Lightwave comments on Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics - Less Wrong

62 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 July 2009 07:22AM

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Comment author: HughRistik 24 July 2009 04:14:24PM *  7 points [-]

They rank women from 1 to 10 and advise different techniques.

Yes. The rating system is controversial in the community, and many PUAs refuse to use it exactly because they see it as objectifying. The reason that it probably sticks around is that it happens to be useful: a woman's conventional attractiveness is a factor in how she has been treated by men, and the physiological effect she has on the PUA, both of which are highly relevant.

As I said before, this differs from PUA because everyone realises what is going on.

Do women not realize what is going on when a strange guy approaches them?

The PUArtist intends to hide the artifice,

Are you against all hidden artifices in dating (including female artifices)? Or just some particular types of artifice? If the latter, what distinguishes the artifices that you find objectionable? The moral standards you are advocating seem potentially over-broad to me.

to convince a woman to sleep with him or lust after him without her realising he is using mind tricks to do it.

The problem I have with the term "mind tricks" is that a lot of these behaviors are isomorphic to social behaviors shown by men who are naturally successful with women (which is not to say that I don't have a problem with some techniques, see below). The neg, and cocky/funny for instance. It seems counter-intuitive to hold that these behaviors are OK if you don't realize you are doing them, but not OK if you know how they work. Of course, you might see the neg as bad either way, in which case it sounds like the main problem you have is with the effects of the technique, not its covert nature.

And indeed, I also have a problem with the neg. I think that the potential benefits it provides don't outweigh the potential discomfort or insult it can cause to the woman. Or though it might in some contexts, there are better ways to get the same interest without risking hurting her feelings. I think the seduction community as a whole is coming around to this view. Mystery had them believing that negs were practically necessary on highly attractive women in clubs, but eventually people discovered that there were other ways to get their foot in the door, so the neg could no longer be justified on the grounds of virtual necessity.

Comment author: Lightwave 24 July 2009 06:53:14PM *  2 points [-]

And indeed, I also have a problem with the neg.

The neg can simply be more on the teasing side than on the insulting side. I don't think teasing is all that objectionable.

Comment author: jfpbookworm 24 July 2009 07:26:27PM 4 points [-]

Part of the issue is that, even when the hurt is minimal, it's a decision that one's own self-interest outweighs the harm to someone else, and as humans we're not very good at making that calculation objectively.

Comment author: HughRistik 25 July 2009 05:31:27AM *  2 points [-]

Hi jfpbookworm, long time no see. I agree with skepticism when making decisions over whether one's self-interest outweighs harm to someone else, which is why in this post I advocated weighing in the potential benefit to the other party also (emphasis added):

I think what we should really be asking is: is the technique harmful, can the user of the technique reasonably be expected to know that, and can any potential harm be justified by potential benefits to the recipient of the technique?

I think I came by this way of thinking from reading Mane Hajdin's The Law of Sexual Harassment. He wrote an article in this book that has some relevant comments (read page 297-299, though we don't get 298 in the preview):

We base our decisions on comparing the expected social utility of a practice (the magnitude of the benefits multiplied by the probability of their occurrence) with the expected social disutility or the expected social cost (the magnitude of the harms multiplied by the probability of their occurrence). [...] For at least some crude or aggressive advances we will have to conclude that the magnitude of the harm, multiplied by its probability, is so great that the advances in question are worthwhile, and that it may be desirable to have rules that prohibit them. [...] Moreover, in determining whether sexual advances of a particular kind would be worthwhile we need to compare the making of such advances not only with not making any advances, but also with making other kinds of advances that can be made under the circumstances.

He then sets up three hypothetical advances:

  1. 10% chance of success, 88% chance of mild annoyance, 2% chance of offense

  2. 10% success, 89% mild annoyance, 1% offense

  3. 11% success, 69% mild annoyance, 20% offense

He says that advances #2 is obvious preferable to advance #1. As for advance #3, the relevant question to ask is:

whether the additional 1 percent probability of success justifies the additional 19 percent probability of offense. If the answer to that question is "no," as it may well be (that depends on the precise intensity of the offense), then we may want to discourage people from making advances of this third type and encourage them to make the advances that are less risky instead. This is exactly analogous to the reasoning that leads us to impose speed limits on motor traffic.

When pickup artists think about ethics, I suspect this is the kind of implicit moral framework they are using. Of course, all of these calculations have subjective factors, but they are better than nothing.

Comment author: Rachael 26 July 2009 05:42:59AM 1 point [-]

Exactly, thank you.

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