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Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics
Part of the Sequence: The Science of Winning at Life. Co-authored with Minda Myers and Hugh Ristik. Also see: Polyhacking.
When things fell apart between me (Luke) and my first girlfriend, I decided that kind of relationship wasn't ideal for me.
I didn't like the jealous feelings that had arisen within me. I didn't like the desperate, codependent 'madness' that popular love songs celebrate. I had moral objections to the idea of owning somebody else's sexuality, and to the idea of somebody else owning mine. Some of my culture's scripts for what a man-woman relationship should look like didn't fit my own goals very well.
I needed to design romantic relationships that made sense (decision-theoretically) for me, rather than simply falling into whatever relationship model my culture happened to offer. (The ladies of Sex and the City weren't too good with decision theory, but they certainly invested time figuring out which relationship styles worked for them.) For a while, this new approach led me into a series of short-lived flings. After that, I chose 4 months of contented celibacy. After that, polyamory. After that...
Anyway, the results have been wonderful. Rationality and decision theory work for relationships, too!
We humans compartmentalize by default. Brains don't automatically enforce belief propagation, and aren't configured to do so. Cached thoughts and cached selves can remain even after one has applied the lessons of the core sequences to particular parts of one's life. That's why it helps to explicitly examine what happens when you apply rationality to new areas of your life — from disease to goodness to morality. Today, we apply rationality to relationships.
Relationships Styles
When Minda had her first relationship with a woman, she found that the cultural scripts for heterosexual relationships didn't work for a homosexual relationship style. For example, in heterosexual dating (in the USA) the man is expected to ask for the date, plan the date, and escalate sexual interaction. A woman expects that she will be pursued and not have to approach men, that on a date she should be passive and follow the man's lead, and that she shouldn't initiate sex herself.
In the queer community, Minda quickly found that if she passively waited for a woman to hit on her, she'd be waiting all night! When she met her first girlfriend, Minda had to ask for the date. Minda writes:
On dates, I didn't know if I should pay for the date or hold the door or what I was supposed to do! Each interaction required thought and negotiation that hadn't been necessary before. And this was really kind of neat. We had the opportunity to create a relationship that worked for us and represented us as unique and individual human beings. And when it came to sexual interactions, I found it easy to ask for and engage in exactly what I wanted. And I have since brought these practices into my relationships with men.
But you don't need to have an 'alternative' relationship in order to decide you want to set aside some cultural scripts and design a relationship style that works for you. You can choose relationship styles that work for you now.
With regard to which type(s) of romantic partner(s) you want, there are many possibilities.
No partners:
- Asexuality. Asexuals don't experience sexual attraction. They comprise perhaps 1% of the population,1 and include notables like Paul Erdos, Morrissey, and Janeane Garofalo. There is a network (AVEN) for asexuality awareness and acceptance.
- Celibacy. Celibates feel sexual attraction, but abstain from sex. Some choose to abstain for medical, financial, psychological, or philosophical reasons. Others choose celibacy so they have more time to achieve other goals, as I (Luke) did for a time. Others are involuntarily celibate; perhaps they can't find or attract suitable mates. This problem can often be solved by learning and practicing social skills.
One partner:
- Monogamy. Having one sexual partner at a time is a standard cultural script, and may be over-used due to the status quo bias. Long-term monogamy should not be done on the pretense that attraction and arousal for one's partner won't fade. It will.2 Still, there may be many people for whom monogamy is optimal.
Many partners:
- Singlehood. Singlehood can be a good way to get to know yourself and experience a variety of short-term partners. About 78% of college students have had at least one 'one-night stand', and most such encounters were preceded by alcohol or drug use.3 Indeed, many young people today no longer go on 'dates' to get to know a potential partner. Instead, they meet each other at a social event, 'hook up', and then go on dates (if the hookup went well).4
- Friendship 'with benefits'. Friends are often people you already enjoy and respect, and thus may also make excellent sexual partners. According to one study, 60% of undergraduates have been a 'friend with benefits' for someone at one time.5
- Polyamory.6 In a polyamorous relationship, partners are clear about their freedom to pursue multiple partners. Couples communicate their boundaries and make agreements about what is and isn't allowed. Polyamory often requires partners to de-program jealousy. In my experience, polyamory is much more common in the rationality community than in the general population.
