I think realistic simulations of social interactions would help many people - by providing a low pressure environment for socially awkward people to practice the skills you mentioned, before putting themselves out there in groups etc. - but realism is an absolute requirement. No current AI will do that for you, they are not good at roleplaying realistic humans, and they’re too nice.

If you want a “practice date” to give you useful training that transfers to real life, your conversation partner needs to react to you just like a human would. Including negative reactions (not liking you, thinking you’re weird, faking a call from a friend to escape mid-conversation, and so on). But if you could make an AI that did all that, and it could also give you the sort of actionable feedback that is hard to get from humans, I think that has potential.

We're still quite far away from an AI that can simulate human eye contact, facial expressions, and subtle vocal cues realistically enough to be useful for teaching social skills. I expect that training people using the current level of AI is more likely to make them worse at dealing with actual humans in ways that are difficult to measure.

Maybe I've watched too much Star Trek to think that's a good idea.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Booby_Trap_(episode)

Joining groups and socializing is great. But please don't be that creepy guy who hits on all the women in the co-ed softball league or scuba diving club or whatever. That ends up driving the women away and ruins the group for everyone.

I can’t see any way that it won’t come across as creepy. But like the old saying goes, “if you look good it’s flirting, if you’re ugly it’s harassment”

> If you want to make friends and meet a partner you need to join groups

Agree on the friends side, disagree on the partner side.

I have never met a romantic partner anywhere but through an app. It lets both parties be clear with their intentions. I don't have to guess if they're there to make friends or date. I can say in my profile, "I am here to date."

If they respond to my message, I can ask them out immediately (max of 2 or 3 messages before making IRL plans) because I know there is at least some mutual interest and that we both want to go out on a date.

I won't discount you here, because two of the best marriages in my circle were from dating apps (albeit back when they were more useful, like 2013-2014), but far more of them are based on what I said - regular interactions, lots of small talk, and time to develop closeness. It takes longer, it's less efficient, but it gets results and I don't think dating apps are really doing it any more - it certainly didn't for me.

> I have never met a romantic partner anywhere but through an app.

And I’ve never met a romantic partner on a dating app. If you’re suited to app dating good for you but most men aren’t going to appear as attractive through the app as they actually are in real life.

Why not? Is it just a matter of bad photos and poor writing skills?

That’s part of it, you can certainly optimize your profile for better chances but the medium is the message.

Most things that women find attractive in men are not things that are easily highlighted via a few photos and a bio unless you’re in the top tiers of physical attractiveness. And outside of dating apps women don’t generally prioritize physical attractiveness to the same degree men do. But dating apps put that front and center as the main criteria for matches.

I’m happily married to someone I started dating after almost a year of being in the same game night group and there’s no way we would have ever connected over the apps, because you’re not going to easily connect over shared humor and compatible personality on the apps.

> I have never met a romantic partner anywhere but through an app

I mean, okay, I get it, but people have been finding mates for hundreds of thousands of years before apps. People really need to exercise that muscle. Apps are a crutch (and imo a bad one, at that).

For most of that hundreds of thousands of years, mates were arranged and/or the men forced women to mate them. “Love marriages” weren’t a thing and still aren’t the norm in many cultures

Read the comment I was replying to closely:

> If you want to make friends and meet a partner you need to join groups

"Need" is obviously not true. I generally agree that it is mostly true for friends but I strongly disagree that it is mostly true for romantic partners.

> people have been finding mates for hundreds of thousands of years before apps

People have been doing tons of things before apps. Eating, moving themselves from point a to point b, buying things, etc. I'm not sure your point here.

> Apps are a crutch (and imo a bad one, at that).

Why specifically is this crutch bad?

You would never say that accountants were keeping books for hundreds of years before spreadsheets and that spreadsheets (or Quickbooks or Xero or whatever) are a crutch (and a bad one at that).

> Why specifically is this crutch bad?

The data speaks for itself: people are reporting being lonelier than ever, sexlessness is up for both men and women, birth rates are down. These apps are predatory, etc., etc. I wrote a blog post about it a few years ago[1]. Approaching women in the wild is more fun, more natural, and more in line with our biological imperatives. Comparing dating apps with Excel is, imo, a category error.

[1] https://dvt.name/2020/02/24/rfc-lets-disrupt-dating-apps/

We should be careful not to make claims that any particular behavior is "more natural". Citation needed. Many cultures place very tight constraints on men approaching women, sometimes to the extent of criminal penalties. I'm not saying this is a good thing — people should be able to live their own lives — but I'm just pointing out that we really have no idea what natural human behavior without cultural influences would even look like.

Your post won't load for me, but I find the date of the post intriguing...right on the eve of lockdown. A lot changed for a lot of people then, including young people who suddenly had no option to approach others "in the wild."

How long has it been since a mass casualty shooting? I'd rather we live in a world where those don't happen, and what we've been doing so far hasn't worked. So while your advice works for some people, unfortunately it doesn't work for everybody. For someone with horribly low esteem/other problems that they've given up, giving them tools to help them get out of that hole so they are able to go out and make friends IRL seems like a win in my book.

Mass shootings are significantly rarer than the world (and one's own anxious brain) makes them seem. The risk of dying from a so many other things absolutely dwarf the risk of being shot to death. You're more than twice as likely to die in a car accident than be shot to death. You're more likely to die from an accidental injury than be shot to death by about 10 fold. And that's just for all gun homicides. If you break that down, you're significantly more likely to die by a gun that's shot by yourself, a police officer, or somebody you know than by a stranger. Mass casualty events are even small.

I agree with your point at large, though. The mass shooting panic is a little frustrating when you actually look at the numbers, though. Your risk of dying by gun assault is about 1 in 300, but the risk of dying in a mass shooting is about 1 in 11,000.

I am giving those people a tool. Find a local sports league, improv group or regular trivia night and start going. It's fine if you only talk to the person working the league or the employees the first couple times - they're paid to talk to you. When muscles atrophy, it's fine to take small steps to make them strong again.

You are far more likely to die driving to work than you are encountering a mass casualty event - that kind of becomes an excuse at some point. If you are really concerned, the biggest targets are large public events and schools (US only), which aren't a great place to work on social anxiety anyways.

I think his point was that, evidently, trying the same solutions over and over to the mass shooting problem is as futile as giving out the same trite dating advice. Not that he's concerned about joining an improv group due to the risk of mass shootings. We may have found Quinlan's HN account.