lagrangian
2d ago
- Use type annotations.
- Don't get clever. Python is incredibly flexible, and you should use a very small subset of what's available. See e.g. the Google Python style guide.
- Have good test coverage.
- Have good version control/dependency management.
lagrangian
4d ago
Thanks for this!
One modification I wonder if you'd be willing to simulate for us: what if we don't strictly require stopping at n? You could formalize it to something like "given a strategy that on average samples n suitors when run it to its stopping point, what are the loss/etc?" p(miss) becomes 0 by definition.
That feels more like real life: if the goal is to stop dating by 35, but I happen to be dating Hitler when I hit 35, I'm probably gonna push it to 36.
I hate to tell you this, but a lot of those variables go together. The odds that a woman who is age 25-34, smart, attractive, and good personality is also single are... not high lol.
Yeah, the single filter should probably be stronger, given the correlation you point out. But, most other places, the math has the opposite problem, so maybe it cancels out.
focus less on looks
Attractiveness is really not the thing I'm being picky on - I don't think this advice is relevant to me here. This particular woman is quite sufficiently attractive, but (to repeat myself) she could be significantly less attractive and I'd still feel this way. Even removing that filter entirely, the numbers don't shift much. If anything, IQ is the interesting point to argue over I think.
lagrangian
5d ago
E.g. here, although in fairness 1) "sexual intercourse with black out drunk women" isn't quite what was being advocated for by others, and 2) I freely admit (as I did then) that my (extremely sleep deprived) prose on the subject was not super well organized. Still, yeah, shocking to me to see how the votes settled.
lagrangian
6d ago
There are many markets and your value will vary between them. App wise, if you are looking for anything serious, avoid Tinder (though it may vary by city) - I like Hinge. See who matches/responds/goes on a first date, see who goes on a second, see who makes it to a few months...I think the earlier in the pipeline there, the more it tells you about your profile and the app; the later, the more it tells you about you.
As to meeting people IRL, you'd, uh, want to ask someone else (though I'm working on it, in theory, a bit).
Some metrics are fairly objective. Height, income, even attractiveness. Personality gets more subjective, but still definitely has identifiable groups. Other than height, mostly it's things one can work on. As to where a particular set of category ratings puts you, harder to say.
You can in principle sign up as a woman and look at men's profiles, too.
lagrangian
6d ago
99% IQ? I know we are supposed to be kind in this particular thread. But...are you sure you're in the top 1%?
Yes. I'd guess 140-145 IQ, based on various standardized tests/competitions/comparison to peers. I'd wager she's smarter. (Insert some standard disclaimers about IQ being stupid, especially out at the tails; I mean all of the above more about intelligence than IQ, let alone IQ as measured by any particular test.)
What is going on with this filter setting?
It's possible that it's a pure coincidence that the strongest connections I've felt to people, platonic or romantic, male or female, have all been to people this bright. But, I doubt it, and the causality isn't difficult to imagine. Shared life experiences and interests, and a sense that they can see more of me than "that smart guy." Somehow this all matters even when we're not talking about anything that requires being smart
That being said, on an unrelated note, I did appreciate your arguments against sexual intercourse with black out drunk women and I agree that is a bad thing. Unlike a lot of people in that thread.
Thank you, shit, that was not the proudest of themotte I've ever been. OTOH, it's nice to know I don't quite fit every stereotype here, and to have something to point to as foil to when I explain to someone "look I'm really not that conservative, it just sounds that way sometimes".
lagrangian
6d ago
I don't have anything to add, but love the post and the math. Makes me think of a Fermi paradox equation
Ha, thanks, yeah.
for incels!
