Anatomy of a Dating Document

post by squidious · 2022-07-31T02:40:00.863Z · LW · GW · 24 comments

Contents

  TLDR: a dating document should tell the reader who you are, where you’re at, where you want to be, who you’re into, anything that can’t or won’t change, non-negotiables, and dealbreakers.
  Some bonuses! 
  Other relevant links:
None
24 comments

I’ve noticed a trend of writing out dating documents (or web pages, blog posts, etc) as a means of having everything you’d normally put on a dating profile in one place. There’s a particular way many of these are written, such that they’re more straightforward and practical about dating than online dating profiles and apps tend to be. It honestly reminds me a little of how arranged marriage works nowadays in India. In an effort to better understand what it is people tend to expect of these documents (and throw in some of my own thoughts), I decided to read through every dating document I could find (mostly through reciprocity and Bountied Rationality) and compare/contrast to find common themes, as well as good ideas of what to include that should be more common. Though written as a guideline on how to write your own dating doc, this is equally (if not moreso) a meta-analysis on what's been put into those already out there.

TLDR: a dating document should tell the reader who you are, where you’re at, where you want to be, who you’re into, anything that can’t or won’t change, non-negotiables, and dealbreakers.

Start with basic information about you. Along with the standard “age, sex[/gender], location”, people typically share details about their current life status, such as occupation or school, housing situation, and anything else static in your life, like pets and kids. This is also the place to put orientation, which includes sexual and romantic orientation as well as preferences for monogamy vs polyamory. Some people will choose this space as the place to elaborate on any current partners or kink alignments as well.

Next comes the bulk of it, focusing on who you are and your personality. It can be helpful to use typologies like Myers-Briggs, Big 5, Enneagram, etc, but I’d suggest putting this only if you identify with your typology. It’s important to note that anything you say about yourself also reveals which of your own qualities you find important, and similarly, mentioning typologies implies that you agree with the assumptions revealed by them (just as mentioning zodiac implies you believe in that). The traits highlighted in these typologies are also traits people tend to focus on when describing themselves, particularly introversion vs extroversion and thinking vs feeling from Myers-Briggs, and openness and conscientiousness from Big 5. Aside from these, people most often mention sense of humor, ambition/leadership, organization, cuddliness, flexibility, and emotional sensitivity/lability. Sometimes people describe a kind of “energy” they give off, which is nebulous and hard to pin down, but easier to ask for others to describe about you than for you to mention about yourself. Of course, there’s also the fun stuff: hobbies, media, skills/talents, special interests, habits, subcultures, etc. All the stuff people normally put on their dating profiles. Just be more specific than “hiking and good food”, please.

Aside from personality, values are huge in determining long term compatibility. This can include cause areas, which may also link to career or lifestyle related things, like travel, volunteering, and earning to give. Money and family are two of the biggest sources of conflict in long term relationships, so discussing values on this here can be really important. People also like to discuss independence vs enmeshment, personal growth ideals, community engagement, social justice, and aesthetics. I think it could also be useful to add something about being narrative-oriented vs fact-oriented, since I often see this as a source of conflict within the community. These values are important because of how they tie in to what a long term relationship would look like, so this can also be a place to mention long term goals. For example, discussions around cryonics can be surprisingly polarizing, and you probably don’t want to be with someone who is against it if you’re already committed. Values can also influence things like career goals, renting vs owning, and lifestyle. I think most profiles I’ve seen mention at least basic thoughts on marriage and kids, but more detail here is better – are you attached to your genetics or open to adoption, open to dating someone who already has kids, what your timeline looks like, etc. Also, I notice people rarely mention thoughts on pets unless they have them, so this might be a good place to put that, if it’s something you want down the line.

As much as dating documents are a place to market yourself, one thing I really appreciate is the level of disclosure I’ve seen in some of them. While many people assume the potential points of difficulty are implied, it can help to be explicit right off the bat, so you aren’t wasting each others’ time. If there are traits you have that rub people the wrong way, things you’re working on improving about yourself, or points of contention with past partners, it can help to say them outright. This shows self-awareness, honesty, consideration, and can reveal what you are and aren’t willing to change, so you don’t end up with a partner who has mismatched expectations for your personal growth, or is surprised at how core to you a particular trait is. This is also a place to discuss things like physical and mental health, diet, STIs, financials, and personal history. People can spend years going back and forth with each other about things that cannot and will not change, and I think part of the point of the explicit nature of these documents is to avoid that.

