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SilasBarta comments on Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics - Less Wrong
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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.
I'm not sure that settles it....
"There is an object one foot across in the asteroid belt composed entirely of chocolate cake" is either true or it isn't - in the sense you used it, that's only a one-bit claim. So with "this murder was committed by Mortimer Q. Snodgrass, who lives at 128 Ordinary Ln."
It may be relevant that it takes a lot more than two bits to specify your hypothesis in the first place.
Let's have a real test, that actually has elements corresponding to the offensive elements of PUA. Write your article to explain how a woman can use beauty enhancement techniques to increase her apparent attractiveness so that she can get men she is not actually interested in to buy her drinks, or do her other favors they incorrectly expect will win her attraction. Advocate that women should actually do this. I predict that this will cause offense. If it does not, that would count as evidence in your favor.