NancyLebovitz comments on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA - Less Wrong

66 Post author: XFrequentist 10 September 2010 12:25AM

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Comment author: komponisto 11 September 2010 01:51:25PM *  14 points [-]

If I may say so, there is something troubling about your third paragraph (edited, with emphasis added):

The one thing I still have a problem with is self-help courses that guarantee you success with women. Nothing can guarantee you that...[W]hen you have consensual social interactions, the other person could always rebuff you. It can get creepy when men think...that it's unfair when they get turned down. I worry about that driving men to violence.... [W]omen are free to reject you.

Try to imagine substituting other forms of consensual social interaction here, and seeing if the tone feels right. For example, right now the economy is bad in many places, and many people are unemployed. I can easily imagine that there are numerous self-help courses that teach people how to make themselves more attractive to employers, by teaching them how to behave during interviews, etc. Now obviously no such program can guarantee anyone a job. Imagine, however, that some poor soul -- let's make her a woman -- goes through these courses, does everything she can to improve her prospects, but still can't manage to secure a job. Presumably, a person in that position would naturally feel a sense of frustration; they may even feel that they are the victim of unfairness. Can you imagine applying a word like creepy to this -- general, unspecified, hypothetical -- woman's distress? ("Creepy" is about the strongest form of social condemnation that exists in near mode -- i.e. when we're not talking about distant political villains.) Would you feel the need to point out -- in a rather defensive-sounding way -- that employers are in fact free to reject those whom they regard as less-than-qualified candidates? It's unlikely you would worry too much about such a person turning to violence -- and to the extent you did, it would probably be in the standard sympathetic way in which thoughtful, liberal people usually discuss the relationship between poverty and crime.

I don't mean to single you out personally and question your motives, so please don't take what follows that way; but it seems to me that underlying remarks like these -- which I have seen and heard from many people in many places over the years -- is a fundamentally inadequate level of sympathy for "unattractive" men. I wonder if it's time someone made the bound-to-be-controversial suggestion that women in modern society are excessively conservative when it comes to granting sexual favors. There is apparently no greater female nightmare scenario than mating with a less-than-optimally-attractive male. The Darwinian reasons why this should be the case are too obvious to be worth stating; but it should be equally obvious that such behavior is less than rational in our modern era of contraception: sex simply doesn't have the same dangers that it did in the ancestral environment.

(I would guess that the analogously irrational male behavior is probably sexual jealousy.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 September 2010 04:46:10PM 0 points [-]

How many hours a week of mercy fucks would you say that women owe to the world?

I don't think you should necessarily avoid talking about changing preferences. I do think you should consider that people only change their preferences for reasons that make sense to them, and that contextless statements that the world would be better if only people would make themselves more convenient for someone else (who coincidentally is more like you than they are) are not likely to go over well, and why.

I wonder if it's time someone made the bound-to-be-controversial suggestion that women in modern society are excessively conservative when it comes to granting sexual favors.

When you said it was bound to be controversial, did you have any specific controversies in mind?

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 21 September 2010 03:22:07AM 3 points [-]

The obligation should be no stronger than the obligation to welcome a homeless person into your dwelling for a night's sleep, or to donate a large portion of one's savings+income to feed the starving - that is, nonexistent.

The typical person would not necessarily offer sex to all comers on a pro bono basis, but could fund professionals who choose such a line of work.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 21 September 2010 08:10:50AM *  2 points [-]

If it had been phrased as you put it, I don't think things would have blown up.

Correction: If it had been conceived as you put it, things wouldn't have blown up.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 21 September 2010 08:17:18AM *  0 points [-]

Glad to hear it. It's painful than seeing people try to blow up rationally :)