RomanDavis comments on Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics - Less Wrong
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I think your comment was quite appropriate. Even under the best imaginable scenario, these articles and their follow-up discussions will suffer from at least two problems.
First, there is the conspicuous omission of any references to the PUA elephant in the room. The body of insight developed by this particular sort of people, whatever its faults, is of supreme practical importance for anyone who wants to formulate practical advice in this area. Without referencing it explicitly, one can either ignore it altogether and thus inevitably talk nonsense, or pretend to speak based solely on official academic literature, which is disingenuous and unfair in its failure to attribute credit (and also misleading for those who would like to pursue their own research in the matter). It's as if someone wanted to talk about electronics but insisted that the only legitimate references should be from pure academic quantum theory, and the nuts-and-bolts work of tech entrepreneurs and industry engineers is forbidden and unmentionable.
Second, really good practical advice in this area simply cannot be inoffensive. To take a clear and obvious example, one absolutely essential sort of knowledge is what kinds of people are likely to lead to various sorts of trouble if you entangle yourself with them. In principle, this is an exercise in assigning conditional probabilities that should be greatly attractive to the LW folks fond of Bayesianism. Yet since in our culture the discussion (let alone practical use) of certain kinds of conditional probabilities about people is considered immoral, discussing these things while remaining within the contemporary inoffensive bounds is as if one wanted to discuss sexual techniques while respecting the prudery norms of 17th century puritanism. (Also, on a more mundane level, LW is still far from the standards of rationality that would make people who recognize themselves in some of these conditional probabilities refrain from destroying the discourse by crying offense, and various others not to try boosting their staus by joining them in solidarity, or even complaining preemptively on their behalf.) There are of course many other important aspects of the topic where one faces similar problems.
On the whole, the article is based on the premise that an accurate and no-nonsense analysis of the topic will result in something that sounds not just inoffensive, but actually strongly in line with various fashionable and high-status norms and ideals of the broader society. This premise however is flawed, and those who believe that this has in fact been accomplished should apply the powerful debiasing heuristic that says that when a seemingly rational discussion of some deeply problematic and controversial topic sounds pleasant and reassuring, there's probably something fishy going on. There is simply no way to approach this topic without ending up with something that's either offensive to the mainstream sensibilities and apt to upset certain sorts of people, or disingenuous and inaccurate to a significant degree.
A solution might be to make a sort of subforum for mindkilling topics, and associating them with some karma cost. Doesn't eliminate the mindkilling aspect, but hopefully makes it so that people with low karmas are kept out, which is hopefully correlated with some minimal rational ability.
Or maybe not. Holding off on that sort of thing is sometimes a good idea.