Find Compatibles

mathematic nature of problem and solution

2009-01-06T15:10:00.000-08:00

I cannot emphasize too much the need for a mathematical treatment of the problem. It is not a difficult one, only getting the data is difficult. In essence we need to turn question and answer personality and other profiles into numerical profiles which can be processed in rather simple ways. Some are slow running algorithms, but not difficult ones. I could implement much of this myself and have even done some of it. The key thing is to get other people interested, to get a bit of help, especially with collection of data from forms published on the web. I hope someone will agree to help.

dpw

web page about fictional system

2008-06-02T16:58:00.000-07:00

I now have a substantial collection of web pages, though few have much content on them. One new one which relates to this finding compatibles blog and its associated web page is at
http://FindCompatibles.awardspace.com/SystemByBeth.html
which should also be available at
http://dougwilson.rack111.com/SystemByBeth.html
in case the other link is down.

dpw

de-invention of adolescence

2008-05-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

I want to make some remarks on a controversiaal subject. I do this because I want to post fragments of a novel in which remarkable behaviour is seen and tolerated. In this book quite young teenagers have sex with one another. This is not a case of adults abusing children, not at all, it is young people having sex with other young people of approximately the same age. The idea horrifies many adults, but I don't think it should.

What is adolesence and why is it so horrible, both for the kids and their parents? Why are the teenage years so bad for everyone, the teenagers and the adults who come in contact with them, parents and teenagers.

Fundamentally, the answer is that for almost all of the million years over which human beings evolved there was no adolesence. A soon as people were old enough for sex, they did it. Even for the last 100, 000 years that our own species of human being existed, adolescence was unknown. It did not become invented until the neolithic period when agriculture was invented, when parents needed to keep their children around as unpaid labour. Sexual behaviour interfered with that so it was strongly discouraged. Later, much later, education became important, and sexual activity interfered with that, too. So to this day people physically capable of sex are not allowed to do it.

It has been true that sexual feelings and activity interferes with work and education, but why is this? I believe it is because of the extreme emotional states it induces. Sexual behaviour interferes with the work and education of adults as well, but the feelings are not so strong and adults are able to control them better.

But all the emotional turmoil ultimately stems from one thing. People have an urgent need for sex, their bodies insist on it. But it is almost impossible to find compatible partners, either for emotional relationships or for sexual relationships. People who are comfortable, happy, regularly relieved of their sexual pressures with the most compatible of people will not suffer the emotional turmoils we so often see.

If that can be the case, if it always very easy to find compatible sex partners, and society permits it, then there can be no adolescence as we know it. The young people will never experience sexual frustration and the
strong emotions of love and desire will be reciprocated, leaving nobody out in the cold.

In this way, through reliable methods of finding compatibles, adolesence can be de-invented, and all the turmoil associated with it will vanish. Teenagers will work and learn without all the pressures which frustrate them today. This is not only possible, it must happen, it will happen.

dpw

Finding Compatibiles in Tech Fantasies Book

2008-05-23T09:09:00.000-07:00

I have now posted the entire text of the novel Technological Fantasies on my web site. The links for it are on http://dougwilson.rack111.com/techfantasies.html and are full of stuff about finding compatibles. This theme dominates the first half of the book, then the themes of Practical Immortality and Non-Arbitrary Languages become more prominent.

In the early sections of the book, matching people to people for various reasons is discussed and the lead characters implementing it are shown at work. But also matching people to ideas, ideas to ideas, and ideas to projects are described. All of this falls under the FindCompatibles umbrella.

In the middle section of the book schools based on compatibility are described and important characters grow up in the compatibility based social environments thus created.

The novel is long, but I think it is a good one, a lot of fun, actually. But I am biased. I hope someone will read it and comment.

dpw

clickable

2008-05-19T15:22:00.001-07:00

Putting a URL as the title of a blog seems to work. If not, see if this works: http://dougwilson.rack111.com/findcompatibles.html

dpw

http://dougwilson.rack111.com/findcompatibles.html

2008-05-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

Well, this seems to be what you do. Put up web pages, create blogs, pray.

dpw

novels about finding compatibility

2008-05-19T00:32:00.000-07:00

I have written some novels about finding compatibles. None are satisfactory, one is obscenely long, another just way too long, a third may actually be of publishable length. I will begin to serialize abridgements of the long ones on a web page soon. It is worth noting that most of the ideas posted in these various blogs of mine came into being during the writing of the longest of the three, the immense Green Family Chronicles, over 5000 pages and counting. This book turned out to be so filled with technological fantasies that I started another, Technological Fantasies, now more or less complete at 1500 pages. The one I periodically try to publish is called Harmony and Matching, bringing in musical motif as well as talking about matching compatibles.

