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Tyrrell_McAllister comments on Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics - Less Wrong
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I'm not sure that many would object to this analogy. It strengthens the case that sharing PUA techniques isn't an appropriate use of LW, just as sharing beauty-enhancing techniques isn't.
It seems to me that the situation is pretty simple, for PU artistry as well as for advertising. Most PUA techniques that I've seen amount to efforts to persuade using Dark Side Epistemology. Bottom-lining is rampant. For example, with "negging", the PUA starts with the bottom line "You should feel self-conscious and insecure", and then seeks only evidence that supports this conclusion.
Such PUA techniques should be discussed like any other Dark Side methods: with a view towards minimizing their use and effectiveness.
I think I agree. My opinion is that LW shouldn't be for PUA/beauty tips or how-to's. But it would be appropriate to discuss why these methods work, under what conditions you'd want to resist them, and what countermeasures you can take. (And I suspect some don't even want it to go this far, or want to restrict PUA more than beauty.)
So, IMO it would be appropriate to say, "This beauty/PUA technique exploits the psychological hardware in men/women for the following evolutionary reasons ... "
But it would not be appropriate to say, "Here's a trick you can use to dupe men/women into obeying you/sleeping with you ..."
Have there been actual discussions here about beauty enhancement techniques that we should worry about restricting?
I meant they would have a different standard for discussing the cognitive bias issues related to beauty (despite the parallel in PUA), not that such discussions have been common.
What leads you to make this prediction?
The massive flamewar this board had which was partially over the PUA issue, compared to the tame discussions of evolutionary psychology that touch on judgments of female beauty.
What leads you to find it implausible?
It's not that I find it implausible. It is that, other than you bringing it up, I don't know why I should even be considering that hypothesis.
Can you point to a particular statement about evolutionary psychology referencing female beauty that is analogous to a statement about PUA, but did not provoke analogous offense?
Easily.
That example does not work. For one thing, the same paragraph goes on to describe:
None of the comments to that post expressed any offense at either of these descriptions, so this illustrates the symmetry you predict does not exist.
Also, neither of these descriptions was advocating that anyone should deliberately trigger these evolved thought processes in others to manipulate them, and thus are missing what people find offensive about PUA.
A good answer to my question should point to three things: a discussion of beauty techniques which provoked no offense, an analogous discussion of PUA, and someone taking offense to the analogous discussion of PUA. By analogous I mean that the elements that made the PUA discussion offensive should correspond to elements in the beauty techniques discussion.
I think it's time to take a step back here: I stated a suspicion of a bias in one direction with regards to the "male side" and the "female side" of an issue as it appears on this site (and, I'd add, society in general). A suspicion, not something I could document my basis for forming. This is a low standard to meet.
In turn, you raise a reasonable question about why this hypothesis should even be on the radar (i.e. am I maybe privileging a hypothesis)? However, this is a less-than-2-bit claim. Given the topic matter, either there's a bias in one direction, or in the other, or there's no bias. Focusing on any one of those doesn't require a lot of evidence to justify to begin with, so again it's a low standard to meet.
Furthermore, you seem to arbitrarily give no weight to the fact of a large flamewar on PUA, without a corresponding one of female physical attractiveness. (And, I'd add, no one's modded you up after your first question, while they've modded me up.)
Therefore, your requests on this issue seem out of proportion to the evidence I need to present. This suggests to me there's a deeper issue going on, which maybe we should be discussing instead. If so, could you tell me what that issue is?
Now, with that said, I will answer your latest question: it's true that both the male appeal and the female appeal were discussed in the link I gave. And yes, in giving that example, I did need you to fill in a few assumptions to see why it supports my case. So let me explain what conclusions we should draw from that post:
Imagine that EY's post were a bit different. Let's say that instead he went to great detail explaining the female attractiveness enhancing techniques, explain why make-up works (it has to do with how the brain interprets images from shadows, light gradient, etc.), why certain gestures work, why certain styling works. Let's also say that he went into comparable detail about things that the male did to increase his sexual desirability, and why those are effective.
