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A Quantitative Analysis of Online Dating
imjustatomato writes "Never before has something so human and primitive as dating been reducible to such discrete values. A study analyzes the data of an online dating service. When do you like someone like yourself? Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match. Other interesting findings are: men initiate 73.3% of messages, but their initiations are 17.9% less likely to be reciprocated; 78.2% of messages are never responded to."
I wrote that I wanted to relax on a couch with someone getting high and watching insects having sex on the Discovery Channel.
100% of my messages are never responded to.
Why not link to TFA? Here is a more direct link to the research. I wonder why we got linked from the summary to another summary. Maybe because the summary is new today but the research is 2 years old.
Anyhow, none of the numbers seem all that surprising, except that 55% of active members are women (63% of all members were men).
Discrete and discreet
I had mostly positive experiences with online dating after my divorce. I met several women, some were romantic friends, some were regular friends and one just didn't work out at all.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match.
Uhh, yeah. I'm going to guess that the phrase "wants children" means something different, depending on whether you're on a dating site, or on alt.sex.lolita. Yes?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
I can't believe how many blank pages there were in this dude's thesis! Interesting work, but come on, at least do what we normally do when we can't make our 90 page requirement... use larger fonts, make the margins 1.5", double-lines, etc.
A thesis doesn't have to be long in order to contain good research. My doctoral thesis is only 81 pages, and 20 pages of that is overhead (front matter, table of contents, list of symbols, preface, advice to the reader concerning the order in which chapters should be read, epilogue, and references).
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I always thought discrimination against religion and smoking were bidirectional. Religious people are more likely to not want to date non-religious types, than the other way around. Non-smokers will prefer to date non-smokers, but I doubt smokers have much of a preference. It would be interesting to see if there are characteristics that work in the opposite manner. Opposites attract, don't they? Guess not
- Communication. Email (and other text-based mediums) miss out on several communication cues. Tone of voice, body language, etc. are important to figure out exactly what is meant. I can write something and mean it in one way, but that doesn't mean the person at the other end will read it that way - they could just as easily (especially if they're having a bad day) cast it in a negative tone in their mind.
- Expectations. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find out that men (and women!) online are looking for the "perfect partner". Newsflash, people: there's no such thing. Everybody has their flaws. Doesn't matter who they are.
- Appearances (which comes in with expectations, I suppose.) If you're not 'beautiful', you're evidently not worth knowing. Dig a little deeper, people. There's more to beauty than stick figures like you see in those fashion magazines
...
My experiences with online dating? I've met five, maybe six, people that way. One's a decent friend still. One, it's too early to tell (but my feeling is "nothing more than friendship".) The rest, I haven't seen much of beyond the early meetings.All in all, my Quest for Non Single Status shall henceforth be conducted off the computer. Between the cost, the frustration of usually never getting a message back (I'd rather hear "thanks, but I don't think it'd work out" than never hear back at all - at least then it's a clean break), and generally getting out and about in the real world a bit more than when I was a teenager, I think I'll be much happier for it. Do I need somebody? Hell no. Do I want somebody? Yes. But I'd rather be single than with the wrong person.
I recently spent two months on Match.com and by and am pleased with the end results... I am dating someone I met on there. .ru email addresses. The old I need a visa and it costs 600 American dollars thing.
You really have a hard time weeding through the mass amounts of spam email (I realize you are looking for someone in Virginia, but Montana is only 6 hours away), the obvious scammers mostly with
Also there are a fair amount of women that fall into the FREAK category.
I would disagree with this point made in the paper "Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match."
From my limited experience on Match, I think the most important thing women were looking for was income range. I initially had that on my profile and got swamped with replies, after hiding that bit they slowed way down.
Did you look at the website? It's chock full of sociology+internet research.
Yeah, but 72% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
And from the other side of the equation, no sensible female of the species will choose to date a geek that is clearly ill-adapted socially, is not likely to resemble a movie star from her wall poster, and probably will not fare well in the salary department if he ever manages to leave his basement (many choose not to.)
