QC

anyone thinking seriously about how to redesign dating? i think it's pretty clear that 1) modern dating is super broken and 2) finding people healthy long-term romantic relationships is one of the best things we could do for them so let's fix it already

random topic to get started: i don't see anywhere in modern dating that you get strong positive signals of trustworthiness. many people are substituting trustworthiness = you have the same ideology as me, and this has nothing to do with trustworthiness

it would be great if we still had villages. if you date people you've been in community with your whole life you have a whole lifetime's worth of data on how trustworthy they are, not only from your experience but from gossip. you don't get any of that with a tinder rando

https://twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1127439363384561664 …

so, taking that train of thought seriously: given that we don't have villages, how might we redesign dating to produce honest signals of trustworthiness? my first thought is to add more stress: do harder stuff together sooner, e.g. take a class, do a hard escape room or sth

second thought is to pull in other people: meet each others' friends and parents sooner, hear all the gossip. relationship is not a 2-player game; if a relationship is gonna go anywhere it needs to be embedded in a shared community, so make that explicit in the process

Matchmakers! psst, I'm currently operating as a matchmaker. I have friends tell me their criteria (hard yes, hard no, negotiable: kids? poly? women/men? // long term committed primary or something else?) and I'll keep an eye out for them.