I fell so much in love with the characters in my longer two books that I could not stand the idea of killing them off. So as the eldest member of the Green Family reached the end of his life he was resurrected immediately into a computer, not as a copy but as himself. Thus began a whole new theme for this novel and it was also used in Technological Fantasies. See my Practical Immortality blog for more information.

Anyway, it is my sworn intention to get at least the raw text and probably more readable abridgements of the novels out there on the web as soon as I can.

dpw

sex-religion-politics

2008-05-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

I have a new blog, sex-religion-politics, all of which require or depend on some way of finding compatibles, compatible people for sexual relationships, people with compatible political views, and people holding compatible religious beliefs. To make it easier to access this and other blogs, I add here some links:

Please see these blogs:

This blog, FindCompatibles devoted to matching people with friends, lovers, jobs, places to live and so on, but doing so in ways that will actually work, using good math, good algorithms, good analysis.

Technological Fantasies devoted to future stuff, new ideas, things that might be invented or might happen, such as what is listed above and below.

Practical Immortality yes, practical immortality. Don't write this off as
insanity, please. See the first entry in the blog first.

Or, (oops!) here:

Practical Immortality hmmm. Slight spelling mistake. Use the above
link instead.

Related Web
Pages are, of course,
FindCompatibles,
Technological Fantasies
and Practical
Immortality, plus Social
Tech and my own home
page. For now these are (probably) all identical.

dpw

cross-reference web pages

2008-05-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

Please see http://findcompatibles.awardspace.com

dpw

helping to find suitable blog

2008-05-15T13:52:00.000-07:00

Blogs are greatly over-rated, as I have said, suffering from the same problems as other things addressed in this FindCompatibles blog. Using google I could not even find this blog myself.
Would more key phrases help? Find compatible people. Find jobs. Find a match. Search for a compatible person search for a suitable job. What else. There are many many FindCompatibles
problems, (see first post), but it's hard to think up words or phrases that might help.

One of my two other blogs has a similar problem. I could not find my Technological Fantasies
blog myself. On the other hand, my Practical Immortality blog was the first one listed when I searched for Practical Immortality on a Google Blogs search, though it was invisible if I just searched the web. Another odd thing. Although this FindCompatibles blog and my Technological Fantasies blog were invisible on google blog or web searches, I did find one of the posts on each that contained a reference to Practical Immortality. Strange.

Anyway, nobody but myself has posted anything on any of the three blogs. Why is that? Well, it is hard to find suitable blogs, of course.

dpw

finding blogs is finding compatibles problem

2008-05-05T15:12:00.000-07:00

Nobody finds this blog. I never find a blog that interests me. I know that the contents of this blog would interest many people out there. I am even more sure that there are blogs out there that would interest me. But somehow we just don't find each other. This is clearly a problem of the FindCompatibles type, the kind of problem this blog addresses. What to do about this?
Well, currently there is no good solution. Even Google is not an adequate search engine, and this is not really a searching problem but a matching problem. Ideally people should be able to find this blog or your blog whether they know what to search for or not. Ideally, this blog and your blog should be drawn to the attention of those it would interest, whether they search for it or not. In essence matching blogs to people is creating links within our social and informational environments.

I have some vague ideas about how to do this, but they need work. Attempts to find blogs should find the right ones, even if keyword searching on a search engine do not. Somehow a user should be able to keep a profile, then send out a summary of it with any added keywords that seem appropriate, so the search engine can do more than just a keyword search. Also, search engine providers should be able to keep profiles on users, without privacy or security problems, so they can notify users of appropriate blogs or web pages when they appear. But these notifications much not just be spam. An interesting problem.

I think the solution probably lies in having incoming data anonymized so that the searching or matching engine providers never know who is asking, and the anonymizing mechanism should be open to public inspection and regularly monitored to make sure it works. Equally the mechanism that de-anonymizes, taking data from a numbered user and turning into an e-mail address should also be open to the public and carefully monitored. The provider should have no access to the e-mail addresses or contents of the e-mails sent out under its name. To avoid a spam problem, users should be able to specify how much and how often they will receive an e-mailed message from a given source. Messages should be prioritized before de-anonymization.