Uh, not-so-thanks? I wonder what fraction of this board is any way incels. I've had at least reasonable luck with these things over the years, and maybe I'm projecting, but wouldn't expect otherwise of most people here. We've got a lot of articulate and gainfully employed people - I picture mostly NEETs when I hear "incel."
lagrangian
6d ago
I've liked your advice before, we'll see. Thanks for the anecdote. I'm surprised to find that your comment here, and the similar sentiment in a few others, has at least moved me from "obviously not happening" to "very unlikely to happen." It's not really my MO to take risk or be able to picture life being great, but maybe that's stupid in this context. Patiently always buy index funds may be a better strategy in the financial case than the romantic one...
Attractive—where does 1 in 3 here conditional on 25-34 and high IQ place them on absolute attractiveness? I would assume given youth, iq, and contentiousness the person would be well above average in attractiveness to start with. Even if only from the correlated likely socioeconomic advantages they enjoyed growing up. I mean, how many ugly people do you see walking around the campus of say Stanford?
That's valid. It's plausible I could weaken this filter. Some of the point of it was to remove women who are too attractive to be into me. I tend to find them paradoxically unattractive anyway: give me a t-shirt over gratuitously well put together outfits and makeup any day. The personality filter also does some of the work on that front.
I don't think I could remove it, though. Especially by my age bracket, a fair number of people are getting out of shape, and that's not ideal.
As to the specific question re: absolute attractiveness, I guess the target is 6-8, although I've always found the numbers weird. Like, is this linear? Are we measuring against only the same age, or if not, how broad a range? Do we include my specific preferences? At any rate, Ms. Definitely is great on this front, very much my cup of tea.
lagrangian
6d ago
See the thing is, I get real tired of hearing stupid people talk, and there's an awful (or delightful) lot of that in dating. It's great being able to talk about things in my life and know she has context on them. I hear this point about overvaluing a woman's intelligence/career frequently (e.g. here), but strenuously disagree. At some point I'd try proving myself wrong on that again, but I am not there.
lagrangian
6d ago
Yeah, I think that'd be evidence I pulled a Peter from the lab leak debate. OTOH, 22 from my metro area makes me think my filters are somewhere between reasonable and slightly picky, especially in context of being myself somewhat of an atypical individual (but a fairly "modal Mottizan" - I can't seem to find that post...)
30 year fixed rate mortgage is a helluva drug. I've also finally started making local friends in the last couple years, since buying the house, which was half the point of buying the thing: to make myself stay put.
And, she's leaving in a month. If it were even three to six, I could have enough data to not feel like a crazy person. Stranger things have happened, but I just don't see doing it.
That said, it wouldn't be the first time in recent history I failed to predict my own behavior re: moving and major life decisions, although the other time I decided to stay rather than take the much better job out of state. I suppose I'm going to not think about this possibility too hard, keep going on dates, and see if it feels even modestly less crazy closer to D[efinitely leaving]-day.
It's also not obvious if she rates me as highly as I her. Highly I think, but there's some gender asymmetry here where, especially once she moves to $EVEN_LARGER_CITY, men like me are somewhat common (albeit still not super common); women like her aren't common, anywhere (...I think, pretty strongly, but ??). The assumption that she's leaving town makes it hard to read certain things, since all I can trivially infer from her going out with me is that she like me enough to burn some time with before the move.
Lower IQ filter down to >120 (80thp) as opposed to ~135(99p).
I really don't think so. It's easy living in a bubble of smart people to forget what p80 intelligence looks like. The least smart person I've ever dated was a first grade teacher, and presumably she was at least above average, leaving not a ton of room, if any, from her to p80. I really wanted to believe it wouldn't matter, but it just did. My real preference is probably steeper than p99, and Ms. Definitely clearly is past there. I'm fairly sure she's smarter than me, and I know I'm comfortably past p99. It doesn't hurt that often, and in this case, IQ correlated with gainful employment.
Attractive.. okay keep this one, but don't be a k-drama protagonist about this
I'm really not trying to be, with my factor of 3 on that. Note that I didn't put "top 1/3" attractiveness - the intention is to filter out some at the top, filter out more at the bottom, and aim for some objective notion of at least modestly above average. She easily is, and fits a number of my specific preferences that are neutral to most people. She could be a fair amount less attractive and it wouldn't have changed my reaction.
