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RobinZ comments on What is missing from rationality? - Less Wrong
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Because politics is the mind-killer and almost every single conversation about pickup artistry immediately becomes infested with politically-charged claims. It's like that discussion about the correlation between race and intelligence that went to hell in a handbasket not long ago. If there be mines, don't go for a walk.
I actually feel like the last time it came up the discussion was really constructive- what began as a near flame war ended up as a friendly and informative discussion (see, in particular, Hughristik's comments).
In this case the initiator was pretty clearly either biased or unable to communicate his reasons. He also used unsavory tactics. But I thought the discussion outside that particular poster was quite good: fair-minded and rational.
As I said to NancyLebovitz:
These few insightful posts have been the exception - most comments on PUA here have been much more incendiary.
roland hasn't shown any sign of being noninflammatory on the subject, much less insightful.
I think that depends on how you count. Most times PUA has been brought up, it has gone quietly, but the threads that have gone badly have generated a lot of comments.
I concede that I have performed no analysis of the distribution.
I don't remember ever writing much on the subject of PU, except the meta-comments in this post. Prove me wrong please?
I thought that some progress actually got made. I got a better idea of the more benevolent end of the range of PUA, and PJ Elby and someone else stopped generalizing so much about women.
The "almost" in the "almost every", and I was impressed when I saw it. I do not believe I exaggerate when I claim that ten times as many comments failed where pjeby's succeeded. roland has not demonstrated the same kind of awareness - somewhat the opposite.
And it wasn't just a formal "almost every"-- there was a description of a sort of woman who'd been left out of the discussion. I'm willing to bet that his theory of typical and atypical women is still incomplete, but at least it includes a lot more of my experience.
And I forgot to mention that I got a better understanding of a lot of the men who go in for PUA.
OK-- there's that almost, but sooner or later, we have to work on being rational about difficult things.
As I recall, what went wrong with the race and intelligence discussion was someone who kept making assertions with no evidence. I wouldn't be surprised if that person didn't know the what evidence was.
It might have been a moderation problem. Banning people for utter cluelessness might have been the only solution.
On the other hand, I don't think anyone tried to engage that person in a discussion of how they thought about evidence.