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SarahC comments on The Social Coprocessor Model - Less Wrong
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Hang on half a second here. No more than 1% of Americans are autistic. (CDC estimates 1 in 110.) Autism is four times as common among males as females. This whole "NT" vs "non-NT" thing you're talking about is distinguishing 99.75% of women from 0.25%. I think this may be misguided. There are way more women who don't ask to be bought drinks than that.
I didn't say that (most NT women) (ask men for drinks), I said (most women who ask men for drinks) are NT.
Given your statistics, this would be expected even if half of all women asked men for drinks, because then you'd have half of 99.75% of women being NT+drink.asking and half of .25% being non-NT+drink.asking.
That being said, I do not assume that non-NT-ness requires actual autism or even diagnosable Asperger's. High intelligence alone (IMO) qualifies one for being neurally "atypical" in my book.
Ah, I misunderstood (I've only ever heard "NT" to refer to "not autistic.")
You're quite right, technically; I perceived an implication the other way as well but you may not have meant that.
Personality is a factor, not just attractiveness. Women who are some combination of the following don't engage in testing like this, or are less likely to do so:
Sweet, sensitive, nerdy quiet types of both genders just don't like status games very much, and they tend to be bad at them.
The standard PUA model focuses a lot on women who do engage in testing and status games, because they tend to disproportionately encounter women who play them. This is understandable, but flawed.
I expect that women who match one or more of your bullet points are less likely to be the most eye-catching.
I suppose that's true.
My confusion with this whole business is quantitative. The assumption in Roko's drink-buying model is that this is the right way to interact to attract the kind of women his audience would be interested in. That's a statement of probability. It's likely that you'll be going to bars to meet women, it's likely that any women you're interested in engage in shit-testing, it's likely that any women you're interested in respond the way the girls in the Feynman story do. I'm really not sure about that.
There are, as I mentioned, very, very few autistic women. So Roko and Nancy lump in the less attractive women. Fine, in principle. I'm still not convinced that a typical straight male LW reader won't find, in his dating pool, quite a few women who don't behave like the prototypical chick in a PUA parable. I only have anecdotes, of course, but I and most of my female friends and family members don't behave like that. We hit a lot of HughRistic's bullet points. And we've stumbled into our fair share of good relationships.
In other words: I think nerdy women are pretty numerous, far too numerous to be diagnosable autistics, and do just fine on the dating market. And I suspect the typical straight male LW reader wouldn't mind dating one.
Actually, it's a statement of conditional probability, conditioned on a woman asking a man for a drink in such a setting, often as a prelude to having any conversation at all.
(It's not, however, a great example of a cacheable response. Really, the whole point of it as a status/social skill test is that it is hard to fake!)
Anyway, here's the reasoning: if a man is asked for a drink, it may or may not be a test, conscious or unconscious. However, in all possible cases, the man is highly likely to improve the situation by skillfully declining or negotiating a quid pro quo, because the situation is still a signaling opportunity, even if the woman's attraction wouldn't have decreased upon acquiescence. (In other words, you either win, or don't lose - a positive expected outcome over multiple trials.)
For example, let's say it's one of those "nerdy women" -- she is not fishing for a drink, not consciously testing, and (probably) not unconsciously testing, but maybe has been taught that this is how you signal openness to being courted, or just doesn't think about it at all.
Well, in that particular case, it's an opportunity for a signal like, "Not a feminist, huh?" -- probably leading to a thought-provoking conversation about feminism, chivalry, and the impact of social trends on dating behaviors...
A conversation that wouldn't have happened if the response was a bland, "okay". If he'd simply agreed without further comment, maybe he wouldn't have lost any points, but he certainly wouldn't have gained any either -- he has simply failed to distinguish himself from any other man who lacks the social skill to finesse the situation. He is out a drink, and gets nothing except (maybe) the continuation of the conversation... assuming that her attraction doesn't mysteriously evaporate shortly thereafter, due to her unconscious lowering of his status.