Note also that by "attracted" (factor of 3), I meant "attracted to me" not "I'm attracted to her". I'm alright looking, but appearance certainly isn't my top selling point.
All that said, I think there may be some redundancy between these two factors, and between them and everything else. I.e. women who are smart, age appropriate, personality match etc are more likely than random women to be attractive/attracted to me.
Politics - For the most part, drop this.
I put a light factor here (2) intentionally. I don't need her to be a Mottizan, just not to hate me for having weird opinions on things from time to time. This also filters out e.g. strongly religious people.
Also I doubt this woman meets all these filters. I mean what are the odds right? You have rose tinted glasses on.
Rose tinted glasses in general, entirely possible. As to the specific factors, I think they're all there, but it's possible she misses on "attracted to me" (I don't think so, but hard to say, and these things take time especially for women sometimes), "politics" (we've gotten into it some, but not that much - the lack of it coming up is in itself actually almost enough to check this box) and "personality" (I don't think so at all, but don't know her that well just yet). There's zero doubt that she's within an hour drive, human, female, age appropriate, highly intelligent, attractive, and single.
Had a second date today. She's great. I mean, great. Just objectively an obscene number of things in common, but different enough to be interesting, and the chemistry was there. Never felt this way really, although one other time was in the ballpark (...and then I moved out of state).
Unfortunately, she learned today that she's "definitely" leaving the state for work related reasons, permanently, in a month. If I had any sense, I'd've walked away when she gave me this news, early on in the date, along with the suggestion that I do so. Instead, I'm going to just ignore this fact, I guess, despite my dating goal being "a very serious relationship at a minimum" - next date Saturday. Why ignore this fact? Well:
-
there's some reasons (omitted for anonymity) to believe it's more "probably" than "definitely"
-
genuinely enjoying the dates
-
market research
And it's not even a "well, let's at least get laid" kind of thing (or I'd just text my ex instead of being back on the apps...). I wouldn't be shocked if we do sleep together, but I might actually try not to, in the interest of not getting hurt more than necessary. Might, anyway.
At a minimum, I think I've just found the bar by which future secretarial interviews will be judged. At a maximum, hell, I work remotely and make rash decisions sometimes, and recently narrowly didn't die while hiking - maybe I leave the state, too. I "definitely" won't do that. Even if she stays, I think long term she leaves, but by that point it'd be not crazy to imagine following.
I do in fact realize the above is rashly strong, I really do. The saner takeaway here is that I should approach dating more seriously, more optimistically, and with higher standards - women like that do exist. But damn, if not for the atomization of society, the tendency of high achievers to move around so much; if we'd met in some small town before the internet, the outcome would, with reasonable probability, be the obvious and happy one.
I did some napkin math. With 3.5M people in my greater metro area (~1 hour driving radius), I estimate 22 potential matches (though she clears a bar more than a bit higher):
| constraint | frequency | dating pool |
|-------------|-----------|-------------|
| human | | 3500000 |
| female | 2 | 1750000 |
| 25-34 | 5 | 350000 |
| 99% iq | 100 | 3500 |
| attractive | 3 | 1167 |
| attracted | 3 | 389 |
| politics | 2 | 194 |
| single | 3 | 65 |
| personality | 3 | 22 |
I can't decide if 22 is good news or not. I lean "good news" but finding 'em is a bit elusive.
lagrangian
15d ago
ChatGPT and Bard, mostly the former, unpaid version, through browser. Sample transcript on the diamond problem in C++ multiple inheritance: https://chat.openai.com/share/603e851e-daa0-4c4b-81d7-1b8332897694
lagrangian
16d ago
I don't find them enormously useful, but two specific uses for me:
- when reading a textbook, ask it to explain some passage (e.g. on a weird C++ detail) (usually helpful)
- write code in some language/framework, given approximately that code in another language/framework (hit or miss)
lagrangian
16d ago
Rent vs buy math is difficult to impossible. If you can budget the house, and it'll make you happy, do it.
