What interventions will I judge to be the most successful at improving my dating life?
Inspired by Vlad's market.
Ida Mayer answered
learn how to flirt (express interest nonverbally)
18%
Ida Mayer answered
get a hobby where you're forced to interact with many new people
17%
joy_void_joy answered
Fall in love more
11%
Adam answered
Bi-hack (if you aren't already)
10%
Austin answered
Put up a large financial bounty for referrals
10%
Austin answered
Switch to being poly
7%
Austin answered
Spend 15m a day on dating apps (likely Hinge)
4%
Austin answered
Spend more time climbing (consistently 3x a week)
3%
jmaa answered
Gain 20lbs of muscle mass
2%
jmaa answered
Go on blind dates with the women your parents have been talking about
2%
Austin answered
Create a "date me" doc
1.8%
S G answered
Upgrade wardrobe
1.7%
Alex Lien answered
Lower your standards
1.6%
joy_void_joy answered
Try FetLife
1.5%
Martin Randall answered
Dancing
1.3%
Sinclair Chen answered
Take HRT
1.3%
Martin Randall answered
Make Manifold into a billion dollar company
0.7%
Martin Randall answered
Do less
0.4%
Martin Randall answered
Be featured in a video game by @SneakySly
0.4%
Martin Randall answered
Cultivate a sense of love and compassion for all
0.4%
Martin Randall answered
Sign up for cryonics
0.2%
Add your answer
Ida Mayer answered
learn how to flirt (express interest nonverbally)
Austin bought M$20
Anyone have recommendations on learning how to flirt? Books? Classes? Things to do?
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@Austin I dunno! We should talk, I'm sure everybody's different. If you want resources I'd specifically go find general resources on nonverbal communication. Do not go find resources specific to flirting it will be full of toxic nonsense.
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@IdaMayer I feel like nonverbal communication has an untapped potential in my life in general and I feel dumb for not having checked it. Thanks a lot for suggesting this. I'll look into it/studies done about it
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@JoyVoid yay! I'm glad I helped - if you find some excellent resources/research please share it back here :)
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@Austin Generally for social situations, I learn best by noticing what friends and acquaintances are doing and the responses they get, and then copying what seems helpful. This is especially hard with flirting (and I myself am dreadful at intentionally flirting), but maybe if you have friends in a new relationship, you can notice how they act around each other?
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different meanings of "flirt" entail selection. there's a class of people for whom expressing interest nonverbally doesn't matter at all. I think it's more important to figure out which class you're in than to adapt to the class you perceive as the dominant one.
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Ida Mayer answered
get a hobby where you're forced to interact with many new people
Kronopath bought M$20
Pumping this one. It’s way more sane than “bi-hack” or “become poly” (ick). Specifically, pick an activity that’s not skewed against the gender you’re romantically interested in.
Though a lot of this depends on what you’re looking for in terms of your dating life. Might be worth you adding that to the description, as I suspect that would greatly affect the interventions suggested.
E.g. would you consider getting into a single, stable, monogamous relationship to be an “improvement”? Or would you consider it as a detraction, because it prevents you from dating around more?
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joy_void_joy answered
Fall in love more
joy_void_joy bought M$10
Related to @Sinclair 's answer, getting interested in people actively and telling to yourself you love people who are a potential match ("fake it till you make it") can be a very potent strategy
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@JoyVoid hmm I think this is surprisingly actionable. Austin is sleeping less so he's probably lower on serotonin, which is good for falling in love. Step 1 would be to do more research into the science of falling in love - although iirc the research is a bit lacking. A good place to start would be the eye gazing and nose smelling research I think
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@Sinclair I have vague memories of a list of 20 personal questions that are good for falling in love.
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@Sinclair Yeah, for me, I notice that just _wanting_ to fall in love and telling to myself "This person is awesome, this person is awesome" really works great. I suspect people are more or less easilly self-influenced.
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@MartinRandall Also, yes the 20 personal question (especially "We're not really strangers anymore") is quite awesome :D .. Could be its own answer
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@JoyVoid this self-hacking ("this person is awesome, this person is awesome") is seriously powerful. It's really easy to make many things work this way (and not in the "power of positive thinking" way; the technique won't make your relationship better or the person kinder or your business more successful; it will only change your emotional valence about it. So, y'know, careful, heh)
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@Adam I think there's a prisoners dilemma view where if two people mutually decide to cooperate and fall in love then their relationship will be stronger and better as long as they continue to cooperate in that way.
So the twenty questions, kissing, sex, couples counseling, marriage, all good mutual strategies in that game.
But as a one-sided strategy, it feels like it could backfire with missed opportunities or a sub-par match.
I'd endorse something like cultivating a general sense of compassion and love for all humans.
