
Online Dating for Scientists - BerislavLopac
http://dating.newscientist.com/
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rayiner
Interestingly, I think my science/engineer friends are behind the curve when
it comes to online dating. I guess they're over sensitive about the stigma,
but I think it's misplaced. A lot of my single female friends have OKcupid
accounts and use them. It's a great alternative to the bar scene for women. No
sweaty drunk guys harassing you.

Also: shared interest forums are a great place to meet people. My wife and I
posted on the same law forum before we ran into each other in person.

Also, and this is unrelated but I have to share since I'm too married for it
to be useful to me: if you're in Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art on
their gallery nights.

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fossuser
Works great for women, but poorly for men.

Women sign up, immediately get hundreds of messages - choose one and go on a
date. Men sign up, send out a few messages and nothing happens.

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nessus42
I'm a guy and I've gone on a couple dozen dates from online dating sites over
the years and met six of my past girlfriends this way. All of these dates came
from women who wrote to me.

Cultivate interests that appeal to women, write an interesting profile, and
put up a nice photo and the women will come to you. (I'm no Calvin Klein
model, by the way.)

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imcrs
Cultivate interests that appeal to you. Those interests will probably appeal
to people you will want to date as well.

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nessus42
For many geeky guys, this turns out to be a self-indulgent view that will
virtually guarantee that they'll spend their life alone. I've met plenty of
guys who think that they should just be able to find the video-game playing,
D&D-, MtG-, hard scifi-, Linux-loving girl geek of their dreams. If they can,
more power to 'em! On the other hand, I'm willing to bet that their chances
will be significantly increased if they develop a taste and passion for art
and cinema and cuisine and travel, etc.

Of course, it's not going to work if you end up having no real interest in
these things, but if you do, then you might take these interests off of the
back burner.

Another common fallacy is that you can weigh 300 pounds and yet attract a 110
lb waif. It's been known to happen, but the odds are stacked against you.

~~~
klipt
> Another common fallacy is that you can weigh 300 pounds and yet attract a
> 110 lb waif.

For guys, being skinny isn't considered that attractive though. Better than
being fat, but not as good as being buff.

~~~
rayiner
Yes. That being said, women's tastes seem to fall on a broader spectrum than
men's. If you're a skinny guy, dress flatteringly and you'll be attractive to
some non-trivial demographic of women. Skinny guys can look great in a suit or
more formal clothing, or they can get skinny jeans and go for the heroin chic
look. Same is true for heavier guys. Take up touch football on the weekends
and there will be a demographic of southern women who will be into that.

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pud
Whois tells me it's a white-labeled "launch your own dating site!" site from
<http://datinglab.net/>

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treyp
so does the footer

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cing
Title is a little misleading, as far as I can tell there are no aspect of this
site that verify the users are scientists at all. If only there was a dating
site that did, that let me filter my potential mates by how prestigious an
institution they got their PhD from =)

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SilasX
It filters by whether or not you want to date a scientist ... should be
sufficient.

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stefantalpalaru
Are the profiles peer reviewed? Joking aside, one of the featured profiles is
for someone who thinks "American" is a language.

~~~
derleth
> "American" is a language.

"American" covers a number of very distinct varieties of English. It isn't
considered its own language for political and cultural reasons, not
necessarily linguistic ones. (As another example, look at the divide between
Hindi and Urdu.)

~~~
kylebgorman
There is no legitimate linguistic authority that recognizes a language or
dialect called "American". Even the term "General American", used to discuss
features shared by most forms of American English requires "scare-quotes" to
indicate that it's an abstraction across many different dialects.

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michaelpinto
I just want to warn you gold diggers that scientists tend to be very underpaid
given their high levels of education.

~~~
derleth
Don't call them 'gold diggers', just mention that they're uninterested in
people unable to financially provide for them.

It's a perfectly valid concern in this wintry economic climate.

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troymc
When I Google "dating website for scientists" my first search result is
Science Connection. They advertise in Scientific American and probably other
places too. If you go to their website:

<http://www.sciconnect.com/index.htm>

the copyright notice at the bottom says "Copyright © 1991-2012." Does that
mean they've been around since 1991?

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hkmurakami
this page [1] seems to suggest that the service predates 1997 by a good number
of years.

[1] <http://www.sciconnect.com/staff.shtml>

~~~
Turing_Machine
I remember them running print ads in Scientific American back in the 80s (if
not them, an organization with a very similar logo of two lab mice).

