faceh
2hr ago
do literally the exact opposite of everything you have been doing. Roll out the red carpet for him, make his life easy and eschew the attention you receive from other men;
That's the big one.
Most guys are aware that a woman will have a dozen other prospects in their phone at any given time. You CAN'T get attached to that person, b/c her cost of swapping you out for another is minimal. You become aloof because that's what the game theory says you have to do. She can defect at any time, and she can't be punished for doing so, don't be the chump who cooperates too early.
Costly shows of effort and interest that demonstrate she's not entertaining other men is how you'd actually know she's serious and not as likely to leave on a whim (alas, it takes 5 minutes for her to set up a dating profile, so you're never truly safe).
And no, that doesn't count just sleeping with him, since there's no direct cost to THAT anymore. Be pleasant, show appreciation, make him feel like he is important to you, and he's already yours.
What's interesting is I think women know (or ought to know) that this is a male desire/fantasy, you can find certain genres of softcore porn that emphasize the woman being pleasant and affectionate and doting and caring for a guy with sexual desire as an undertone. The blackpill is that you can easily get a woman to act this way if you pay for it directly in hour-long increments. Which tells you both that many women don't want to act this way for a man, naturally, and perhaps worse many are able to convincingly fake it anyway.
faceh
2hr ago
I simply do not believe that most matchmakers are actually good at their jobs (especially given the larger culture they're working in) to give them money I could spend on either improving my status or actually taking out a woman I was interested in.
I stop short of calling them scams (they surely DO provide matches) but they're not solving the issue of women believing they have infinite optionality, which is simply a symptom of having access to dating apps at all.
faceh
2hr ago
The 'nearest' prospect that showed up with the maximum range was across the state.
30 miles, for me, encompasses my town and the 3 nearest towns, any further than that and its a real commitment to drive out to meet someone.
faceh
5hr ago
Took me five minute to sign up and there are absolutely zero people meeting my criteria in a 30 miles radius.
faceh
5hr ago
Be braced for misery my guy.
No point in sugar coating it. Just realize its not really a 'you' thing.
faceh
5hr ago
It sucks because you rarely ever learn any useful lessons out of it either, because there's no reason for things ending other than "brain said to run so I ran."
You don't learn to be a better partner, you just get left wondering if you were inadequate.
What helped me a lot was keeping tabs on these women for long enough that I could see that it wasn't me, they did this to every guy. I actually had an interesting realization that of all the women I dated seriously... only one of them has managed to get into a stable relationship, so realistically I probably couldn't have made any of those situations work on my own efforts.
But also means I've been pretty bad at selecting good partners.
And finally, the thing I really hate is when I meet a girl whose personality is a really close match to my ideal and is physically attractive, but I immediately clock her as anxious or avoidant and I ultimately learn that she had a bad experience with a controlling, abusive, or adulterous/sociopathic dude who has basically ruined her pair-bonding capability. And I agonize over the "what ifs" I had met her earlier before the damage was done.
faceh
5hr ago
Well yes and no.
If ALL you had to go on was physical appearance, then yeah you zero in on the pure 'hottest' and drop from there.
But OKCupid in its prime let you get granular and find someone who was 'hot' in the way you actually prefer, and would have enough preferences in common that you could actually expect a positive interaction.
And of course it let you identify various dealbreakers easily so you didn't waste time.
These days I basically can only snap judge someone based on whether they have a nose ring or they have aggressively liberal politics mentioned on their profile.
That is essentially both OKC, Hinge, and hundreds of other matchmaking services pitch too.
Nah I think that's the hilarious thing. The sales pitch of swipe apps is "we'll connect you with so many people! The possibilities are (theoretically) endless!" and they never explicitly promise those connections are likely to go anywhere.
The bait is the theoretical ability to find that perfect match amongst the detritus... whilst denying you the tools necessary to do so.
They avoid any, call it 'liability' for providing 'bad' matches because hey, you're the one swiping on these people, we're just putting them profile in front of you. But if it DOES work out somehow be sure to thank us because but for us that connection wouldn't have happened!
faceh
6hr ago
Yep.