But the (extreme) case of a nerdy woman who's both sincerely asking for a drink and won't subconsciously decrease attraction upon compliance, is actually the worst case scenario for measuring the advantage of the "never buy a drink without quid pro quo" heuristic... and yet it still comes out well ahead of compliance in the best case, and only slightly better in worst-case!
And in all other scenarios, such as a woman using this to get rid of the guy or to get drinks, using it as a filter for non-interesting guys, or even a woman who thinks it's normal but unconsciously feels less attracted to men who comply... the heuristic produces much better results on average than buying the drink does. (Assuming, again, the guy has developed the social skills to pull it off.)
Among other things, it's also a counter-filter, since the woman who truly has no interest in the guy outside his ability to procure alcohol will immediately depart in search of another sucker, no matter how skillfully it's done. For the rest, you still either win, or else you don't lose.
Of course, this is all conditional on the man's skill in making use of all the available information in the situation... for one thing, he's got to be socially calibrated enough to be able to tell the difference between the woman who'll respond to "Sure, bend over, you spoiled brat" vs. the one who'll respond to "Not a feminist, eh?"... and preferably be able to tell that before even starting the conversation. (Oh, and let's not forget that those two can be the same woman, in different moods!)
But that's the "software" way of doing it... the "coprocessor" way is that the guy ideally just believes that it'd be silly to buy a woman a drink without a quid pro quo (like Feynman's advisor) and lets their social hardware handle the details of responding.
Attempting to cache a specific behavioral response in "software" isn't going to cut it, though; the PUA methods that revolve around "canned" material are necessarily probabilistic and essentially manipulative. So, if there's a flaw in Roko's example, that would be it: caching a specific response pretty much guarantees it's not going to be done with a truly beneficial level of skill.
And yet, even in that case, it's still probably positive-sum advice, as long as the man continues learning and improving over the long haul.
Well, if "behave like that" is asking guys for drinks, then there's no conflict with what Roko said, since the situation will never come up.
However, if "behave like that" is responding with increased attraction to a display of confidence, tact, humor, and/or other social skills, I'd be surprised. (It's just that what you would personally consider to be such a display is going to depend on a lot of situational factors that a single canned response can't possibly take into account.)
I think this needs to be emphasised a lot. Also the differences between types of women. While a nerdy girl may not ask for a drink, they may ask for help with a heavy box. Now from the canned advice given this can be seen as a shit test, will the guy demean himself by lugging a heavy box to try and get with someone of my level. If so they don't want to be with a loser who lifts his own boxes. So a response like "Do I look like a shelf stacker?" said in a suitably amused tone, would be appropriate.
However the nerdy girl might just want the box moved and be interested in people who can just get stuff done with a minimal amount of prodding. The appropriate response in this case is to help. Grumbling (with a grin) while doing so, or making a light comment about being owed one might show you aren't a complete push over and won't put up with too much of that sort of thing without something in return, would be appropriate I think.
I'd have a lot less problem if advice were couched in term of normal human interaction rather than just trying to get into an extrovert girls pants.
Hauling a heavy box is not at all analogous to the drink example. When a woman asks a man for help with heavy physical work, this puts him in a much better initial position status-wise. She is the weaker party, asking for necessary assistance from his greater physical strength. Helping a weaker party from a position of greater power is a first-rank status-winning move. Therefore, it's best for him to do it cheerfully with a "that's nothing for a man like me" attitude; grumbling and saying "you owe me" is a bad idea since it suggests that he actually finds it hard, rather than an act of negligible difficulty from his superior position.
Of course, if a woman regularly exploits a man for such favors or makes him spend unreasonable time and effort helping her, that's another story altogether. However, a random request for some small help with a hard physical task nearly always conforms to this pattern of status dynamics.
In contrast, when a woman asks a man to buy her a drink, she is asking him to satisfy a random and capricious whim, not help her as a weaker party from a superior position. Therefore, acceptance carries no positive status signals at all, but instead signals that he is willing to obey her whims for the mere privilege of her company. Compared to the box example, it's like accepting to pay extortion money versus giving to charity. The former is an expression of weakness and submission, the latter a dispensation of benevolence.