In order to describe something of parallel effectiveness, he would probably need to go into things like: actions that make him appear higher status than her (such as "negs"), and the reason for giving a false (verbal) pretense for retiring to a hotel room.
Do you think that these more educational -- and equally educational -- descriptions on both sides would provoke equal outrage? If so, I can see why it is unconvincing to you, and why I wouldn't be able to find similar side-by-side examples to satisfy your standard of evidence.
But we do have a chance to put this to the test. I've been reading two books about the human mind which touch on visual processing and why makeup works. If I wrote an article for LW that discussed these issues in such a way that a female reader could use it to ("artificially") increase her attractiveness, but it didn't provoke the outrage that PUA-informative posts have provoked, would you count that as evidence in my favor?
I think we both already know what would happen, though.
Actually, the function of a neg is not to induce insecurity, but to disarm. Mystery's original goal was to create a method of seducing what he calls "exceptionally beautiful women", who are often surrounded by hordes of supplicant males flattering their beauty.
The function of the neg in this context was to show that Mystery was not applying for membership in the woman's puppy dog pack, and thereby signaling a higher status than those other males, as well as indicating that she would need more than her physical attractiveness in order to interest him.
It also served an additional purpose of preventing both the "target" and her friends (male or female) from being initially aware of his interest in her, to keep them from engaging in whatever stereotyped defensive behaviors they might have for discouraging people from hitting on her.
The actual effect of a neg may include insecurity, but the intended effect is to make the PUA appear "hard to get", and therefore more attractive... even if only as a challenge to the woman's "game". Mystery's "jealousy plots" are a similar class of maneuver.
In any case, outside the context of "exceptionally beautiful woman" (who knows she's desirable) with a pack of friends and/or "orbiters", the use of actual "negs" are counterindicated. David DeAngelo's "cocky funny", or RSD's "self-amusement" concepts are more generally applicable in such cases, and a neg is really just an intensified version of the playful teasing of those other methods, for a specific field of application.
[By the way, this is not an endorsement of any of these methods by me, just an attempt to correct a (common) misunderstanding about negs. If you've watched Mystery's TV show, you might be aware that some aspiring PUAs are also under the impression that a neg is an insult to lower self-esteem... and you may have also seen just how horribly wrong things actually go when you try to use it that way. ;-) ]
My point is only that the neg is an example of bottom-lining. First you decide that you will convince her of something that will have certain effects on her. Then you decide on the evidence that you will highlight to convince her of this.
I'm confused. ISTM that Mystery's primary intention (as stated very frequently by him) is to convey the message, "I am not like other men". Everything about his behavior and appearance is tailored to communicate that message, and as a result, it is true. He is not like other men, in his appearance and behavior, unless they are imitating him.
Also, you said here that:
Mystery's "song" is (accurately) portraying himself as a quirky nonconformist who requires more than beauty to impress him.
The real flaw in Mystery's method is not that the behavior itself is wrong, but that his systematic disassembly and reassembly of large- and small-scale behavior patterns is not a good teaching method for getting people to be attractive, because the act of transmission via breaking down and reassembling inevitably communicates and reinforces various wrong things.
In effect, the breakdown mechanicalizes people and reduces authenticity until someone develops enough confidence of their own -- fake it till you make it, so to speak. The problem is that then some people never get past faking it, and the actual faking may be questionable.
In essence, Mystery asked, "what behaviors do I need to perform to attract women?", and used this same question to inform his training of others.
But the people who are these days rebuilding Mystery's training methods, have been asking a different, and much better question: "how do I become the kind of person who naturally exhibits the kind of behaviors that (the kind of ) women (I'd be interested in) find attractive?"
Modern methods emphasize identifying the mental and physical characteristics of your ideal mate ("your true 10" in DYD-speak, or your "blueprint woman" in RSD-speak), as a prelude to identifying what sort of man to become... which is more analagous to finding out what kind of music someone likes, so you can play it for them.