And with respect to children, many men dislike children and don't want them at all. They are expensive to maintain, and pointless to raise in the first place. The society changed so much in the last 100-200 years that a large family that was a great advantage to a peasant is now a death warrant in many professional areas, financially and time-wise. Parents nowadays are expected to sink up to a million dollars into a child, with no ROI whatsoever. The parents become slaves to their children, working most of their productive life to maintain the family.
Of course, women love a man with a huge... bank account. Did this suprise you?
oops, I meant this as a reply to this comment.
I cannot believe geographical distance wasn't a factor. Who is going to date someone a two hours drive away? Then again, ignoring this probably helped in making the number of messages sent the best predictor for number of messages received, giving more false hope to quicktyping nerds. Bet the author was one.
blow your mind already
I disagree that online dating "is an easy, socially acceptable way to find partners for dates or relationships." The "stigma of desperation," as it is described in one of these papers, is still strong.
Have you considered doing original work?
KFG
Interestingly enough, my *nix instructor lives with his mom (who happens to be the SQL instructor).
Yes, I'm a coward.
For what it's worth (and I imagine it's worth a lot to slashdot readers), my experiences with online dating have always been best with okcupid. It is free, novel (fun matching tests), and its participants always seem, to me, to be more appealing than those of eharmony, match.com, and all the other paysites.
Did you look at the website? It's chock full of sociology+internet research. There's the post on the affect of Internet and social relationships, MMORPGs as third places, communication technology affecting lying behavior, etc. And you might want to read the papers that those papers reference. Be careful about getting caught in an infinite loop
Psh. At 99% of universities, the phrase "masters thesis" might as well be replaced with "book report".
Yeah, I plan on all original work, but its nice to know what other people have done. Its good to have a solid theoretical background, even if other people aren't using the same paradigms. The problem I run into is that a lot of the work focuses on the influence that internet usage has on people in their real lives, whereas I want to focus on social interaction on the internet itself.
I found that 1.24 line spacing was close enough not to bother the eye and doesn't look like there is extra space between the lines.
Leave me alone. I'm trying to live happily ever after
I've had much success with "internet dating", but it seems to depend on where I live. When I lived in Houston the girls were plentiful and fun. Living in Des Moines is a completely different story. The only ones I get replies from here are trollish freaks that probably couldn't get a date if they didn't post fake pictures of some model, or at least some hot chick from down the street. I'm still amazed at the enormous differences in both quality and quantity of women from the online world between the two cities.
You're nothing; like me.
-4, outrageous stereotypes: for instance - geeks are ill-adapted socially, geeks want supermodels, geeks are underpaid (though offshoring has been threatening to make that one true), many men don't want kids (perhaps this is true on alt.support.child-free though)
-1, hypocrisy - posting on slashdot
-3, 3 counts of bigotry, one against geeks, one against people who want kids, one against kids, period.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
And mine was over 400... My theory is it depends how wide an area you covered, with highly original research in a single field being shorter. Mine spanned three fields, so I had three complete literature reviews. Actually, one of my literature reviews was as long as your entire thesis. Maybe your field just didn't have enough other people :)
Well, there is the question of gender...
"Advice on the order in which the chapters should be read"... Hmmm. You might want to review the order in which you present your information. Doing so might expose your doctoral thesis to a voluntary peer review.
References are not padding. They serve the important purpose of showing that you are aware of previous research in the same area, showing where your research fits into the body of knowledge, and making it more obvious what new stuff you discovered in your research.
An important part of research is to first be aware of the existing body of knowledge, in order to avoid duplicating work done elsewhere, or, worse, of coming to conclusions debunked elsewhere.
Most papers have a part called "state of the art" whose purpose is to reference previous work done in the area.
Hello, im a desprate virgin tieered of masterbating to videos of other people having sex. I spend all day at the computer, and i need someone to cook my food, do my laundry, and clean the house, as i have just moved out of my moms basement. I also require you to do all of this in sexy outfits, and have sex with me whevere i want, further, no naging is allowed, or i will reprogram you in the basement
Please resond this time HotWifeWannabe1337!!, you dident seem to get my first 26 messages...
