kodos96:

What I have seen is that I've made several "You're wrong" comments, and none of the PUAs have responded to their substance ("No you're wrong" doesn't count).

I don't know if you count me among those, given what I've written in this thread, but I have addressed several of the points you made in that comment and elsewhere. In particular, I have pointed out: (1) that the body of expertise in analyzing male-female relations that originated in the PUA community is not limited to picking up girls from self-selected samples in bars and clubs, though some parts of it are; (2) that men successfully use lessons derived from this analysis for achieving and maintaining more permanent and close relationships with women, up to and including marriages; (3) that while some of the techniques recommended by certain PUAs are sly and dishonest, most of these techniques are just about making socially inept men clue onto the regular and normal protocols of human social interaction; and (4) that people are prone to irrationally dismiss insights of this sort as immoral due to the rule-hypocrisy bias. Just click on my name to see my recent posts in which I elaborate on all this.

Also, if you look at pjeby's comments, he has addressed many of your points at great length, and some other people have too. Therefore, even if you disagree with all this, I don't think you can realistically claim that nobody has attempted to address the substance of your objections, even if it wasn't done in direct replies to your comments.

What I have seen is that I've made several "You're wrong" comments, and none of the PUAs have responded to their substance ("No you're wrong" doesn't count).

What you're wrong about is here:

In PUA circles, "winning" is defined by getting laid.

Many men study PUA with the goal of being "good with women" (includes but is not solely defined by getting laid) or to "find my dream girl", or to impress other men with their game. And even of the ones who do get into it just to get laid, almost invariably find that success to be hollow after a while. (Read Strauss' book "The Game" for one man's personal account of this process.)

Do PUAs use the ability to get laid as an acid test for their techniques? Sure. But all of the ones who are about having more and deeper relationships with women -- even the women they're only going to speak to in the bar for 30 minutes or so before moving on.. will definitely tell you that it's not all about that. Even Mystery, who has one of the most shallow and manipulative PUA systems in existence, doesn't treat simply getting a random lay as being an adequate definition of success. (He calls it "fool's mate".)

Most PUA "outer game" frameworks are about being able to socially relate to people, because this is a minimum requirement for being able to "isolate your target". If you just walk up to a woman in a group of her friends and try to talk to her, you won't have much success. So Mystery in particular spent an extensive amount of time learning how to engage -- and ally with -- his "targets'" friends and companions.

So, it's this empirical success at social dynamics that is PUA's relevance to this discussion, not its ability to get men laid via "fool's mate". You can't get laid with someone you can't meet in the first place, because her friends don't like you and thus either try to keep you away from her in the first place, or drag her away from you if she seems to like you too much.

IOW, "no, you're wrong", and that's why. ;-)

Responding to a complaint about punitive downvoting without substantively engaging the argument, by punitively downvoting and failing to engage the argument?

Really???

The fact that people (e.g. pjeby) have returned to this subject without invoking offense, despite discussing similar content, suggests that the offensive characteristic is not a necessary component of the subject.

FWIW, it has been previously argued that I don't really talk about PUA, but only a bastardized female-friendly version thereof.

I, OTOH, maintain that this is merely a function of using non-misogynistic language and metaphor to describe the same acts, and the fact I don't signal loyalty to men protesting that they're being oppressed by an unjust conspiracy of women and traitorous men .

My personal take: shit yea it's unjust. But I don't see those guys doing anything to fix the injustices on women's side of things (or even really trying to understand them in the first place), instead just proclaiming their own side's values to be superior.

But that's just stupid. If you want to relate to women, you need to... well, relate. I think that both women in general and "dog people" in particular have a few peculiar or irrational values by my "cat-man" lights... but they're still their values.

And if I want to interact with those people, that means honoring their values, not insisting that they behave by mine. So, let's replace the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you'd have them do unto you") with the Platinum Rule: do unto others as they would have you do.

Or, better yet for LessWrong, let's coin the "Dilithium Rule": do unto others that which you can empirically expect will produce the response(s) you wish to receive. ;-)

(And by this rule, protesting men's oppression is silly, unless your goal is to ally with other true believers. It can be empirically observed to have little effect on anyone else.)