I got sick of landlords and wanted nice versions of things (air conditioner, kitchen appliances), so I did it. I also (correctly) assumed it'd make me finally put more effort into meeting people instead of moving cities constantly optimizing my career. Was it the right move financially? I won't know until I sell, and even then it's hard to include everything.
I just tell myself that it's at least non-disprovably a good choice and that the (uh, overly generalized) efficient market hypothesis says it should be similar to renting.
lagrangian
17d ago
Back when there was a bug allowing you to download tracks from a number of streaming sites, I programmatically downloaded the full discography of ~every artist I'd ever liked on Pandora/Youtube Music. Stored on ZFS, served via plex, and, naturally, totally ignored in favor of Youtube Music.
Consider places ~an hour from LA or San Diego. This takes you down a notch on cost of living, at the primary cost of being farther from exciting things to do, which some of your suggestions about more remote places tell me you might not super prioritize. Still not cheap, but home ownership is plausible at 250k/yr if you prioritize it. At the same time, you're close enough that if you build a life but decide you need to be more central (e.g. for special schools), it's not the end of the world to commute or make a small move.
Beautiful, great weather, lots of hiking, active rat community, plenty of smart young people (albeit not SF/NY/Boston levels).
E.g. Fallbrook/Julian/Camarillo.
Feel free to PM if you want more details on my similar search a couple years back.
lagrangian
22d ago
Meta: the overall negative scores on most of my participation on this topic is fascinating. The categories are very fuzzy and my arguments were clearly not perfect, but I would have guessed mild positive. Thoroughly enjoyed the back and forth, all, even having "lost."
Double meta: downvotes are not supposed to be disagree buttons, in theory, but I think we use them mostly that way...and I like it.
lagrangian
23d ago
The key difference is that only in the rape story has anything been done to her by someone else.
When driving, the damage is to the pole. Heck, let's say she ("S") kills someone else ("E"). S has violated E's rights, so S should be prosecuted for murder (or property damage to the pole). No one did anything to S, except insomuch as S did it to herself, so no one should be prosecuted (or held morally responsible) for anything that happened to S.
When S is raped, the damage is entirely to S. This was done to her by someone ("R"[apist]), who should be prosecuted. Debateably, S did something to herself too, but undebateably (well, it is themotte, but I feel pretty good about this one), there is the key difference that something was done to S in this one.
Further, in my version of the setup, she really hasn't decided to sleep with the nerd ("can't count to ten"). Past some level of drunk, you're on autopilot, and anyone who steers you transgresses. So yes, I absolutely do deny people agency once they are blackout drunk. I put that agency in the hands of society/morality to protect them. Enormously practical? No, so go be monogamous and sober, but still better than a free-for-all on drunk coeds.
lagrangian
23d ago
I think the disconnect is somewhere in which sets are equal vs subsets of "consented" "said yes but was much drunker" "was much drunker but I didn't realize", but have lost the thread of exactly what.
lagrangian
23d ago
I have at no point intended my comments to be gendered, although I have almost certainly said man (by which I meant less drunk/larger) and woman (by which I meant more drunk/smaller). Heck, apply it to nonbinary dragonkin.
So, we may agree on ~everything.
lagrangian
23d ago
h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6{font-size:inherit;}
Literally less legible than assembly. Thanks.
While I also love Vim, I want to push back on the claim that it's time consuming to learn. I think you can expect to lose ten or twenty hours of productivity to getting used to it, after which it's a net positive (but a continuing learning curve).
Even more practical is to just use a Vim plugin for a
worsemore normal editor. This is also a good gateway drug to Vim.More options
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