Isn't this just coincidental linkage? I forget the precise term. If you examine a big enough set of variables, some are bound to show correspondence by chance alone, so you need to lower your p-value threshold or something.
Question 1 should be followed up with "Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees?"
Also, that sentence is hard to parse, because with the volume of questions that can be answered there, I can't imagine one-third of couples even both answering all those questions. They must have had to throw out a lot of data to analyze on the basis of questions at all.
So my wife and I would definitely match on one and two; would probably turn up similar ambivalence to three though she gets seasick so probably not so much there.
Occasionally, occasionally, occasionally.
On the sailboat one, I guess I shouldn't say anything until I know how big the boat is.
Clearly more precision is needed.
"Do you like Alien?", "Have you ever travelled around Laos alone?" and "Wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go live on HMS Victory?"
(My answers: yes, yes, and yes but only if it was somewhere not Portsmouth. Ladies.)
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, my giant goes with me wherever I go, I think you're going to need a bigger boat.
I think you're going to need a bigger boat.
"Wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go hunting a giant great white shark with Robert Shaw?"
2, etc.: Not a statistician, so trolling the statisticians by exposing my ignorance: don't you correct for this by discovering it on a large randomly selected subset of your input and testing it on the overall input set, or a different large randomly selected one? And since they're getting new data all the time, couldn't they validate it further?
13: Maybe that's a method, but I think I recall from classes at one point a mention of a standard method to adjust the p-value depending on how much you're analyzing.
13: Using a test set and a re-test set is the best way for this type of analysis. I don't always think about it because we never had the N for that kind of stuff. I don't know that's what they did. My suspicion is that they did not.
15: Bonferoni correction and related concepts. It's not really standard because you always argue over how many things in the same family and thus need corrected for.
No, yes, emphatic no.
I'm pretty sure I would hate to live on a sailboat. It just sounds like a lot of work.
horror movies - not really
travelled alone - yes, it sucked
sailboat - came damn close to doing this after my divorce. Not enough space for my cats on a boat I could afford, and slip fees are daylight robbery.
I wonder whether what's really being tested with the sailboat question is "propensity to assent glibly to romantic-sounding suggestions that are actually dubious." I could see that correlating to compatibility.
Do you like Pina Colodas, getting caught in the rain?
Often (but not ones that are Saw-levels-of-gratuitous-nastiness); yes; sure. Who do I get?
I used to work at a place that did clinical trials. Our head of dept used to demonstrate why you shouldn't do after-the-event subset mining by showing that X drug worked best on Pisceans.
Obviously there just no helping people who can't either go full carnivore or stick to vegetarianism.
Yes, Yes, That's like asking "wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and be nauseous all the time?"
I am delighted that my boyfriend hates boats as much as I do.
Does it have to be a sailboat? What about a big rowboat? Or a modest, but comfortable--let's call it upper-middle class--yacht? Because I have no desire to deal with sails and wind and winches, but I'd live on a yacht in a second.
I think even motor yachts have winches.
"I dream of chucking it all and purchasing the Sultan of Brunei's megayacht"
The sails and wind are the best things about boats!
The top ten megayachts are pretty much all middle eastern rulers, plus Roman Abramovich and David Geffen.
I'm just not willing to work that hard.
A friend who used to work with the mega-rich once spent a week or so on a billionaire's yacht. It had an actively stabilized pool table for playing in rough seas.
I suppose I should tell my potential suitors that having someone else around would ruin everything great about living on a boat.
Having someone else around is basically the whole point of dating.
31 -- if you're too lame t to play in the top ten league, the rest of us peasants have to do things like charter the Amaryllis for only 770,000 Euros per week.
31 was to 29. But it might be time to forget about programming and get in on the ground floor of the coming business boom in Iran.
The largest megayacht, the Azzam (which belongs to Abramovich) cost $620 million to build and has maintenance costs of $62 million per year. Megayachts are not for the weak.
It also has a private submarine and its own missile defense system.
It might cost a lot, but the seats on the public submarines are always so dirty.
I'm a little disappointed that no one has managed to spend a billion dollars on a yacht.
You could probably do it if you built one that was unmanned and completely automated. And had TWO missile defense systems.
I don't think you should be able to count the submarine in the price of the yacht unless it can somehow drive inside the yacht.
Or one missile defense system and one torpedo defense system.
41, 42 -- looks like the Admiral X Force 145 will get to the billion dollar mark, and it's not clear that it has even one submarine. It does have two helipads and a zen garden (for tranquility), though.
So, is there like a website where they are looking for volunteers to start the revolution?