Hugh points out that your limbic system may not agree (at least initially) with your cognitive choice of a relationship style. Some women say they want a long-term relationship but date 'bad boys' who are unlikely to become long-term mates. Someone may think they want polyamorous relationships but find it impossible to leave jealousy behind.7
The Science of Attraction
A key skillset required for having the relationships you want is that of building and maintaining attraction in potential mates.
Guys seeking girls may wonder: Why do girls say they want "nice guys" but date only "jerks"? Girls seeking rationalist guys are at an advantage because the gender ratio lies in their favor, but they still might wonder: What can I do to attract the best mates? Those seeking same-sex partners may wonder how attraction can differ from heterosexual norms.
How do you build and maintain attraction in others? A lot can be learned by trying different things and seeing what works. This is often better than polling people, because people's verbal reports about what attracts them don't always match their actual behavior.8
To get you started, the virtues of scholarship and empiricism will serve you well. Social psychology has a wealth of knowledge to offer on successful relationships.9 For example, here are some things that, according to the latest research, will tend to make people more attracted to you:
- Proximity and familiarity. Study after study shows that we tend to like those who live near us, partly due to availability,10 and partly because repeated exposure to almost anything increases liking.11 A Taiwanese man once demonstrated the power of proximity and repeated exposure when he wrote over 700 letters to his girlfriend, urging her to marry him. She married the mail carrier.12
- Similarity. We tend to like people who are similar to us.13 We like people with faces similar to our own.14 We are even more likely to marry someone with a similar-sounding name.15 Similarity makes attraction endure longer.16 Also, similar people are more likely to react to events the same way, thus reducing the odds of conflict.17
- Physical attractiveness. Both men and women prefer good-looking mates.18 Partly, this is because the halo effect: we automatically assume that more attractive people are also healthier, happier, more sensitive, more successful, and more socially skilled (but not necessarily more honest or compassionate).19 Some of these assumptions are correct: Attractive and well-dressed people are more likely to impress employers and succeed occupationally.20 But isn't beauty relative? Some standards of beauty vary from culture to culture, but many are universal.21 Men generally prefer women who exhibit signs of youth and fertility.22 Women generally prefer men who (1) display possession of abundant resources,23 (2) display high social status,24 (3) exhibit a 'manly' face (large jaw, thick eyebrows, visible beard stubble)25 and physique,26 and (4) are tall.27 Both genders generally prefer (1) agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion,28 (2) 'average' and symmetrical faces with features that are neither unusually small or large,29 (2) large smiles,30 (3) pupil dilation,31 and some other things (more on this later).
- Liking others. Liking someone makes them more attracted to you.32
- Arousing others. Whether aroused by fright, exercise, stand-up comedy, or erotica, we are more likely to be attracted to an attractive person when we are generally aroused than when we are not generally aroused.33 As David Myers writes, "Adrenaline makes the heart grow fonder."34 This may explain why rollercoasters and horror movies are such a popular date night choice.
But this barely scratches the surface of attraction science. In a later post, we'll examine how attraction works in more detail, and draw up a science-supported game plan for building attraction in others.
Attractiveness: Mean and Variance
Remember that increasing your average attractiveness (by appealing to more people) may not be an optimal strategy.
Marketers know that it's often better to sacrifice broad appeal in order for a product to have very strong appeal to a niche market. The Appunto doesn't appeal to most men, but it appeals strongly enough to some men that they are willing to pay the outrageous $200 price for it.
Similarly, you may have the best success in dating if you appeal very strongly to some people, even if this makes you less appealing to most people — that is, if you adopt a niche marketing strategy in the dating world.35
As long as you can find those few people who find you very attractive, it won't matter (for dating) that most people aren't attracted to you. And because one can switch between niche appeal and broad appeal using fashion and behavior, you can simply use clothing and behavior with mainstream appeal during the day (to have general appeal in professional environments) and use alternative clothing and behavior when you're socializing (to have strong appeal to a small subset of people whom you've sought out).
To visualize this point, consider two attraction strategies. Both strategies employ phenomena that are (almost) universally attractive, but the blue strategy aims to maximize the frequency of somewhat positive responses while the red strategy aims to maximize the frequency of highly positive responses. The red strategy (e.g. using mainstream fashion) increases one's mean attractiveness, while the blue strategy (e.g. using alternative fashion) increases one's attractiveness variance. Hugh Ristik offers the following chart:
This goth guy and I (Luke) can illustrate this phenomenon. I aim for mainstream appeal; he wears goth clothing when socializing. My mainstream look turns off almost no one, and is attractive to most women, but doesn't get that many strong reactions right away unless I employ other high-variance strategies.36 In contrast, I would bet the goth guy's alternative look turns off many people and is less attractive to most women than my look is, but has a higher frequency of extremely positive reactions in women.