All this seems possible to me. I probably have made mistakes even in the few details I hint at, but something like it is possible. I wish I could get the Google people or one of their competitors to work on this, but I am not sure how to do that. I am not good at getting my ideas across.
I hope someone can help, even if only by disagreeing with me and thereby forcing me to think harder about all this.

As before, let me suggest that you look at my Technological Fantasies and Practical Immortality blogs on this host. I think they are worth at least a quick look at.

dpw

related blogs

2008-05-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

I have created two new blogs. One is called Technological Fantasies, after an old web site of mine. The ability to find compatible people for social relationships and to find jobs or places to live or the best education for a specific person is indeed a technological fantasy. For the difficulty of achieving this but the extremely valuable consequences of doing so, see the first post in this FindCompatibles blog.

The second new blog is called Practical Immortality after the name of a field guide in a large novel I have written. If anything can be called a Technological Fantasy, then this surely is. But I claim it is achievable, or will be in the near future. As with other important projects, I believe that the first step is to find compatible people to work on it. Finding Compatibles is my panacea, the solution to all problems. I hope someone will disagree with this -- it would be so nice to be able to defend it.

dpw

non-profit change-the-world organizations

2008-04-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

I have repeatedly tried to appeal to people interested in the idea of finding compatibles, but most of the people who have responded (the very few, sad to say) want someone now, not a plan for changing the world. Indeed, I can offer very little to such people other than the advice that dating services are at best worthless and probably harmful. I see now that I must try to attract the attention of people in non-profit change-the-world organizations or people with a deep seated interest in changing the world. For, as I said in my first post, to make it possible to find compatible people, places, job, educational opportunities, and so on, would be to change the world more than anyone can imagine. Want to solve the drug problem? Don't address the symptom, the drug abusers, the drug trade, instead address the root of the problem, which is the social environment which leads people to abuse drugs. Whatever problem your non-profit organization addresses, whatever problem interests you, I claim that it is susceptible to the cure I prescribe. See my first post for some information on that. Please, try to understand what I am saying and why.

dpw

finding compatible outlets for your ideas

2008-04-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

I don't expect too much from this blog. I think those with ideas who want to tell the world about them should not expect too much. Basically there are just too many web pages, too many blogs, too many information sources. Even though there are a large number of users, the net doesn't work very well, it doesn't match ideas with the people who might be interested in them. It should, but that is a combinatorially difficult problem. All I can do is keep at it and hope someone finds it. That is the most any of us can hope.