I've become ACUTELY prescient at noticing when someone is anxious-avoidant or worse, just straight up dismissive. Me, I'm mildly anxious (have gotten a lot better) and very secure once basic trust is established. It takes a lot of effort to maintain that, since one scary thing is that secure-attachment people can be shifted over to avoidant and anxious if they have enough bad experiences with the other types.
So the secure types become a rarer and rarer type to find because they're either pairing off or getting ruined by having a handful of bad relationships that failed on them.
I'm semi-comfortable with the anxious types, I don't mind giving reassurances to them that the relationship is strong... but there's always going to be some incident that 'confirms' their fears and causes them to cut it off when they think that things are about to go south.
The ones where the avoidant person is trying to withdraw and the other party is trying to chase and secure their commitment is maybe the worst dynamic on a meta level, because it can remain stable for quite a while but its burning out both parties as it continues. I remember straight up telling one girl "look, its one thing to want men to chase you... but you have to be willing to be caught and its clear you are not."
And the pernicious one is the avoidant who is mostly aware they're avoidant, and keeps trying to establish relationships with people then withdrawing suddenly, closing off all contact as if the connection never existed, and move on relatively quickly. That one hurts.
This is apparently a pattern with some women. Fire up a dating app, stick around long enough to find a nice enough dude, delete the app, date for a bit, freak out and break it off, stay single and get lonely after a bit, then repeat.
“Once I hit the age of 40, I’m not taking any new calls… No, I don’t want to know you, I don’t want to meet you, no; I don’t care about you; leave me alone…” That was about the age he just wanted to officially stop everything, consolidate his gains and what he’s made for himself in life, call it quits and live out the rest of his days in peace.
Can't lie, I'm contemplating that deadline myself, in my late 30's.
Every failed connection or relationship that goes nowhere unfortunately makes me bayesian update towards the likelihood that I'll just never find someone that I can make it work with.
Thing is my drive isn't dwinding yet. I'm not feeling 'old' by any means yet. I still feel vital and effective and the misery is coming from trying to encounter someone whose interests and values align when most of those interests and values are selected against by the default overculture.
There's an odd disconnect these days. I'm able to attract women... but I'm less interested in playing the games and I'm better able to perceive the immediate disqualifying factors. The women I have available are not bad people but I don't expect that anything I initiate between us would last... so why toy around with each other?
I can sustain my current life routine indefinitely (until AI disruption finally hits) and every foray I make into the dating market gives me yet more reasons to stay out of it.
faceh
6hr ago
Yes, there legitimately should be no need for the 'matchmaker' role at all, if they let you search with the precision that I'd like.
Imagine if Google, instead of returning an array of results that are mostly responsive to your query, it showed you a snapshot of some webpage that sort of matches your general interests, and then makes you swipe through each one individually. A large enough database with a powerful enough search function shouldn't need a middleman I have to pay to find and access the result I want.
I think the appeal of Keeper is the promise of basically "one and done" being a real possibility rather than a whole process, so if you're really to in the mood for going through the process for months on end, they give you a shortcut.
faceh
7hr ago
As stated by @orthoxerox, OkCupid was very close.
You answered a bunch of interesting questions, and you'd search for people who answered those questions in ways that indicated they would be compatible, then winnow from there.
There was a lengthy profile sections so people could put quite a bit of info about themselves if they wished.
And, the killer function, you could actually search and filter from the pool in a given area to zero in on ones that seemed most promising. It was more like spearfishing rather than sticking your bait out there and seeing who nibbled.
It was FAR from perfect in terms of actually generating dates, but I know multiple people who met spouses there.
I myself met the Ex that I almost married on there. Granted, it was because we both happened to be online at 2 a.m., me because I had gotten stood up by a different date. Timing/luck was a huge factor.
When I came back to it years later after my breakup, it had already been converted to a Tinder-style swipe app... as has EVERY OTHER APP.
The visible parts of the dating market are promiscuous women and women with low sex drive. In the past the concepts of "putting out", "marital duty" obscured this dynamic, but modern women have been brought up knowing they don't owe anyone sex and don't have to hide their (dis)interest.
Generalize that further.
The people who are visible on the dating market are often 'broken' in some way that makes their ability to maintain long-term relationships much more stunted (especially under modern conditions).
