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Alicorn comments on The Social Coprocessor Model - Less Wrong
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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.
Wait, you realize that Ghandi was a gigantic racist, who hated black people (as well as the minority groups in his own country), right?
LOL good catch. Still, the KKK advocates violence and hides their identity in protests, so they're not quite kindred spirits.
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. ;-)
Well, pretend the bar serves something I'd drink. Say I'd get a virgin pina colada. I could imagine asking for one of those.
I might also ask girls, if the environment gave me high enough priors on them being bi/gay.
So, your moral compass allows you to use other people's sexual preferences as a money pump?
(And no, that's not a line, although now that I've said it, I suppose it could be reworked into a LW-friendly response to a drink request. Needs more humor, less judgment, though! Hm, maybe "Are you trying to exploit my hardware preferences as a money pump?" A little too double-entrendreish, though. These things are really situational, and not at all suited to cached responses.)
I can't actually think of any situation where asking a question seems to me to be immoral. It can't be a denotative falsehood, so it's clear on the "lying" front; there's nothing else obvious it could be that would be wrong. I suppose it could be mean, or impolite, but this doesn't even appear to be that to me. I wouldn't badger anybody about buying me the beverage, which would be mean.
This is a request which is slightly different from a question. Some requests are considered immoral when there is a power or status differential. University lecturers and students provide an example where some requests are widely considered immoral.
Point. Questions/requests that predictably create a sense of obligation in the hearer to do something they ought not feel obligated to perform may be wrong. I don't think I can, let alone do, project enough power in a casual setting to make anyone feel obliged to buy me the liquid of my choice, although I suppose it's possible I'm mistaken.
Refusing makes the guy look bad, unless he has a particularly adept response. The request becomes "buy me a drink, or go through status shenanigans to not look bad." That's not exactly obligation, but it is a form of social pressure.
Asking for $5 (well, probably $7-8 if it's not a beer) isn't exactly obligation, either. Is that a request you would make of both men and women? If not, why not? And how it is different to a request from a drink, other than the latter being wrapped up in more social frills (and combined with more social pressure)?
If anyone is saying "excuse me?" shouldn't it be the person being asked for the drink (aka $7)? The only problem is that if men make this response, they look bad, due to the context-specific social power differential.
There is also an implied contract with most requests. Many people if asked to buy a stranger a drink will assume that agreeing to the request will result in an opportunity for conversation at least. If someone makes the request with an understanding of the implied trade and no intention of fulfilling their half of the bargain then that seems at least dishonest if not actually immoral.
Okay, this has me curious - is there actually a subset of pickup that is designed to tell me what to do, instead of telling people what to do to me? That would be news to me.
And apparently a "Playette FAQ" as well. (It makes heavy use of PUA terminology like "one-itis" and "IOI", though.)
I haven't really read ASFin almost 20 years, so I didn't know about the Playette stuff. Funny story, though: I can attest to the value of the "whiff" technique in the Playette FAQ, because my wife used it in our first email and phone conversations, back in 1992... and well, um, it worked out pretty well for both of us. ;-)
*pokes around*
Meh. This reminds me of advice columns, only with worse punctuation.
That depends on what exactly your goal is. Typical men can boost their sexual attractiveness to women by changing their behavior far more than vice versa, so it's unsurprising that there is a much greater body of expertise aimed at men in this regard. Also, getting sex is pretty much trivial for women and requires no particular skill. However, commitment and long-term relationship strategies are important and nontrivial for women too, and on better game-oriented blogs, I've often seen good discussions about the mistakes women make in this regard. Trouble is, realistic treatments of this issue tend to bring up even more ugly truths and end up sounding even less PC than the ordinary PUA stuff.
Can you give a couple examples?
Alicorn:
Like in everything else, humans make bad decisions due to biases in matters of mating and pairing too. However, these particular biases are male- and female-specific, and pointing out the latter is easily perceived by women as an affront to their sex, which makes realistic discussion very hard.
But since you're asking, here are some instances of such biases. None of them are universal, but each is held strongly by non-negligible numbers of women and leads them to decisions they later regret. One example is when women overestimate the attractiveness of men they can realistically hope to attract for serious permanent commitment, given the higher attractiveness of men they can attract for temporary relationships and short-term flings without any real commitment on the man's part. Another is when women underestimate the speed with which their looks and reproductive abilities deteriorate with age. Yet another is the refusal to acknowledge that women can be greatly attracted to some very nasty personality types of men, not despite them but because of them (google "dark triad"), which leads some women to entering disastrous relationships with such men. Then there are also many wrong beliefs about what personality characteristics of women are truly attractive and pleasant to men and apt to attract their loyalty and commitment in the long run.
There are other examples too, many of which would probably sound more controversial. Even these I listed can provoke much worse reactions when put in less abstract and detached terms, which is typically necessary when forming concrete advice.
You're bi, right? You could probably make use of much of the advice for straight men if you wanted.
I find it nasty to read. It's not intended for me, even if I'd be interested in some of the people it's about interacting with.
This is a general comment about the PUA material I've read.
It comes off as lonely. There's no hint of enjoying someone's company, or hope that a someone could enjoy the writer's company if not manipulated into it.
Yes. Sometimes I get a sense of simmering resentment underneath it all, especially on the subject of "nice guys" vs. "jackasses".
What the PUA people call "day game" (approaching women in everyday life, instead of bars and clubs) can verge on the concept of enjoyable company, but from my limited reading on the subject they don't seem to cover day game nearly as much. They say it's more difficult than "night game".