I find documents particularly helpful when they list out what they’re looking for in a partner. On the most basic level, this involves what kind of relationship you’re looking for, age and gender preferences, and traits or values you want. Like with the personality section, people can often describe a type of “energy” they like, though it can work even better to supplement this with traits since, as mentioned, it can be hard to know how others see you. The goal here is to write what you’re looking for in a way others can see themselves reflected. Love languages (giving and receiving), communication or conversation style, things you find attractive, and a little on what dating you looks like can help a lot here. While it can feel awkward to discuss sex and sexuality so publicly, this is another big reason why relationships end. Non-negotiables in any area are important to bring up, particularly anything that’s more of a need than a want. Similarly, any pet peeves and deal breakers, particularly any you often encounter, should be mentioned here as well. It can be nice to mention things you want to do with a potential partner, especially since this can lead into a first date easily.

Some bonuses! 

  • Pictures, particularly pictures of you doing interesting things, or anything that shows what your day-to-day is like

  • Links to things you’ve written, social media, contacts

  • Reviews from past and current partners

  • Why are you single?

  • General attitude towards dating, romance, relationships, etc

  • How you handle conflict, and any related triggers

  • Insecurities, biases, and other related self-insight

  • Have you been to therapy, what have you worked on in therapy, how are you currently working to better yourself (or maybe that’s just me)


Other relevant links:

  • I mentioned and linked this above, but here's something I wrote on arranged marriage, and some things I learned about the practical view of relationships from various conversations with my parents.
  • There was a reddit thread asking people what they wish they'd discussed with their partners before they got married. One user compiled the answers into a list of questions, which they shared here. It's very much based in common failure modes in relationships, and leans very heavily on things like raising kids, but can still be incredibly helpful.

24 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by ChristianKl · 2022-08-01T05:42:36.318Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

One important aspect of these documents is that they make matchmaking easier. A clear understanding of what people are looking for makes it easier to set up people in our community to have relationships with each other. Having the document also makes facilitates the actual conversations about setting people up.

comment by Said Achmiz (SaidAchmiz) · 2022-07-31T04:02:46.451Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

When you say that dating documents “should” include this or that, do you mean by this merely that the dating documents you read did in fact include those things? Or do you have some evidence that including the things you list contributes to these documents’ success?

Likewise, you write:

In an effort to better understand what it is people tend to expect of these documents (and throw in some of my own thoughts), I decided to read through every dating document I could find (mostly through reciprocity and Bountied Rationality) and compare/contrast to find common themes, as well as good ideas of what to include that should be more common.

On what do you base claims about what “people tend to expect” of such documents? Would we not have to survey readers of such documents, to get that information?

Replies from: squidious
↑ comment by squidious · 2022-07-31T18:35:33.528Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I base what people tend to expect on the threads resulting from such documents, as well as a good amount of conversation that takes place in person. Similarly, what "should" be included is a mix of things I've noticed in existing documents, avoidable failure modes of relationships, and from my own conversations with people (largely women) in the community discussing what they're looking for in a partner in general. Given that these documents are written with the intent to be straightforward about what one does and doesn't want in seeking a long term partner, I'm assuming people would rather know if the person has attributes they highly value in a partner sooner rather than later. 

Also, like I mentioned at the start, the post is written as an instructional on how to write one, despite being more of a meta-analysis on dating docs. This is because I want to normalize writing documents like this, and found that explaining how to do things is really helpful in helping them feel empowered to do it. Re evidence, despite rising popularity, there isn't actually enough on these dating documents to draw conclusions on what  is and isn't successful. I do think using documents like these are a great idea (it's actually similar to modern arranged marriage practices in a sense) and that's why I'm trying to push it into awareness now rather than waiting for there to be enough data on how successful this particular version is within our subculture.

Replies from: SaidAchmiz
↑ comment by Said Achmiz (SaidAchmiz) · 2022-07-31T18:53:42.168Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

the threads resulting from such documents

What do you mean by this? Threads where?