-- Anoymous Coward
I am just completing a research phd, and beleive me, it was very hard indeed.
The idea of doing a phd that had involved just learning the current state of the art didn't appeal at first, but they get you educated to the required level, and they're easier.
Doing original work is painful, stessful, and frankly scares the shit out of you at times. I'm lucky (well, I worked my ass off), I managed to acheive my stated goals. A 'book report' thesis, as you describe it is still hard, but you at least know it can be finished if you work hard enough.
I can certainly see why people do them. It has another huge advantage over research as well. My knowledge covers a very small domain at the moment, albeit to a very high level. I've now got to 'prove' that I can do other things because of acheiving so much in my current field, which is a problem I hadn't considered. A student who doesn't do original research doesn't have that problem to such an extent.
Whichever type you do, you still need to conduct research afterwards to stay current. After a while it all levels out.
You might want to review the order in which you present your information.
The order is quite simple: First I present a new algorithm; then I present two applications of it. It would be absurd to present the material in any other order.
The fact that the first chapter draws upon some very difficult material and is easier to understand having first read and understood how the algorithm will be applied is a good reason for recommending that the chapters be read out-of-order; but it wouldn't justify using a theorem before proving it.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Some committees will give an upper maximum to dissertations... (~100 pgs) Of course, that means lots of references to an external appendix :-)
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
"I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no. I have a headache."
"Yeah, I get that a lot."
Maybe your field just didn't have enough other people :)
:-)
Yes, that's probably a fairly accurate assessment. The third chapter of my thesis essentially says "here's a problem which several people think requires exponential time to solve. Here's a linear-time algorithm for solving it."
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
As an example of opposites attract. Maybe that's too obvious!
What's 'primitive' about dating? You think they have or had 'dating' in primitive societies? Modern Western culture, and those parts of the rest of the world that have been globalized into it, are the only places we find this custom. They didn't 'date' in Europe/America in the 1900s, and they don't 'date' in most of the world now, except for that internationalized overclass that you get in big cities.
They have lots of sex, but that's a whole nuther thing.
Enjoy the sophisticated, rarefied culture that allows you to have such esoteric customs as dating! But don't think it's a basic primitive instinctive thing, because it's about as natural to human culture as the iPod.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
Hmm. I'd have to say that when I first learned I was going to be a dad, the third thing that popped through my mind was "Well, I guess I don't have to worry so much about my pension anymore."
(The first thing was "Already? I haven't finished paying off the wedding yet." and the second thing was "Yay! I love children and I've always wanted to be a dad!")
In pure financial terms, the ROI for children is that, hopefully, they look after you in your old age. Now I know that is a hopefully, but given the pension crisis, I reckon that there is a much stronger chance, and better quality, of my children looking after me throughout my old age, than my pension will provide.
The sleep deprivation and spare time loss is an absolute killer, mind. If you thought getting a proper job really cut into your RPG campaigns and FOSS hobby-coding, a baby stops both pretty much stone dead. Plus, my study has become a bedroom. I'm hoping to introduce her to LOGO and FF RPG at the age of 2 or 3, hopefully then we'll both get back into our stride.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
That is just plain wrong. Members (Latin name: Phallus Maximus) are sentient symbiont life-forms that human males carry between their legs. The member is connected to the brain of the human male and takes over control of the brain and thus the entire body whenever a human female is present manipulating the human male into to doing and saying idiotic things he would otherwise never dream of. Members, and the effect they have upon the behavior, utterances and personality of the human male can be quite annoying but unfortunately they can also not be eradicated since they are essential to the procreation of the species. Research into alternative technologies such as cloning is ongoing.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
When I was 14, I hoped that one day I would have a girlfriend. When I was 16 I got a girlfriend, but there was no passion, so I decided I needed a passionate girl with a zest for life.
In college I dated a passionate girl, but she was too emotional. Everything was an emergency; she was a drama queen, cried all the time and threatened suicide. So I decided I needed a girl with stability.