My point was more that the situations could be confused by people with broken social coprocessors and inappropriate behaviour translated across from one domain to another. Without a lot of explanation of the appropriateness.
Buying drinks can also be seen as someone weaker (financially) asking someone stronger. Considering that men earn more on average than women, and if you are picking up college girls and have a real job that is likely to be even more the case. So I don't see the way that these situations can be easily distinguished that way by someone without much social experience.
I agree about the grumbling, don't grumble about the weight, grumble about the time taken.
I have a few meta-rules of thumb in such matters:
Anything can mean anything.
Corollary: Never explain by malice that which is adequately explained by intelligence.
The rules are never what anyone says they are.
The rules may not even be what anyone thinks they are.
Nevertheless, there are rules.
It is your job to learn them, and nobody's job to teach them to you.
All advice, however universally it may be expressed, is correct only in some specific context.
Application of the last to the whole is left as an exercise. :-)
whpearson:
Well, yes, but that's what explanations are for. Once you grasp the underlying principles, it's not that complicated -- and more importantly, you gradually start to make correct judgments instinctively.
No, if you understand the status dynamic fully, you'll realize that you shouldn't grumble at all. Grumbling, of whatever sort, indicates that you assign a significant cost to the act, and in order to come off as high-status, you must make it look like it's a negligible expense of effort from your lofty high-status position, a casual dispensation of benevolent grace. As soon as you make it seem like you perceive the act as costly in any way, it looks like you're making the effort to fulfill her wishes, clearly displaying inferior status to hers.
But that is an extremely normal human interaction.
You haven't clarified the all-important context. Is this a friend? Stranger? Do they need boxes moved often? What are your goals? Friendship? Company? Just getting a good feeling from helping people out?
Certainly, the default response, assuming a member in good standing of your extended tribe, is to help. This doesn't make it the "appropriate" response for all goals and contexts, however.
Agreed. Don't see anyone talking about "just trying to get into an extrovert girls pants," though. The rough consensus I'm seeing lately from proponents of learning normal social interaction is that it is useful for improving interaction with people in general.
Aaaaaaaugh.
As someone who is fairly good at predicting my own behavior in various counterfactual situations, I'd like to hereby offer to tell people how I'd react to lines about which they are curious. I don't know to what extent I'm in the reference class anyone's aiming for, but if the information would be useful, there it is.
Alicorn: Hey, wanna buy me a drink?
pjeby: Not a feminist, huh?
Alicorn: Aaaaaaaugh.
Am I parsing you correctly?
I know it's an act of terrorism for me talk about Alicorn, especially given this topic, but ...
She's really not someone whose reactions are characteristic of the NT, average intelligence women that men would approach in bars, so knowing what she would do is probably not going to be helpful.
I would not actually say "Aaaaaaaugh." in that situation. I'd probably say "Excuse me?" and then there would need to be a rather excellent recovery or I'd stop interacting with the person. (I'm granting for the sake of the exercise that I'd ask for a drink in the first place, even though in real life I don't consume alcohol.)
Which is precisely why the offered hypothetical is worse than useless in this case.
Bear in mind that in the circumstance being discussed, asking for a drink is like asking someone to hand you $5 -- for no reason at all other than than that you asked, and the fact that they are a male.
To presume that you would react in a certain way, conditional upon first having done something so utterly foreign to you in the first place, is like saying what you'd do if the moon were made of green cheese, only ISTM you'd have a better chance of being right in that case. ;-)
What emotion or thought is this onomatopoeia intended to signify?
Frustration.
OK let's try this. I've faced this situation maybe hundreds of times, and am curious as to how you compare to the girls I typically see.
Alicorn: Hey, wanna buy me a drink?
cousin_it: (smiles happily and shakes head)
Your response?
Then it would probably depend on how much I wanted to talk to you in the first place (where this includes, factored in, how charming the happy smile is). If not much, I'd probably shrug and go back whence I came. If more than not much, I might say "Aw, why not?" - not to try particularly to extract a drink after all, but out of curiosity and to have something to have a conversation about.
