Vlad's Roam Garden
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Hi there I'm Vlad! I'm figuring out how to build tools to augment human intellect; I derive joy from dance, poetry, playing with animals & I'm looking for a long-term partner.
I'm 30, hetero, live in San Francisco and open to either monogamy or polyamory.
Pics!
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Me
🧰 My current best attempt at describing what I'm doing with my life is that I'm an independent researcher exploring ideas in the Tools for thought and Future of Programming spaces.
Day to day that looks like me paying attention to friction in my workflows, incidental complexity people encounter and structural/architectural issues in tools I use and following my curiosity in thinking how things can be better.
It also implies a lot of iteration often means that I get excited about something, build a prototype and then get excited about something new 😅
Some things I've been thinking about recently: top of mind
I also sometimes do coaching to help people become better Software Engineers.
And do a lot of dancing!
🎉 Things that bring me joy
🕺 The first thing on this list by far is dance (West Coast Swing)
It has progressively become a larger part of my life through the last year and consistently brings me a lot of joy!
📜 Last year I've discovered that I enjoy poetry!
🎭 doing improv
💡 pursuing my curiosity & building things
🎤 singing
This one is somewhat of a recent discovery - I kind-of abstractly knew that singing is joyful - I was looking forward to an occasional "sing with friends around the fire" moments.
But recently after spending some time in Prague where we had karaoke in the office - it became more salient to me. I've also developed more confidence in my singing which helped me to enjoy it more.
🕰️ In my past life
I’m originally from Ukraine
I have lived in France & Ireland before coming to the US
Which turned me into aged cheese and dark beer enjoyer
Spent most of 2021 being a digital nomad (SF Bay → Portland → Paris → Dnipro (Ukraine) → Prague → Berlin → New York → SF)
I used to know how to dance Argentine Tango
Which introduced me to social dance and showed me new ways to move and communicate
I used to be a Software Engineer at Amazon
My preferred mode of interactions with people is trending towards 1-1. The group interactions are "lower pressure" but they're also often missing depth, which I crave. I think "mostly meeting friends at social things" is a bad equilibrium - you're always in the state of "kind of saw each other recently" which is technically true, but rarely affords for you to get to know each other better.
I have a pull to always improve my environment - both physical and digital
Remove trivial inconveniences, so I can more consistently do what I set out to do
Add simple tweaks to environment to make it easier to interpret / less likely for you to make mistakes
Be on a lookout for better tools (for programming, note-taking, etc), though switching costs can often be quite high =\
One other manifestation of this (or plausibly of some underlying thing that is the cause for both) is me having a preference towards order over chaos (at least when it comes to maintaining my home). I'd say I'm consistently among people who most contribute to maintaining the house cleaner, making it nicer, and generally keeping up the fight against the encroaching chaos
(a notable exception would be the time when I lived with my parents 🙃)
I believe, as with good habits - well-designed environment has a large impact on people's lives.
I like trying new things & strive to be on the right side of explore-exploit tradeoff 🙃
You can explore the rest of this digital garden to get a (somewhat outdated) peek into my mind 😉
I'm signed up for cryonics
I identify with the rationalist and effective altruist movements, I'd say I inhabit the edges of these communities rather than being deeply embedded into them though 🤔
❤️ My love languages are
Physical Touch 🧑🤝🧑 🫂
A thing I've been wondering about recently (after spending some time in Mexico) is why public signs of affection are much less common in the US compared to Ukraine or Mexico
Quality Time
💭 My values, according to Clearer Thinking
Achievement/agency
Beauty
Longevity
Freedom
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What are some signs that we'll get along
this is not meant to be a strict list of requirements - more of a set of observations on what qualities led me to grow closer to people in the past
You enjoy having deep intellectual conversations - some of the times when I felt most connected with people were in a situation when we were both excitedly exploring new idea, helping each other see new implications, building on each other's perspectives, etc
You are into touch, affection, physical intimacy
You're deeply curious/passionate about some topic/you're pursuing your ambition in some area.
It helps if I can relate to the target of your focus 😛
You have a pet or up for having pets
I derive a lot of joy from interacting animals - I recently had an opportunity to live with two dogs, and it was wonderful.
A quote from a friend:
Whenever Vlad meets a dog - his face lights up, and his entire body language changes - he is delighted to get to know it and play with it
You're able to consider & talk about most ideas regardless of whether you agree with them or whether they match your political views/etc
You have a good process of figuring out what is true and updating your beliefs in face of new evidence epistomology
You'll enjoy dancing together! And more generally - us deriving joy from similar things
You'd enjoy traveling and exploring new places/things together.
You think that death is bad
Something something irreverence, playfulness
Why you may not want to date me
You're into religion, astrology, "new age" things
My model of the word is very much lies on the foundations of materialism, reductionism & empiricism. So the broad set of things that I point at with the labels above is not something I resonate with.
Kids
From interacting with friends and looking at general life satisfaction research - raising kinds seems like a very painful process that significantly reduces your life satisfaction day to day.
Many people find it a deeply meaningful activity in retrospective, and of-course there are moments of joy sprinkled through, but I'm not convinced that the tradeoff is worth it 🙃
It seems to me that you can do things that are as or more meaningful, more impactful and bring you more joy day to day instead.
Lmk, if you think I'm wrong though!
I think the main avenue for me becoming more open to having children is figuring out a solid plan on mitigating painful aspects of the parenting. Some vague outlines of such plans can include:
Live with/close to a bunch of friends who are excited to help each other with raising children.
Have enough money so that it's trivial to hire nannies/etc
Based on past experience - I don't think long distance relationships work for me
How to reach out
Don't fret about having an elaborate message, just say hi, I prefer higher bandwidth channels (meet in person, video call) for the purposes of actually getting to know each other!
Channels
💌 Email me at vlad@sitalo.org
👫 If we’re friends on Facebook you can also use https://www.reciprocity.io/.
In that case I would only see your reach-out if I also check the corresponding box at some point. Asking me out is faster (if I haven’t already checked your box) and I promise I’ll be non-awkward about it.
If you’re uncertain, please lean on the side of getting in touch!
If reading this profile made you think of someone who can be a good match - I'd appreciate you sharing a link with them!