Beyond optimized dating

It all started with my summarizing my evolving views on dating approaches¹ to stir some discussion on one of the rationalist discords:

What do people think of pros and cons of old vs offld²?
One pitfall I see with old is that it makes it easy to do pretend work and feel like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing while in reality not making any progress and being stuck. Like, I have profile with decent pictures and doing my swiping and messaging that's it right? And if most convos fizzle out and occasional first dates go nowhere that's just coz this is a numbers game and you just have to keep grinding? Likely not.
"Dating outcomes are largely determined by who you are". Your profile content and who you swipe on and messages you send not to mention date behavior are conveying who you are, parts you're aware of and parts you aren't.

Feedback propagation in old is kinda terrible, it's a "wicked" learning environment, for many people it often takes a long while to realize they've been doing the same thing all over and stepping on the same rakes in different guises. How many of us are getting profiles reviewed by dating-successful folks of same/opposite gender, not to mention talking through swiping decisions and convo histories?..
Guess what I'm saying is that old tends to be somewhat solitary/isolated/sterile environment not by itself conducive to social learning that some of us need to get where we need in dating (typical mechanism for social learning being repeated varied interactions in a community context allowing people around you to collect data and well-positioned trusted friends to deliver you feedback based on that). Guess my mental model of what holds some of us back is limited socialization/work left to be done on social adjustedness: and under this model what is needed is socialization and some offld first, whereas old is a distraction/excuse to avoid doing that.
Old is more enhancer/scaler, not build-from-ground-uper: once you are a kinda person ready and capable of attracting and building relationships with the right kind of women, or getting close to that, old can put you in touch with great matches/allow to get even more experience faster. But it’s not a place to work on yourself.

In replies I got the following interesting OD reference:

Counterpoint, regarding dating apps being better for learning:

Dating Minefield vs. Dating Playground

Which interestingly took the opposite stance to mine on pretty much everything, so it was fun to react. It came out a bit inflammatory, or even a bit ad hominem, more appropriate for high trust conversation than a public space, so, pardon the language:

"Who you are is what you perceive".
To me a lot of implicit presumptions in the essay scream "low trust", "low social skills resulting in extreme discomfort in social situations". The whole adversarial framing, "minefields", "dying", is telling.

This phrase is maybe the single most telling sign for me:
"Even if you don't get ousted for sexual harassment, your social standing in your community might be ruined by one clumsy flirting attempt"
Nooo! You're not an extremely awkward teen anymore (or can quickly learn not to be). You can pay attention to the cues and signals, chat up girls who seem somewhat interested, judge the reactions and proceed accordingly.
I understand and been through the traumas that lead to that kinda attitude.. and the people with that kinda attitude are exactly the target audience I had in mind for my original "work on your social skills first, old second" message.
World is full of randomness and all sorta things can happen, but imo one is gonna be held back by that lack of social skills whether in old or offld, except in offld it's upfront and in your face and asks to be dealt with.

On a different note, the article does a ton of strawmanning.
"School/work/hobby" are not all/the main offld avenues, parties and other relatively larger events with ample opportunities to meet friends of friends are.
"Waiting years before confession" to somebody presumably pretty close is not the archetypical offld experience, chatting up a girl who glanced your way a few times at a party is (one of) - and it's gonna be pretty clear if there is some interest, and either you get a number/arrange a date right there and then or not.
"Not using old at all" is another one - seriously, what world is that from, old is the low effort convenient default that everyone (ex the most socially successful who don't need to) tries first.

Overall, the article seems to implicitly advocate precisely what I meant to warn against: low social skills/high social anxiety guy going for old and avoiding dealing with those issues.. Listen, they aren't as intractable as you fear! Social skills can be significantly improved upon with the right kinda effort, benefitting both you and your dating life.

I don't have enough data to judge how often old for socially unskilled works well. The story of the apparently inexperienced stem phd going on old and immediately finding good success sounds insane to me but who knows.
My target audience here is more OD types, folks who've been on OLD for some time, spent some effort optimizing their pics and messages and all, yet haven't gotten into particularly serious relationships as a result.
If that's your reality I urge you to consider an alternative hypothesis that it's the harder to measure stuff that is holding you back, and that personality and/or social skills/socialization work is warranted, rather than continued polishing of your pictures and openers or ascribing limited success to pure luck.

1. To be transparent, I’ve always been too much of a mess to really care about finding a partner or devote a lot of energy to dating. So quite plausibly I’ve been more driven by curiosity than results-focus in this exploration.. which is maybe what enables one to be more exploratory in the first place.

2. Online dating, offline dating, resp.