The ones who are capable of stable pair-bonding and are generally normal in terms of attractiveness, life-put-togetherness, from happy families, are by sheer definition, the ones most likely to get locked in to a stable relationship early and not leave. The pool, at any given time, is mostly inhabited by the broken and you have to get lucky to chance onto a viable partner in their brief period of availability.
It creates a double-sided Market for Lemons as people learn to expect the worst from each given encounter and thus are ever less willing to extend commitment or effort to the next person.
So don't limit it just to promiscuity and libido, include emotional stability and familial instincts and generally being 'sane' enough to envision a committed relationship with that person. If the person is aware that they're broken, they even have an incentive to hide that from potential matches, so there's already a layer of suspicion going in.
In terms of promiscuous women, I think that they get the focus because sexual availability is one of the few things that's relatively easy to sus out in short order, and if you've decided you're unlikely to find a life partner anytime soon, getting sex in the meantime is a consolation prize of sorts. Or a self-esteem booster.
This is an issue that the dating apps not only haven't solved, they've exacerbated.
They give you less up front information than you'd need to make a solid judgment, they disallow searching out specific characteristics and they show you people at seemingly random that you know almost nothing about other than they, too, have been unable to secure commitment.
It enrages me. I know with precision the qualities I'm looking for. I know what qualities I want to avoid. I'm acutely aware how rare these positive qualities are, DOUBLY so among those who are still single. So I want to be given tools to zero in on these people more directly, and not absorb the waste of time and additional risk of figuring out if this person who deigned to match with me is sane or not, whilst operating on the assumption they are not. When the person I'm searching for is so unique, the search tools need to be powerful. And search is, on the technology side, a solved problem, I should be able to pluck my potential partners out of the ether with ease.
But this is simply not a thing you are allowed to do in the current era.
faceh
1d ago
You're definitely right its a bad analogy.
But that just makes the realpolitik of the situation much clearer. No ref stoppage is imminent.
faceh
1d ago
Dogs are the best because thousands upon thousands of years of co-evolution has made humans and dogs biologically optimized for companionship with each other and mutually beneficial cooperation.
I like to say that if you don't have a dog in your life (not necessarily owning one, mind) you're leaving 'money on the table' in terms of personal happiness, you can improve your own mood for basically free just by petting one.
I have a medium-small mixed terrier rescue. With a diagnosed anxiety disorder. He's gotten a lot better since I got him. Already dreading the eventual day he'll leave me, but haven't regretted a minute of having him around. Okay, maybe a few hours here and there.
Anyway, here's hoping they solve dog longevity in the next 5 years. They deserve it more than us. Literally nobody can raise an ethical objection to giving dogs healthier, longer lives, right?
I've read my Lesswrong and I find the Yudkowskian arguments convincing enough to believe we're going to eventually hit the "foom" point even if progress stagnates in the short term (which it hasn't, as you note).
An AI with Von Neumann level intellect that is able to self-replicate and cooperate with its copies AND has access to its own source code should, I'd think, be able to solve most bottlenecks to its ascension in the course of a day.
I do not feel remotely qualified to guess what the actual tipping point will be.
faceh
6d ago
Tend to agree.
Also, part of the issue is that a job can very much look like bullshit right up until some extremely important necessity arises.
Some amount of 'busywork' is there so that someone can stay occupied while they're being paid to be present in case that [event] occurs, which can be at almost any time, and the work has to be easy and unimportant enough that they can set it aside to attend to the event without something else catching on fire.
Rough example, the security guard at the bank might sit around watching videos on his phone for most of a year, but he is expected to jump to it if a guy with a ski mask appears.
So glad my alter ego already posted this, saved me a lot of hassle writing my own response.
Especially this:
This commoditization vector is where the actual bear case lives. Forget your framing about demand evaporating with the busywork. The version of the worry I'd take seriously has total inference going up 100x while AI-provider gross margins compress to nothing because the underlying capability turns out to be fungible across providers.
Right now, this is where I predict the LLMs will end up if the exponential growth curve does taper off and become sigmoid before we hit AGI. Intelligence will become akin to a utility. Literally, tokens will be treated in the manner of drinking water or electricity or internet data itself. It'll just be expected that every individual and business will have a hookup and they'll pay a monthly bill for their usage, the price of which won't vary much between providers, and where the ease of switching providers is practically instantaneous.
