When contemplating various outings—to conferences, to parties an hour’s drive away in San Francisco, to ecstatic dances, to old friends’ brunches—a consideration that arises is “it’s good to meet people”.
It seems helpful then to know, how do I actually meet people? (And perhaps, how do you actually meet people?)
To that end, here are ten ways I became friends with people (not exclusively the closest), emojified to help with seeing patterns:
Perhaps we met in the Future of Humanity Institute office. The period of knowing each other better began with a party at my house and continued through regular messaging, living together and dating. 🫶(⟡) : 🥳☎️🏠🌹
We met somehow through Effective Altruism somewhere before 2012 (probably also in the vicinity of the FHI office) then got to know each other better through living together, work collaboration and intentional hanging out. 🫶(⟡) : 🏠👷♀️☎️
I wrote to them about their dating doc, and we got to know each other through going on an extended first date, then keeping in touch and not dating, then dating. 🌹: ☎️🌹
We met so we could consider each other as potential housemates, thanks to a friend’s recommendation. We got to know each other well as housemates. 🏠👭 : 🏠
Someone put us in touch for me to talk about them contributing to AI safety. Our closer acquaintance began with talking when I was visiting the FHI office. We got to know each other well through social calls, a brief period of dates, then living together. 👷♀️ : ⟡☎️🌹🏠
We probably met as housemates, and got to know each other living together in another house and working together. 🏠 : 🏠👷♀️
Our first conversation was about whether they might want to work for me, which they didn’t. We got to know each other well through living together, regular calls, and dating. 👷♀️ : 🏠☎️🌹
We probably met through Effective Altruism events somehow an incredibly long time ago, and got to know each other better through mutual friends, living together, and one-on-one hangouts. 🫶 : 👭🏠☎️
The first meeting I remember was because our then-partners were best friends—the four of us went out for dinner. Both relationships ended soon after, but we got close via coworking with other mutual friends, then perhaps more so from living together. 👭 : 👷♀️🏠
We met when I intentionally moved into the house where he lived in order to meet interesting people, then spent the month hanging out a large fraction of the time. We did get to know each other even better through dating, but we already knew each other pretty well by that point. 🏠 : 🏠🌹
Tally of how I got to know people:
First meetings:
🫶 Effective Altruist and/or AI risk social spaces: 3
🏠 Housemates: 3
👷♀️ Job duties: 2 (I separate this from ‘job related socializing’, partly to encourage myself to do my job duties—beyond whatever importance they have, sometimes they lead me to meet new close friends!)
👭 Mutual friends: 2
🌹 Romance: 1
Getting close:
🏠 Living together: 9
🌹 Romance: 5
☎️ Frequent correspondence or organized hangouts: 6
👷♀️ Job duties: 3
🥳 Parties: 1 (though surely I’m missing some in the ‘vaguely through EA’ category, and probably between some first meetings and some knowing each other betters)
👭 Mutual friends: 1
Extra:
⟡ FHI involved somehow: 3
Takeaways:
Hell yeah group houses! Living with people seems to be super important for strengthening relationships (or else when I’m going to try to be close to someone anyway, I manage to finagle living with them, which seems at least a bit true).
I was going to infer that parties seem fine to miss, but even that single 1 is incredibly precious to me so I should probably go to more parties on reconsideration.
Romance is a great source of friendships for me, but I’m unusually good at being friends with exes for some reason.
Job duties: great
I met half of these people initially through projects and none through parties—this at least suggests that if people are saying I should go to a party in SF to meet people I’ve never met before, I might do better to stay at home and work, even from a meeting people perspective (assuming working at home will lead to meeting people later, e.g. when I finish and share the work).
This is harder than I expected! For instance, I didn’t list ‘through AI safety’ much, so you might infer that doing AI safety is not an awesome way to meet people. However beyond the clear connections between working on AI safety and being at EA events or in the FHI office, my housemates and romantic partners are very likely to be working on AI safety. So is working on AI safety actually required for any of these meetings? My guess is no, this is mostly from common causes—but in general, the causal situation seems complicated.
The end of FHI may impact my social life more than I realized
How do you meet people?
Cover photo: my group house c.2017