Mystery's real problem, however, was not that he didn't identify the target audience for his "music", or that he didn't try to play the kind of "music" he observed that audience responding to. It's that he was operating from an assumption that he wasn't good enough in himself, and that therefore he needed to mimic attractive behaviors, rather than simply becoming attractive himself. To resume your music analogy, it's as though he believed he needed to lipsync the music of others, rather than to learn to actually "sing" himself.
The larger PUA community, I think (or at least the thought leaders), have come to the conclusion that, despite Mystery's immense contributions to the analysis and understanding of the social dynamics of meeting and relating to people in nightclubs, this assumption of inferior status and value as a starting point to interaction (because initially, Mystery's situation was one of needing to lift himself from an inferior status), was a serious mistake that drove the community in bad directions and reinforced the insecurity and immaturity of many, rather than helping them to face and overcome those issues.
Your post is consistent with my understanding, also.
Furthermore, Mystery's model of women is biased towards the modal female extravert. Since he based most of his understanding of women on his club interactions, he was vulnerable to the availability heuristic. (Look! We are talking about rationality and pickup!)
It is indeed important to understand the modal/median/average women, but unless you actually want to date the type of woman, you need to understand other types of women, also. Yet the view of women in the community seems a bit over-homogenized towards the types of women that PUAs encounter most often.
Furthermore, I think part of the reason that some PUAs sound cynical or patronizing when they talk about women is that PUAs are not the average male. They are probably higher than average in intelligence and introversion, yet they are comparing female extraverts of average intelligence to themselves and finding them lacking; this is an unfair comparison.
Are the women they're attracted to of average intelligence? I can see arguments pointing in four directions. The 9s and 10s are of average intelligence-- it's the null hypothesis. They're smarter than average-- if appearing maximally attractive takes some skill (and it does), then g should help. They're less intelligent than average-- they've been coasting on their looks. They're of average or above average intelligence, but choose to appear less intelligent so as not to put men off.
Hey, I resent the implication that all PUAs are attracted to the same kind of women. ;-) (j/k - I resent nothing.)
However, PUA tastes in women are not all alike, at least if you look at their gurus as an indicator. My estimate is that David D seems to go for stability, intelligence, and class, Juggler values interesting and emotional conversation, Soporno seeks fun, sensuality, and maturity/depth. (My personal estimates based solely on information from their publicly available materials.)
Of course, there's a lot of other gurus who only brag about their ability to pick up "hot" women, or in Mystery's case, "women of exceptional beauty", and for them, intelligence doesn't seem to be something they care about one way or the other.
I suspect this has more to do with these men seeking Status from their ability to "get" these women, rather than seeking the Affiliation and Stimulation of the women's company. (As is more clearly the case with some of the other gurus I mentioned.)
Modal?
Oh, I guess you mean "typical", as opposed to atypical. I thought maybe it was a typo for "model", since Mystery's aim was reported to include models, bartenders, strippers, hostesses and other "women hired for their beauty".
Which kind of underscores your point in an odd way -- his observations were NOT based on "average" women at all, but on neurotypical extroverts of above-average appearance.
"Modal," as in "pertaining to the mode."
Yes, my broader point is that a lot of the observations of PUAs are based on the women they meet the most often. The type of women they meet the most often is club-goers of above average attractiveness. The average intelligence of these women is likely to be around the population average, they are probably above average in extraversion, and they have highly "people-oriented" interests (and they may well be above average in neuroticism and below average in conscientiousness).
These female phenotypes may be common, but there are plenty of other female phenotypes that are less well understand by PUAs. Furthermore, the phenotypes of female club-goers are massively, massively different from the phenotypes of PUAs, who are probably 1-2 standard deviations above the mean in intelligence, above average in introversion, and "thing-oriented" rather than "people-oriented" in their interests (many PUAs might not even be completely neurotypical).
