There is no fact of the matter. You can't and shouldn't compare people in this way, and honestly I'm appalled that so many people here are doing so. Relationships are not a commodity.

The health of your romantic relationships is more of a function of what you and your partner put in than compatibility. And even when you look at compatibility, it's more about having compatible goals, values, behavior, etc, than anything that can be expressed in percentages. People need to let go of this Disney/Romcom mentality of there being some kind of a perfect match for you somewhere and if only you found them, your relationship would be perfect. Make yourself a good romantic partner and you would be able to have a great relationship with whatever compatible person you choose to love.

@Shump many years ago I read a book written in the 1950s by a Social Psychologist, and a lot of his perspective on partnership is similar to what you're saying here. his entire point is that love (or I'd say it applies to any collection of adjacent words a person wants to use for their partnership) is not the passive thing one "falls" in but rather the choice and ongoing desire to learn it like a skill.

I haven't ever been able to find the quote again (maybe I imagined it?) but at some point he uses the analogy that 'expecting to fall in love when the right person comes along is like standing a guitar in the corner of the room and expecting to be able to play it when the right song comes along' and it's simplistic but relevant here. and the idea that human beings can be represented by percentage points is so foreign to me - I'm still not-so-secretly hoping that someone who chose a percentage here would come to define what that practically means.

this is the book btw: The Art of Loving

In his classic work, The Art of Loving, renowned psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm explores love in all its aspects—not only romantic love, steeped in false conceptions and lofty expectations, but also brotherly love, erotic love, self-love, the love of God, and the love of parents for their children.

@Joshua

gf was standing behind me when I responded to this, can you change my vote to 100% when you take the final count?

People act like answering high shows more commitment to their partner, but in my view thats just a diss. 10% of a good relationship is enormously compelling, and more compelling the better the relationship!

Quick, link your vote here to your Manifold Love profile for max profit.

would you trade your child for a 100% better child as well ?

@Odoacre I might adopt a 100% better child that was orphaned and asked to be adopted, and then my original child would have less of my time and resources.

@Joshua you are trying to weasel out of the game. Trade means replace.

let's assume there's someone else that's willing to adopt your current child, at what percentage would you trade for the better child ?

@Odoacre Ah, well I'm approaching the whole question as someone who's not monogamous so that does make a big difference. I would obviously not trade my child away for any other child.

@Odoacre Do you see these scenarios as the same/equal? Partnerships are things I enter into that are (hopefully) mutually non-dependent and voluntary. Obviously over time becoming entangled in relationship(s) means emotional investment, attachment, possibly sharing physical property, etc. but still, generally speaking no one's true survival or livelihood depends on another. A child is someone you bring into the world who is truly dependent on you for survival, safety, emotional needs, etc and that you're making an entirely different commitment to.

I doubt anyone could raise a good question or argument of morals or ethics related to interpersonal relationships in the same way they could about parent-child relationships. I think I get what you're trying to raise but I don't think it's weaselling out of the game to consider these entirely different questions.

@shankypanky I get what you're saying too. I think the difference boils down to your romantic partner is an adult while the child is not and this does change the equation. But both scenarios force you to evaluate the value you attribute to a person as related to your personal enjoyment and this is what I find repulsive about the original question, it implies there's some simple formula you can plug in your partner and some other rando and it tells you If you should switch.

I reject that idea. People are not interchangeable. Relationships are built on shared experiences and those are irreplaceable.

I kind of get Joshua's point of a non monogamous relationship, where one partner can slowly overtake another in a natural way. A similar thing happens with friendships where as the circumstances of life change you suddenly find out you'd rather hang out with friend A rather than friend B. But is that the right way to value friendship B? Just because you'd rather hang out with friend A right now does that mean you can't rely on friend B to help you in times of need? Would you not support them if they needed your help?

I get that relationships and people can change, and that sometimes you want to stop being in a relationship. That's fine. But framing it as "trading" someone for someone else is what disgusts me.