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Probably I was thinking of this set of 36 questions: http://36questionsinlove.com/
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Adam answered
Bi-hack (if you aren't already)
Yup, this seems to work for a lot of people (and not just in a "extend the pool of available people" kind of way)
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@Adam wait what? I don’t think that’s an available option
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I know people who did, sexuality is a lot more fluid than people give it credit for. It also matches my personal experience of deciding my sexuality, though as pan/a-sexual, I don't know how much that qualifies
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Austin answered
Switch to being poly
@Austin meh, you can't switch that easy. It requires time, communication, introspection, management of emotions...
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@Austin this only decreases your potential pool to only include other people interested in that, yeah?
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@Austin I think if you want 0.5 girlfriends and a chance to explore more this is fine, having 1.5 girlfriends is a way more substantial time and emotional investment than I think you want or would be good for you. What is your metric for success? I don't think this gets you closer to getting married and having children than looking in the larger pool of monogamous people.
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@MattP It's not uncommon in the bay area in general, and very common among rats. I think it would actually increase his pool on net, mostly because I finally get to ship Austin with my friends.
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Austin answered
Spend 15m a day on dating apps (likely Hinge)
@Austin Most likely I'd be bearish on this.
The meta that makes the most sense to me is that _character count limits_ make reasonable selection algorithms nearly impossible to implement, pointing to OkC as a solution. However, the meta that makes the most sense to my friends is that _top-down design of selection effects totally doesn't work_ and a vague heuristic like "if the profile is non-boring enough for me to notice" really can create true love! I don't know which of those sides you should take (it's a hard problem, and all solutions _suck_).
Based on the above, I find that hinge's _marketing_ ("designed to be deleted") is not sync'd with it's _design principles_ (steep character count limits).
But to be clear, the part I'm bearish on is _dating apps_ in general, not hinge in particular, because dating apps as we all know are horrid, no good, evil, and ineffective.
Finally, just want to say _it's a stochastic process and has very little to do with meritocracy_, the hard part is keeping a good attitude and not getting sucked into doomerism, but if you do that the rest is just grinding it out at the casino.
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Austin answered
Spend more time climbing (consistently 3x a week)
jmaa answered
Gain 20lbs of muscle mass
I guess this is very dependent of who Austin is going for, if he's mostly looking in the rat/trans-adjacent community, this would be mostly pointless or outright negative
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jmaa answered
Go on blind dates with the women your parents have been talking about
Austin answered
Create a "date me" doc
S G answered
Upgrade wardrobe
Alex Lien answered
Lower your standards
joy_void_joy answered
Try FetLife
joy_void_joy bought M$10
So, even if you're not kinky or interested in that, I've found that FetLife is the new OkCupid in terms of people and connectivity. I think it can be a good way to find interesting dates (at least in terms of new experiences)
If you are not kinky, you can just say so or not mention it and it seems completely okay
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Bizarre comment. Nothing in my experience backs this up.
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Martin Randall answered
Dancing
Sinclair Chen answered
Take HRT
Sinclair Chen bought M$5
Despite being very similar in psychology and personality, Sinclair gets a lot of girls whereas Austin does not. Now, in what ways are we different?
1. Sinclair is a girl
2. Sinclair is poly
3. Sinclair is more open to talking about sex
4. Sinclair falls in love a lot
3 was a negative signal when I was a guy, but probably increases my dating success as a girl. 4 can be caused by taking hrt. Also, I really think it was hrt specifically that made me more attractive. I was extremely unsuccessful in dating when I was pre-hrt and crossdressing - although it is a much cheaper experiment and therefore probably worth trying.
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Martin Randall answered
Make Manifold into a billion dollar company
Martin Randall answered
Do less
Martin Randall bought M$1
There's more to life than romance, if it's unpleasant and not working you can just do something else.
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Martin Randall answered
Be featured in a video game by @SneakySly
Martin Randall answered
Cultivate a sense of love and compassion for all
Martin Randall bought M$1
Buddhism says for all sentient beings, but as a dating strategy having love for all eligible dating partners would suffice.
0
Martin Randall answered
Sign up for cryonics
@MartinRandall "Couldn't find someone during the meatspace portion of life? Sign up with Alcor and mingle with 500 million of the HOTTEST brain-uploaded ems in your area!"
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@SG Advanced quantum computing where every em dates every em and then we collapse the universes where the dates go poorly.
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@MartinRandall "noooo i swear i love you please don't destroy the universe honey"
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@Sinclair That would definitely be a red flag for me in the hypothetical world where someone secretly freezes my brain against my wishes so we can do quantum dating in the far future.
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General Comments
@horse Yeah, this type of market (like Vlad's) really need more data about what worked, what didn't, what's been tried, what's the best thing so far, etc
0
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