In lengthily summing up my LessOnline experience in my previous post, it would have felt uncouth to mention this, but getting to hang out with a massive group of rationalist types made me think a bit about dating prospects. As I did mention, there was a pretty severe gender skew there (as was completely predictable), but I was a little taken aback at how attractive in general I found the women there to be -- intellectually and in personality as well as superficially, of course, but the being taken aback is about their superficial attractiveness. It helps, I think, that I tend to go for more traditional presentations and particularly aesthetically dislike certain particular affectations including septum rings, and, as mentioned in my previous post, the women had more traditional presentations than I would have expected.
Not to get into all of my worries about ever finding someone with a collection of beliefs and mindsets that I feel are compatible with mine, and the fact that part of me knows I set too high of a standard for that, but I've often felt that I would run into less or none of this concern with someone who was very rationalist-y. As in, when I think of approaching a rationalist (or at least sufficiently rat-adj) as a potential partner, this feels like a great weight off my back. Three weekends ago at LessOnline only served to further cement that feeling. It even gave me a slight urge to move to the Bay Area to access this aspect (among others) of the social scene there, even though most of my instincts tell me that moving to the Bay Area would be a really bad idea even when considering dating prospects alone: as long as I'm considering only women, I'd be choosing the geographic region with probably the worst possible gender ratio for me anywhere in the country.
On the longer of my plane rides back home, I discovered that the charming late-middle-age couple next to me were academics who had a lot they wanted to talk to me about, and I sort of vaguely explained where I had been along with discussing with them my general career/life situation. I didn't bring up dating/relationships, but the woman did, saying, "You want a partner, right?" and eventually centering my ultimate happiness on finding that, suggesting (not unreasonably) that it would be the biggest single component to put in place in order to make other things fall into place. And she asked, "Were there any attractive woman at the convention you were just at? You did try to talk to them, didn't you?"
And it was like, yes there were definitely many attractive women, but despite being very energetically social and striking up conversations with plenty of people and taking advantage of Writehaven's utility in instigating one-on-one conversations with people, partly due to the unfavorable gender ratio I didn't actually wind up having many extensive interactions with women. I certainly don't feel bad about that: I didn't go into this with "meeting potential dates" as one of the objectives; I was planning picking and choosing conversations mainly based on interest in subject matter rather than the characteristics of the person I'd be talking to, which felt like the right way to approach a convention like that (especially one on the other side of the country from where I live). I will confess (with a mild bit of awkward feeling even about putting it in writing) that I did choose one of the sessions I went to primarily because of my interest in the woman running it -- I had encountered her at a mealtime earlier, not quite in a direct interaction, but because she was infodumping in my general direction (certain types of infodumping are prone to making me feel very attracted to someone!), and I wanted to see her give a talk on something in her natural element and perhaps find some opportunity (through my participation) to make a good impression. Unfortunately, the best thing that can be said of my participation in that session is that I participated. Had I performed better, I don't know what would have come of that anyway, beyond that maybe I would have had a good lead-in to chatting with her after it was over.
Another factor was that it was almost never at all apparent whether a woman participant was already in a relationship or not. I heard at least one comment about how the vast majority of women at such events already are in relationships (most often with other LessWrong types also at the events); one can figure in the factor of what proportion of them are poly and still open to new partners, but being poly, particularly being someone's secondary partner, is not my cup of tea.
There was also a speed dating event planned for the final evening that I would have eagerly gone to but got cancelled at the last minute -- I forgot to tell the woman on the plane about this. (There was also a cuddle event later that evening, though explicitly not sexual, that also got cancelled before being halfway resurrected too late for me to join.)
The woman on the plane went on at length, after we'd all been conversing for a couple of hours, about what a great catch I'd be. I've noticed this as a common theme among women in their 60's and older: they seem to sincerely find me charming and witty and potentially a great partner (for someone age-appropriate) in a way that younger woman don't (the perception of me as charming and witty part is the most stark aspect of this and has made me speculate that culture between the generations in terms of expected levels of wittiness has shifted a significant amount). She emphasized that I strike her as "attentive" and would be an "attentive partner" too, which was a little more unique. In most cases, these older women call me handsome as well -- this woman didn't, perhaps because I looked like a bit of a mess since I tend to not be well put-together while traveling, or she felt that would be a weird thing to say right next to her husband, or whatever. (Her husband was a very quiet type who only entered the conversation occasionally, often to almost inaudibly correct his wife on something she'd said: "They're not called 'dating sites' anymore; they're called 'dating apps'." I defended his wife: "Many of them are still considered dating sites as well as dating apps.")
The session on dating advice for rationalists mentioned a dating site specifically catered to rationalist types called Cuties, which makes use of dating docs rather than the type of (all too often minimalistic) profile that has become traditional. I looked it up within a few days of getting home, and I wound up on some online directories for dating docs in general (I think this was the main one). It was the usual rather discouraging experience. The posted dating docs were very sparse, including in major cities, and of course especially from the women seeking men. It would look like an almost reasonably-sized list was showing up, but I would find that most of the links were defunct.
What was interesting, though, is that for whatever cultural reason, while those who go the dating docs route aren't necessarily online-rationalism-affiliated, they all seem to have a lot going on in terms of a high-status career and lots of money and difficult/expensive hobbies and pastimes and so on. It's a very sharp and unmistakable contrast from most of the world of online dating, and I wonder how it came about. (Compare also to explicitly rationalist people: I don't have much of a sample size, but I did give feedback on one man's dating doc at LessOnline, and this is a guy who at age 30 has so much money that he's thinking of retiring and switching to a lifestyle where he spends all year round intensely traveling the world.)
The very first of the non-defunct "date me" pages that I looked at, which I won't link to (because that feels kind of icky) was for a woman who, to list immediate traits I feel positively about, is a beautiful secular liberal-leaning Jew and lives in [major city area around two hours from me that I'd love to move to if jobs/finances allow] but spends a lot of time in [one of my favorite towns in the world, some four hours from me in a different direction], and to list immediate traits (and ultimately the only traits) I have some apprehension about, is taller than me and fosters dogs as a major hobby. She otherwise is such an incredibly and attractively high-powered person that I have to list a summary some other things mentioned on her page just so that there's a real-life example on this blog of someone who appears to have superpowers from my perspective, that is, who simply seem capable of doing at least twice the amount of productive things with their lives than I am capable of. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the things:
got an advanced degree
super high-powered job with obvious helping-the-world purposes (much like a lot of the higher-status rationalist community people, although she doesn't appear to be affiliated with that community)
history of super intense outdoor stuff, now apparently keeps up a diet of hiking, biking, climbing, and scuba diving among other things
consumes more than one book per week
the aforementioned constant dog fostering for a major dog rescue non-profit
fairly serious photography
plays at least three instruments
writes music in a variety of genres that I appreciate, included audio clips of them which I listened to and they're legit good!
appears to maintain a very active social life, yet has no partner (guess that's the one thing she hasn't found time to do, or maybe she keeps her standards so high that nobody eligible has wandered into the picture)
Apparently that is an actual person who exists, and she is on the more extreme end of the Having Superpowers spectrum as well as the more extreme end in intensity among the types who post dating docs, who are collectively, for similar reasons, pretty far out of my league.