@Odoacre I share a lot of your perspectives. My brain doesn't distill human beings' complexity to figures and rankings, but I know other people compute differently. I also commented below that I'm not even sure what xx% looks like related to a person, so that's hard for me to get my head around (I know it's not meant to be entirely literal).

Regarding non monogamy I guess I see things differently there too, as I find trust and connection are more solid when I know that no one is comparing and ranking one another. Ultimately there's some small degree of comparison that may be inevitable, but I would hope any partner appreciates me for what I am and gives the same courtesy to anyone else without mentally pitting us against one another. It's not (shouldn't be) a competition. That also comes back to my interpretation of this question and my own rejection of this "xx% better than you" framing of course.

I think the thing about relationships is understanding to what degree someone needs to be a "right fit" while having our mutual needs met in order for it to be worth it. The point where concessions are compromise and not sacrifice, that sort of thing.

I will end a relationship because it's not a good fit, but I hope I'm never in a point where I or my partner are hanging around because no one better has come along yet? "Trading up," to me, implies that I'm in a relationship with someone at least in part for lack of a better option. That sounds really destabilising and emotionally unsafe, and not really respectful of either of us or our commitment to one another (in whatever context that means). That said, when I end relationships that aren't a good fit I of course hope the next one is a better match in part because of what I've learned about myself through it. But it's not by holding onto one branch until I have the next one to swing to.

I guess that's also pretty easy for me to say/feel because I'm not really wired for comparison between people or putting them in a hierarchy - the phrasing in Yud's tweet is the most challenging for me ("xx% better than you"). If I were to find myself comparing my parter with someone else, I'd assume that's pointing to a bigger issue to look at between us.


also - there's a notable lack of punctuation at the end of his tweet 😅

@shankypanky yeah i always try to think of relationships as completely independent from each other. if i see someone new and shiny, i don't go "will they be better than my current partner?" i go "how is my current relationship?" and if the answer is "great" then the new shiny person is irrelevant

@goblinodds (and if the answer is "not great" then the new shiny person is still irrelevant! "is this relationship better than being single" is the bar i use)

Golblin just liked my earlier comment and it brought me back here, and I'm genuinely curious: for the people who voted 25%, are you in a currently happy relationship? I have zero judgement, that just seems like a low threshold for "trading up" to me.

And, what does xx% look like when we're talking about a person or compatibility? What does my partner x 200% even mean? I know that $100 is 100x my $1 but what does it mean when it comes to human beings?

I chose the option "at no x%" but not because I wouldn't leave a relationship in hopes of finding a better fit, but because I wouldn't leave a person because I feel that someone else is an upgrade. A better fit is not a better person, just perhaps a better dynamic for me.

@goblinodds ily 🧡

I don't know anything about the science of romance. but the idea of constantly seeking an upgrade seems to fundamentally undermine the essence of a romantic relationship. In my own wisdom,

true fulfillment in a romantic relationship or marriage is when both parties reach a selfless attitude e.g. you are willing to put yourself through discomfort or sacrifice to improve the well-being of your partner. which is technically valuing the other above themselves.

It makes sense to trade up during the early stages of dating because you are still exploring. But if this mindset persists and you are still willing to trade up your partner for another one that's X% better, it means that you are still acting selfishly and the relationship needs to end anyway.

My take is based on the assumption of merely seeking an upgrade for a relationship that's going well with no significant conflicts

X% better than your partner?

What "better" mean here ? Probably doesn’t mean, objectively better, so it is better given our own judgment of what is better ?
But even then, it feels like the wrong metric. I would not date the perfect thing or even the perfect person, because there would not be any gain from it.
The real metric, in my point of view, is how much we both improve from it.

I would trade for some 99% worse (if there is a really good reason), and not for some 100000% better, this metric is just completely wrong I think.

Does Eliezer actually believe this? I feel he just posted it for the engagement

@Soli he just voted for 100%

@Soli I thought this was going to get like 0 engagement

@EliezerYudkowsky 😂

What do you think of this? Does it affect your decision?

@Soli Previously accumulated human capital specialized on each other, is obviously taken into account in the threshold someone has to meet to be X% better than your current partner!

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