In one's professional life, it may be better to have broad appeal. But in dating, the goal is to find people who find you extremely attractive. The goth guy sacrifices his mean attractiveness to increase his attractiveness variance (and thus the frequency of very positive responses), and this works well for him in the dating scene.
High-variance strategies like this are a good way to filter for people who are strongly attracted to you, and thus avoid wasting your time with potential mates who only feel lukewarm toward you.
Up next
In future posts we'll develop an action plan for using the science of attraction to create successful romantic relationships. We'll also explain how rationality helps with relationship maintenance37 and relationship satisfaction.
Previous post: The Power of Reinforcement
Notes
1 Bogaert (2004).
2 About half of romantic relationships of all types end within a few years (Sprecher 1994; Kirkpatrick & Davis 1994; Hill et al 1976), and even relationships that last exhibit diminishing attraction and arousal (Aron et al. 2006; Kurdek 2005; Miller et al. 2007). Note that even if attraction and arousal fades, romantic love can exist in long-term closed monogamy and it is associated with relationship satisfaction (Acevedo & Aron, 2009).
3 Paul et al. (2000); Grello et al. (2006).
4 Bogle (2008).
5 Bisson & Levine (2009).
6 Two introductory books on the theory and practice of polyamory are: Easton & Hardy (2009) and Taormino (2008).
7 See work on 'conditional mating strategies' aka 'strategic pluralism' (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000).
8 Sprecher & Felmlee (2008); Eastwick & Finkel (2008). Likewise, there is a difference between what people publicly report as being the cause of a breakup, what they actually think caused a breakup, and what actually caused a breakup (Powell & Fine, 2009). Also see Inferring Our Desires.
9 For overviews of this research, see: Bradbury & Karney (2010); Miller & Perlman (2008); Vangelisti & Perlman (2006); Sprecher et al. (2008); Weiten et al. (2011), chs. 8-12. For a history of personal relationships research, see Perlman & Duck (2006).
10 Goodfriend (2009).
11 This is called the mere exposure effect. See Le (2009); Moreland & Zajonc (1982); Nuttin (1987); Zajonc (1968, 2001); Moreland & Beach (1992). The limits of this effect are explored in Bornstein (1989, 1999); Swap (1977).
12 Steinberg (1993).
13 Zajonc (1998); Devine (1995); Rosenbaum (1986); Surra et al. (2006); Morry (2007, 2009); Peplau & Fingerhut (2007); Ledbetter et al. (2007); Montoya et al. (2008); Simpson & Harris (1994).
14 DeBruine (2002, 2004); Bailenson et al. (2005).
15 Jones et al. (2004).
16 Byrne (1971); Ireland et al. (2011).
17 Gonzaga (2009). For an overview of the research on self-disclosure, see Greene et al. (2006).
18 Langlois et al. (2000); Walster et al. (1966); Feingold (1990); Woll (1986); Belot & Francesconi (2006); Finkel & Eastwick (2008); Neff (2009); Peretti & Abplanalp (2004); Buss et al. (2001); Fehr (2009); Lee et al. (2008); Reis et al. (1980). This is also true for homosexuals: Peplau & Spalding (2000). Even infants prefer attractive faces: Langlois et al. (1987); Langlois et al. (1990); Slater et al. (1998). Note that women report that the physical attractiveness is less important to their mate preferences than it actually is: Sprecher (1989).