I just watched a few minutes of an interview with the CEO of the company that made the Azzam, who made the Job Creators argument that we should thank the owner for creating so much employment.
My buying-a-yacht daydreams always begin with the question "How large a boat can I manage by myself, alone on the bounding main?" because I hated the being-around-shouting-preppy-assholes part of sailing lessons. I can't imagine Russian oligarchs being much better.
@26: but how about sails and wind and wenches, a horse of a different color?
Two of my best summers, admittedly decades ago, in my yoot, were spent working on large sailboats (50-100 feet). One of the summers, I was even paid (the other was with friends for room & board). Just like pot & LSD, I have very fond memories, but suspect that if I actually had the opportunity to repeat the experience, I'd be quickly disabused.
Glenn Beck's yacht will be called OLIGARH.
Translation of last question: "wouldn't it be fun to oversell our irrepressible spirits by talking about chucking it all and going to live on a sailboat because obviously that is not a thing that almost anyone you will ever meet will ever do if for no other reason than, oh hi, people have to eat and also sometimes it's nice to have movie theaters so you can go see the horror movies you were so enthusiastic about in question 1?""
You could project movies on the mainsail, maybe.
The Amaryllis? Fuck it, I'd probably be happy slumming it on the shitty old Latitude. (I think I would love to live on a boat like that for a while.)
Shit, just remembered C and I used to say that we would retire to a boat. That's clearly what made us think we were so compatible and inspired us to get married quickly.
I know a dude who got pretty close to living on a sailboat. He bought a sailboat to live on and started working on fixing it up. I think he was pretty close to actually moving aboard after ten years or so but then he got a girlfriend.
The largest megayacht, the Azzam (which belongs to Abramovich)
She mostly just sits at a table on the deck and the crew gets to take turns sitting across from her, staring soulfully.
My actual answers are 1) no, but sometimes a scary movie without grossness 2) yeah, sort of, like I was staying with people when I went to the USSR when I was 17 but I wasn't with family so I think given that I was 17, it counts 3) obviously not but I have my own weird chuck it all fantasies.
My resistance to yes/no answers on these things is part of why I hate the Meyers-Briggs.
55: But they clearly weren't compatible!
In her late 20's, my sister paid off her student loans and with a couple months had bought a boat, quit her job and headed out for Mexico. It wasn't what she thought it would be.
She went with a guy who fell hard for her, but they didn't leave as a couple. They got caught in a storm off Monterey and the Coast Guard rescued them. My parents hired a captain to take them around Pt. Mugu and teach them more about sailing, which my sister said was great. She sold the boat to the dude because she didn't want to sail with him as he pined for her. She then worked on other people's boats. Her main conclusion was that it was an old, alcoholic culture that isn't that much fun for smart people in their twenties. She came home after a couple months, on the grounds that it wasn't that great and found herself another engineering job.
Conclusion: my sister really will chuck it all, in a responsible way, until the adventure lifestyle has run out of interest. She liked some of the sailing parts.
I never enjoy boats, so I wouldn't try to build a sailing trip into my life. But I really want to walk across the country. Maybe bike, but really walk.
I also know someone who chucked it all and went sailing around in the South Pacific for about six months. (Didn't know him pre-chucking, only met him several years after he un-chucked and returned to sivilization).
No, yes, the act of chucking would be fun, the reality of living on a sailboat would be fun sometimes and not fun a lot more of the time.
Anyone interested?
So stack the deck in your favor and abide by what we called "The Monster Truck Rally Theory of Dating": Don't sit across from your date at a table, sipping a drink and talking about where you went to school. Do something adventurous, playful or stimulating instead
Exactly. Just go to bed on the first date.
I think I'd like to live on a houseboat for a week or two (okay, stay on a houseboat, since one or two weeks is not really "living"), on the Thames, or one of those English-y waterways that would remind me of Penelope Fitzgerald. The close quarters would really get to me, though, and also the tiny galley kitchen.
A week long stay on a 22-26 sailboat doing site line trips on an interesting coast or amongst a group of islands is the most relaxing, refreshing kind of holiday I've ever had. There's always something to do so the small busyness of the boat's world has a chance to briefly conquer thoughts of work etc, and there's a sense of adventure planning each day's trip, each night's anchorage.
A colleague and I once discovered we'd been on the same boat the past summer, her family for a day sail and mine for a week's cruise. It's a small boat not at all glamorous rented out by a friend of ours. The briefly disclosed horror on her face when she realized we'd slept on it! Yep, mini portable marine head, removable gas ring on a gimbal bracket, tiny cooler - great vacation.