dpw

fragment of a screenaplay

2008-04-23T20:46:00.000-07:00

Mostly for my own amusement I am posting this short section of a screenplay, which says something about this topic. The first section is just to establish the characters, part of an unusual family, then the next section is about the compatibility problem. Sorry about the wrong formatting. Cutting from a real application and pasting into this blogging software screws it all up.
-------------------
FADE IN:
INT. GREEN FAMILY BUILDING
A tall slim woman about 30 is talking to a taller
man in his early 50s.
SARAH RIVERS
Ken, I think you should talk to Beth.
She doesn't seem happy. She is
beginning to develop, you know, and
David won't leave her alone. I think
he wants to examine the subject first
hand.
KEN GREEN
Well, I would have, at his age. But
if she is not happy I will have to
talk to her. I can always do that.
INT. BETH'S ROOM
Beth's room is filled with books and computer
equipment.
KEN
Hi there, beautiful. Bethie, dear.
I am a bit worried about you. Your
mother doesn't think you are very
happy.
BETH GREEN
Daddy, do I have to go to school?
KEN
No. You have to get an education.
But it doesn't have to be in school.
You could stay home and study with
Annette or another teacher, if you
want.
BETH
I think I will, if you don't mind.
KEN
It's OK with me. I'll square it
with your mother. You're too smart
for that grade at school anyway.
Annette or one of the others can
handle most of it, but I'll do some
of it with you myself for math or
the hard sciences. You are way ahead
of them, there.
A few days later. Books are spread about. Ken
has been giving a lesson to his daughter
KEN
... And so, Bethie, that was wave
mechanics. It later fell out of
favor, not before Louis de Broglie
received the Nobel prize in physics
for it.
BETH
But Daddy, it is so mathematical, he
should have received the Nobel prize
in mathematics for it instead,
shouldn't he, Daddy?
KEN
Well there is no Nobel prize in
mathematics, Beth.
BETH
That's silly. Why not?
KEN
Well, Alfred Nobel, the man who
donated the money for the prizes
apparently didn't think mathematics
was as important. He left out
biology, too, though he included
medicine.
BETH
What about computer science?
KEN
The early mechanical computers were
almost unknown or jokes or annoying
office machines at best. Nobody
thought they would ever be important
and Alfred Nobel didn't either.
BETH
Are all Nobel prizes forever to be
determined by the prejudices of one
man, Daddy?
KEN
No, much later, in the 1960s sometime,
the national bank of Sweden donated
the money for a Nobel prize in
economics.
BETH
Well somebody should donate the money
for a Nobel prize in mathematics.
KEN
Well, I'm trying to fund the creation
of a university, Beth.
BETH
Oh, I didn't mean you, silly. I
know enough to know that the Nobel
prizes are paid out on the interest
from the original amount of money
that the guy left in his will, right?
They are about a million bucks, Daddy,
so it would take at least 10 million
to fund a new one, and probably more
like 30 million, right? I don't
think you have that kind of money.
KEN
Beth.
BETH
You do?
KEN
Well, the university is going to
cost me at least 100 million, and
probably a lot more. A lot more.
BETH
Holy Cow, Daddy. Did you inherit
this, or get it doing business, or
something?
KEN
In business.
BETH
If you are the important business
kind of guy with that much money,
how come you have so much time to
spend playing with your children?
KEN
I would let it all dribble away before
I gave up a single minute playing
with my children. Especially you.
BETH
Oh, Daddy. So, here's what you do,
Daddy. Put your loose change in a
piggy bank. You probably have a lot
of loose change. If you put only
the tiny bit you can afford without
hurting your university or family
into a piggy bank, say a few thousand
a year, or whatever it is, then maybe
you can fund a Nobel prize in
mathematics some year.
KEN
Yes, I guess that would work. Maybe
I could do computing science as well.
I could probably put together 100
million worth of loose change in 10
or 15 years.
BETH
Daddy, you are teasing me!
KEN
No I'm not, Beth.
BETH
How much money do you have, anyway?
KEN
Well, lots.
BETH
Are you a billionaire, Daddy?
KEN
Please don't tell anyone, Beth, but
yes, I am.
BETH
Wow, rich Daddy! OK, I won't tell.
I guess that's how you can afford to
have dozens of children.
KEN
Beth, I have hundreds of children.
BETH
Oh. Oh, yeah, I guess I knew that.
So many leave with their mommy's
that I forget. Daddy, you are a
very unusual man!
KEN
(looking straight at
his first child)
I think if I'd stopped after the
first, I would be almost as happy.
Pretty Beth blushes, pleased with his praise.
BETH
Oh, Daddy. You are so nice. Well,
if you are rich rich rich, I think
you should start that piggybank and
try to setup those two new Nobel
prizes within a couple of decades.
OK?
KEN
OK, I promise. But you have to try
to win one of them, alright?
BETH
Well, maybe, but I think my field is
social technology. I guess you can't
endow a prize for a discipline you
almost invented, especially when
nobody seems to be doing it. Let's
revisit that question in a decade or
two, OK, Daddy?
KEN
Sure thing, princess.
INT. GREEN FAMILY BUILDING - DAY
Facing away from a communal cooking and dining
area is a row of what looks like model houses,
houses reduced in scale to fit underneath a 12
foot ceiling. The rightmost one of these houses
Ken Green, owner of the building and progenitor of
the many children who reside in the other half of
the building. Ken's 11 year old daughter Beth
Green approaches and knocks on the door of her
father's house. He opens it and looks out at her
smiling happily down on his favorite child.
BETH
Daddy. Do you have a few moments?
KEN
I always have time for you, Beth.
BETH
Good. Though I'd never want to take
you away from one of the mommies or
prospective mommies. But if you
really do have time, let's go to the
library.
KEN
True, I do have my duties. But you
have caught me at a good time, at
rest between my labors. Let us go
to the library, then.
INT. LIBRARY WITHIN GREEN FAMILY BUILDING
A large room filled with books and large filing
cabinets. There are a couple of tables with
chairs around them, and some more comfortable
chairs nearby. Beth sits down at a table,
motioning her father to sit beside her. She
points at a small stack of three books in front of
her and slightly to one side. Her father gives a
look of distaste.
KEN
(with a theatrical
moan)
Oh. Those.
BETH
Yes, Daddy, I've read them.
KEN
Beth, I am surprised at you. I have
always felt you to be Number One.
You have always been number one to
me, but now it seems you are number
two.
BETH
I am?
KEN
Yes indeed. I believe Edna Stiller
read them a few years ago. She was