19 Eagly et al. (1991); Feingold (1992a); Hatfield & Sprecher (1986); Smith et al. (1999); Dion et al. (1972).
20 Cash & Janda (1984); Langlois et al. (2000); Solomon (1987).
21 Cunningham et al. (1995); Cross & Cross (1971); Jackson (1992); Jones (1996); Thakerar & Iwawaki (1979).
22 Men certainly prefer youth (Buss 1989a; Kenrick & Keefe 1992; Kenrick et al. 1996; Ben Hamida et al. 1998). Signs of fertility that men prefer include clear and smooth skin (Sugiyama 2005; Singh & Bronstad 1997; Fink & Neave 2005; Fink et al. 2008; Ford & Beach 1951; Symons 1995), facial femininity (Cunningham 2009; Gangestad & Scheyd 2005; Schaefer et al. 2006; Rhodes 2006), long legs (Fielding et al. 2008; Sorokowski & Pawlowski 2008; Bertamini & Bennett 2009; Swami et al. 2006), and a low waist-to-hip ratio (Singh 1993, 2000; Singh & Young 1995; Jasienska et al. 2004; Singh & Randall 2007; Connolly et al 2000; Furnham et al 1997; Franzoi & Herzog 1987; Grabe & Samson 2010). Even men blind from birth prefer a low waist-to-hip ratio (Karremans et al. 2010).
23 Buss et al. (1990); Buss & Schmitt (1993); Khallad (2005); Gottschall et al. (2003); Gottschall et al. (2004); Kenrick et al. (1990); Gustavsson & Johnsson (2008); Wiederman (1993); Badahdah & Tiemann (2005); Marlowe (2004); Fisman et al. (2006); Asendorpf et al. (2010); Bokek-Cohen et al. (2007); Pettay et al. (2007); Goode (1996).
24 Feingold (1990, 1992b).
25 Cunningham (2009); Cunningham et al. (1990).
26 Singh (1995); Martins et al. (2007).
27 Lynn & Shurgot (1984); Ellis (1992); Gregor (1985); Kurzban & Weeden (2005); Swami & Furnham (2008). In contrast, men prefer women who are about 4.5 inches shorter than themselves: Gillis & Avis (1980).
28 Figueredo et al. (2006).
29 Langlois & Roggman (1990); Rhodes et al. (1999); Singh (1995); Thornhill & Gangestad (1994, 1999). We may have evolved to be attracted to symmetrical faces because they predict physical and mental health (Thornhill & Moller, 1997).
30 Cunningham (2009).
31 Cunningham (2009).
32 This is called reciprocal liking. See Curtis & Miller (1986); Aron et al (2006); Berscheid & Walster (1978); Smith & Caprariello (2009); Backman & Secord (1959).
33 Carducci et al. (1978); Dermer & Pszczynski (1978); White & Knight (1984); Dutton & Aron (1974).
34 Myers (2010), p. 710.
35 One example of a high-variance strategy for heterosexual men in the dating context is a bold opening line like "You look familiar. Have we had sex?" Most women will be turned off by such a line, but those who react positively are (by selection and/or by the confidence of the opening line) usually very attracted.
36 In business, this is often said as "not everyone is your customer": 1, 2, 3.
37 For discussions of relationship maintenance in general, see: Ballard-Reisch & Wiegel (1999); Dinda & Baxter (1987); Haas & Stafford (1998).
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Comments (1529)
This vid on relationship issues helped me get aware of reasons I may be such a bad date! things i'm gonna work on from the vid: flaking or trash talking commitments, hostile existing relationship with family when I let down my guard that could be scripted over, sense of entitlement with resentment and anger that I am the priority, lots of relationship fails that I attribute to others and not me, flexibility and getting frazzled when things aren't exactly how I want them, and iron sharpens iron but from the man's perspective to women
Great.
Where is part 2? Can't find it. Did you ever write it? As this is linked a lot you might consider to remove the "part 1" from the title. Except if you intend to send lots of people onto a quest to find the missing part 2 - which might be a good idea actually.
He had released two drafts that I can't be bothered to find. Maybe lukeprog can find it. I looked for part 2 but couldn't find it.
Or just agree with me: http://lesswrong.com/r/UnrequitedHope-drafts/lw/ln9/meta_list_all_users_posts/
EDIT: There's also this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/70u/rationality_lessons_learned_from_irrational/
Interesting on the first link I get "You aren't allowed to do that.".
Resurrecting a long dead post, it's been two years. Was there ever a followup post for this?
Doesn't seem to be. There are other posts on relationships by the authors, but nothing in the sequence this occupies (indeed, this is the sequence's last existing post), and nothing similarly named that I can find.
At this rate it might be very rational to look at ways to modify our cognitive architecture and limbic system to experience long term and sustained attraction and love... rather than hack it via external stimuli.
MDMA is promising when it comes to revive intimacy between long term couples. But its neurotoxic profile makes this non-workable for most people. Long term sustainable mood enrichers and love enhancers should be developed... this will be much more life enriching than just rationally learning what relationship style best suits you.
