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Vladimir_M comments on Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics - Less Wrong
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OK, then to phrase it in purely grammatical terms, what exactly is the antecedent of the pronoun "it" in your question above?
You write as if there is some particular horrible truth that I'd like to be able to shout from the rooftops but I'm afraid to do so. There's nothing like that. (Not about this topic, anyway.)
What does exist, however, is that real, no-nonsense advice about this topic breaks the social norms of polite discourse and offends various categories of people. ("Offends" in the sense that it lowers their status in a way that, according to the present mainstream social norms, constitutes a legitimate grievance.) This leads straight to at least three possible failure modes: (1) the discourse breaks down and turns into a quarrel over the alleged offenses, (2) the discourse turns into a pseudo-rational discussion that incorporates heavy biases that are necessary to steer it away from the unacceptable territory, or (3) the discourse accurately converges onto the correct but offensive ideas, but makes the forum look to the outsiders like a low-status breeding ground for offensive and evil ideas.
Concrete examples are easy to think of even without getting into the traditionally controversial PUA stuff. For example, one sort of advice I wish my younger self had followed is about what sorts of women it's smart to avoid entangling oneself with due to all kinds of potential trouble. (In fact, this is an extremely important issue for men who undertake some sort of self-improvement to become more attractive to women, since in their new-found success they may rush to hurl themselves into various kinds of imprudent entanglements.)
However, if you state openly and frankly that women displaying trait X are likely to exhibit behavior Y that in turn highly increases the probability of trouble Z, you may well be already into the unacceptably offensive territory. Women who have the trait X will be offended, or others may decide to signal enlightened caring by getting offended on their behalf. Those who exhibit, or have exhibited, behavior Y may defend it and be offended by its condemnation, and so on. All this will likely be framed as a protest against prejudice, a rhetorical tactic that tends to be very effective even if no evidence has been given against the conditional probabilities that constitute the prejudice in question. (Though of course there may be plenty of fallacious but rhetorically effective disproofs offered.)
It's this kind of thing that I have in mind, i.e. stuff that's offensive and insensitive in quite mundane ways, not some frightful "Soylent Green is people" bombshells.
Well, it's fair to say I wrote that way, as that was indeed the impression I was operating under. Looking back on your actual posts, I'm not quite sure precisely where I got that idea, though apparently I was not alone in that interpretation (I see you've already responded to one of those comments as well).
In that case, I'm somewhat more sympathetic to your point of view. If you think it probably isn't worth the predictable breakdown in discussion to spread around some particular piece of offensive-but-helpful-and-true advice, I'm not going to second-guess you.
But to be fair, I think the points I made in this particular branch of the conversation do apply more generally to whatever other Soylent Green-style horrible truths you (or anyone else) may or may not have, not just this one specific topic.
The trouble is, I really don't see how any course of action would have much hope of avoiding at least one of the three listed failure modes. On the one hand, I don't want to be the one responsible for failure (1) or (3), but on the other, I have grown fond enough of this forum that I'd hate to see it degenerate into just another place where failures of type (2) go on unnoticed. Hence my attempt to draw attention to the problem by discussing it at the meta level.
Redheads? Now I'm curious what kinds of traits X you're talking about.
To take a prominent example, it's impossible to discuss the inferences that can be made from a woman's sexual history without getting into the problems described above. (Especially considering that statistically accurate criteria of this sort are, as a purely factual matter, highly asymmetrical across the sexes.) Or similarly, any sorts of inferences that can be made from looks and behavior, where it's usually impossible to even get to a rational discussion of whether they are statistically accurate, since any such discussion will at the same time hit the ideological boo light of "prejudice" and personally aggravate those to whom these inferences apply personally (or who have important people in their lives in this category, or who will perhaps just react for signaling reasons).
On these topics, there really is no way to avoid either sounding crude and offensive or being misleading by omitting important elements of the truth.
Perhaps if you started by sharing your dataset first (with names changed to protect the guilty, etc.), then the conclusions you drew from it, and only afterwards the advice you would give to a younger version of yourself?
So basically which stereotypes are accurate? If you're willing, I'd like to know what specific inferences can be made from sexual history, looks, or behavior: you can PM me. I assure you it won't personally aggravate me. Are you thinking lots of partners/good looks correspond to intimacy issues, low self-esteem, or craziness?