Doubtful it'll become a public commodity though.
The somewhat close analogue is Bitcoin Mining. Remember it used to be viable to mine on CPU, then GPUs were the only method, then ASICs. And now, as far as I can tell, mining power literally just sorts out to where the cost of electricity is cheaper/subsidized, and its pointless to try to compete if your power costs even 5% more.
Although I have to imagine, similar to electricity prices, there'll be some dynamism in it, with prices potentially shifting not just due to the cost of various inputs, but the shifts in demand in various geographical areas.
Hah, I wonder if there'll be the bargain-tier option to set your agents to only run when there are lapses in demand.
If this does happen, it should strongly inspire a tech race into cheaper electricity generation. A method for converting electricity directly into usable intellectual work is the sign of the next industrial revolution. That's exciting.
You use Mythos or Opus for the demanding work, and smaller models where quality doesn't come first.
This is my other thought. We're going to get a severe tier system for model 'intelligence' and some protocol for determining which model to use for given tasks based on complexity/importance. The top tiers might be the equivalent of Deep Thought from Hitchhiker's Guide where it takes them immense amounts of time, at serious expense, to compute their answers, but said answers are guaranteed to be correct regardless of the complexity of the question (but make sure you specify the question enough to understand the answer). The bottom tiers might be able to assist you at Bar Trivia when you're too drunk to remember movie titles.
So yeah if things taper off before AGI, I expect we'll get some intelligence that is too cheap to meter, but the good stuff will only be available at Top-Shelf pricing.
My overall take? The big guys want to be first to AGI, then hope that RSI takes them all the way to ASI and incredible wealth.
But this is the driving force behind the big bets, all evidence is that the big players believe the hype is real, and the prize for winning (or, at least not losing) is so immense that they don't know how to rationally calculate for it.
faceh
6d ago
Basically this amounts to an expectation that the current 'frontrunners' are vulnerable and some as-yet-uncertain player will succeed in disrupting their runs.
Which I can see as a possibility, but I'm not sure where to look for them.
faceh
6d ago
I think I take your meaning, but allow me to try and parse this:
The markets are expecting a Obama/Trump style moment where someone unexpectedly comes in
The markets expect that the unexpected will happen. I guess its just a wait and see thing, account for the uncertainty.
And as much as Obama provides good precedent, I think the subsequent years where Hillary and then Biden locked down the nom against upstarts (including Bernie... twice) makes it less likely.
Its frankly hilarious to me that the Dems are basically stuck with the coalition they built and all its dysfunction because they elevated the AOCs, Kamala Harris', Jasmine Crocketts and Stacey Abrams amongst them, and the most motivated and active parts of their base are all-in on identity politics, so trying to wrest back the controls will require exercises of raw, naked power that is just as likely to bite them in the ass as it is to select a viable candidate.
My biggest fear for the GOP is post-Trump (or the small chance Trump simply declines to leave the stage) power struggles and the constant tendency at infighting at the most inopportune times.
But the GOP now has a deep qualified leadership bench by comparison, and one that isn't (as far as I can tell) beholden to constituencies that will demand the faucet of grift, graft and fraud be kept all the way open or they'll revolt. Which is to say, a GOP official can actually try things that might make things better.
it is quite clear that as of now the USA is in no position to contest the globe with the likes of China or Russia.
...
...I don't think it is 'quite clear' and the case laid out here just takes it for granted.
I'm sorry was there not a whole thing where Russian and Chinese anti-air completely failed to pose a real threat in Venezuela and later in Iran?
Did I hallucinate a whole news story about an incursion into Venezuela without even needing to perform a significant amount of bombing? Last I checked Maduro is still in prison in New York.
Was that not a notable development that suggests that U.S. air superiority is even more lopsided than might have been assumed?
I'm actually asking for a chain of reasoning to explain how you came out of the last 5 months with a higher estimate of Russian and Chinese military efficacy compared to the U.S. than previously. This viewpoint befuddles me.
I don't know what your precise definition of "contest the globe" is but holy cow, if nukes were off the table, how exactly do those countries even show up for the competition, let alone win it convincingly. What exactly is the edge you're giving to them that will outperform demonstrated U.S. capabilities, before discussing the stuff that is as-yet undemonstrated.