When I was 25 I found a very stable girl but she was boring. She was totally predictable and never got excited about anything. Life became so dull that I decided that I needed a girl with some excitement.
When I was 28 I found an exciting girl, but I couldn't keep up with her. She rushed from one thing to another, never settling on anything. She did mad impetuous things and made me miserable as often as happy. She was great fun initially and very energetic, but directionless. So I decided to find a girl with some real ambition.
When I turned 31, I found a smart ambitious girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground and married her. She was so ambitious that she divorced me and took everything I owned.
Now, I am older and wiser, and am looking for a girl with big tits.
threadeds blog
of the paper you linked is that most people put aside personal prefereces when the socioeconomic status of the other part is enough to cover their needs. IE, I would prefer a rich brunette than a poor redhead. Interesting.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
...who is attractive. No surprise there.
from grandparent post:
From my limited experience on Match, I think the most important thing women were looking for was income range. I initially had that on my profile and got swamped with replies, after hiding that bit they slowed way down.
As a woman I can make a reciprocol evaluation: From my experience, the most important thing men were looking for was looks. I initially had a photo up and got swamped with replies, after removing the photo they slowed way down.
Length is never a good measure of content. 20 pages of mathematical reasoning can be worth 100 pages of hand waving and pretty pictures in terms of material. Which one you find easier to read depends a lot on how your brain works.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Do you not have a 'motivation' section near the front, which explains the problem your algorithm is trying to solve? I would begin with this, then prove the correctness of the algorithm, and then go on to the results from the case studies. In effect, you put the case studies without results first, and then the results from them at the end.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
this chick_ 004.jpg
_ 003.jpg
http://www.tshirthell.com/images/contestpics/a249
and this chick
http://www.tshirthell.com/images/contestpics/a249
the reason they didn't write back was they already finished spanking it for that evening...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Having done online dating in the past my top criteria was religion - not what religion they were following per se, but what religion they were looking for. "Catholics seeking Catholics" seemed to be the most common requirment in my area on match.com. As someone who is Jewish, albeit barely practicing, I was forced to skip these profiles over. What really irked me were profiles seeking a "Christian, Muslim, Taoist, Atheist" etc. and they had to go out of their way to de-select the option of dating someone who was Jewish, rather than just select "All religions"
I had quite a bit of luck when I was using a fee-based service: had a steady flow of dates, dated for several months on a few occasions, and met my present girlfriend. With the fee-based service, you had to buy credits to send messages (instant or mail) but 'smiles' were free. You'd log in and either find responses to the few emails you sent out the day before or at least a couple of new 'smiles' to pursue. It was easy-peasy.
When I tried a free site, my response rate dropped to about 1% compared to about 50% on the fee-based site -- it was a complete waste of time. Why? It turns out the women were bombarded with hundreds of mail a day (compared to 5-10 with the fee-based services). A few of my prior-dates-now-chat-buddies and I talked about this and confirmed it -- they just couldn't keep up with all the mail, most of it being half-assed attempts to get them into bed or have webcam sex.
My conclusion? Since the service was fee-based, and each message costs you money, you have to think twice about sending pictures of your wee-wee to "IWANTHOTSEX69" and the "LONELYHOUSEWIFEWHOJUSTWANTSATTENTION" and "IM18ANDGIGGLY" types are much less likely to dominate the population.
body massage!
The blog entry just cherry picks some data from Master's thesis work done by Andrew Fiore at MIT (he is now at Berkeley). His online dating research papers can be found here.
Fiore's thesis is a much more interesting read then the blog entry .
Hey, its how I got started..
I was 2 when I father brought me to IBM and taught me JCL and assembly programming. (my uncle took the weekends to teach me Large Scale Network Design (worked for CIA and IRS at the time).
If you kids show an interest in what you do, include them in.. the rewards are great (speaking as the "kid", not the parent)
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Look for http://Thebar.steelbeachca
Yeah, I plan on all original work, but its nice to know what other people have done.
Indeed it is. It's nicer still to be the one who is a pioneer in the field who establishes the theoretical background. That's where the chairs and prizes are.
