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Vladimir_M comments on Love and Rationality: Less Wrongers on OKCupid - Less Wrong
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Comments (329)
Frankly, I think that all this advice is simply irrelevant for all practical purposes. The goal of a dating site profile is to elicit interest and attraction from people who would in turn be attractive to you. However, what this post presents are just instructions for satisfying the author's entirely abstract vision for what a nice profile should look like. They are not guaranteed, or even likely, to improve your chances for eliciting attraction even from the author, let alone anyone else. Ultimately, the listed advice ends up being pure noise at best. The fact that a post like this one is getting a significant number of upvotes should serve as a strong warning signal to lots of people here that they greatly overestimate the level of "rationality" that they supposedly apply to all issues.
One basic problem is that the author starts with an impossible goal, namely providing fully general advice that will apply to people of all sexes and sexual preferences with unchanged wording. While such an approach resonates well with the modern popular forms of idealism, it is far too detached from reality to allow for any sensible results.
Another part that struck me as completely detached from reality is:
That's about as realistic as saying that there are two schools of thought on what to do when the low fuel light in your car lights up: one is to to keep driving and pray to God that he might keep your car running no matter what happens, and the other is to pull over at the next gas station and fill the tank. If you're a man looking for women, the idea of asking women for advice in love and dating, versus getting advice from men who are successful with women, stand in about the same relation when it comes to the expected practical success. This is entirely uncontroversial among people who have any real knowledge of these matters.
Steve Barnes asked the woman he knew who most resembled the woman he was looking for what she wanted, and made changes in himself to be more like that. It worked for him-- he's happily married.
On the other hand, this isn't the same as asking for general advice.
Interesting. I wonder what you do when "what your ideal partner wants" and "what you want to be" conflict. I guess you figure out which one's more important to you.
As noted, the post was a summary of the thoughts given in the OKC thread; some people were seeking advice from their preferred gender, and some from people who shared their preference. So I am reporting that, among LWers who use OKCupid, there are indeed two beliefs.
The only thing that "guarantees" eliciting attraction--from me or anyone else--is being attractive. If you write honestly about how you are a person whose interests and values do not intersect with mine, and present it well, I still will not message you. This is not a failure of your writing; it has saved us both some wasted time.
Where 'being attractive' to a significant degree means 'doing things that elicit attraction'.
Relsqui:
I have no particular comment on what you write here, but I would like to point out that this makes my above comment sound much cruder than it really was. The phrases "guarantee to improve one's chances for eliciting attraction" and "guarantee eliciting attraction" do not mean the exact same thing.
Your criticisms of this post seem valid, but could likely be equally well-applied to (for example) most of what Eliezer and Yvain have written. To test this for yourself, go to a random post from (for example) the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence and see how much empiricism stands behinds its claims.
Posts like this are fine, though they should be followed up by empirical study if anyone cares.
thomblake:
I disagree. While I certainly have disagreements with these posts you mention, their approach is still fundamentally sound. They don't, at least in the great majority of cases, provide unsubstantiated practical advice in this vein, and they rarely, if ever, fail elementary sanity checks like these ones I mentioned.
Well if you're so sure what it ain't, how about telling us what it am?
Not to sound arrogant, but as a man successful with women, I can offer my advice to other men here.
Feel free to reply to this comment or PM me with questions.
I don't doubt that you're as successful as you claim, but given that neither of us has presented any proof, what makes your single data point more valuable than mine?
What evidence would you expect me to be able to provide online?
I'm not asking for evidence. I'm asking why it's okay for you to offer advice based on the strength of your own personal experience, when it apparently isn't okay for me to do so. Or do you disagree with the people claiming the latter?
Wrote my comment in light of this:
Understood. However, a couple of people elsewhere in this thread are claiming that I have no business giving advice about online dating without being able to give some evidence that my advice works. Do you disagree with them? Or do you think that it's inappropriate for me to do so, but appropriate for you to? Or neither?
Depends what you mean by "have no business giving advice."
Not all advice without evidence is bad advice. There are heuristics we use to figure out which unsupported advice is better than others. Based on some people's heuristics, like Vladamir_M's, my unsupported advice would more likely lead to better results (assuming all else equal).
What's the relevant difference between your advice without evidence and mine? Is it that he already expects advice from men about seeking women to be sound, and more general advice not to be?
I don't know that there's any way to pursue ths question without sounding defensive, which is not my intent. I just want to make sure I understand the objections to my post.
pwno didn't seem to imply that his argument applied to his advice and not yours.
It's a factual question whether positive personal experience backs up usefulness of principles one follows, not some kind of social norm, where you can make egalitarian appeals.
It's not an appeal, it's an honest question. Aren't we both claiming that our personal experience backs up our principles? If you're saying that there's a difference between the two cases, can you explain what that difference is? I'm genuinely trying to understand.
Agreed, interpreted this way it's a good argument. I answered the literal and perhaps unintended interpretation.
I'm relieved that we're back on the same page. I do try to avoid the kind of implication you were responding to, for exactly this reason; it's difficult, but I'll continue trying.
Part of the difference is that you are a different gender from pwno. Your experience may support your advice for women, but it doesn't give much evidence of its effectiveness for men.
Another difference is that pwno seems like he hangs out with more mainstream and gender-typical people, while your profile suggests that you hang out with alternative and gender-atypical people (based on your comments about disliking gender stereotypes). Your experiences in the minority gender-atypical taxon of 10-15% of the population may not generalize well to the majority taxon of gender-typical people. Anecdotal evidence from pwno and Vladimir_M may generalize better.