Find it annoying to see these posts that basically affirming the consequent by bolstering a given conclusion they've reached (the U.S. failed to completely demolish Iran's nuclear program) then pretending their premise (U.S. military capacity is hamstrung under Donald Trump) without a supporting scaffold of logic. We're barely two years into Trump two, after four years of whatever the hell Biden was, and making bold prognostications about his efforts being failures kind of belies the results we've seen overall.
which’ll hopefully initiate a process of rebuilding for the damages the last decade of Trumpist politics have inflicted on the nation.
Can't help but notice some motivated reasoning there, bub. Especially because there's that glaring interruption in "the last decade" of Trumpist politics that goes utterly glossed over.
Curious to mention Kamala in your post but I do a ctrl+f "Biden" and its empty. Howboutdat.
Anyway, sorry to sound flippant, but it really helps that when you're trying to advance a particular conclusion, you actually back up the premises you're using that are the most controversial or extraordinary, such as "a decade of damages" from Trumpist politics (damage inflicted where? of what magnitude?), or "...that his rule has largely been to the detriment of... America’s relationship with its allies in NATO" (As compared to before? What precisely has deteriorated?).
Anyhow:
Rubio or Vance remain the favorites for winning the 2028 Presidential election Much can change in between, but the assumption that there isn't a viable path forward that actually preserves much of the Trump coalition seems wishful, there's likely a power struggle to come, but all those Trump-backed challengers just blew out a bunch of incumbents in Indiana, so it seems pretty clear where the center of gravity within the GOP lies right now.
Oh, also, on the manufacturing front. Upward momentum after decades of decline... suggests something has changed or improved. Yes, that includes the Rust Belt.
I dunno, this analysis seems to be a little undercooked.
Tend to agree that 4 was the one where everything they'd learned came together and had the fewest annoyances overall.
And it achieved strong variety of gameplay and challenges, and the open world and fetch quests didn't feel too tedious 90% of the time.
Indeed, can't think of any part of it I genuinely dislike, other than the radio host guy, and mostly because of how repetitive he was.
I'm still desperate for a Far Cry 2 remake that adds more combat variety, and some of the quality of life upgrades from the subsequent entries, but keeps the core, raw immersive difficulty elements.
FC2 remains one of the few games I've ever played that balances out the "One Man Army" power fantasy with the "actually you can very easily die because you are all alone, in a hostile environment, with crappy weapons/tools and aggressively outnumbered by people who want you dead." Which is to say, it natively encouraged 'sensible' strategic and tactical approaches and punished you if you got too wild. At least, outside of explicit survival/horror games.
Also remains the best AI enemies ever had in the series... and in almost any other game I've ever played.
I have a distinct memory of aggroing a small group of enemies at an encampment by a river. I shelter in a small shack, firing out the windows. The enemies actually started flanking my position and then, to my absolute shock, lobbed a grenade right through the window practically into my lap. That was a tactic I would attribute to a human player. And I still rarely see that done by AI in even more modern games.
They were trying to flush me out of cover so they could mow me down.
Also the only game I know of where injuring an enemy and waiting for a comrade to come and rescue him so you can kill both was a viable tactic!
I mean, I had a significant LTR with a woman, met her through OKCupid, built quite a bit of a life with her.
That ended badly for reasons that I came to realize were related to her deep, unaddressed anxieties. But for a couple years there it felt like it was going great. I know what it feels like to fall asleep beside someone and wake up next to them hundreds and hundreds of times.
That part of my psychology means I can't find real fulfillment in casual flings or just using someone for sex. The deeper intimacy is missing. I'm aware of how nice it is to be with someone who feels compatible and expresses affection and in theory wants you to be happy too, and now I can't accept less.
And I'm agonized by how hard it is to find and secure that nowadays. It took me about six months on the market, including the dating apps, to meet that one. A few more months to commit my trust to the relationship.
Now, its been years of trying for a new thing, and I've encountered just about every other failure mode and false start you could imagine. And that's why its so odd, if women don't want to be on dating apps like you say, that they also don't like to behave in the ways that would actually lock down a partner, but instead make the process painful for both themselves and the men they encounter, for no apparent gain.
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