the problem is that they don't understand why they are being considered a jerk. What they would really need is a better model of the other person's responses, which would lead them to understand why they would be seen as a jerk in the first place.
I'll also observe the opposite problem: being perceived as overly submissive may be a turnoff for some women, too.
preserving and consolidating spare time to spend on a girlfriend,
Agreed.
and looking through the available females in your area to find one who is basically agreeable and spark-y with you in particular.
Looking at the women available in reality is indeed the best heuristic, rather than trying to define in advance the prototype of the ideal woman and then try to approximate her as best as possible in real life, or try to turn real life women into that image. That approach is problematic beca...
your time as a single male rationalist might be better spent concentrating on not being a jerk, preserving and consolidating spare time to spend on a girlfriend, and looking through the available females in your area to find one who is basically agreeable and spark-y with you in particular.
Also, cultivating social confidence (as opposed to confidence in the rightness of one' s opinions), and an unconditional interest in individual human beings (as opposed to "humanity") would be good ideas as well. AFAICT, these correlate strongly with (if they don't equate to) "not being a jerk".
(Social confidence mostly means being relaxed and emotionally unreactive to disagreements or differences of opinion, as opposed to argumentative, tense, or submissive. An actually confident person has no need to either harangue or dismiss those who they disagree with, or indeed to express any outward semblance of disagreement. And cultivating genuine interest in human beings as-they-are, not as-you'd-like-them-to-be, helps one to react to the most bizarre ideas and beliefs with, "Ah, how fascinating" -- without putting off any social signals of arrogance.)
Now there is no necessary connection between rationality and a sci-tech association, and the correlation in the world probably isn't that strong, but I'll believe most readers here are strongly sci-tech. And this post is surely right that as a man you'll get far more mileage out of the social status that goes with sci-tech, at least in many female eyes, than you will from your rationality. Rationality, after all, has pretty much zero, if not negative, social status in our society.
Survey results show that 57.5% of people here are single (plus most a likely large number of people who are in less than happy relationships with not very desirable partners, and this it's best they can do and stay in them because it beats being single).
Let me express again a shock at this figure, which seems a lot higher than society average. As far as I can tell techniques developed by PUA community for getting romantic and sexual partners are the only case ever of evolutionary psychology getting used to achieve very significant practical results in people's lives. So why doesn't absolutely everyone here learn them?
It cannot possibly be lack of interest, unless your emotions are very far from human mainstream sex, affection, connection etc. are probably very high on your list of priorities. So when you can have a solution to a major problem in your life using your favourite tools of rationality and evolutionary psychology, why not take it?
Also advice like avoiding people with opposite political views makes me just sad. That's not how it works. You have a wrong model.
PUAs make claims that are based on naturalistic observation, and hence lack rigorous scientific backing.
Correct. Naturalistic observation is indeed inferior to rigorous science on mating preferences... except that the latter doesn't really exist yet, at least not to a degree that it is sufficiently comprehensive and actionable. For people lacking knowledge or experience, naturalistic observation, backed by a little evolutionary psychology still beats, hands down, anything else available right now, especially the most common alternatives (a) blundering around without knowing what you are doing, and (b) following the outdated conventional advice.
Although PUAs should be studying studying science (well, they are, though they are making a few oversimplifications), scientists should also be studying PUAs by taking hypotheses from their theories for testing. But until scientists catch up, a guy need some ideas that are better than his nerdy male brain's model of women combined with the advice of Maxim, his mom, and his friend Joe.
Indeed, I suppose that many LW patrons consider PUAs to be manipulative and immoral, and don't use PUA advice for that reason.
Yes, there are attitudes and...
As a female, who is dating a man who is rationalist, I don't necessarily think that Science plays a large role in how well we work together. I think that the fact I know his decision making processes are based on rationalism, and I am willing to understand why he has made decisions (even if I would not have made them using that logic) does ensure that we resolve things easily, or that I accept them. Essentially, I think that if you are a rationalist man then you need to date a woman who is willing to understand this part of you, and make some effort not to...
This post assumes that the reader wants a long-term relationship. There is often talk here on Less Wrong about PUA techniques, but they seem to be oriented towards the short-term. So, as usual, the question to ask yourself is: what do you really want? If your preference is for the short-term then you should get to know someone who knows PUA techniques, or attend a bootcamp. If your preference is for the long-term there are plenty of dating sites that claim to be able to match you with people of your type.
Excellent post. We need more posts on this topic. The best rationalists I know are single and lonely. They're holding out for a strong female rationalist, I presume.
Interestingly, I identify as the single female with aspirations for a strong male rationalist! Consider me an example of someone less than "strong female rationalist" but still compatible with a male rationalist. For me to identify as a "strong female rationalist" is probably deceiving. I cannot justify it to myself because of my lack of education and familiarity with the formal definitions and concepts of rationalist discourse. I still consider myself compatible because of my open-minded nature and desperation to learn. My abilities h...
I am not as old as you (I am in my early 20s), but I have come to the same conclusions independently.
If an interest or proficiency in rationality is related to cognitive or personality traits that show sex differences in mean or variance, such as systemizing or Openness to Ideas, then the pool of female rationalists would be lower that the pool of male rationalists. Consequently, barring polyandry, not all male rationalists can date female rationalists.
Yet even though a female rationalist might be a good match for a male rationalist in many ways, it is no...