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denzil_correa
Only a matter of time before such a service sprung up. Nice to see News
Scientist take this up though "The Dating Lab" seems to be behind the
implementation [0].

[0] <http://www.thedatinglab.com/>

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biot
It seems to have sprung up a while ago. I found a profile there which was last
modified in 2007.

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31reasons
OKCupid found through their data that online dating is highly racist. I am
wondering how the online dating for scientists would look!

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mkhattab
Do you mean that most people are highly selective about the race of their
potential mate? If this is the case, I don't think that this is racist.
Besides, scientists are humans too, I doubt there would be much of a
difference.

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potatolicious
How isn't that racist?

Racism doesn't _need_ to involve blathering idiots who want to burn your house
down, all it takes is someone to treat another person worse because of their
race.

Which is to say, we're _all_ at least a little bit racist. One of the greatest
lies of modern society is that racism is somehow exceptional, or intrinsic to
a character, when it is in fact highly contextual and can be brought out of
anyone.

Race in dating is very heavily influenced by popular perceptions of particular
races, including stereotypes - that someone won't give a black person the time
of day even if they are articulate and hit other criteria _is_ racist, though
the fault here seems to lie more with society than the individual.

~~~
ajays
I disagree. Mating is deeply biological phenomenon; the rational brain has
little to do with it.

For example: I'm attracted to slim women. But some of my best friends are
curvy. I'm not discriminating against curvy women; it's just that I find the
skinny ones more attractive, without any rational reason for it.

~~~
potatolicious
I believe this is less biological than you think it is. You're attracted to
slim women because there are a truckload of cultural artifacts celebrating
slim women. If you were born 500 years ago, or in a different part of the
world today, you may very well be attracted to curvy women.

And this is even more true for race - there may very well be people who are
_biologically_ wired to dislike certain skin colors, but IMO they are well
into the minority. Race in dating has _much_ more to do with cultural
perceptions of race than any evolutionarily hard-wired perception.

In any case though:

> _" it's just that I find the skinny ones more attractive, without any
> rational reason for it."_

Which makes you, I guess the word would be... weightist?

The whole point of my post isn't to point at people and go "you monster! you
won't date black people!", it's to point out that even subconsciously
influenced racism _is_ racism, and the net effect for the target individual is
the same, regardless of if you're "simply like that without rational reason"
or if you actively and consciously dislike them.

The fact that we've been programmed by culture and circumstance to
discriminate against a certain group doesn't make it our fault, but it is
still discrimination at the end of the day.

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urbionic
Previous employee of Dating lab here, some info you guys might like: All in-
house dev done on linux, content and profile vetting is taken very seriously,
there is a dedicated team making sure no one get's scammed and profiles are
real people. There is checks and balances to prevent on-line stalking also.
The two-way match algorithm is also pretty beefy and rather impressive. A few
of my friends are married to partners they met on one of the datinglab network
sites, a few employees also. These guys have been in the business a while,
they know what they are doing.

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NanoWar
Pro tip from them: "Lose your heart, NOT your cash" ;)

Wonder how the male/female percentages on those platform are...

~~~
frozenport
Probably better than EE, where it is +infinity.

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VSerge
dating limited to any given group of people is just so backward it's amazing
they'd try it for scientists. If you're university educated and are dumb
enough to think only other university graduates are educated, you'll disregard
lots of great people that have learned by say, reading on their own, and would
also have a lot to offer. Reinforcing these artificial boundaries is just
absurd.

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nautical
Finally a place for sheldon cooper .. :)

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jrockway
Is computer science science?

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31reasons
Computer Science is Science as much as Math is.

~~~
jrockway
So no.