In some fields that hardest part of a research project is simply trying to find a blank space on the page.
KFG
His compliant was about the lack of work in the field, that there is no existing body. i.e., he is a zone where he can help establish the state of the art and become a reigning expert.
.worse, of coming to conclusions debunked elsewhere.
Hence I found the complaint amusing. He should be running down the street wet and naked, shouting "Eureka!"
. .
Or better, coming to conclusions debunked elsewhere, but have one's work be good, challanging the debunking.
Most papers have a part called "state of the art" whose purpose is to reference previous work done in the area.
He is in the extremely envialbe possision of being able to inscribe "Here there be dragons" in his.
KFG
I'm afraid that this post makes the baby KFG cry.
KFG
Kids are frequently portayed as a cost factor with no ROI whatsoever. I can tell you otherwise. I have seen many old people in retirement homes and see a huge difference between those who have a family and those who don't.
...
Those with no kids often have nobody, who
- looks after their well being (nurses and doctors are often overworked and do not notice health problems until it is too late)
- visits them regularly. You can immediately spot people who haven't seen friends or relatives in a long time, they are often highly depressed and apathetic.
- can take care of them so they stay out of retirement homes as long as possible. You will find that most people in retirement homes are folks with no family. Most of them could survive easily in their own house if someone cared for them properly.
- really takes the time to understand their needs. Nobody knows your parents like you do. Nurses don't have the time to find out what you want if you can't talk after a heart attack
- gives you love and comfort if you are sick and/or dying. You can't pay for that.
Remember, that you spend many years being old and fragile, dependent on help. And at that age you don't look like an actor anymore, so most other people won't care about you. You can't take for granted that you kids will care about you, but from what I've seen, if you were a good parent, they will.
Don't waste your time dating primatives. Full fledged objects make much better dates.
Women have what you say is "the advantage" in ANY singles settng. But very few girls manage to exploit it. And the reason is: the girls who are good with men have all got one before they every make it to a singles setting. Guys arn't usually happy with just one, if they can help it, so the guys who women usually choose in signles setting are just after a 2nd or 3rd partner. So the cycle continues.
But the other important factor is compromise. All women want a "self-confidence" guy above all else (your genes say "get me a guy who can teach my sons to get multiple girls" but "try to get him to put all his effort into my children"). So any woman who can compromise on the guy's "self-confidence" gets her good looking, rich, & faithful, but shy, but. Guys likewise care about looks above all else, making fat girls pretty damn easy.
Anyone, women especially, who bitches about dating just han't been trying to learn from mistakes or compromise.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
So that's what chicks are into these days. Silly me, I thought they were all about differential equations!
My bicyles
..exist solely for & are optimized to make mony, not get you a date. Paid matchmaking worked when your parents paid the village matchmaker, on delivery. But on-line dating sites are simple emotional pornography & fraud.
And its not hard to optimize for a successful on-line dating site, using a bit of intuition from you evolutionary psychology class & common sense. But such thought experiments always yield free sites. For example, consider the following site ideas:
1) Only women, not men, may not initiate first contact; thus restricting everyone to the rare "high probability" conversations where the women has already made a positive assessment, and limiting the guy's eye.
2) People place "ads" for specific "dates" (outings), others "bid" by expressing interest. Again means grils are initiating conversations. Gets people out into the real world. Plus many free drinks, shows, & meals for the girls.
You can just go on & on like this, but you'll never see a money maker here.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Most mathematics theses are around 80 pages, I think. Mine was like 230, but I do group theory.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I'm in a very successful (so far, knock wood etc) relationship with someone I met online. To get there, I think I went through 30 girls?
Hooked up with some of them, shot down by more of them, and generally found the whole process a huge pain in the ass. BUT I also ended up w/the current one and that makes it something I consider a success.
I'd suggest looking at sites that interest you and joining their dating site. (though it probably hooks up to spring street networks, which kind of blows) I met my gf through the Onion personals.