In any case, I can’t help but notice that the things you say you base your commentary on fall into two classes:

  1. The content of existing “dating documents”; and…

  2. Essentially, opinion based on personal experience and interaction, having nothing to do with “dating documents”.

Notably absent is any information whatsoever about, or from, actual consumers of actual dating documents, or data about the efficacy of dating documents, or really anything at all about dating documents and their use, other than the contents of the actual documents themselves.

Given that these documents are written with the intent to be straightforward about what one does and doesn’t want in seeking a long term partner, I’m assuming people would rather know if the person has attributes they highly value in a partner sooner rather than later.

I… don’t quite get this logic. The conclusion seems to not follow from the premise… at all? Could you trace out the chain of reasoning here?

Also, like I mentioned at the start, the post is written as an instructional on how to write one, despite being more of a meta-analysis on dating docs.

Yes, but what makes your recommended way the right way to write a dating document, or even a good way of writing a dating document, or even a not guaranteed to completely torpedo your chances of ever getting a date again way of writing a dating document? Have you successfully gotten dates after having written a dating document in the way that you recommend? Have other people followed your recommendations and then gotten dates?

Re evidence, despite rising popularity, there isn’t actually enough on these dating documents to draw conclusions on what is and isn’t successful. I do think using documents like these are a great idea

But why do you think it’s a great idea? Just because you would prefer it if such things worked?

To be clear, you have no concrete reasons at all to believe that “dating documents” have any effectiveness whatsoever in getting their authors dates, getting them into relationships, etc.? Not even anecdotes?

Replies from: squidious
↑ comment by squidious · 2022-07-31T22:18:52.491Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Threads are largely on Facebook, along with personal conversations. Most of these are with women seeking a nesting partner, and most of these documents are written by men seeking a nesting partner, so in this sense the group I got most of my data from is the target  audience. I do think that a lot of this is more generalizable, at least within our community though; knowing whether or not your partner wants kids is useful regardless of gender and sexuality. I think part of what you're getting at is that it's ambiguous where each piece of advice is coming from, and you're definitely right about that -- I initially was compiling this information for personal use before deciding it might be worth sharing, hence not having sources and such. 

Re the comment you didn't quite get... the appeal of a dating document is largely from the ability to be upfront about what you want. This is to avoid the common failure mode of dating someone for years only to find a fundamental incompatibility that, if brought up from the start, could have saved a lot of trouble. It's an attempt to date more efficiently. This is the attitude both readers and writers of these docs bring to the table. In the same way that people might use a specific app to find a specific kind of connection, people have used dating docs as a way of finding someone willing to make things work based on practical alignments like coparenting and such.

I have anecdotal evidence that dating documents are helpful with getting dates, but no actual numbers. What I have found is that the sooner in a relationship couples discuss potential dealbreakers, goals for the future, etc, the more likely they are to either last or have a mutual breakup with no hard feelings. Again, no actual numbers here, but I'm a therapist and have worked with couples and taken workshops that have only supported this belief. In particular, often couples will fall in love, realize that they don't align on practical things, and then try to make it work anyway, often ending up feeling stuck together (like if they have kids) or having a messy breakup. The reason I think dating documents would work is that they improve upon an existing method for finding a partner, with the addition of built-in disclosures to prevent common failure modes. Plus, even if the document itself isn't what finds you a match, writing one out is a good exercise in figuring out what you want and showing it to a potential  partner is a good way of assessing practical compatibility upfront.

Apologies for not properly answering your questions the first time. It's been years since I've written on LW and I'm both a bit rusty and incredibly nervous. I do appreciate the constructive feedback, and acknowledge that my own experience (being told my ideas are invalid for not having measurable evidence and credible studies to cite) played a part in my response's tone.

Replies from: gwern
↑ comment by gwern · 2022-08-01T00:39:45.208Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I hate to weigh in with more criticism here, but I've also noticed this idea of putting up a long list of requirements on ACX threads and it struck me as rather self-defeating - to imagine that you can usefully define 'dealbreakers' in advance and screen people out, or do Zoom calls as the first date instead of in person dates etc.

