Saturday, December 10, 2005
The one expression I think I hear more than any other when it comes to dating is that I'm "sick of the games." What games are these? I have a quaint image in my mind of two post-college aged, urbane people sitting around and playing Monopoly. Are these the games that people are referring to? I highly doubt it.
I would like to propose an alternate hypothesis. It's all a game. Several years ago a former employer of mine was discussing the nature of good salesmanship. The key to being a good salesman isn't necessarily in customer service, though it definitely helps. Seldom do we hear about positive customer experiences as opposed to negative ones. The fact of the matter is that it is a numbers game. The founder of Wal-Mart knew that lesson well. It isn't about selling quality products, customer service, or even having employees without lazy eyes. It's about marketing and availability. It's how many people can I see and talk to in one day. My old employer's favorite analogy went something like this:
One method of getting laid is to simply walk up to every girl you find and ask her "Will you have sex with me?" Most of the time you'll most likely be slapped. How many should you ask? 10? 100? 10,000? Eventually one will say yes. It isn't a question of "if," really it's just "when." The variable is how many you ask.
Personally, I feel that the analogy is rather simplistic. I am going to preface this with the fact that I am neither a cynic or a pessimist. I have a very positive outlook on finding men. With that in mind, I am going to say that men are indeed a numerical game. A game of statistics. A gaming process with control limits, mean values, variance, and standard deviations.
Recently I was listening to an interesting argument about Six Sigma. Six Sigma is essentially a design and process optimization system. General Electronic applies the Six Sigma in terms of the statement "Our customers don't feel the average, they feel the variance."
How true is that? How often do we hear expressions like "I would love someone normal." Normal. What exactly is normal? If normal was average, then we'd find normal everywhere. Clearly that isn't the case. Therefore, average is the non-normal (as fucking counter-intuitive as that really is). We are not impressed by the average. Average is whoever we can find on a street corner somewhere. What we see is the variance from the average. We look for the people that stand out, that have something unique, that are "normal."
How do I meet these normal people? I talk to as many people as I can. I say hi to a LOT of people. Most of the time I find average. That means that I find most men are really just are not worth the time. Nothing says average faster than a completely unjustified sense of ego. Nothing says average faster than a complete lack of brain power. You know what, nothing says average faster than low self-esteem and a piss-poor sense of confidence.
About two years ago I developed a system in which to describe men. The system involved measuring men in terms of sigma. In this sense, sigma is a standard deviation away from the mean. A guy who was one sigma away (in the positive direction) was better than average. A guy who was two sigmas away was pretty great and most likely pretty hot. Three sigmas, now your talking a model. Three sigmas away represents less than 0.001% of the general population.
The theory is simple: increase the sample size N of the general population and you'll find a three-sigma guy. If you find one that's not interested, increase N some more. It's a numbers game. Nothing more, nothing less.
Monopoly anyone?
I would like to propose an alternate hypothesis. It's all a game. Several years ago a former employer of mine was discussing the nature of good salesmanship. The key to being a good salesman isn't necessarily in customer service, though it definitely helps. Seldom do we hear about positive customer experiences as opposed to negative ones. The fact of the matter is that it is a numbers game. The founder of Wal-Mart knew that lesson well. It isn't about selling quality products, customer service, or even having employees without lazy eyes. It's about marketing and availability. It's how many people can I see and talk to in one day. My old employer's favorite analogy went something like this:
One method of getting laid is to simply walk up to every girl you find and ask her "Will you have sex with me?" Most of the time you'll most likely be slapped. How many should you ask? 10? 100? 10,000? Eventually one will say yes. It isn't a question of "if," really it's just "when." The variable is how many you ask.
Personally, I feel that the analogy is rather simplistic. I am going to preface this with the fact that I am neither a cynic or a pessimist. I have a very positive outlook on finding men. With that in mind, I am going to say that men are indeed a numerical game. A game of statistics. A gaming process with control limits, mean values, variance, and standard deviations.
Recently I was listening to an interesting argument about Six Sigma. Six Sigma is essentially a design and process optimization system. General Electronic applies the Six Sigma in terms of the statement "Our customers don't feel the average, they feel the variance."
How true is that? How often do we hear expressions like "I would love someone normal." Normal. What exactly is normal? If normal was average, then we'd find normal everywhere. Clearly that isn't the case. Therefore, average is the non-normal (as fucking counter-intuitive as that really is). We are not impressed by the average. Average is whoever we can find on a street corner somewhere. What we see is the variance from the average. We look for the people that stand out, that have something unique, that are "normal."
How do I meet these normal people? I talk to as many people as I can. I say hi to a LOT of people. Most of the time I find average. That means that I find most men are really just are not worth the time. Nothing says average faster than a completely unjustified sense of ego. Nothing says average faster than a complete lack of brain power. You know what, nothing says average faster than low self-esteem and a piss-poor sense of confidence.
About two years ago I developed a system in which to describe men. The system involved measuring men in terms of sigma. In this sense, sigma is a standard deviation away from the mean. A guy who was one sigma away (in the positive direction) was better than average. A guy who was two sigmas away was pretty great and most likely pretty hot. Three sigmas, now your talking a model. Three sigmas away represents less than 0.001% of the general population.
The theory is simple: increase the sample size N of the general population and you'll find a three-sigma guy. If you find one that's not interested, increase N some more. It's a numbers game. Nothing more, nothing less.
Monopoly anyone?
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Once again I'm in new surroundings. These last couple of days have been absolutely insane attempting to get everything at the towers finalized as well as preparing the house. Needless to say, I'm pretty damned exhausted from the seemingly endless car trips between the Towers and here.
I'm still debating on whether or not tonight is going to be my first real night here at the new digs. I honestly doubt it since I didn't really bring any of the "essentials," but I could always just go grab them. The other key problem is the severe lack of internet.
Lack of internet? Then how am I writing this from the place?? Because at least one of my neighbors has an unprotected wireless network and I'm just "borrowing" a little bandwidth to get basic stuff accomplished.
Speaking of getting stuff accomplished. I sent various email messages out to some of my professors asking about letters of recommendation and none of them have responded yet. I'm going to spend the next few days harping on them to make sure that everything gets done. I really hate nagging professors when I could be accomplishing something else.
This has been more haphazard than usual, but I also spent the day moving heavy shit. I'll see what I can do about updating this thing slightly more often.
I'm still debating on whether or not tonight is going to be my first real night here at the new digs. I honestly doubt it since I didn't really bring any of the "essentials," but I could always just go grab them. The other key problem is the severe lack of internet.
Lack of internet? Then how am I writing this from the place?? Because at least one of my neighbors has an unprotected wireless network and I'm just "borrowing" a little bandwidth to get basic stuff accomplished.
Speaking of getting stuff accomplished. I sent various email messages out to some of my professors asking about letters of recommendation and none of them have responded yet. I'm going to spend the next few days harping on them to make sure that everything gets done. I really hate nagging professors when I could be accomplishing something else.
This has been more haphazard than usual, but I also spent the day moving heavy shit. I'll see what I can do about updating this thing slightly more often.
