Open Thread, August 2010

NancyLebovitz

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

I'm intrigued by the idea of trying to start something like a PUA community that is explicitly NOT focussed on securing romantic partners, but rather the deliberate practice of general social skills.

It seems like there's a fair bit of real knowledge in the PUA world, that some of it is quite a good example of applied rationality, and that much of it could be extremely useful for purposes unrelated to mating.

I'm wondering:

if this is an interesting idea to LWers?
if this is the right venue to talk about it?
does something similar already exist?

I'm aware that there was some previous conversation around similar topics and their appropriateness to LW, but if there was final consensus I missed it. Please let me know if these matters have been deemed inappropriate.

A lot of companies conduct anonymous "360 review" processes which veer into this territory to some degree.

Also, several business schools conduct leadership labs. In fact, a large chunk of the business school experience is really about social grooming / learning how to network / and so forth.

So do we have any traction for this idea? How about a meetup?

8Violet16y

If you want non-PC approaches there are two communities you could look into: sales-people and conning people. The second one actually has most of the how-to-hack-peoples minds. If you want a kinder version look at it titled "social engineering".

0marc16y

I think you're probably correct in your presumptions. I find it an interesting idea and would certainly follow any further discussion.

7

Open Thread, August 2010

7

7

7

Open Thread, August 2010

7

7