'Tell vs Ask culture' is a great idea and I am fond of telling things too. But telling only works if you can, in fact, 'tell' something - unfortunately, when it comes to romance, "we know more than we can tell". I mean, we live in a world where Mencius Moldbug just got married to a Bard-graduate Peace Corps feminist sex writer for Jezebel! (I can also name among my relatives the improbable pairing of an ardent vegan and her husband, a butcher; decades later, still no sign of divorce.)

It is a trite saying, but it looks like "the heart has reasons reasons know not", and this catchphrase must be added to the armory along with "the dodo bird verdict" or "the metallic laws" or "correlation!=causation". I would highlight the studies (excerpts):

Background:

To summarize: everyone agrees on who's hot or not, and it is better to be hot than not; past that degree of assortative mating, predicting pairwise success of romance appears to be essentially impossible.

I'm particularly impressed by Joel et al 2017, where participants spent half an hour filling out several hundred of the most useful survey/psych questions (many extremely similar to what 'date documents' record) first, and past the global 'hot or not' ratings everyone could agree on, they throw high-powered random forests at trying to predict pairs of men/women, and the pairwise random forests do not merely fail to add much predictive power, they actually make the predictions worse! I, uh, did not predict that.

If you can take hundreds of participants filling out hundreds of tailored survey items about all their preferences and ideals and desired traits of romantic partners, and our highest-powered statistical methods identify less than zero signal, and this is also consistent with other analyses like asking whether your preferences predict satisfaction with partners (apparently not!), then I cannot see any reason for optimism about 'dealbreakers' existing and being so important you should structure all dating based on it. They would appear to be highly negotiable; perhaps true dealbreakers exist only in retrospect (such as at workshops or couples consulting therapists in the middle of messy breakups). Note the pernicious learning problem here inherent to screening: how will you ever learn you were wrong to screen out someone based on a supposed 'dealbreaker' if you screen everyone that way? It's not like you (or anyone else) will randomly pick half to go on a date with anyway and diligently acquire a sample of a few hundred n which can show that the two processes have the same (low) success rate for additional dates/relationships...

If neither you nor anyone else can predict your actual romantic compatibility with a random person beyond the basics of assortative mating, no matter how many questionnaires you fill out or dealbreakers you list, because you will 'click' with whomever you click, and that's the end of it, no point asking 'why', the heart has its reasons all your dealbreaker reasons know not, etc, then it seems like one ought to be thinking of dating as a numbers game in finding the maximum of n draws, more like the lottery of apple breeding than filtering airplane flights on Travelocity looking for the perfect flight with zero layovers leaving at noon for $200. When better-than-chance screening is expensive (or impossible), then there's not much you can do but grow a big field of apple saplings, give each a bite, and wait to get lucky with the next Honeycrisp apple; if you aren't sampling hundreds, at a minimum (a normal max looks like a log), you're throwing away a lot of potential gain. The last thing one would want to do is to self-defeatingly throw away lottery tickets based on criteria that won't matter in the end - each one of them could've been Mr Right, no matter how you defined and discarded him as Mr Wrong.

(For the same reason, I am skeptical of attempts to do 'Zoom first dates': Zoom is, even at the best of times, alienating and hard to feel any real attachment through. It may be adequate for cold business transactions, but for love...? I think that, like VR for decades, the screen resolution and latency and jitter are simply not there yet, and even something like Project Starline may still be inadequate. So using Zoom may doom a first date that could've succeeded, and is worse than dealbreakers because it throws away lottery tickets while wasting a lot more time & effort.)

Replies from: Kaj_Sotala, Benito, vanessa-kosoy, tailcalled, romeostevensit, squidious
↑ comment by Kaj_Sotala · 2022-08-01T08:38:16.529Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm particularly impressed by Joel et al 2017, where participants spent half an hour filling out several hundred of the most useful survey/psych questions (many extremely similar to what 'date documents' record) first, and past the global 'hot or not' ratings everyone could agree on, they throw high-powered random forests at trying to predict pairs of men/women, and the pairwise random forests do not merely fail to add much predictive power, they actually make the predictions worse! I, uh, did not predict that.

As far as I can tell, the outcome that the study was trying to predict was perceived compatibility on a four-minute speed date? If that's the amount of time you have to get to know a person, it doesn't sound too surprising if the global 'hot or not' ratings are the only useful predictor. Many people even reserve deal-breaker questions like "kids or no kids" until the second full date or later.