Has anybody tried Aziz Ansari's book about dating? Listening to his comedy, he seems simultaneously cloying and clever-- he might be interesting if he were wiling to dial it down, so to speak.
I answer like Asilon, concur with 4 and 51 on the inanity of the sailing question.
I'm newly single, haven't gotten around to creating an account anywhere to meet women electronically, seems potentially unpleasant, since electronic image is so shallow.
I read Aziz's book that this is an excerpt from. It was pretty good but nothing really radically new. He did do a bunch of focus groups that was pretty interesting. A lot of older women regret marrying right away so that they could leave their parents houses. Singles in small towns are kind of bummed out. Cuts down on the possible "things would be better if" speculations.
Sort of, sort of, I can't think of anything I'd hate more. How fucking boring to be trapped on a boat with monotonous seas to look at. All the clausterphobia and upkeep of an RV combined with all the lack of scenery of Life of Pi, and unlikely to have consistent internet.
I've never been in far from shore in a small boat, but I don't think I'd like it. I have a strangely exaggerated fear of heights that can be triggered by deep, clear water. It hit me when I was in Florida tubing and swimming in some river that had a very deep hole. Swimming or floating over the hole made me very, very nervous even though I am a very good swimmer and being in water just as deep where I couldn't see the bottom really doesn't bother me. Unless it's murky enough water that I can't see anything. Then I worry about being eating by a creature regardless of depth.
A cow-orker is seriously planning to spend half his time after retirement on a sailboat anchored at some Caribbean island where he previously worked (the pay was terrible but life was good). I think he may even have already bought the boat.
Answers:
Yes, but prefer stuff like giallo, Japanese and Korean horror, a good B werewolf movie (Dog Soldiers, Ginger Snaps, etc. But absolutely no slasher or Saw type shit.
Yes. A number of places and planning some in the near future. Maybe Oman this time or Sri Lanka or something, I haven't decided.
No longer than a year.
I find even moderately large quantities of water hypnotic in a fascinating way - as in, starting at the Lake-of-the-Isles size* and continuing up from there, so the idea of living on a boat sounds really appealing in a way. It's right up there with "get a cabin far away from everyone else up in the mountains somewhere where it's pretty much always cold and I have an easy source of wood and, somehow through magic, have no trouble with internet connectivity or food" in terms of pleasant daydreams. I want security in life way too much to do anything like though that if "chucking everything" meant more than "putting my furniture in storage and being rich enough to do whatever I feel like safe in the knowledge that I could always just go back and not be in any trouble". I tend to assume that when people talk about walking away from everything and doing [romantic sounding thing] that's what they really mean, though.
*Can be walked entirely around in about an hour, fully contained within the city of Minneapolis and not even one of the remote bits of it.
That said I'm not sure of the appeal of a sailboat particularly, as opposed to one that can go places you actually want to go without doing a lot of complicated trigonometry first.
So the thing with a sailboat is the abdication of responsibility-- doing basically anything worthwhile (generating the respect of competent people, raising a kid, learning to do something well) requires sustained attention, much of which is irritating and/or routine, in terms of hours spent.
Thinking about a weightless life, whether on a boat or a beach or living unmoored someplace pleasant, obviously the weightlessness will wear thin after some months, maybe floating could last more than a year but not two. Now there is a desire for stability or the ability to make changes to the world that require inertia. This balance between spontaneity and effective responsibilty, everyone has this balancing act.
Reducing it to one obviously aspirational question is just, oh fuck it, there must be a nice remix or reimagining of th Pina Colada song. Here's best of three I see on soundcloud, gotta be a better one:
https://soundcloud.com/michaelvoigt/rupert-holmes-escape-michael-voigt-remix
Oh but heebs is unabiguously wrong on the specifics of the pleasure of a sailboat-- the silence, the waves, the motion, excellent. Up there with skiing.
Here's another one-- a little insipid, but there's something there
Living on a boat sounds even worse than my husband's fantasy of buying a tiny house.
73 I wouldn't want to live on a sailboat that was just docked somewhere. I'd want to learn to actually sail the thing and then do it which seems to be to require quite a large degree of responsibility, competence, learning to do something well, etc.
The monster truck rally theory of first dates sounds terrible. One of the things I really liked about dating was that it gave you a chance to talk to at least semi-interesting people over drinks and a decent meal, and then sometimes you have sex. I'm not even opposed to monster truck rallies but that sounds way worse. And no way do I want to go parasailing or to Dave and Buster's or some other kind of reality TV show activity date.
seems potentially unpleasant, since electronic image is so shallow.