I'll be optimistic and assume the latter option happens! I've heard this reply several times, here's what happens next:
Alicorn: Hey, wanna buy me a drink?
cousin_it: (smiles happily and shakes head)
Alicorn: Aw, why not?
cousin_it: (keeps smiling, almost laughing, eyes half closed, reaches with arm to catch her waist)
In fairness, you can't give an informed reply to that because you can't assess my physical attractiveness over the Internet, but I can just tell you the decision tree from this point. The girl either plays along or evades. If she plays along, I keep doing what makes sense. If she evades, I turn away to the bar without lingering even a second. You'd be surprised how many girls thus NEXT'ed later come back :-) Of course I don't mean to imply anything about your behavior!
Well, the "buying a drink" story is an extreme example that's been canonized to make a point. But I'm convinced that in general, human beings are always unconsciously "testing" each other, and that this applies to everyone, male or female, autistic or NT. It's just part of how humans talk and joke around and communicate. For instance, saying hi to someone and smiling is "testing": you're seeing what kind of mood someone is in. Making a joke, or laughing at a joke, is "testing": you're seeing how other people react.
I don't see the "PUA" stuff as about sex or dating or men and women. It's about human social interaction in general.
I suggest there's a difference between "testing" and "checking". In a test, you're trying to find out whether the other person will fail or (in the case of bullies) hoping they will, while in a check, you'll hoping they'll succeed. I gather there are some people who are pretty evenly balanced on the chack/test scale-- if the other person passes, fine, it's a potential friendship, and if the other person fails, the harassment commences.
I think that a lot of small talk is what I call "pinging"-- "Hello, I'm here and friendly".
Good point about the pinging.
Using your test/check distinction, I think in most cases, including the "buy me a drink" scenario, what's going on is a check. After all, the attractive girl is in a bar talking to the guy; she'd prefer the guy be attractive to her, not a pushover.
Yes, status-testing is a general component of typical human interaction. I think this is the point that Roko was trying to make, even though his particular example was rather gendered. If you want to see status testing in a non-male-female context, watch the behavior of frat boys, for example.
The point is that for those unfamiliar with this behavior, they need to be able to identify it when it happens, to not take it personally or as a sign of hostility, and know how to respond. Roko's advocation of "caching responses" is very helpful, until one gets a gut feeling and can be guided towards a satisfactory response merely by emotions.
I understand your point: that is an extremely visible and easy to see example of a dominance hierarchy.
But I'm more thinking about testing in general, not necessarily status testing. I interpret most testing as learning about the other person's responses, not necessarily testing their status. I don't even know if I would interpret the "buying a drink" story as about status: it's more about humor and confidence.
The frat boy example has extremely negative connotations, and I wouldn't call it "typical human interaction". How about "watch two people having a pleasant and friendly conversation, laughing together, and enjoying each other's company"? That's a more pleasant example of unconscious testing, in the sense of unconsciously doing things to see people's reactions and learning about the other person.
I don't see any necessary contradiction between Roko and SarahC's perspectives in determining an optimal dating strategy for men with LW-reader phenotypes that doesn't rely on luck.
Are there nontrivial subsets of women who would make good matches for male LW-readers, with psychology not correctly described by the standard PUA model? Yes. Should these guys go outside that model to understand these women? Yes.
Are there nontrivial subsets of women who would make good matches for male LW-readers, with psychology that is correctly described by the standard PUA model, in part or in whole? Yes. Would these guys benefit from attaining knowledge of neurotypical social behaviors (from PUAs or elsewhere) to be able to date these women, instead of arbitrarily cutting them out of their dating pool? Yes.
I take an empirical approach to romantic success. Being able to date many kinds of people gives you a lot of options. Sometimes, you can't know whether you would be compatible with a certain type of person until you try dating someone like that. Saying "but I don't want anyone like that anyway" about people out of one's reach because of a lack of common social skills is a failure mode. Yet if you attain the skills to date someone like that, and you find it doesn't work, then you know that you are not merely the fox calling the grapes sour in Aesop's fable.
