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January 10, 2004
SocialGrid: Much, much crazier than I thought
Posted by Clay Shirky
So I
posted yesterday about SocialGrid, the proposed "Hey, I know! Lets make everyone's demographics completely explicit!" peer-to-peer Google-reliant online dating service.
What I didn't see is that it's part of
a larger effort to "solve dating", in the author's felicitous phrase.
The Solve Dating manifesto runs thusly:
1. Modern Soulmate Theory is based on math and probability calculations.
2. It has nothing to do with reincarnation, astrology, or magic.
3. Soulmates are not destined to be with each other.
4. God may have made a soulmate or a few soulmates for you. God may help you find your soulmate or He may not. Evil forces or your own free will may influence you to choose the wrong person.
5. You may have one or millions of soulmates depending on how different you are from the population mean.
6. Statistically, there is at least one person in this world that will bring you true love, a love that will last a lifetime.
7. People spend a lot of time, money, and energy in their search for soulmates.
8. The odds of finding a soulmate are very slim. Only a few people are lucky enough to find their soulmates.
9. Current dating services are inefficient and flawed.
10. People are "forced" to settle for incompatible mates resulting in break ups and divorces.
11. Human and social capital decrease because of relationship problems.
12. One day in the near future, because of technological advances, people will find their soulmate or soulmates very easily.
You may also want to try the
SoulMate Calculator, which looks like FOAF gone mad, and don't miss the notes on
Love Economics.
There really is a very particular mental illness associated with presuming that human dealings can be perfected through reduction to discrete variables. (I wonder if
DSM IV has a name for it?) This site obviously veers far into net.kook territory, but the scary thing is the number of proposed services that suffer from a mild case of the same disease.
Comments (10)
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1. Lucas on January 10, 2004 10:51 AM writes...
"There really is a very particular mental illness associated with presuming that human dealings can be perfected through reduction to discrete variables."
Kookie site sure, but I believe there has been discovered an accurate schema with which to type human relationships (basically the Russian MBTI) called Socionics.
http://socionics.com
At first glance the vastness of its explanatory powers does seem preposterous, but over time my personal observations have convinced me that, much to my suprise, it is in fact accurate. The potential for use by social software is pretty incredible.
I don't think it's a coincidence that it was discovered in the former Soviet Union. I have found Russians to be some of the most open people in the world.
Interestingly all the basic tenets of the relationship model can be found in Jung's writings, but scattered about. I think he had to be aware of it, but was unsure of the public reaction to something that seemed so pat. Or rather being a masterful psychologist he had no doubt that most of the world's enormous egos and fragile senses of identity could not withstand the blow of being reduced to 4 letters.
Permalink to Comment2. Vertamae on January 10, 2004 2:04 PM writes...
Re: No. 10, no one is ever 'forced to settle'. That's crap. Settling is a choice.
Permalink to Comment3. zod on January 10, 2004 3:30 PM writes...
I supposed you haven't see the founder's personal website at http://www.aluran.com/ Gives a lot more insight into the craziness behind his other projects.
Permalink to Comment4. Phil Hunt on January 10, 2004 4:30 PM writes...
You say: There really is a very particular mental illness associated with presuming that human dealings can be perfected through reduction to discrete variables.
True, but many human problems have been helped through technology.
Permalink to Comment5. Richard Soderberg on January 11, 2004 1:03 AM writes...
I don't feel there's any harm in trying to reduce humans down to variables, as long as you have the understanding that your set of variables is only useful in conjunction with other sets of variables. It's not enough for me to tell you that I'm an INFP, because without knowing my "hours a day spent socializing" variable, you have no way to know that I strongly resemble an extrovert.
It's really nice to see people implementing their mental love ontologies in public; as a people watcher, I couldn't ask for more. Visions of K-Collector, The Dating Edition dance in my mind; "map your ontology onto one we know about, and we'll help you find others that are well-matched".
Permalink to Comment6. Henka on January 11, 2004 8:02 AM writes...
"no one is ever forced" to settle
bt then the 'choice' is to refuse to settle for less or to settle for less
i wonder what choice is realy
Permalink to Comment7. Seth Finkelstein on January 12, 2004 1:33 AM writes...
Hilarious! It's "computer dating" meets techno-babble of our times.
By the way, the whole things looks like it's built to be amateur Google-spamming.
Permalink to Comment8. Lloyd Wood on January 13, 2004 11:03 AM writes...
"There really is a very particular mental illness associated with presuming that human dealings can be perfected through reduction to discrete variables."
...and the name of that mental illness would be "economics", the 'dismal science'.
Permalink to Comment9. Liz Lawley on January 13, 2004 11:52 AM writes...
Did you see the "Warning to Copycats & Clones" on the site?
Permalink to Comment10. Dan Brickley on May 8, 2004 7:11 AM writes...
Permalink to CommentHeh, breathtakingly deluded. Entertaining link of the weekend, thanks!