Well, it's not like in real life you walk up to people and immediately know their innermost soul.
My chuck it all fantasy was based more on chucking it all than having some cliche of an adventure. It involved cutting all ties with everyone, moving to a small town in Texas (a particular one! I'm not saying which, because then someone could find me!), buying a small cheap apartment, getting a very unchallenging job, and never doing anything again.
The plane thing has kept me from traveling to other countries much. I do think traveling alone and being in a city you don't know alone is intriguing. Not being part of the culture of travel was actually a big disadvantage in dating, actually. It is how people prove they are interesting.
I don't mean to sound judgmental, but that's a much stupider fantasy than the sailboat one.
No fucking way. Oceans are so kowaii.
Hurricanes, tsunami, pirates, fucking moby dick. People really die and disappear out there.
I will never be anywhere I can't walk to a 7-11 and get a slurpy.
Reminds, I don't fucking fly either.
My fantasy is that the gorgeous Heebie U midcentury modern library will never get torn down and my fear is that it will. My other fantasy is that the kids will all get a couple years older and we'll do neat stuff with them. I'm willing to give it time.
My fantasy involves going to a small Nebraska town, buying a really big house, and running the place like Mr. Potter ran Bedford Falls (but more nicely).
I will never be anywhere I can't walk to a 7-11 and get a slurpy.
And the thing is, you have to walk your dogs. Which you really can't do on a sailboat, nor even on a yacht.
Couldn't you have some kind of fake-grass covering a floor made of metal grating that extents over the side. Walk the pee plank, doggie.
Walk the pee plank, doggie.
No self-respecting canine would submit to such subterfuge. Also: what a urine-stained mess this would prove to be! and within a few short weeks or so.
Dude you just sail from Antibes to Monaco and have one of the 100 on-board servants walk the poodle for you in Monaco. Done and done.
My friend's parents live on a tiny island off Florida. You have to take a ferry whose sole purpose is to keep it exclusive. All the ferry has room to do is make three-point-turns. Again and again and again. But hell no bridge.
It's probably worth it not to be part of Florida.
The best deal about the megabuck and up yachts is that the owners don't really spend all that much time on them, so they hire peasants caretakers who get to live on them and only have to be servants hosts a few weeks a year.
79 - When your fantasy is obviously achievable and you don't give it a try I'm not sure if you're doing fantasy right. Why not just do that?
87: Poodle? I'm thinking McManus has one or more of those true-grit Texas Ranger hounds that will lock and load on command.
1.Yes, spooky rather than bloody.
2.Yes, plenty.
3.Not a sailboat, a riverboat. They come in handy if you need to confront the brute nihilism of western exploitation, and you can get off anywhere you like.
93 -- we all know that "Bob McManus" is just an internet persona adopted by Llloyd Blankfein.
have one of the 100 on-board servants walk the poodle for you in Monaco
You're not thinking like a Russian oligarch/Middle-Eastern sultan, and the less said about JPJ's modest roots, the better. On a $600M boat, when your dog has to pee, you throw it overboard and have a new one choppered in.
walk to a 7-11 and get a slurpy
You can get a cheap blowjob just about anywhere, bob; you go to the 7-11 for a Slurpee.
Dude you just sail from Antibes to Monaco
My prized poodle wouldn't be caught dead pissing in the street in some dirty French town. That's why I bought it its own special estate in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat so we'd have a place to hop over to if it needed to mix business with pleasure.
I know several people with dogs on boats. Most of them have doggy winches and slings. Dogs swim.
Liveaboarders must be hugely overrepresented in my acquaintance - small ports here have specialized services, and starting with MSFT money is the easy way. Even motorboaters are nuts if they take it up to *avoid* sustained, routine, irritating, constant attention. (I know a family that started circumnavigation when the kids were tweens because they bwanted to guarantee the kids got that. It was that or horse farming. Or third world poverty. Kind of Diamond Age logic.)
91: Because fantasies aren't always things you want to do.
You may not be trying to undermine France from within, but the one about over-thinking things seems true.
97: Yeah, it was a mistake, originally it was going to be "bottled water" but I impulsively thought "slurpy" sounded better. Actually, I don't think I have ever had a Slurpee.
I remain phobic about flying and big water, heights, cliffs, edges, beaches...actually the waterline. Have a hard time in high rise buildings, avoid the windows.