It's a little like something in a famous essay by Eric Raymond on "good porn" vs. "bad porn". (Just google on those phrases to find a copy -- I don't care to do that search from a machine at work.) Following a personally conducted scientific examination of porn pictures on the web, he concluded that men looking for porn are not looking for depictions of attractive young women posed as if about to have enjoyable sex with the viewer. The porn industry knows what sells, and pictures of that sort, that Raymond called "good porn", formed only a small minority. They are looking for what he classified as "bad porn": pictures of an absolutely joyless activity, all hard faces, cold stares, and fetishistic trappings.
ETA: Eric Raymond's essay is on his own blog here, and he's updated some of the links that were broken when I first read it, so you can see some of his experimental samples.
Yes: It's so bitter and so full of blame for the vast sea of women who didn't respond as desired to "niceness".
Depends where you look. Some of that stuff is indeed written in such tone, and it's true that some of it advises sly and dishonest tactics. On the other hand, here's the story of a man who saved his marriage by applying insights he gained on game websites (the blog might be NSFW for foul language, though it's on the blogroll of Overcoming Bias):
http://roissy.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/relationship-game-week-a-readers-journey/
For me, that story seems awfully depressing. Nothing in the story suggested to me that the man loved his wife or that his wife loved him. Game may have permitted them to have a more harmonious marriage, and evidently better sex, but not a relationship that seemed based on mutual love and respect.
It may be that the marriage was just too flawed to begin with; it's also possible, given that the writer was writing for Roissy's blog, that he consciously left details and color about love out of his narrative. But from what he has actually written, he's not describing the sort of marriage that I would want to be a part of.
As I mentioned once before but should mention again since you linked to his blog, Roissy is not representative of PUAs. He is like most of the worst things about PUAs, plus some other flaws of his own, all packed together. He's attracted a lot of attention outside the seduction community, but virtually nobody inside it knows who he is or cares about him.
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!
Yeah, going for the waist at that point would get a shriek even if you managed not to tickle me, and not in a good way. I don't care if you look like Sean Maher. I'd escape (and it would feel like escaping, not like something more neutral like "disengaging" or whatever), and if I was with any female friends I'd warn them you were grabby. I might do an evaluation of how the bouncer would react if informed, but I have low priors on getting help for "socially acceptable" invasions of space.
I think you misunderstand cousin_it's reference to "physical attractiveness". He's filtering not for whether you think he's good-looking, he's filtering by whether you are physically attracted to him at that moment in time, and open to the possibility of doing something about it, preferably as soon as possible. (This doesn't necessarily mean sex, btw, just being physically companionable and open to exploring the chemistry further.)
Anyway, if you're someone who's aversive to being touched by strangers, this will obviously filter you out.
I'll be honest here -- girls kino-ing me (i.e. touching to show interest in this way) used to freak me the fuck out. I wouldn't shriek, but I would definitely respond in a negative, abused-cat kind of way.
And I used to rationalize this response as being not just different but better and more right(eous) somehow than the dog way of doing things.
Nowadays, though, I realize that it's irrational to pretend I'm going to change everybody into cats or even that it's necessarily a good idea! (If everyone's a cat, who's going to do the stroking?)
So, while a stranger rubbing me the wrong way might make my hair stand on end, I have learned not to hiss, scratch, or run when I'm pawed by a dog person of whichever sex. Tolerating the discomfort or politely disengaging or explaining my issues with touch produces a better long-term result than just freaking out.
I've endured a fair number of lectures from my parents about how it's rude to freak out when strangers touch me. Here is why I go on doing it anyway:
It is always startling. I do not expect strangers to touch me, and I can't read them well enough to come to expect it when it's going to happen. This gives me little opportunity to prepare a response.
It often sets off sensory issues. I can tolerate accidental, very brief incursions into these issues by people who know about them and will stop instantly if they hear the relevant word, but anything prolonged may well have me curl up in a ball and scream. And it turns out that people are confused, or worse, think it's funny, when I try to explain these issues. If they are confused enough, or think it's funny enough, to go on touching me in a non-approved way while I try to explain in an increasingly hysterical fashion, I will wind up doing something far less socially acceptable than just freaking out and escaping.
I don't think that every random person is a rapist, but I think some of them are, and if I'm later in a position of having to go to the cops, I want every witness who saw me with the accused to have noticed that I established a precedent from the start of not wanting to be touched, because sexual assault investigations are nightmarish enough as-is without the kinds of whispers a history of "kino" would create.
There are certain kinds of touch that are quite safe. I will shake hands. I love hugs. Backrubs are awesome. I often ask to pet people's hair and am perfectly happy to permit the reverse. But the only context where I would be okay with someone grabbing me around the waist would be if I were in an ongoing relationship with them and they knew to stop on a dime if I utter the words "that tickles".
To be clear, I am not saying that it's "rude"... I'm just pointing out that in my case, it has been more useful to adapt. This should not be construed as an implication that you can or should do so.
(looks up Sean Maher)
Oh no, I look nothing like that. I look like a dork, not a movie star :-)
I feel bad that this behavior would scare you. Honestly I don't know that I ever scared a single person in my life, man or woman. I mean, you could probably beat me up if you wanted to :-) Humorous shrieks are a common girl response; scared shrieks, no. But... okay. I'm playing a numbers game anyway, some form of evasion is the expected response.