Well, it's a topic for a whole book, not a brief comment buried deep in a vast old thread. But for some concrete examples, see e.g. the comments I left in this subthread.
So basically, if a guy tries to have a long-term relationship with a girl who's had a lot of partners, he better study Game or there's a good chance she'll get bored, because she's used to very attractive guys? That makes sense; I wouldn't think of that as very controversial. Of course, that ignores that some women actually do also make an effort to work on their long-term relationship skills and find ways to deal with periods where their partners seem less attractive.
I didn't see anything about looks in that subthread; does something similar apply to dating someone very good-looking?
By "looks" I didn't mean the level of attractiveness, but more generally, all clues available from people's appearance. Clearly, this is going to lead to strife once people start recognizing themselves, or someone they care about, in the criteria under discussion. (This may in fact be due to understandable annoyance on part of someone who represents an actual statistical exception, but again, this makes it no less a barrier to rational discussion.)
Re: relationships with women who've had a lot of partners, the problem is that for a typical man, the extreme skew of the male attractiveness distribution and the asymmetry of the male-female mating strategies mean that even with some dedication to studying and practice of game, he'll likely end up in an unfavorable position. But again, talking about this stuff in plainer and more concrete ways is hard to do without crossing the bounds that have repeatedly shown to be a trigger of discourse breakdown on LW.
The obvious question is, what about female partners, or group sex partners with the guy in question? Do they count against the girl?
I'm not seeing why the asymmetry means that the guy will end up in an unfavorable position even if he knows how to be attractive enough. Other than the girl finding the guy unattractive, I'm not sure what else you're hinting at. Given that I like girls who have had large numbers of partners, is there anything else I need to know or do or be aware of?
Re: looks, are we talking the "blonde = ditzy, glasses = geeky" level of stereotype? Or are you talking about the way someone's mood, shyness, introversion, and so forth can be read from body language? Or something as straightforward as someone wearing a lot of makeup spent a lot of time on her appearance, and thus probably wants attention/cares what people think of her a lot?
The only "discourse breakdown" I've seen is the crowd that thinks any attempt to improve dating skills is fake and evil, and I don't really care about them. I think we're past the reflexive "pickup = evil" by now. I'd really like to hear this stuff talked about in plainer and more concrete ways, or at least PM me with a few specifics!
One idea: we've had a thread on LW where people post their online dating profiles for feedback. I think it'd be an interesting game to post pictures of people, either ours or other random pictures, and see what kind of guesses we come up with about them based on clues from their appearance.
A better way to go about it would be slipping Vlad some drug that will overwhelm his barriers and make him blabber out the horrible truth. Look at his comment history and you'll see that no-one ever got anything serious out of him after him dropping such hints with just talk.;)
(I might be joking now, but my jimmies are overall quite rustled with his entire soap opera; moreso when I consider how clear-headed and constructive he can be with simple and ideology-free comments.)
Naaaah, let's just have Eliezer try to get Vlad's ideas out of the box. :-)
Based on the comments you've left so far in response to what I've been writing, I estimate a low probability that you are genuinely intrigued by what I might think about certain questions, and a much higher probability that you are baiting.
However, just in case the less probable hypothesis is true, I will for once respond to you. Namely, if you want me to talk about things that I'm reluctant to discuss because I'm not sure if it's worth the controversy it will cause, then I'd first like to see that you're making some effort to understand the arguments that I have already made on related topics. So far, I've seen zero indication of this, which makes it likely that you are indeed baiting.
Now, this may be a misunderstanding on my part, but honestly, I can hardly see how it might be so. Someone who is genuinely curious about my contrarian opinions would make some effort to respond intelligently to those comments where I have already discussed them, even if I've done it only in a cautious and indirect way. You, on the other hand, have shown absolutely no inclination to do so. Rather, you are behaving as if you are eager to get some juicy soundbites that would be a convenient target for attack. And you can't possibly claim that my writings so far have been devoid of substance, since dozens of other people have evidently found enough substance in them to write well-thought-out responses.
You had me convinced that Vladimir really was all talk and bluff until other links in recent comments lead me to some rather detailed explanations by Vladimir of his position.
I have an even stronger dislike than normal for cheap rhetoric when I realize that I have been taken in by it. All future anti-Vladimir_M claims by yourself will now be treated with extreme skepticism.