the first, so far as I know.
BETH
Yes. I've spoken to Edna. She says
they are brilliant, but much much
too difficult. She tried to use the
easiest one for a college class once,
but the students found it too hard.
Anyway, nevermind. Nevermind. Let's
move on to the little demonstration
I have prepared.
KEN
(relieved)
Please.
Beth has three cardboard boxes sitting in front of
her, each for a small jigsaw puzzle.
BETH
Behold. The puzzles. Let me just
shove these books aside and the first
one.
KEN
I seem to remember you graduating
from jigsaw puzzles to advanced math
about age 3, Bethie.
BETH
Yes, and it may have been too soon,
as you will see.
Beth dumps the first box out on the table and
starts turning pieces over, face up, and grouping
them together by appearance. After a moment, her
father begins to help.
BETH
Good, Daddy. You are doing the right
thing. You see, you first turn find
pieces that fell out of the box upside
down so that you can see what they
look like, then you move them around.
Human society, Daddy. Human society.
You are trying to fit the pieces
together.
KEN
Alright, good metaphor.
BETH
Yes. Now some fixed point theorem
says there is a piece we don't have
to move, but in practice we have to
move all the pieces around. Nothing
stays where it was. We don't just
try to force any of them to fit with
some other piece that happens to be
nearby, do we?
KEN
Ah. So you have read the books.
Depressing, isn't it. Imagine several
billion pieces, scattered all over
the world. Imagine trying to fit
all of them together.
BETH
Relatively easy, Daddy. Now let me
sweep this aside so we can look at
the second box.
Beth opens the second box to reveal a puzzle that
is all put together nicely lying in the bottom of
the box.
BETH
Now this one I have put together.
So, if I am careful ...
She quickly turns the box over. The puzzle comes
out upside down, with almost all the pieces still
stuck together. Rather than trying to put those
back in place, she scatters them around randomly.
BETH
Doesn't this seem a bit more like
reality, Daddy? Not only are the
pieces scattered about at random,
but we can't see what they really
look like. Each one is a mystery to
us. Just as the people around us
are all mysteries. We can't see
what they are really like, inside.
KEN
Yes. I get it. Let's say that if
two pieces happen to be side by side
they can talk each other into turning
face to face, showing each other
their faces. Even then ...
BETH
Yes, even then. Billions of
mysteries, scattered all over the
globe. Yet think about a jigsaw
puzzle, Daddy. The pieces are all
different in shape and will only go
together one way. Maybe a few pieces
will almost fit and can be forced,
but there is one solution we are
trying for.
KEN
So what is in the other box?
BETH
Well, let me show you.
She opens the final box. In it is also a puzzle
nicely put together. She briefly shows it to him,
then turns it over carefully, then scatters the
upside down pieces at random, as before. But this
time the pieces have various esoteric signs and
symbols stamped on their backs.
KEN
Ah. What do the symbols mean, Beth?
BETH
That is for you to figure out, Daddy.
I won't guarantee that they mean
anything. Also, some of these pieces
may be lying. Some of these ones
stamped with a happy face may actually
be only pretending to have a sunny
disposition. Marry one and you
realize it should have had pitchforks
stamped upon it.
KEN
Other than the ones that lie, should
we try to put ones bearing similar
symbols together?
BETH
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe their is
some preferred way of matching them,
so we should always match up the
triangles with a specific star shape.
I won't tell you the answer, Daddy.
People don't know any such rules, do
they? No, Daddy, this is human
society, not just a collection of
mysteries, but mysteries with
mysterious clues that may be
meaningful or not. They may be lies,
but even if correct, nobody knows
how to interpret them.
KEN
I seem to remember a conclusion that
depressing, somewhere, but you have
expressed it brilliantly. Just what
I would have expected from the
smartest girl in the world.
BETH
If I'm so smart, how come I can't
figure out how I will ever find myself
someone when I grow up. I am not
going to fall for someone I just
happen to run into, Daddy. And I am
not going to pretend I have figured
out the clues and know the right
person. So what am I to do? Will I
ever have a truly compatible husband,
Daddy?
KEN
Well you know, Beth, no father wants
to think of his little girl in the
arms of a man anyway.
BETH
Too bad. I am going to have a real
life, Daddy, out in the real world,
a full life, with all that entails.
I have lived my whole life in this
building, you know. I've been very
happy here, but you know what happens
to kids eventually. It is inevitable.
KEN
I suppose it is.
BETH
Fine. Glad you agree. Well, I am
now a very mature 11 year old, wise
beyond my years. Wise enough to
know that you have not a day over
five years to fix this, Daddy.
KEN
How am I suppose to do that?
BETH
Didn't you ever hire some expert
advice about this, Daddy.
KEN
Of course I did. The experts mostly
concluded it was unsolvable, except
for those who thought it was trivially
easy. Those who had that idea were
just envisioning a fancy dating
service.
BETH
Did you ever use a dating service,
Daddy?
KEN
Ouch. The less said about that, the
better. Let's just say that they
either pretend to read the cryptic
signs on the backs of the puzzle
pieces, or they stamp more symbols
on them and leave you to puzzle them
out. Nothing useful. I think they
are mathematically impossible anyway.
BETH
Well, we have to figure out how to
do this. Five years, Daddy. I don't
want to be the only 16 year old
without a date.
KEN
Oh, Bethie, please. No dating until
you are at least 30, please.
BETH
No, I am not going to be waiting
around till the bloom is off this
rose, no matter what your fatherly
preferences might be. Five years.
KEN
You will have to help, then.
BETH
Of course I will help. Now Daddy,
you are going to hire a bunch more
experts. But this time I will help
you select them, and we will show
them the rejected results of your
earlier studies right up front.
Anyone who suspects one conclusion
or the other might be right will not
get the job. You are a rich man,
Daddy, you can afford to throw some
money at this. To start with, I
think we should rent me a numerical
methods expert and a discreet math
person, someone who designs
algorithms. OK?
KEN
Done. I'll get your mother to start
making some queries.
BETH
Good.
With her fathers help, Beth shovels the puzzle
pieces back into the boxes, stacks the boxes up,
on top of one another, then piles the three books
on top. Her father again looks at them with
distaste.
------