So when we see PUAs holding cynical attitudes towards women, such as "chick crack," or talking about women as children or pets (these last attitudes are rare, but not unheard of), we should consider that they are unfairly comparing average women to themselves. When PUAs talk about women like they are a different species, perhaps it is because average-intelligence people-oriented female extraverts do seem like a different species from 130 IQ thing-oriented male introverts.
If PUAs were to be interacting with women more psychometrically similar, perhaps they wouldn't experience the feelings of alienation from women that so many currently do, and which women find off-putting in their speech. Furthermore, my experience is that once I started interacting with women who weren't 1-2 standard deviations different from me on most major psychometric traits, a lot of the "problems" I was having interacting with women (e.g. not being sufficiently extraverted and dominant) suddenly vanished.
Yet I am reluctant to blame PUAs for not going after women who are like them. First, these women are harder to find, since they are introverts and less likely to go to clubs. Second, I have good reasons to believe that there are simply less nerdy women than nerdy men, for any reasonable operationalization of "nerdy." There is not a nerdy girl for every nerdy guy.
I find it perfectly understandable that PUAs are basing their models of women on the women that it is easiest for them to find, but I do wish there was a bit more emphasis on building a model of the type of woman that you want and figuring out where to find her. Day game is certainly progress in that direction, and I've also had some good results with online dating.
I'd be interested to hear them. I'm aware of the stereotype but not any evidence (other than perhaps dubious IQ data).
Other than that, your comment matches my impressions. I have in the past seen nerdy friends of mine go to bars "to meet women", and had to ask, "Why would you do that? You'll just meet women who like going to bars!"
Also, I've found that most people seem stupid, so I imagine if I were the sort of person who specifically aimed to meet lots of women, I'd likewise form the impression that most women are stupid. It seems like an easy mistake of generalization for someone with nerdy male friends and average female acquaintances to think "women are stupid"; there but for the grace of FSM go I.
Does nerdy = intelligent? Or (as I suspect) is nerdiness the only kind of intelligence of interest to most nerds?
Both.
On reflection, I'm not sure "women who are easy to find" is a such a good excuse. They haven't seen intelligent women in their families or classes?
I realize it's hard to notice things that you aren't in the habit of noticing, and I make a serious effort not to insult people for ignorance-- if you don't know something, you don't know it. Still, I wish these guys could notice that "women are stupid" is an idea which is likely to be self-reinforcing.
And it's harder to pay attention to other factors when you're in an environment which includes a lot of supernormal stimuli.
I take your last point in a somewhat different direction-- if you don't know what you want, but you're trying to build yourself a good life, you'll be over-influenced by status considerations.
And then you decide that your precautions against causing harm must be good enough.
I have no desire to minimize the use or effectiveness of techniques women use to enhance their beauty. Or were you not considering that a 'Dark Side' method?
I think the 'Dark Side' sometimes gets an overly bad rap around here. I wish to understand the techniques so I can avoid being manipulated into doing things that are against my broader interests and I would prefer to see less use of dubious techniques for persuasion in discussions that are supposed to be truth-seeking but I wouldn't want to see all 'manipulative' techniques disappear completely. Sometimes I enjoy being emotionally 'manipulated', whether by art (movies, music, paintings, literature) or by deliberate suspension of disbelief in personal interactions. Being a rationalist should not require turning oneself and the world into the 'Spock' stereotype.
Not all PUA techniques are examples of Dark Side Epistemology, nor are all beauty-enhancing techniques. Some, however, are.
Could you elaborate on what you consider the dividing line to be? Is it merely the awareness of the target of the techniques being employed? I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that as a dividing line: I enjoy music and the effect it has on my emotions despite not being sufficiently knowledgeable about music to understand the mechanics of how to achieve a particular emotional effect. I am aware such techniques exist but I don't know the details. Similarly with female beauty enhancement. I'm more aware of the techniques film makers use to manipulate emotions because I have spent quite a lot of time learning about them but when enjoying a film in the moment I do not wish to consciously focus on them.