Given that squidious was talking about cases where people jump into a relationship and might find out about serious problems only much later, e.g. at a point where they might already have kids, it seems that the kinds of long-term issues she was talking about would also go unnoticed in a situation where you only had four minutes to assess the other person.

The authors note this limitation themselves, and seem to say that the actual question squidious is referencing hasn't even been studied, since it's methodologically too hard:

The present findings address only obliquely the predictability of long-term romantic compatibility. Even if unique desire in initial interactions is not predictable a priori, a matching algorithm could serve a useful function by surrounding users with partners with whom they would ultimately enjoy long-term compatibility should a relationship develop. Building and validating such an algorithm would require that researchers collect background measures before two partners have met and follow them over time as they become an established couple. To our knowledge, relationship science has yet to accomplish this methodological feat; even the commonly assessed individual-difference predictors of relationship satisfaction and breakup (e.g., neuroticism, attachment insecurity; Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Le et al., 2010) have never been assessed before the formation of a relationship. For these variables to be useful in a long-term compatibility algorithm that also separates actor, partner, and relationship variance, researchers would need to predict relationship dynamics across participants’ multiple romantic relationships over time (Eastwick et al., 2017). Predicting long-term compatibility may be more challenging than predicting initial romantic desire. 

Replies from: vanessa-kosoy
↑ comment by Vanessa Kosoy (vanessa-kosoy) · 2022-08-01T09:09:18.365Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Great point. Also, going on speed dates is already a selection effect, for example I consider speed dates to be a waste of time, especially with random people (I think they are usually not preselected?)

↑ comment by Ben Pace (Benito) · 2022-08-01T09:09:26.888Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

To summarize: everyone agrees on who's hot or not, and it is better to be hot than not; past that degree of assortative mating, predicting pairwise success of romance appears to be essentially impossible.

...participants spent half an hour filling out several hundred of the most useful survey/psych questions

Psych questions are not the only info that we can consider here. In advance of actually skimming the studies, here are some things that I predict correlate with relationship success:

  • Physical proximity
  • Social status
  • Financial wealth
  • IQ (because it positively correlates a little bit with all good things)
  • Class, with working class people more likely to break up
  • Height

If none of these correlate with relationship success... I will be much more confused than I currently am.

I don't know if we're discussing short-term or long-term success. Are we predicting that they enter into a relationship at all, or that they're still together 10 years later? I can imagine the latter being much harder to predict. (And one reason I could be bad at predicting the latter is if the former is anti-correlated with it.)

Replies from: squidious
↑ comment by squidious · 2022-08-01T19:33:15.864Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

The only things that I know studies have shown to be predictors of how successful a relationship will be are:
- Similar IQ (not necessarily high or low, but similar to each other; can't remember the study specifically)
- Lack of Gottman's Four Horsemen: contempt, criticism, stonewalling, defensiveness (though this has largely been studied by Gottman himself because it's hard to get anyone else to study your theories in psych)

Honestly maybe I should have just listed the four horsemen and left it at that :P

↑ comment by Vanessa Kosoy (vanessa-kosoy) · 2022-08-01T02:46:07.148Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I am confused about the relevance of hotness. Obviously if you're hot, more people will want to date you. But does it also improve the long-term success probability once you're already dating? Hot people have more stable relationships?

Also I realize you have actual studies there but to me this unpredictability sounds like something from another planet. Theory: maybe there is substantial difference between "normie" dating (normies are most of the population) and dating for groups that are on the tail of certain distributions (e.g. intelligence)? Because if you're on the tail then you need someone else on the tail (or at least skewed to your side) while if you're in the "bulk" then most people (who are also in the bulk) will do?