Assuming that you're using info from my OKC profile to place me in that taxon, it bears noting that a lot of women who place near me on the Kinsey scale probably identify as straight. I don't think I'm quite as unusual as you think I am, but the point is still valid.
Most of this post's discussion has revolved around what sorts of things are okay for Relsqui to post on this site. That is exactly a question of social norms. How your factual question turns out is only relevant in that it has some bearing on the question of whether the things in this post should have been posted here.
The social norm is not to post things that are not expected to be factually correct based on usual LW background and arguments given in the post itself. It's more general than not posting things containing any specific error, and so it's incorrect to say that there is a social norm against any given specific pattern, that is currently considered in error.
Not talking about evidence of the personal anecdote being accurate, but about the evidence of the advice being useful, which accurate account of successful personal anecdotes is not.
Hey, I'd like some advice.
When I hang out in nightclubs, I seem to have two discrete states with a very abrupt transition between them: an "off" state where I'm almost invisible to girls, and an "on" state where they suddenly hang on me in twos and threes. But the "on" state happens rarely (once or twice a month for several hours, max) and I'm still not sure how to trigger it, even though I've spent months on experimenting. I've established that it doesn't depend on clothing, haircut, posture or the other obvious controllable factors - it must be some aspect of "inner game" that I sometimes achieve spontaneously but can't put a finger on. I also know that it's easier to reach the "on" state after a random girl smiles at me: it becomes a little easier to make the next random girl smile at me, and (with luck) it escalates like runaway AI. Does this match your experience? What is this thing, and do you know any tricks for "switching"?
In PUA lingo, this state is referred to as simply "state", since it's of course the state that PUAs want to be in. ;-)
PUA theorists vary as to what this "state" consists of, but they do say a few things in common about it and about how to produce it. Many have commented on this aspect you describe:
Some thinking goes along the lines that the key elements are "nonreactivity" (ie., not being concerned about what other people think of you) and "self-amusement" (i.e. doing things for your own enjoyment and amusement, rather than to achieve some particular outcome).
At the same time, the comments of many gurus suggest that they themselves do not have total or absolute control over this state: they sometimes talk about the need to get early good responses in order to get more later, just like you... but they have rituals and processes both to prime the pump in the first place, or to recover their state when it falters.
Usually, these rituals are both silly and masculine: chest thumping, jumping up and down and whooping, marching through a club with friends while chanting something nonsensical (aka "lording the club"), offering strangers high-fives, opening with ridiculous, but self-amusing lines in a deliberate attempt to invite rejection, etc.
The stated purpose of these rituals is to aid a transition to the desired state, rather than for the direct purposes of a display of confidence, but it's possible that part of the point is to convince one's self that the current environment is a safe one for confident self-expression and masculine display... in which case the smiles of females might function similarly.
I've tried a couple of these things to improve general outgoingness and sociability (or to get psyched up for writing or speaking performances), with some limited usefulness. But I have not tested any of them as a way to attract women, so your mileage may vary.
Wow, I should have known that you would show up :-) Thanks for the info! Your advice seems to be along the same lines as pwno's, so I'm reasonably sure that it's worth trying.
Is the nonconscious, adroit performance of well-practiced behavior which is often referred to by ahtletes as "flow" identical to "state," a component of "state," or completely unrelated?
Well, the ways that PUAs "pump state" and the athletes "psych up" certainly have some things in common. Chest bumping, high-fiving, rhythmic group chants and exhalations, or strutting and other displays of confidence, status, or masculine attributes.
"Flow" is certainly a much more general term, no?
PUA state involves flow, but also other things.
Many people have the same experience. You've landed the right mindset for a brief time and your outer game improved.
I believe the mindset is mostly a function of personal expectations about your interactions with women. When you expect the interactions to go towards your desired direction, you're more likely to hit the mindset. Problem is, you can't make yourself expect positive results just like you can't make yourself expect coldness when you touch fire.
The most straightforward technique to "switching" this mindset on is to prove to yourself, on a conscious and subconscious level, that you should expect positive results. Gather your evidence, by achieving easier, related goals. For example, if you're in a nightclub and not in you preferred mindset, try achieving the following:
You can probably come up with small goals yourself too.
Thanks! Sounds plausible, I'll test this.
How do you know that this apparent state difference isn't due to confirmation bias and standard tendencies for humans to see clustering where it doesn't exist?
Good question, made me think. At any given moment, except the short period of ramp-up, I can tell whether I'm "on" or "off" - from the inside it feels like it's binary. But it's true that on the outside my success varies on a continuous scale, because when I'm "off" I still have some tricks up my sleeve. But these tricks require a lot of willpower to use. When I'm "on", everybody likes me and willpower becomes irrelevant. Maybe it's about dynamics: when I'm close to "on", I gravitate toward "on" as I get more validation from others, but when I'm close to "off", I slide toward "off" for the same reason.
I wonder... is this a "social proof" a.k.a. Magnetic Girlfriend effect? (If you have one girl hanging on you, others become interested?)
Edit: Rephrased to fix ambiguity.
Definitely not. If I shake myself free and go to another room alone, it works just as strongly.
Warning: "Magnetic Girlfriend" is a TV Tropes link.
EDIT: This comment is obsolete; it was based on an ambiguity that has been fixed.
Not clear what distinction you're drawing - if the latter is the effect itself, then it describes it by definition; the question is what's the cause, of which "social proof" is one possible. Or how were you thinking about it?
Fixed, sorry. (Two different names for the same basic thing.)