dpw

Compatible What?

2008-04-23T16:24:00.000-07:00

Well, at very least, finding people for sexual relations, potential spouses, but almost as important, finding friends, especially one best friend of your own sex or whatever sex you are NOT attracted to sexually.

But by Compatible What? I mean more than that. I mean finding jobs that are really suitable, places to live, even blogs to read.

Personally I need to find a friend, but that is not what matters to me the most. I want to find someone who Understands The Problem.

I have written about this and written about this and written about this, but nobody seems to understand that:

1. The best person in 1,000,000 is just barely good enough. Everyone has at least 6 independent attributes that they could evaluate on an scale from 1 to 10, or to put it another way, everyone has at least 32 independent attributes that can be binary, yes or no, true or false. To think you can satisfy those attributes from a pool of less than 1,000,000 candidates is just plain wrong.

2. Dating services do not do matching, as they claim to do, they are at best search engines. Anyone who uses search engines regularly should know that only the easiest searches produce good results right away.

3. There are so many people in this world, billions of them, that there must be good matches for everyone, but your odds of finding a good enough match any important social relationship worse than the odds of winning the lottery.

4. There are genuine solutions or at least very good approximate solutions to all these problems, but they will not be found and implemented until someone takes the problems seriously.

5. You can read newsmagazinex, daily newspapers, watch television, even get a college education, without any of these problems being even mentioned, let alone discussed.

6. Almost all the problems addressed in such media are deeply rooted in compatibility issues. Drugs, for example. People with truly close friends an other important relationships are much less likely to feel the need for drugs and alcohol. They are much more likely to give up substance abuse with the help of compatible other people. Some problems are obvious:
divorce, domestic violence, children growing up without a true and healthy family environment. Other problems are less obvious but can clearly be dealt with in a good social environment. Parents who tell their children not to fall in with a bad crowd are right. Having the wrong friends leads to trouble, leads to crime.

7. Self-help books make things worse. They focus on better communication, which means how to improve bad social relationships. Just don't do that. Don't communicate better with the wrong people, find the right people.

8. As of this moment there is no reliable or even marginally effective way of finding the right people. But we can change that.

Well, that's enough for now. Rccommended reading on how social problems develop in a poor social environment: What Came Before He Shot Her, by Elizabeth George.

dpw