Replies from: gwern
↑ comment by gwern · 2022-08-01T03:38:17.644Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I don't know if it improves success conditional on dating someone; I could tell a story either way - being hot makes you more of a keeper, but then, maybe you'll be quicker to leave. It's a competitive market. Doesn't seem too relevant. The point of the hotness part is that when I say 'dating success is unpredictable', that's bracketing the obvious factor, visible to everyone. Obviously you can predict that a supermodel is probably going to get dates. It's not interesting to say, "a 5 should probably not try to date a 10". What is very surprising is, "here are a 5 and a 5; you can ask both of them as many questions as you like, of any sort, feed it into your fanciest statistical model if you need to, and you are still not going to outperform a coinflip in predicting how well their date, as far as we can tell from all our failed efforts to do so". This is especially surprising because we do this all the time with many other apparently equally formidable social prediction tasks like predicting criminal recidivism or child abuse or suicide: the incremental prediction validity might not be great, but at least it's not frigging negative variance! I'm not sure what other social psych thing seems to be so precisely null predictive.

this unpredictability sounds like something from another planet.

I agree that it's very surprising and I'm still looking for a good explanation. The best I have so far is an analogy from evolutionary genetics theories of personality where personality is either stuck as, or possibly deliberately functioning as, a randomizing device (because personality is a hawk-dove model), and this leads to canalization of preferences for obviously desirable traits like health, but then additional preferences are completely inscrutable randomness.

Because if you're on the tail then you need someone else on the tail (or at least skewed to your side) while if you're in the "bulk" then most people (who are also in the bulk) will do?

I can't disprove that but I see no reason to invoke it either. If there were small clusters or niches or heterogeneity like that, I would still expect approaches like random forests to have found them (that's exactly what they are brilliant at). And I have already explained why there have to be many severe illusions about how effective any selection process is, because no one experiences adequate sample sizes nor do they ever see the counterfactual. As Bacon asked, "where are the sailors who prayed to the idols and did not return?"

Replies from: alexander-gietelink-oldenziel, vanessa-kosoy
↑ comment by Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel (alexander-gietelink-oldenziel) · 2022-08-01T06:04:45.812Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thank you for your scholarship, gwern!

Like Vanessa I'm confused about the tails story. It is clear to me that people highly sort on class/education/iq when choosing a mate. You are saying this isn't relevant - purely an artifact of who people hang out with? They could have just as easily found happiness outside their class? (Or is this somehow sneaked in by the hotness factor?) It seems difficult to believe that this does not factor in to long-term compatibility.

Another: I strongly predict your chance of a successful long-term relationship will be much lower if you date somebody serious mental illness or substance abuse problems.

Perhaps you are only claiming there are no predictors for falling in love rather than long-term compatibility?

In that case, selecting on sensible deal-breakers becomes extra important: you can randomly at any moment fall in love with a completely terrible mate.

If love really is so random - the traditional control that family exerted over young people makes a lot more sense

Replies from: gwern
↑ comment by gwern · 2022-10-04T16:45:41.409Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

The randomness theory explains assortative mating variables as a mix of desirability and selection effect. To expand on Kaj's comment and move away from the STEM/nerd stuff, let's consider the obvious one of politics. Variables like intelligence, income, or education are part of broadly-agreed upon desirability, OK, fine, so they don't constitute individually-predictive or dyadic factors beyond the net desirability - but how can we explain Republican vs Democrat that way? Half the population thinks Republicans are better, and the other half Democrats, no net there. Some of these studies will do political-related questions as extremely obvious to ask about, and you do see large correlations between spouse's (pre-relationship) party affiliation in the US population, but still, the study nulls are null.

Does that mean the studies are wrong somehow? Well, maybe a little: range restriction is a problem here. (I would definitely like more diverse studies here, even if the extent of range restriction in them ironically emphasizes my overall point about selection effects, and doesn't undermine my other points too much.*) But the population correlates are probably more wrong. Because you can't click with someone you haven't met! As the joke goes, "don't marry for money - spend all your time with rich people & marry for love"; if you choose to spend time only with Republicans because you're a Republican, you will, of course, only find the Republican you click with, and not the equally numerous Democrats you would have clicked with. (How could it be otherwise? What, would you exude a pheromone that only your Democrats counterparts smell from miles away and snuffle their way to your address to ask you out on a date?) This mere proximity manufactures a population correlate, even though there is no individual correlate - nothing intrinsic about being a Republican makes that person more likely to click with you. The speed-dating gets a null on Rep vs Dem because it forces each side to encounter the other side proportionately much, revealing the proportionately-much click. This is the unseen counterfactual.