In general it's a very frustrating method of dating, but dating is frustrating no matter how it goes down. Online you have the luxury of disconnecting from place/time to do it, which is nice. (you can travel and still browse for people in your home area)
I'm of the opinion it's another vector but shouldn't be your sole vector.
Also, when it works. . . boy, does it!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
"men initiate 73.3% of messages, but their initiations are 17.9% less likely to be reciprocated; 78.2% of messages are never responded to."
Sounds like the numbers for offline dating, don't they?
I wonder if people still use the "what's your sign" line? Probably updated for the internet age though. "What's your URL?"
It's good to know that rejection is automated these days. Getting turned down at a bar is so... so... 1987.
For the actual smokers, it might depend on whether they're trying to quit (which on some sites, is an option). People trying to quite might be more likely to date a non-smoker (or another trying-to-quit'er). Most people I know who smoke say the hardest thing is when significant other is lighting up in front of you, second being your friends...
Not only did I getfew responses, I was alos out 39 bucks.
Ugly looking women and women with no social skills still have lots of kids.
Lemme guess... it's all about sperm banks, alien abductions and the like?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
OKCupid's designers (math geeks from Harvard) anticipated this sort of study, so they built their entire matching algorithm on it.
Most dating sites have a small (fixed) number of variables you can set, such as "wants kids" and "smokes." Say there's 10 variables with 4 values each. That's 2^20 possible distinct people (1 megaperson) on the site.
OKCupid does that too. But then OKCupid lets users create additional variables for study (over 2000 at this point) with two to four possible values. So there's more than 2^2000 possible OKCupid users, or "more than there are atoms in the universe." That's a much nicer dating pool.
But it's not just a bit array. It's weighted. You decide how much each variable is important to you. I can give a question like "Do you play a musical instrument" marginal importance -- it'd be neat if I had a musician partner, but it's not a big deal. However, it's vital that a potential match properly answer the question "Would you consider dating a person of Caucasian descent?"
There are several other key factors making OKCupid a great site to meet people. As you mentioned, there are lots of non-single people on the site. This is actually a big plus for a dating site because it means not everyone is trying to get in your pants. Some just want to know what's your inner Hobbit. Many of these people are interesting, worth talking too, and fun to have dinner with.
The site has a great sense of humor. The test you take when you sign up is a parody of the famed Meyers-Briggs personality test, but with results like "The Boy Next Door" and "The Dirty Little Secret." One of the random logout messages is "See? The internet's not so bad..." The graphics are humorous, and many users make the effort to have a profile entertaining to people completely uninterested in dating them.
Finally, their user interface is pretty well designed. Their new messaging interface is similar to Google Chat and their ads are pretty non-obnoxious. Not to mention the whole site's charge-free (supported by donations and ads).
Disclaimer: I don't work for OKCupid, but I did meet my wife there.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I moved to a new city with a GF in 2003. Broke up in Jan. 2004. I didn't know anyone so tried www.lavalife.com.
Simple system - it only costs you $ to send messages, and if you're crafty, you can occasionally bypass that altogether.
Anyways, I went on more then a few dates. Most were good - just women in a similar boat as me - just wanting to meet someone, see where things go. I still talk to a coupel of them as they're good friends.
I also got married this past summer to the last woman I dated from the site.
Just a few bits I've picked up from my time on an online dating service:
1. Be honest. If you're 5'2", say so. Some women want a man taller then them, and that's their issue to deal with. Don't try and change their mind. They'll already think you're a liar when you first meet if you haven't been up front about it.
2. Post a pic. Esp. important for me, but I'll get to that in a moment. Seriously - it's easier for someone to say "I wan tto meet that person" if they know what you look like.
3. Guys - be prepared to pay. Most women (at least on lavalife.com) expect men to make first contact, and that means it's the guys putting up the cash to pay for that first message.
