= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
SilasBarta comments on Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (647)
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.
I'm familiar with the concept, Thom. Take a guess at why I used this phrasing:
GIven that we already have enough evidence to be discussing the matter, there are only a few options left.
So yes, if we had enough evidence to be considering MQS as the murderer, it would not require additional evidence to justify considering the hypotheses "MQS guilty" and "MQS innocent".
Perhaps I should have instead disputed whether the 'topic matter' was 'given'. But we've already established that my intuitions regarding gender / society / taboo / PUA are vastly different from yours, and that I seem to be atypical, so perhaps my skepticism is unimportant.
ETR: Okay, let me tone that reply down.
Yes, that would have made your point responsive, and have prevented you from falsely accusing me of a basic error. Please exercise caution when someone's comment initially appears to you to be rather stupid -- you may need to look at the context some more.
In the "Mortimer Q. Snodgrass" example, Snodgrass is not one of three or so people that the evidence has not ruled out, he is one of a vast multitude of people that the evidence has not ruled out.
Of the three (mutually exclusive, jointly exhaustive) hypotheses listed by Silas, which do you think corresponds in likelihood to "someone other than Snodgrass did it"? Or do you dispute that those form a worthwhile trio of hypotheses?
Indeed, I'm skeptical that there are a 'male side' and 'female side' to this issue, and that it's worthwhile to divide it up along gender lines, and that the two cases Silas refers to are analogous to the extent that it would be meaningful to talk about a 'bias' towards one as compared to the other. But I'm convinced there's a high enough probability that my skepticism is unwarranted that I shouldn't bug people about it at the moment.
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.
But I already agreed from the beginning that "how-to"s should be off-limits! So that's not a relevant test.
The question here is whether the cognitive bias issues related to male/female attraction (which could potentially inform someone wanting to increase attraction in others) are disproportionately stigmatized when they talk about female biases (which matches society's general tendency to let women be overt about effective ways to attact men beyond their natural beauty, but not men to attract women beyond their "natural" status).
People who describe biases in men (how e.g. bras can affect their judgment) do so without being criticized, but the parallel case doesn't hold for women. Now, do you have any further evidence to dispel this suspicion, or would you prefer to explain to me what's really motivating your question?
Fine. Then write an article about PUA that is not a how-to, presenting the biases involved as something women should be aware of when they are approached by men, and see if that is still offensive. The point is to make a real comparison, to hold both sides of this issue, men manipulating women and women manipulating men, to the same standard.
I am still not convinced there is any evidence for your suspicion. Everything you presented has been an apples and oranges comparison. The only data I have seen about an actually analagous pair of discussions is that no offense was produced in either case.
I consider it rude and a distraction from the object level discussion that you are questioning my motivation.
I guess I should have said more from the beginning: any detailed article about the bias will be usable as a how-to, by a sufficiently intelligent person. So why bother with the distinction, then? It's an issue of tone and etiquette. "Men are attracted to X for evolutionary reasons" is preferable to "Use X -- your ability to manipulate men will improve", even though the former is informative about the latter.
So I think that for me to write a sufficiently elaborate article like the one you've described will provoke outrage, no matter how refined the tone. And I consider that a proper test, but I reject the constraint that the article have a deliberate focus on "this is evil, here's how to protect yourself". Attractiveness in women has effects on men's minds; must any discussion of make-up be prefaced with "make-up is evil, here's how to identify a woman's 'beauty-invariants'"?
This just shows me the extent to which the bias I warn about is present in you, and why my allegation seems to bother you so much. "Manipulation" is a really big category, and we need to be talking about which kinds of manipulation are unethical and which aren't. The use of the term "manipulation" is followed up with an implicit standard of "behavior-altering actions I don't like", which are labeled "manipulation", while the ones you don't like "aren't manipulation because I like them".
Make-up, hairstyles, bras, etc. are forms of manipulation. Why are those acceptable, but not e.g. "negging"? That's something you have to prove, not just assume.
So when I see you automatically attach all kinds of negative features to bias discussions involving PUA, in order to count that as a fair comparison, that looks to me like you're trying to sneak in your own arguments by use of definition. And therefore counts as the very evidence of disparate treatment I warned about.
I consider it rude that you ignore my substantiation of that suspicion, and a distraction from the discussion that we should be having, of which my claim that you object to, is just one facet.
Because women make no bones telling men they're wearing make-up, or had their hair styled, but for a PUA to explain that they are using "negs" specifically to deflate a good-looking woman's ego would ruin the effect.
This is a case of the general hypothesis "manipulation is the use of techniques that wouldn't work if their targets knew about them".
An interesting intermediate case is the padded bra: this is deceptive, hence arguably manipulative, and I would predict with some confidence that both women and men would look askance at the practice (and that they'd both consider padded shoulders somewhat lame), while a purely decorative bra is OK.
How did you get from "women should be aware" of the biases, to "this is evil"? The constraint seems to fit with your standard:
I believe that discussions following this standard will not provoke offense. Mostly it is important to not come off as advocating the use of the technique for manipulation.
So, me wanting to use the same standards in evaluating the two things I want to compare is a sign of bias?
Where did I claim that some of these are acceptable and some are not? The standard I would apply is what sort of manipulations the manipulated person resents when they find out about it.
It would be perfectly fair for you to point to discussions of PUA that lack the features I describe as offensive, which still provokes offense, and to analogous discussion of beauty techniques that do not provke the same offense. Since I know, and have explained, what evidence would persuade me that I am wrong about what features are negative, it is not fair to claim I am saying they are negative by definition.
I did not ignore your substantiation. I refuted it. You don't get a free pass on supporting a claim because it is part of a larger issue.
And your attempt to parallel my objection does not seem to fit well. Maybe you should not try to be cute like that.