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JGWeissman comments on Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics - Less Wrong
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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.
(That downmod wasn't me; I recognize when my objectivity on a thread for purposes of modding is compromised.)
Well, actually, women will deny or refuse to talk about a lot of these. How many women actually tell men how much makeup they have on? How much "assistance" their bust has gotten? (ETA: I actually remember an ad campaign, possibly still going on, that encouraged women to lie about their age, because of the effectiveness of the makeup. It was actually phrased in terms of "Don't like about your age -- defy it!", accompanied by a scene with a woman getting away with lying about her age.)
Also, I'm not sure your claim about negging is as obvious as you suspect. For one thing, how do you differentiate it, morally, from any kind of teasing? Or the negging that naturals do automatically without even knowing the term or the psychological dynamics of it?
That's interesting. But while you're wringing your hands about this or that practice, the rest of the world has moved passed this debate and doesn't adhere to any kind of standard code on those issues. And women are still sleeping with, dating, and marrying those who use PUA techniques, whether they come naturally or not. (Maybe that makes them all rape victims? Who knows?)
And these women and men are making more copies of themselves.
I guess I should get back to the hand-wringing ...
This may be a left-over 1950s stereotype, but I was under the impression that men both want a rather artificial appearance from women and despise women for their attention to the details needed to create it. I would be glad to find out that I'm mistaken.
I think it'd be more accurate to say that we prefer any makeup to look like the wearer just naturally looks that way, rather than like they made themselves up. (Since awareness of the makeup detracts from the immediate and visceral pleasure we'd otherwise receive from viewing an attractive woman.)
We also dislike it when the time spent on making up goes past that point of attractiveness, because it suggests that the additional effort is being spent on signaling other women, rather than on being attractive for us. ;-) (Even if a man doesn't "get" signaling, he knows that the additional effort is both decreasing his enjoyment and eating into the time he will be spending with his date.)
The things that men most widely despise in relation to artificial appearance are not the attention to detail, but rather, the lack of attention to which details men actually prefer. There are fashion trends in makeup and clothing that seem to be beloved by women, but are absolutely hideous to men at large, because they fail to trigger the visual systems that give us pleasure, or do trigger ones that trigger avoidance.
For example, I forget what they're called, but those tops that make it look like the woman's waist is just beneath her bust... they make women look pregnant at first glance, no matter how otherwise nice and fashionable the tops may be. Eyebrow treatments that make women look like Ming The Merciless, etc. These are the sort of "details" men tend to despise.
In other words, it's not that we dislike women's attention to detail. It's more that we're appalled by the amount of time and effort that appears to go into doing things we don't like.
I would guess that this is probably symmetrical to the things that men spend a lot of time on for women's sake, that women don't like either. E.g. bragging about their possessions and accomplishments might be a good example of a place where men try too hard and turn off women in the same way.
Your comment is non-responsive because I was (mainly) referring to cases where the man doesn't have advance knowledge of how much make-up the woman was using. In general, women aren't expected to disclose such a thing to men they've just met, and don't do it voluntarily. Hence why Morendil's claim
is wrong.
Now, regarding your point:
Pjeby beat me to it: It's another case of average vs. marginal. Men might expect women to do a lot to make themselves beautiful, but resent them wasting time on fruitless marginal units of effort when they "look just fine, what's the fuss?" -- especially when it makes them wait, of course. This isn't a case of impossible expectations.
In terms of being attractive to men, most of the effort spent finding "just the right color" of lipstick or whatever is completely wasted. (I remember a Maddox rant about the different names for indistinguishable lipstick color.) Many a time I've been tempted to go up to a woman in the beauty aisle of a store and say, "Ah! That's it! That's why men don't show enough interest in you! Because your make-up is a slightly wrong color! Aha! It makes so much sense now! The mystery is solved!"
Fortunately, even I have enough restraint not to do that. But the point is, most of this effort does not benefit men.