So, if you spend all of your time hanging out with STEM nerds or EAers, or if you are a celebrity which spends all their time hanging out with celebrities, or if you are an academic who - hard to believe, I know - spends much of their time interacting with other academics... Some of that is the desirability (high SES etc), and then the default for the rest is just "those are the people you meet, so that's where you meet the people you can click with".

This is boring and trivial, but it does have the implication for optimizing dating that you should not try to use simple partisan affiliation per se as a screen because it will just produce false negatives, and throw out people you should've tried a date with.

* to argue that 'range restriction means that these studies are irrelevant to criticisms of dating-checklists because their measures have no useful variation', you'd have to show that the dating-checklists don't suffer from the same problem as much or worse. Which given the overlap in subject matter and the relative diversity of 'a bunch of semi-random students at an ordinary university shanghaied by the researchers' vs 'the guys I recruit online via Facebook', is... implausible.

Replies from: alexander-gietelink-oldenziel
↑ comment by Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel (alexander-gietelink-oldenziel) · 2022-10-04T17:51:56.255Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

From personal anecdote it seems pretty clear to me people have idiosyncratic preferences orthogonal to general desirability that are real. Even spending a lot of time with people that don't fit those preferences does not make them attractive.

I do take your points about the state of the research.

↑ comment by Vanessa Kosoy (vanessa-kosoy) · 2022-08-01T08:04:25.288Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I can't disprove that but I see no reason to invoke it either. If there were small clusters or niches or heterogeneity like that, I would still expect approaches like random forests to have found them (that's exactly what they are brilliant at). And I have already explained why there have to be many severe illusions about how effective any selection process is, because no one experiences adequate sample sizes nor do they ever see the counterfactual.

On the one hand I agree that everything I know about this is anecdotal. On the other hand, am I really supposed to believe it's a complete coincidence that my spouse is a STEM nerd who reads lots of sci/fantasy and is heavily involved with effective altruism[1]? The replication crisis etc left me with a feeling that when common sense and social science studies disagree, there's a fair chance the studies are wrong. But, shrugs, what do I know...

Oh, and, another thought. There seems to be a pretty strong trend for celebrities to date other celebrities / show-business people. I think there's also a trend for academics to date other academics. How come those random forests didn't detect it?

And, I'm pretty sure there is a lot of selection based on ethnicity and religion (more than explainable by geography). Maybe you meant that this is just a "boring" part which we can assume given for the sake of the discussion?

  1. A possible objection is: my spouse is like this because that's how I've been selecting lovers. Okay, but the same is true about e.g. hotness. The aforementioned studies also weren't causal interventions with control groups, I assume. (Plus, the selection pressure I applied wasn't strong enough to explain the outcome.) ↩︎

Replies from: Kaj_Sotala
↑ comment by Kaj_Sotala · 2022-08-01T09:42:49.068Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I think there's also a trend for academics to date other academics. How come those random forests didn't detect it?

Likely because all of the people in question were academics, or at least undergraduate ones, so there was no chance to detect differences in how they matched with non-academics:

Sample A consisted of 163 undergraduate students (81 women and 82 men; mean age = 19.6 years, SD = 1.0) who attended one of seven speed-dating events in 2005. Sample B consisted of 187 undergraduate students (93 women and 94 men; mean age = 19.6 years, SD = 1.2) who attended one of eight such events in 2007. Sample size was determined by the number of speed-dating events we were able to hold in 2005 and 2007 and the number of participants we were able to recruit for each event while maintaining an equal gender ratio. All participants, who were recruited via on-campus flyers and e-mails to participate in a speed-dating study, had the goal of meeting and potentially matching with opposite-sex participants. [...]

The present results were obtained with undergraduate samples; a more demographically diverse sample might exhibit matching by sociological factors such as age, socioeconomic status, cultural background, or religious background.

↑ comment by tailcalled · 2022-08-01T07:31:41.721Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Has anyone looked into applying some sort of dimension reduction and then looked into whether the people who are high and low on PC2 differ in any sort of identifiable way?

↑ comment by romeostevensit · 2022-08-01T04:35:24.698Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Agreed that fake dealbreakers are a bad plan. Ignoring real dealbreakers (long term plans around family and finances) is also a bad plan.

