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thomblake comments on Missing the Trees for the Forest - Less Wrong
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Off the cuff, my advice would be to find someone for whom you don't need to worry about what behavior "would work" and instead find someone who genuinely shares your interests and is a joy to be with, and pursue a relationship with them.
But then, having been in a love-at-first-sight sort of situation, my advice is probably as helpful as "let them eat cake."
I'm glad you acknowledge this is a "let them eat cake response." Not worrying whether one's behavior is "working" is a privilege of those with behavior that works.
Of course, it sounds mechanical, perhaps even objectifying to be talking about whether one's behavior "works" "on" others, as if they were a machine being fed input. Yet this pragmatic mode of thinking is forced on some of us by being the only viable way to solve deficits in social and dating experience and knowledge, deficits that were also forced on us due to negligent socialization.
FWIW, to me, the big difference between a particular mode of thought being objectifying or not has less to do with how one models people's reactions than what one's goal is. If what "works" just means what gets you laid or makes you happy, regardless of its effect on others, then you're treating the other person as just a tool to your own satisfaction. That, to me, is "objectifying" and, well, makes you a shitty, bad person as far as I'm concerned.
If, on the other hand, you actually care about the prospective other person's feelings as well, and what "works" is what makes both of you happy, then I can't really see a problem.
Btw, it's mechanical on the side of the man as well - being forced to output behavior which you normally would not, and might even object to doing.
This is one of the things that puzzles me about the whole PUA thing. Is the point of a guy changing his behaviour in such ways:
1, I can sort of understand. 2 seems like a great way to ruin your life. 3 seems like a disaster as well if it involves becoming someone who routinely does things that one now thinks are objectionable; but could be rather more positive if it instead involves, say, becoming someone who is more fun to be around and better able to enrich the life of a significant other.
Or is all of this missing the point, which is just to get laid in the short term, and not be around for the long term anyway?
You need to do 1 and 2 (keep the charade for as long as you need) as a temporary solution, since changing yourself permanently (acquiring the necessary social skills, building confidence, body language, etc) can't be done quickly and easily.
What is more, having an interim solution can be helpful and gives a boost to the process of improving yourself as well, e.g. even a modest success with women can increase your confidence and give you necessary social practice. It's sort of a multiplier on your efforts of improvement.
The answers to those questions are as diverse as the individuals themselves. Different teachers certainly advocate different things, but the more ethical ones advocate, as you say...
And grasping some of the ideas involved in that has certainly been helpful in my marriage.
Think of #3 the same way you think of any kind of self-improvement work (or if you like, a bootstrapping AI). There is no reason for it to be at all objectionable. People change things about themselves all the time and no one objects.
This "self" business is probably nonsense anyway.
I certainly never meant to suggest that change is objectionable per se. But saying "just think of it as self-improvement" begs the question of whether it's actually improvement. If you find yourself trying to become someone who regularly does stuff you now find objectionable (as per the comment I was responding to) then there's a decent chance you're actually engaged in an act of self-debasement instead.
Just a reminder that "begging the question" and its variants are jargon in logic, and so it seems the colloquial meaning should be avoided here.
FWIW, I didn't intend the colloquial meaning ("raises the question"): I meant that the response "think of it as self-improvement" assumes precisely what is at issue (i.e. that the change is for the better).