I think that the best heuristic is to look for bottom-lining. Have you decided on what you want to convince her of before you have determined what evidence you will selectively show her to bring her to that conclusion? If so, you might be practicing dark side epistemology.
I don't think that the case with music is the same in general. First, merely convincing you to like something is different from convincing you that something is true. Merely convincing you to think that I'm attractive is one thing. Inducing you to do so by convincing you that there's something strange about how your hair looks is another.
Second, suppose that I want you to buy my songs. if I want to convince you that my music is good, then the honest way to do so is to figure out what you like in music, and then to make music with those qualities. But note that there's no bottom-lining here. When you get the song, you will ideally listen to it first, and then draw the conclusion that it's good.
This is an interesting argument, but I don't think that you can hold the same standards of epistemic rationality to matters of social perception. To a large extent, coolness, social status, and attractiveness are subjective qualities that depend on the perception of others. The Earth will not become flatter because you persuade a lot of people that it is flat, but if you can persuade a lot of people that you are cool, then you probably really are cool (general "you," of course).
There is nothing wrong with deciding in advance what "bottom line" conclusion you want people to hold about you (e.g. that you are cool, high status, or attractive), because if you successfully behave in way that influences people to have that perception, then it often magically becomes true, making your original behavior legitimate. Even if you are a shy person adopting that behavior for the first time. At least, it is true in the context of interaction with those people. And if you fail to give them that perception ("this guy isn't as cool as he thinks he is"), then no harm is done because they see through you.
There is nothing "dark side" about trying to act as cool, high status, or attractive as possible, and trying to push the limits (as long as this behavior isn't based on lying or deception). People will either accept you as having those attributes, or they won't. (The only ethical exception is in cases of actual lying or deception, such as about one's job, age, finances, history, social position, etc... In this case, it does become meaningful to say that someone's social perception of you can be based on false pretenses.)
The "truth" about your "real" status and attractiveness is not something that you yourself can decide in advance; at best, you only have a confidence interval. Since you don't know where your "real" status and attractiveness lie, then you shouldn't worry so much about deceiving people about it. Instead of trying to decide your status in advance and "protect" people from having an inflated perception of it, you should try to figure out your status by interacting with people and seeing what behavior others accept from you and respond well to (in more cynical terms, "see what you can get away with"). Other people are perfectly capable of protecting themselves from you acting too big for your britches.
People will tell you, explicitly or implicitly, how cool and attractive you are; there is no need for you to try to decide for them. I will hypothesize that this is how most normal people conduct social interaction, and there is nothing wrong with nerdy people knowingly replicating the same behavior even if it isn't intuitive to them.
Social perception: the only place in the universe where perception actually is reality (at least, to a large degree).
While that sounds nice in theory, it's not realistic. In all human interaction people try to present their best attributes first. This is normal and generally harmless. In fact, most people would find it quite odd if when someone introduced themselves they instantly revealed their major self-perceived flaws. If you continue to withhold important information that you know is likely to be perceived negatively by another person over a long period then you start to cross a line that most people would consider unreasonable but I think you need to offer a more restrictive definition of what is considered the 'dark side' unless you want to rule out most normal human interaction.
It seems that 'dark side' gets used in two somewhat different ways here. What Eliezer describes in Dark Side Epistemology seems a narrower definition than is sometimes employed by others. I haven't seen a clear definition of this broader meaning but it appears to include techniques that are calculated to produce a particular effect in the audience and incorporates the kinds of 'tricks' that artists use to make their works emotionally resonant and powerful.
Dark Side Epistemology is something you do to yourself; the Dark Arts are methods you use on other people (or they use 'em on you). Unfortunately, the names are similar enough and human memory is buggy enough that it's a name collision for most people.
That's why it was renamed anti-epistemology.
Alas, the damage is done. Too bad we can't just update a DNS server-equivalent and have the change propagate to everybody's brains.
Indeed, though I wonder why the older posts on it weren't updated (or at least had notes on the naming added to them).