I met my girlfriend of eight months on OkCupid. The experience there is excellent. I ended up on OKC in a convoluted way. One of my male acquantainces was using it successfully, so when a female friend of mine complained about the crappiness of LavaLife, I suggested she try OKC. She raved about: - The genuine, interesting, fun people on it who were looking for more than just a shag. - The fact that the profile is structured just enough to make it easy to write paragraphs about oneself. I find that a person's writing says a lot about them. - The excellence of the matching algorithm, which is based on oodles of user-submitted questions. There's no minimum number to answer, and they are fun to do. - The way the system really, really encourages and rewards honesty -- honest answers get you better matches. You get matched on stuff you are repressed about too. - The bit where it's FREE I am sociable but not very gregarious -- I don't meet new people often. Majoring in Computer Science gets you surrounded by fellow introverts. OKC sounded very interesting. I decided to give it a try, quickly filled out a profile, and did a bunch of questions. Once the stats were crunched, I messaged some of the higher matches. A bunch responded.:D In the end, I talked with about ten and met about five people in the span of two months. The people were great, and my girlfriend -- whose picture on OKC was not very flattering -- is absolutely awesome. We connect on pretty much every level. Some advice: - Do lots of the "Improve Matches" questions. It's easy and engrossing once you get started. As you do more, the maximum match score asymptotically approaches 100%. - When messaging someone, read their profile and ask about their interests. People like to talk about what they are into. Don't rely on them thinking of a subject.
My other body is also not wearing any.
I met my girlfriend of eight months on OkCupid. The experience there is excellent.
I ended up on OKC in a convoluted way. One of my male acquantainces was using it successfully, so when a female friend of mine complained about the crappiness of LavaLife, I suggested she try OKC. She raved about:
- The genuine, interesting, fun people on it who were looking for more than just a shag.
- The fact that the profile is structured just enough to make it easy to write paragraphs about oneself. I find that a person's writing says a lot about them.
- The excellence of the matching algorithm, which is based on oodles of user-submitted questions. There's no minimum number to answer, and they are fun to do.
- The way the system really, really encourages and rewards honesty -- honest answers get you better matches. You get matched on stuff you are repressed about too.
- The bit where it's FREE
I am sociable but not very gregarious -- I don't meet new people often. Majoring in Computer Science gets you surrounded by fellow introverts. OKC sounded very interesting. I decided to give it a try, quickly filled out a profile, and did a bunch of questions. Once the stats were crunched, I messaged some of the higher matches. A bunch responded.:D
In the end, I talked with about ten and met about five people in the span of two months. The people were great, and my girlfriend -- whose picture on OKC was not very flattering -- is absolutely awesome. We connect on pretty much every level.
Some advice:
- Do lots of the "Improve Matches" questions. It's easy and engrossing once you get started. As you do more, the maximum match score asymptotically approaches 100%.
- When messaging someone, read their profile and ask about their interests. People like to talk about what they are into. Don't rely on them thinking of a subject.
My other body is also not wearing any.
The reason why I don't like internet dating is that you need to spend 10-20 minutes on an email so that you don't sound like an incompetant neanderthal.
In real life(TM), it's much easier to walk up to a girl, say hi, and figure out where the conversation goes... Then again, the problem with real life(TM) is finding places where there are girls who will be interested in you.
No, I will not work for your startup
Your epistemological analysis of the question is interesting, but few believers would accept a logical proof of the existence or non-existence of god anyway. I suspect that the more rigorous you are about it, the less interested people will be. That goes at least double or triple for Believers. Atheists aren't stupid, you know. They realise that nothing -- not even a stout 2x4 applied firmly to the forehead -- will shake someone's faith in beings-unseen. That being the case, atheists, for the most part, leave believers alone. (Would only the Jehovah's Witnesses leave me alone!) This means as things work out in Actual Social Practice, that the ever-so-thin line that the agnostic crowd likes to draw between themselves and us hairy, uncouth atheists doesn't really exist.
But I digress. The more important point is this: Atheism is not a religion. Epistemology or not, it just isn't. Religious people have attached a whole set of social ideologies, rituals, and practices to their theological beliefs. There is no such a thing as atheist confession. An atheist may confess to a psychiatrist, but she goes because she is depressed or because she lives in Manhattan or Paris. There are no atheist holy days because there is nothing holy in atheist thought. Nor is there is anything like the believer's faith in ecclesiastical bureaucracies among atheists. Atheists may be bureaucrats, or they may like bureaucracy, but they do so for purely earthly reasons, and not because some Very Special Guy, who may or may not have really existed, made some vague comment to some Other Important Guy about 2,000 years ago.
