Overview: This is a proposal for a LessWrong Pick Up Artist (PUA)-like sub-community; PUA without the PU (get it?)1. Members would focus on the deliberate practice of social artistry, but with non-mating goals. Origins and intent of the goal are discussed, possible topics for learning are listed, and suggestions for next steps are solicited.
Origins:
The PUA Community began decades ago with men that wanted to learn how to get better at seducing women. As I understand it, they simply began posting their (initially) awkward attempts at love online. Over the years, they appear to have amassed a fairly impressive set of practical knowledge and skills in this domain.
I admire and applaud this effort. However, my ability to meet women is not currently a limiting factor in my life satisfaction. In reading some of the PUA literature, I was struck how often different authors remarked on the unintended side benefits of their training: better relationships at work, better interviewing skills, more effective negotiations, more non-pickup social fun, better male friendships, more confidence, etc. These guys were able to make major strides in areas that I've struggled to improve at all in... without even bloody intending to! This struck me as an something worth taking very seriously!
I find it alarming that such a valuable resource would be monopolized in pursuit of orgasm; it's rather as if a planet were to burn up its hydrocarbons instead of using them to make useful polymers. PUA ought to be a special case of a more general skill set, and it's being wasted. I say that my goals are noble, and as such I should have the opportunity to sharpen my skills to at least the keenness of a PUA master!
Statement of Purpose:
The purpose of this post is to open discussion on how to construct a community of developing social artisans, modeled after the useful components2 of the PUA community. If there is sufficient mass, the next goals are probably sussing out learning methods and logistics.
The mission of the hypothetical community will probably need to be fleshed out more explicitly (and I don't want to be too prescriptive), but pretty much what I was thinking was expressed well by Scott Adams:
...I think technical people, and engineers in particular, will always have good job prospects. But what if you don't have the aptitude or personality to follow a technical path? How do you prepare for the future?
I'd like to see a college major focusing on the various skills of human persuasion. That's the sort of skillset that the marketplace will always value and the Internet is unlikely to replace. The persuasion coursework might include...
- Sales methods
- Psychology of persuasion
- Human Interface design
- How to organize information for influence
- Propaganda
- Hypnosis
- Cults
- Art (specifically design)
- Debate
- Public speaking
- Appearance (hair, makeup, clothes)
- Negotiations
- Managing difficult personalities
- Management theory
- Voice coaching
- Networking
- How to entertain
- Golf and tennis
- Conversation
You can imagine a few more classes that would be relevant. The idea is to create people who can enter any room and make it their bitch. [emphasis added]
Colleges are unlikely to offer this sort of major because society is afraid and appalled by anything that can be labeled "manipulation," which isn't even a real thing.
Manipulation isn't real because almost every human social or business activity has as its major or minor objective the influence of others. You can tell yourself that you dress the way you do because it makes you happy, but the real purpose of managing your appearance is to influence how others view you.
Humans actively sell themselves every minute they are interacting with anyone else. Selling yourself, which sounds almost noble, is little more than manipulating other people to do what is good for you but might not be so good for others. All I'm suggesting is that people could learn to be more effective at the things they are already trying to do all day long.
Word! [EDIT: We need not be bound by this exact list. For instance, there is no way I'm going to be doing any golfing.]
I've met people who were shockingly, seemingly preternaturally adept in social settings. Of course this is not magic. Like anything else, it can be reduced to a set of constituent steps and learned. We just need to figure out how.
Next steps:
I have a rather long list of ideas ready to go, but they made this post kind of awkward. Plus, Scott Adam's post says much of what I was trying to get at. Let's just start the conversation.
So, what do you think?
1 I have nothing whatsoever against the majority of the PUAers with whom I've had encounters, and the title is just meant to be funny. No offense!
2 The mention of PUA drags along several associations that I want to disavow (think anything obviously "Dark Arts"). I considered omitting the fact that much of the intellectual heritage of this idea is the PUAers to avoid these associations, but I couldn't think of another way to tie it together. This idea owes its genesis to the PUA community, but the product is not intended to be its exact replica. Undesirable elements need not be ported from the old system to the new.
