What interventions will I judge to be the most successful at improving my dating life?

Sex and love•Recommendations•Life intervention

Ṁ489

resolved Oct 13

ALL

50%17%

learn how to flirt (express interest nonverbally)

33%15%

get a hobby where you're forced to interact with many new people

17%10%

Fall in love more

1.7%

Create a "date me" doc

Spend 15m a day on dating apps (likely Hinge)

Spend more time climbing (consistently 3x a week)

Put up a large financial bounty for referrals

Switch to being poly

1.4%

Try FetLife

1.5%

Lower your standards

0.4%

Do less

1.2%

Dancing

2.0%

Upgrade wardrobe

0.2%

1.9%

Go on blind dates with the women your parents have been talking about

0.7%

Make Manifold into a billion dollar company

Gain 20lbs of muscle mass

1.2%

Take HRT

Bi-hack (if you aren't already)

0.4%

Cultivate a sense of love and compassion for all

Inspired by Vlad's market.

Get Ṁ200 play money

🏅 Top traders

#	Name	Total profit
1		Ṁ99
2		Ṁ53
3		Ṁ31
4		Ṁ16
5		Ṁ11

25 Comments

82 Trades

Sort by:

answered

Bi-hack (if you aren't already)

@Alex "modifying yourself to be more bisexual" (and thus open to a larger pool of partners).

in general, I find that thinking through the positive aspects of your less-favored gender can reveal latent attraction to aspects of them. Maybe you find penises repulsive presently, but actually like facial hair (or vice versa). Maybe rough hands aren't appealing in the same way as dainty ones, but maybe they hold their own appeal and strong suits. I'm not sure how viable this is for someone who's kinsey 0 or 6, but I think it can move 1s and 5s a long way towards the middle and I think relatively few people are kinsey 0 or 6. I think a lot of people report themselves as entirely heterosexual or entirely homosexual because it's socially simpler that way, it's normative, and they may not have thought about it that deeply.

answered

Bi-hack (if you aren't already)

@Adam can you explain what this is?

answered

Go through a matchmaker, like https://www.propinquity.me/

bought Ṁ5

Whoops, the url is outdated, I meant https://matematch.me/

What do you feel like is your biggest bottleneck here?

answered

Mack on lots of chicks

bought Ṁ2

Girl are like videogames, you need to practice.

answered

learn how to flirt (express interest nonverbally)

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.

answered

Put up a large financial bounty for referrals

@Austin underexplored approach to maximizing quality-adjusted wife years / micromarriages. Excited about this.

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.

answered

Try FetLife

Bizarre comment. Nothing in my experience backs this up.

answered

get a hobby where you're forced to interact with many new people

bought Ṁ20

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?

answered

Fall in love more

Probably I was thinking of this set of 36 questions: http://36questionsinlove.com/

answered

Cultivate a sense of love and compassion for all

bought Ṁ1

Buddhism says for all sentient beings, but as a dating strategy having love for all eligible dating partners would suffice.

answered

Fall in love more

@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.

answered

Fall in love more

@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)

answered

Bi-hack (if you aren't already)

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

answered

Bi-hack (if you aren't already)

@Adam wait what? I don’t think that’s an available option

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)

answered

Put up a large financial bounty for referrals

@Austin free-response market idea? :P

answered

learn how to flirt (express interest nonverbally)

@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?

answered

learn how to flirt (express interest nonverbally)

@JoyVoid yay! I'm glad I helped - if you find some excellent resources/research please share it back here :)

answered

learn how to flirt (express interest nonverbally)

@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

answered

learn how to flirt (express interest nonverbally)

@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.

answered

learn how to flirt (express interest nonverbally)

bought Ṁ20

Anyone have recommendations on learning how to flirt? Books? Classes? Things to do?

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