Though I'm obviously atypical, I thought you might be interested in this: One time I met a woman through a group and asked her out. She later confessed on a date that she was caught completely off guard because she was in her nurse scrubs, was tired from having worked a long shift, and hadn't done anything to look good, and so couldn't understand why I had been attracted to her.
Of course, I did the stupid thing by explaining it with appeal to the concept of a "beauty invariant" ... but that's about right: I (seem to) know a lot about how physically appealing a woman will be to me on average, even if my first impression is in the lower range. But I don't know if this is true in general.
Men really despise women for that? I suppose I cannot know the mind of men in general but that attitude sounds both bizarre and a terrible thing to signal if they desire positive attention from women (ie. to get laid).
The bra is one of the best inventions of all time. I encourage women (and I suppose males that way inclined) to make use of the technology to whatever extent pleases them or suits their purposes. Even more so if that purpose happens to include attracting me. I note, however, that for the purposes of this data point the supporting influence seems to be more important than the enlarging.
My attitude to all other forms of manipulation is similar. I like people influencing me in a way that is beneficial to me and have a strong aversion to people attempting to influence me in a way that is detrimental to me.
My hypothesis: manipulation works even when the target knows about them. This applies to negs and most other manipulation effects, particularly those that relate to attraction. Attraction isn't a conscious choice and conscious awareness of the process makes little difference.
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.
Mainly from your implication that the purpose of the article is that these are things that should be resisted and, in a perfect world, never done to begin with.
No, because you're ignoring the part I just bolded: for some of the techniques, one might be perfectly okay with others using on them. A lot of men are okay with their opinion of a woman being altered by makeup. A female commenter (which I'll dig up if you don't believe me) had remarked that (some appropriate subset she had in mind of) PUA techniques would have the effect, if widely used, of making all men hotter, which she would regard as good.
Let's not forget, a lot of PUA is just teaching autistic-spectrum males to do things that "naturals" already do automatically. If you find yourself saying an action is bad only when you know why it supports your goals, you made a mistake somewhere.
No, your attempt to equate your ungrounded hidden definition of manipulation with "real comparisons", plus the substantiation I gave that you just cut off in your reply, is a sign of bias.
Probably at the point where you required any discussion of biases related to PUA have the premise that it's only being talked about as a way to destroy its effectiveness.
But why does that matter in terms of whether it should be included in the article? Why can't it describe the effects that certain actions have, by reference to specific biases, which exist because of a specific mechanism, without rendering judgments about whether people deem them manipulative (which people, including and especially the targets of the techniques, will disagree on)?
Okay, but you still seem to have this presumption that any article discussing PUA-related biases in women is by its nature promoting bad stuff and so must apologize at every corner by focusing purely on how to resist them.
No, you did not refute it. You have said nothing about the evidential standards I discussed, or the reason it is so important for you to learn the basis for my suspicions. The latter would go a long way to getting to the root of our fundamental disagreement, and be far, far more productive than unraveling what causes a suspicion of mine in one specific case.
If attempting to get to the root of a discussion by comparison to the opponent's standards is "cute", then may we all be kittens!
You are horribly misunderstanding my position, and detecting biases in a position that I do not actually hold. Stop trying to infer a deeper agenda than the things I actually say. Your mental model of me is wrong.
I said women should be aware of biases they have that men will try to manipulate. That does not mean they have to resist it. They could react to this awareness by saying, "Oh, that's cool, it lets me enjoy sex/dating more", as long as that is their decision. You were the one who made the leap, on my behalf, from "they should be aware" to "it is evil and must be resisted". I never claimed and do not agree that this is a necessary conclusion. Though, it is also a reaction that women could have. Or they can react anywhere in the spectrum to each sub technique independantly. Or they can react by thinking "I want sex as part of the process of getting to know someone for a potential long term relationship, and it bothers me that men try to make feel like that is what we are doing when in fact they are not interested in a long term relationship." (And I am aware some PUA's explicitly make their intentions in this regard clear, and this reaction is not fair as a response to their techniques. This should produce less offense.)