I would have to agree. There are just more men who will admit to sleeping with women for their looks than there are women who will admit that they are sleeping with men for money.
Of course most men would be happier if the followed a simple mantra:
"The best looking women are the ones that will sleep with me."
Really it's not the size of womens tits that matter most. It's what I call the "T to T ratio." That would be the Tits to tummy ratio. So, a woman with a ratio of 4/3 will have a more attractive body than one with a ratio of 2/2 or 5/6.
Short answer: You don't.
Long answer:
I used to ask the same question, but then I visited Battleground God, which claimed I was being inconsistent. The site isn't perfect (some of the questions are too polarized), but it's worth looking at.
I am an atheist and an agnostic, but my views aren't really in line with people who traditionally call themselves "atheist" or "agnostic". The problem for me is that these people define "belief" as an all-or-nothing constant; Either you believe in God, or you don't, or you take absolutely no position. That's a fallacy.
If you asked me the time, and I told you it is 8:48 PM, would you believe me? Under normal circumstances, you probably would. However, if you were Phileas Fogg, and you were on the 80th day of your trip around the world, you would be wise to be a little more skeptical. Your apparent belief in my accuracy depends upon the situation.
I don't know, with complete certainty, that the supernatural does not exist---that's what makes me "agnostic"---but I also don't know, with complete certainty, that anybody except me exists. Maybe I'm just a brain in a vat; Maybe the universe came into existence five seconds ago; Maybe I'm a brain-in-a-vat that came into existence five seconds ago. Who knows?
And who cares? There is a reason why scientists demand that hypotheses be testable. What good is a theory that, for example, incorporates 300 different completely undetectable particles? If the particles have no measurable effect, then a theory that discards them is just as useful and probably easier to work with than a theory that posits their existence. Today, structural engineers continue to apply Newtons laws of motion---even though it is well understood that Newton's laws are "wrong"---because they are good enough for structural engineering.
Ultimately, everyone has to make decisions in spite of their limited knowledge. Some people base (or purport to base) their decisions on unconditionally-held religious beliefs. I do not; Instead, I use what can loosely be described as statistics: Every proposition has a certain probability of being true, and for each decision I make, I try to compare my confidence in the applicable propositions with the confidence level that is necessary to sufficiently mitigate the expected cost of one or more errors. To put it another way, I make decisions not as though I "believe" anything, but as though I am sufficiently convinced of various things. What constitutes "sufficiently convinced" depends upon the situation.
As is typical of someone who is agnostic, my view is that claims of the supernatural are highly speculative. I think they are so speculative that I currently can't imagine a situation where I would ever make a decision presuming the existence of the supernatural. That is, for every decision I will ever make, none will be based upon the notion that a supernatural entity exists. Thus, in addition to being agnostic, I am also atheist, albeit tentatively, for all practical purposes.
<rant>On a related point, even if I'm wrong and there really are supernatural entities, they simply aren't as reliable as other factors that can be used as the basis of a decision-making process. Look at the failure of so-called "abstinence-based sex education" programs. Most of us know that abstinence is in the best interests of adolescents, but why aren't they getting the message? In my view, these programs tend to fail because they're centred around the notion that abstinence should be practiced for religious reason
You should try using JDate. It's one of the best dating sites out there, and it'll solve your religion problem.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Hell, I own my own home and have 2 acres (Old Farmhouse) and had absolutely no response from women in online dating.
Of course, my pictures were rated 3.5 on a ten point scale on a dating site too, so this may be more 'qualitative analysis' on the part of the female customers than quantitative analysis.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
And although I wouln't prove to you that I exist outside your mind, I will rejoice myself just telling you to f@ck off and denying what you just asked :P
Hey even better, play this game with your boss !
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.