↑ comment by squidious · 2022-08-01T19:29:14.854Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It seems one of the issues coming up here is that I was assuming dating documents would be written out honestly and in good faith. In particular, I was assuming that those that aren't doing so won't be taking my advice anyway. I also recognize that there's a certain degree of self-knowledge I'm assuming, because largely these documents are written by people who have dated enough to know what they do and don't actually want. I didn't notice this when writing the document out, but I do now.

I also suspect that the lack of examples given makes it look like I'm endorsing preferences that I don't want to endorse, purely because I'm telling people to list out their preferences. So for example, it's not uncommon for women on dating apps to plausible-deniability-joke about a preference for dating men over 6 feet, which isn't something I'd endorse listing as a dealbreaker. However, if someone is single and already has a child, it makes sense that they'd have dealbreakers related to this, like a potential partner wanting kids at all, and non-negotiables, like details about how they wish to raise and parent their child. Some of these might even be non-negotiables and dealbreakers for people who don't yet have kids.

For a less child-centric example (because it's too easy to point to kids as a reason to be upfront): I am a therapist, and know that I have a tendency to do a lot of emotional labor for people I'm close to. In the past, people have taken advantage of this, so I have pretty strict boundaries about how willing I am to do said emotional work for someone I'm dating. As a result, I have a strong preference that anyone I'm dating who would benefit from therapy be in therapy, so they have an outlet for all of this that isn't me. I've seen other dating documents where people mention things like a tendency to get into heated arguments, difficulty understanding their own emotions, high impulsivity, etc. The thing is, these traits could be a big deal for some people, and a non-issue for others. Some therapists don't have any difficulty setting emotional boundaries with their partners, some people who love arguments are better able to keep themselves in check, etc. So it's hard to say universally which  traits are most important to be discussed upfront, because they differ so widely.

comment by Razied · 2022-07-31T03:17:29.969Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

My god, I think this might be the approach to dating most antagonistic to human nature. I thought dating apps were bad, but actually writing out a full document with long lists of every possible reason someone else might want to reject you? It baffles my mind that there has ever been a single guy that has gotten laid this way. As with all dating, supply and demand means that these dating documents will mostly be used by women to decide which of the dozens of male suitors to accept. And as with all dating apps, the women will all try to choose the one tall rich high-status handsome dude while barely glancing at 80% of men. Guys, the way to get girlfriends is through real life interaction, get an attractive body by working out, then confidently approach women you find attractive and ask them out, get used to being rejected, and try again. 

Replies from: SaidAchmiz, Kaj_Sotala, Morpheus
↑ comment by Said Achmiz (SaidAchmiz) · 2022-07-31T04:04:49.191Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Guys, the way to get girlfriends is through real life interaction, get an attractive body by working out, then confidently approach women you find attractive and ask them out, get used to being rejected, and try again.

What is your estimate of the percentage of non-single Less Wrong members that met their current partner by means of the approach you recommend? (Counting both those who used the given method themselves, or whose partner used it on them.)

↑ comment by Kaj_Sotala · 2022-07-31T08:09:36.913Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

the women will all try to choose the one tall rich high-status handsome dude while barely glancing at 80% of men.

This may certainly be true for some women, but what's your basis for the claim that "all" women will try to use this criteria? It seems to me wildly implausible both on the basis of how much individual variation there is in people, as well as just, well, knowing lots of women and having witnessed both what they claim to be attracted to and also the kinds of people they've actually ended up with.

↑ comment by Morpheus · 2022-07-31T21:31:13.724Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

As with all dating, supply and demand means that these dating documents will mostly be used by women to decide which of the dozens of male suitors to accept. And as with all dating apps, the women will all try to choose the one tall rich high-status handsome dude while barely glancing at 80% of men.

In the market for casual sex and the market for longterm relationships, the skew of the market is actually the other way around and your market value can be very different, which is why some people go for an ambigous strategy to end up with higher value mates. (Which is probably not the best strategy to end up in a happy relationship)

I thought dating apps were bad, but actually writing out a full document with long lists of every possible reason someone else might want to reject you?

Given that it is one of the major decisions of your live it would make sense to try to get as much information as possible and additionally you have a smaller cost for being explicit in rationalists circles.