Yeah, that's the thing. I'm all for learning helpful skills. Bar game might be a helpful skill; I've seen enough positive testimonials to make me believe it. And certainly it's a failure mode to do the sour grapes thing. (I've tried dating outside my comfort zone; it's quite possible.)
PUA is a model, though, and people who like it sometimes overstate its applicability. The other thing to keep in mind is that there's a tension between learning new skills and playing to your strengths. Sometimes it's in your best interest to do the latter.
I think a lot of what I'm disagreeing with you and blueberry about is this assumption that meat-market type bars and clubs, and the PUA style tactics that may work well in those environments, are a representative sample of "typical social behavior"
PUA style tactics are predominantly a reverse-engineering of naturalistic behaviors. PUAs didn't invent status games, they just try to copy them.
On what population do you base your view of "typical social behavior"? I do think that bars and clubs are pretty representative of the behavior of extraverts of average IQ. This is just what extraverted 100 IQ homo sapiens do when you put them in a room with a little ethanol. Such behavior may not be representative of the average introvert who is lower in sensation-seeking, but average IQ extraverts are a pretty big slice of humanity.
Bars and clubs may contain a disproportionate amount of status behavior, but this is just on the higher end of the continuum of status behavior among typical homo sapiens.
People in relationships push each other all the time to see how the other person will react. Even friends not of each other's preferred gender do this. You may be taking the "buy me a drink" example too literally.
I don't think people have been talking about "PUA style tactics," as much as about normal social relationships and interactions. You're right that they may be more exaggerated at a bar scene.
Maybe it's happening so subtly that I can't see it, but I don't think everyone is pushing that much all the time.
I think you're defining yourself as normal, and rather subtly making a status claim that anyone who doesn't fit in well with you is deficient.
But that example was the only thing I was ever disagreeing with. I honestly don't even remember what this article was originally about any more, I just remember reading the "buy me a drink" example, and thinking "whaaaaaa?". It just weirded me out that something was being cited as an example of a broader phenomenon, as if it was this universally known, obvious thing, when in reality I think it's something that only people involved in the PUA "community" actually believe - which makes it, whether right or wrong, not a very good example.
It's not universally known, but it it more widely known than the PUA circle.
It seems to be understood among the set of guys that have experience successfully attracting girls.
My friends that meet this criteria take it as an obvious rule with a few exceptions, and they didn't learn it from anything "PUA" related- just from experience and observation
Umm. The purpose of dating is to find someone you're compatible with. "Expanding your dating pool" to include personality types you don't like defeats the whole point.
Unless your current idea of what personality types you're compatible with is too limited, or your judgment of other personality types that makes you not like them is prejudiced. The purpose of dating is also to find out what types of people you are compatible with empirically. See also my response to SarahC.
"Doesn't play culturally-common status games socially-inexperienced people don't know how to handle" is not a reasonable way for nerdy people to determine compatibility with potential mates (or friends). The filter is too broad, and it will exclude people they might actually be compatible with if they understood status games better and how to handle them.
A big part of the reason that nerdy people don't like status games is because they don't understand the psychology behind them, and consequently give the other person an unfairly negative assessment. Since they aren't accustomed to status games, their hackles may go up, particularly if the status ploy triggers issues for them, like memories of past bullying by higher status people. Yet once one attains some understanding of status games and skill at playing them, then the hackles no longer go up, and there is no reason to ascribe such a negative judgment to the other person and exclude them as a potential mate or friend.
Of course, there are valid reasons for nerdy people to find certain types of status games annoying and undesirable, even after understanding them. Yet the best way to get a sense of what kinds of status games are fun, what kind are OK with you, and what kind are intolerable, and what kinds of people play these kinds of games, is to have experience playing them with people.
Except that you may find that you're compatible with someone that you never expected would be compatible with you. Especially when you're talking about stereotypes like "people who go to bars" or "nerdy women" or "people who engage in shit-testing," which are broad enough to include many different types of people
Not to mention that there are many purposes of dating: not all relationships are about long-term compatibility.