I find horror movies both dull and annoying. I have travelled alone but only in totally safe places like Italy, Australia, NZ. My annual holidays every year involve living on a sailboat for a week and I would love to do it for much longer and go more places (furthest I've been is West Cork -Brittany). There is a ton of stuff to know and learn - navigation, tides, weather, passage planning, and skills to improve - steering, sail trimming, knots, mooring, usw. Very absorbing.
OTOH if I had children I would be dubious about the whole let's sail away as a family and homeschool the kids thing.
26. Does it have to be a sailboat? What about a big rowboat?
A rowboat big enough to live on is called a galley. How do you feel about having somebody in your living space beating a drum all day to keep the slaves rowing in synch?
Couldn't you just have a big speaker and some drum and bass cds?
Maybe I would reëvaluate the sailboat fantasy if I could have just a dear little boat with a guy in a gimp suit with a flamethrower guitar on front.
36: €770,000 for a week's charter, and they can't even use correct English on the web page. Ffs, ppl.
109: you see, this is why "Waterworld" was fundamentally misconceived. People go mad at sea just as they do in the desert, but it's the wrong sort of madness. Desert madness is full-bore dehydrated sunstroke mania. That's why all the best religions come from deserts - that's where you lose your grip on reality and start hallucinating angels and burning worlds. But sea madness is melancholy and loneliness and self-absorption and despair. And desert madness may be much more destructive but it's also much more visually gripping. You can make a much better film about Mohammed than you can about Donald Crowhurst.
Also, with sea madness, all the records are likely to drown in the deep. Deserts are better conservation environments.
Right, Ozymandias at least got to have his vast and trunkless legs of stone stick around for a bit.
Clarification question: if I were filling out an OKCupid questionnaire, would I be able to say Yes to the travel question based on my trip to Brazil with my dad, which included A. a couple days wandering solo around Rio while he was working, B. a solo flight to and day of walking around Brasilia, and C. not knowing a word of Portuguese, and barely any Spanish?
It's not remotely backpacking around Europe for a month, but there was definitely overlap with that experience, especially thanks to the language barrier. Oh, and I had basically no money - I had an ongoing fear that I was recognizably American, which would make me an attractive theft target despite also being recognizably poor.
Was that the time you got hit on by the spectacular Brazilian lady?
113: jungle madness is all about self-loathing and rot and weakness and fleshly appetites but can be pretty cinematic if you handle it right, see "Apocalypse Now", but you are still limited in the visual area because you just can't see very far in the jungle, the trees get in the way.
116: Yes! Thank you for remembering, and now I get to pat myself on the back for my restraint.
Obviously I regret not having done anything more than kiss her, but I may regret even more that I didn't get her picture. I couldn't figure out how to smuggle it past BOGF back in the days of physical photographs.
I mean, what is the question actually asking? It's asking if you have any sense of adventure, but in this narrow, bourgeois way. It's mostly asking "are we both middle class?"
"Are we meta-basic instead of regular basic-basic?"
This is not my beautiful wife.
The travel question is definitely a class sorter. The sailboat question is probably a good ambition/satisfice proxy. The horror question might be a good character sorter, or it might be that women who like horror movies are very attractive to guys who do.
When I was in high school, there were always talks from people who were older who chucked it for a year in their retirement to go sailing.
It didn't sound like it was meant to be restful. It was a task to conquer. They weren't aiming to sail around the world alone exactly, but that was the general gist of their goal.
It's mostly asking "are we both middle class?"
If you think most middle class Americans have "traveled around another country alone," you may not have met many middle class Americans.
I do buy it as an SES sorter, but it's mostly the "socio" part of SES. I'd say it's SWPL, but actually being alone in a foreign (non-Anglo) country is something that would terrify many people who own stand mixers and recycle. I guess it's, "Are you a certain kind of SWPL?"
Yeah, it's "are we members of the same class", but 'middle class' isn't right. Upper middle class, or professional class, or something. Not the one percent, but at least the ten percent.
or it might be that women who like horror movies are very attractive to guys who do.
I wonder how accurate the stereotype that most horror movie fans are guys is. Since adding "reading horror blogs" to my list of time wasting activities, I've discovered that most of the better horror bloggers are women.
130: Final Girl is a favorite of mine. It's more or less gone dark at this point, but there are hours of time wasting fun to be had in the archives.
being alone in a foreign (non-Anglo) country is something that would terrify many people who own stand mixers
As long as I have my stand mixer I fear NOTHING. I have it strapped to the stump of my arm, like Ash did with a chainsaw in "Army of Darkness". If I am swarmed by terrifying non-Anglo foreigners, I will shred them. My dying cry will be "MARGARITA TIME, BITCHES!"
Sorry, I don't know what came over me there.