Like Scott Adam's in the quote from the original post, I'm skeptical of the category of "manipulation." People use it to mean a lot of different things. Some use it to mean "influence," in a morally-neutral way. Others use it to mean something like "unethical" influence." Since there isn't a common meaning of what "manipulation" means, I don't find it a useful term. Instead, I would rather just talk about ethical and unethical forms of influence (and if you do see me using the word "manipulation," I use it to mean "unethical influence").
I take the position that there is a lot of influence used in the seduction community, but most of it is ethical, including the example you give. In the seduction community, we call it "venue changing."
Is venue changing ethical influence, or unethical? Let's examine a couple reasons it could be unethical.
You create the feeling that you both have known each other a long time (yes, this technique works on the guy, too). But to call that feeling an "illusion" seems like some sort of category mistake. As I've argued here before, in the social world perception is reality to a large degree. If you feel close with someone, they you are close. There is no time quota you must meet before a feeling of closeness can be categorized as "real" or "illusion."
Basing a feeling of closeness on merely being in a series of venues together might seem like a poor foundation for a connection. But that can't be a basis for calling such a behavior unethical, even when done intentionally. People go through multiple venues on dates all the time; if we told them that they are really "manipulating" each other, should they say "whoops, you're right! Now that we know what a poor foundation for connection we were creating, we should stick to one venue for our dates from now on..."? No.
Furthermore, venue changing isn't devoid of "real" information to base a connection on. Changing venues requires you to show all sorts of things to your date that are useful for evaluating compatibility. How is the next place to go decided, and what kind of negotiation occurs? What do these choices show about the people involved? If you walk, how do you two walk together? Does one person walk faster than the other? Do you hold hands, or walk arm-in-arm? If you go by car, who drives? Who figures out the directions? If you get lost, how do you two handle it?
Traveling around town actually shows you a lot about what another person is like, which is perhaps a part of why venue-changing is so useful for creating a feeling of connection. You feel more connected because you two have done more stuff together.
There is a certain degree of caveat emptor necessary here. People should keep track of what kinds of interaction their feelings of connection with others are based on.
Yet I don't think we can hold the moral principle that it's only ethical to influence people in ways that they are aware of. Not everyone has the same level of social and sexual experience. If that principle was true, then subtle makeup and push-up bras would be unethical, because some men can't recognize them.
I do agree that influencing people in ways they aren't aware of deserves moral scrutiny, I just think we need additional criteria to declare it unethical. In Hugh Ristik's Sexual Ethics v0.9, I propose a couple criteria by which we can evaluate influence the other person is unaware of:
Would they consider that influence OK if they did know? In the case of venue-changing, I think that if women were widely aware of the effectiveness of venue-changing in facilitating a connection, they wouldn't object to it any more than men object to women wearing makeup or cute clothes. It would just become a part of the mating dance that both people are aware of.
Should they consider that influence OK if they knew about it, and understood where you are coming from?
Does that form of influence impair the other person's ability to consent to being sexual with you? No, unless you think that women feeling close to a man are impaired in their ability to consent. I don't. Spiking someone's drink fails this test.
Is it a form of influence that the other person is accustomed to? People are accustomed to feeling close to others, and they are often accustomed to going through multiple venues on dates. In contrast, some forms of hypnosis might fail this test (I don't know; I don't know enough hypnosis) if they create mental states that people aren't used to making sexual decisions under.
Is it a form of influence based on their native brain chemistry? Spiking someone's drink fails this test.
In summary, I think that venue changing is an ethical form of influence. I do think it would be even more ethical if more women realized what was going on. I think the same thing about most pickup techniques, which is part of why I talk about them so much. I want women to know what's going on, and I avoid doing stuff that I would be ashamed of women knowing about.
Let's see for a definition, first hit on 'venue change pua' is http://www.pualingo.com/pua-definitions/venue-change/
Does building "compliance" and "time distortion" sound ethical? Does it sound like it helps people make informed rational choices?
Everything social is shades of gray, and that is why motives are so important. If the art is so ethical why are description of it so often done in such a bad way?