The refutation of your "evidence" was noting that there was no analogous discussion about women manipulating men to the particular discussions about men manipulating women that caused offense, so there is no expectation to observe offense at an analogous discussion until one actually happens. You have evidence that a certain class of discussion of men manipulating women causes offense, and the a different class of discussion of women manipulating men does not cause offense. What you do not have is a comparison of the same class of both types of discussion.
Do you want to show my refutation is wrong? Then stop trying to attack me, accusing me of biases, and find the two discussion that you can argue are in fact analogous, in which the discussion of men manipulating women provoked offense, and the discussion of women manipulating men did not. That is the object level evidence that would demonstrate your point.
All you have to do is effectively argue that PUA discussion met the same standard as the beauty techniques discussion. If I say here is a corner in the PUA article where it did not apologize, you can point to a similar corner of the beauty techniques article. Any unreasonable standard you worry I might apply, you can argue the beauty techniques article doesn't meet it either. But it seems unfair to assume I would treat these articles asymetrically before even having that discussion.
JGWeismann said:
When you used the word "manipulate," I do see why Silas thought you were being judgmental and primarily advocating resistance. If you say you don't mean that, then I believe you, and I would prefer that the discussion move on to substantive issues, rather than what biases you might supposedly hold.
I think part of the problem in discussions like this is the word "manipulation," which different people use to mean different things (some people use it in a value-neutral way, while others use it with a negative connotation... and some slide between these two meanings whenever convenient). I prefer to talk about "social influence," and whether it is ethical or not.
Perhaps you and Silas can just start this discussion over? What was the main question, anyway? I lost track.
What you call an "attack" and "accusation of bias" was actually a very relevant query. Let's review the history (again):
1) I stated a suspicion (prior tilted slightly toward one hypothesis rather than another) that PUA bias discussion would tend to be criticized unjustifiably more than beauty bias discussion.
2) You asked why I harbor such a suspicion.
3) I pointed to the flamewar over PUA, vs. tame discussions of beauty.
4) You say, in essence, that my position is so wildly implausible that I need to provide the same level of evidence as would be necessary to refute a "privileging the hypothesis charge". You ask for an example.
5) I show a case where a man was shown to be biased because of a woman's beauty, while less bias was mentioned for the woman, and a following calm discussion.
6) Here's where the problem begins: Despite my relatively low belief in my claim, you go through the effort to refute the analogy and ask for better ones. Now: all throughout society, discussion of manipulation of men with beauty-enhancing products is widely discussed, while PUA, or any actually effect methods of drawing attraction from women is taboo. Yet you act shocked, shocked that this forum would be otherwise, and demand very specific evidence (and IMHO unfairly specific evidence) that it would be.
7) At this point, I'm confused. Why do you treat my mere suspicion like it's some bizarre, random idea (actually one of 3 relatively plausible options) and keep asking for more and more evidence (and more specific evidence)? It's been pretty commonly noted that a disparity exists (since the OB days), and you won't stop until I can provide copious substantiation for a mere suspicion. Hm. That's strange. Is this part of a broader discussion we should be having, I wonder. And so I ask.
See how it all fits in? It just seems strange that you really want to stomp out any belief, anywhere, that PUA discussions might be unfairly stigmatized. You ask for comparisons from beauty discussions, when you know there haven't been nearly as many for comparison.
That's why I ask what's going on. Because it's clear to me you're not just humbly asking for a little proof of the outrageous idea that men have a harder time discussing the nuts-and-bolts of attracting women. You're offended at the very suggestion.
So again, I'll ask: what's really going on here? What is it that makes this issue, and your belief on this issue, so important that you'll hound anyone who expresses any contrary reservations until they give you that perfectly parallel case? Because I'd much rather have that discussion than this one. And so would the rest of the forum, I'm guessing.