The first few paragraphs of this post sent me in “WTF? Seriously?” mode until I realized that by “rationality” you specifically meant explicit LW-style x-rationality rather than just not being an idiot. But getting kicked in the rationals is no fun, and I already get more than enough of those from people whom I can't choose whether to interact with; so if someone did that on a regular basis I would become much less willing to be friends with them, let alone be their boyfriend. (If I were single I'd have no particularly strong objections to have casual hook...
my advice for mate selection for any person is that while it is good to have things in common like both being rationalists it is more important to have values that complement each other. So if you focus a lot on theory then someone who is more practical, might be better for, if your indecisive then someone who is a bit impulsive could be good for you.
If you are good at math and bad at English then a good match for you might be someone who is bad at math and good at English. So maybe the best match for a rationalist isn't another rationalist.
Please attach status of evidence to advices. What you said is at least cached wisdom, there obviously is the opposite meme going around, and it's unclear whether there is any foundation for each of these suggestions to be systematically correct.
One thing to do that might appeal to a rationalist is to use Jungian type as a model. It justifies why some people are not so rationally inclined, but can be more socially inclined. Most rationalists fall under the NT categories. The best-matched types for them are in the SF category, which specializes in socialization. However, according to the model, some pairings (super-ego emphasizing) are worse than average and others (super-id, or dual) are better.
Essentially, the most important criterion is that the J/P must be opposite, meaning that the rationality...
I think these are all pretty good points, but I have to wonder if female rationality is very important to most male rationalists. This implies that rationalist (Rationalist?) men are very, very, different from most men in the qualities they look for in a partner.
The following started as a reply to a request for relationship advice (http://lesswrong.com/lw/zj/open_thread_june_2009/rxy) but is expected to be of enough general interest to justify a top-level post. Sometimes it is beneficial to have older men in the conversation, and this might be one of those times. (I am in my late 40s.)
I am pretty sure that most straight men strong in rationality are better off learning how the typical woman thinks than holding out for a long-term relationship with a women as strong in rationality as he is. If you hold out for a strong female rationalist, you drastically shrink the pool of women you have to choose from -- and people with a lot of experience with dating and relationships tend to consider that a bad move. A useful data point here is the fact (http://lesswrong.com/lw/fk/survey_results/cee) that 95%-97% of Less Wrongers are male. If on the other hand, women currently (*currently* -- not in some extrapolated future after you've sold your company and bought a big house in Woodside) find you extremely attractive or extremely desirable long-term-relationship material, well, then maybe you should hold out for a strong female rationalist if you are a strong male rationalist.
Here is some personal experience in support of the advice above to help you decide whether to follow the advice above.
My information is incomplete because I have never been in a long-term relationship with a really strong rationalist -- or even a scientist, programmer or engineer -- but I have been with a woman who has years of formal education in science (majored in anthropology, later took chem and bio for a nursing credential) and her knowledge of science did not contribute to the relationship in any way that I could tell. Moreover, that relationship was not any better than the one I am in now, with a woman with no college-level science classes at all.
The woman I have been with for the last 5 years is not particularly knowledgeable about science and is not particularly skilled in the art of rationality. Although she is curious about most areas of science, she tends to give up and to stop paying attention if a scientific explanation fails to satisfy her curiosity within 2 or 3 minutes. If there is a strong emotion driving her inquiry, though, she will focus longer. E.g., she sat still for at least 15 or 20 minutes on the evolutionary biology of zoonoses during the height of the public concern over swine flu about a month ago -- and was glad she did. (I know she was glad she did because she thanked me for the explanation, and it is not like her to make an insincere expression of gratitude out of, e.g., politeness.) (The strong emotion driving her inquiry was her fear of swine flu combined with her suspicion that perhaps the authorities were minimizing the severity of the situation to avoid panicking the public.)
Despite her having so much less knowledge of science and the art of rationality than I have, I consider my current relationship a resounding success: it is no exaggeration to say that I am more likely than not vastly better off than I would have been if I had chosen 5 years ago not to pursue this woman to hold out for someone more rational. She is rational enough to take care of herself and to be the most caring and the most helpful girlfriend I have ever had. (Moreover, nothing in my ordinary conversations and interactions with her draw my attention to her relative lack of scientific knowledge or her relative lack of advanced rationalist skills in a way that evokes any regret or sadness in me. Of course, if I had experienced a long-term relationship with a very strong female rationalist in the past, maybe I *would* experience episodes of regret or sadness towards the woman I am with now.)
Here are two more tips on mate selection for the straight men around here.
I have found that it is a very good sign if the woman either (1) assigns high social status to scientific ability or scientific achievement or finds scientific ability appealing in a man or (2) sees science as a positive force in the world. The woman I am with now clearly and decisively meets criterion (1) but does not meet criterion (2). Moreover, one of my most successful relationships was with a woman who finds science fiction very inspiring. (I do not BTW.) The salient thing about that was that she never revealed it to me, nor the fact that she definitely sees science as a positive force in the world. (I pieced those two facts together after we broke up.) The probable reason she never revealed them to me is that she thought they would clue me in to the fact that she found scientific ability appealing in a man, which in turn would have increased the probability that I would try to snow her by pretending to be better at science or more interested in science than I really was. (She'd probably been snowed that way by a man before she met me: male snowing of prospective female sexual partners is common.)
By posting on a topic of such direct consequence to normal straight adult male self-esteem, I am making myself more vulnerable than I would be if I were posting on, e.g., regulatory policy. Awareness of my vulnerability might cause someone to refrain from publicly contradicting what I just wrote. Do not refrain from publicly contradicting what I just wrote! The successful application of rationality and scientific knowledge to this domain has high expected global utility, and after considering the emotional and reputational risks to myself of having posted on this topic, I have concluded that I do not require any special consideration over and above what I would get if I had posted on regulatory policy.
And of course if you have advice to give about mate selection for the straight men around here, here is your chance.
(EDITED to avoid implying that all men are heterosexual.)