Assuming you are incompatible with certain personality types without any experience of dating them seems unnecessarily limiting.
Many kinds of educated guesses about compatibility increase the probablity of finding the right person or the right relationship, because time is finite, and time spent dating a born-again Christian fundamentalist is time not spent dating an atheist librarian (or not studying Pearl or Jaynes ;-) ).
I've never dated a religious fundamentalist; I almost certainly never will. And I think that is the rational choice, even though it seems "limiting" in a sense. In reality, though, I don't think it is limiting at all, because time is not infinite, and dating opportunities are not fungible with respect to time. It's only limiting if you ignore the probability of successful outcomes based on what you know of yourself and other people, but what is a decision theory worth that ignores the probabilities altogether (and differing payoffs too)?
Edit: what holds regarding religious fundamentalists also holds to a lesser degree regarding various subsets of the average, neurotypical women that are the subject of this thread.
On the other hand, cargo-cult free-thinking can be, at least for me, far more obnoxious than just plain religious close-mindedness. And in that regard, an atheist librarian may well be much worse than a regular churchy girl (or guy).
There's more to life than intellectual activity and rationality. What about occasionally enjoying light-hearted conversation or sex with a born-again fundamentalist, just as a form of recreation? I understand your point about not wanting a serious relationship with someone with very different values, but not everything has to be about a serious relationship.
A much lesser degree, especially for intelligent extraverted women who might enjoy socializing for fun sometimes in bars, as well as more abstract pleasures.
With introversion, agreeableness, and sensitivity, I wouldn't suspect any negative correlation with conventional attractiveness (agreeableness could even have a weak positive correlation). Nerdiness and lack of socialization may be related, and even if there is a negative correlation between them and attractiveness for whatever reason, that correlation may not be particularly strong.
I would hypothesize that personality traits are at least as big a factor as looks in explaining variance in female status testing behavior. As a result, I agree with SarahC's view that neurotypical vs. non-neurotypical status does not adequately demarcate women who ask men to buy them drinks from women who don't. And I also disagree with Roko's suggestion that women who don't engage in this behavior predominantly lie in the left tail of the attractiveness distribution for age.
If pjeby's original intent, however, was to present NT women as those most likely to engage in this behavior, and non-NT women as least likely, then I would agree with him that such a correlation is plausible. If Roko wanted to hypothesize a weak-to-moderate correlation of attractiveness and status-testing behavior, than I would agree. I just consider certain personality traits that are probably uncorrelated with beauty as having a large effect on engaging in this kind of behavior.
I actually didn't state either of the things that people are attributing to me. I simply referred to "the mostly-NT women who show up at bars and ask men to buy them drinks".
The mostly-NT is hyphenated because it is an attribute of "women who show up at bars and ask men to buy them drinks" -- and this attribution does not require any correlation. The simple fact that non-NT women are a minority, period, ensures that most of the women who do this showing up at bars and asking of drinks will be neurotypicals.
I was making a point about the selection bias effect of this on PUA models, not attempting to draw any conclusions about the likelihood of drink-asking behavior given neurotypicality. (I did suggest a negative correlation between neuro-atypicality and drink-asking behavior, however.)
FTFY
[citation needed]
People involuntarily/unconsciously test and asses others' status all the time. Evidence of one's status is embedded in every action, and therefore, all action can be used to determine status.
I'm curious what you mean by this. Do you mean you think they will have put less effort into clothing, hair, makeup, etc. (perhaps true, but perhaps less relevant to male attraction than you think) or do you mean that you expect some inverse correlation between physical attractiveness and the personality traits described?
Partly that they put less effort into their appearance (which, for many, also includes a non-trivial effort to be thin), but also that a desire to be noticed is more related to extroversion and dominance than their opposites, and skill at being noticed favorably is related to neurotypicallity.
I think you're letting an instrumental approach to psychology affect your epistemic rationality.
Ah, then we have a miscommunication. I think it could have been worded better in order to avoid an unsavory misinterpretation.