Unless you mean “78% of college students worldwide”, please specify what country you're talking about.
What ought one do when the problem is not solved by social skills?
I seem to have a tendency to feel extremely inadequate about any skill at which i am not noticeably better than everyone I know about. Due to this quirk of my psychology, I spent a significant portion of my life believing myself to have horrendous social skills. And, for a long time, I attributed my social and sexual failings to that perceived lack of social skill, despite a gradually growing mass of evidence in favor of my social skills being adequate.
(relatively) Recent evidence and experience has now finished falsifying the premise that my social skills are not viable.
Unfortunately, having (a lack of) social skills ruled out as a cause of the problem leaves me, seemingly, without any more low-hanging fruit to pursue. And when even the woman who literally wrote the sequence on self-awareness tells me that she doesn't know why her interest in dating me suddenly evaporated, I begin to... worry, and that feeling of helplessness starts showing up.
(And this doesn't even touch the non-trivial problem of meeting suitable mates, which is obviously a prerequisite to attracting anyone.)
You look at:
The "social skills" referred to when considering mating potential are somewhat specific and include particular emphasis on displaying confidence, particularly sexual confidence. Google "dating inner game" and you'll have an overabundance of resources explaining what signals you need to send and giving tips on how to change yourself so that you are the kind of person who sends those signals more.
This is my primary problem. "Meeting people that I can interact well with, regardless of the mate-suitability criterion" is a fairly/relatively trivial (and different) problem, but all my approaches to meeting people generate massive amounts of noise-results, such that finding a combo-match of (person-I-could-find-suitable) + (person-that-could-find-me-suitable) + (meeting-said-person) + (sufficient-common-knowledge-barrier) statistically becomes very hard. For each of the above "suitable mate met" events, I would have to generate tens of thousands of "person met" events.
Considering the amount of time required to generate these events, and the relative resulting chance of a payoff, it becomes trivially obvious that my time is better spent otherwise (such as reducing the noise through learning better event-generation behaviors) since it computes to rather low expected value.
If p(X would be a suitable mate|you met X) is actually around 10^-4, then maybe trying to lower your standards (if you can manage to do that) might help.
Well, widening / loosening the "margin" or distribution of suitability criteria is indeed one of the valid approaches, but one this is still only part of the equation for the problem AFAICT.
Yes, currently, to my model, that P() really is in that ballpark. I'm currently hitting (with P>.98) way off my current "sweet spot in personspace", with few hits ever getting closer to it and forming a cloud around a completely different area, so my best WAG pretty much give those numbers when trying to project how many I'd have to meet to expect at least one statistical outlier to hit the margin. Making said sweet spot larger is something that would indeed help a lot, but doing so without reducing the total expected payoff of this whole calculation is also non-trivial, for reasons I hope are obvious.
I strongly suspect that my current noise is in no small part due to my current approaches / general behaviors. There's at bare flat minimum 1 in 50 people (assuming IQ stats are any indication) with sufficient reasoning ability for me to find them very interesting, of those at least 1 in 3 is using that ability in a way that I probably wouldn't perceive as noise (so I'd probably notice quickly enough), my preferences / personspace "sweet spot" check would eliminate around (WAG: intuitions from personspace stuff) 80-95% of those remaining.
Which means that, by those numbers and assumptions, around 1 in 750 to 1 in 3000 would be a valid match if I were meeting persons according to a uniform personspace probability distribution and breaking the sufficient-common-knowledge barrier in a proportionally uniform manner over persons met. The clear difference indicates that I'm probably doing something wrong, so the most efficient way I know of solving the problem is to find what I'm doing wrong and fix it first, not just meeting more people.
IMO, 1 in 750 is not a particularly constraining margin, especially if you consider that under ideal circumstances you should do the reverse of what I'm doing and actually be concentrating your hits around your sweet spot, not some other place far away from it.
Also, I dislike the term "lowering your standards". The imagery puts person on a scale basically equivalent to transforming personspace into a Me.perceivedValue(X) function that outputs the scalar distance between Me.perceivedPSLoc(X) and Me.sweetSpotCenter. It gives exactly zero information about the other components of the equation. It also gives very little information on the measurement unit of the scalar.
Maybe part of the problem is you go around saying things like that.
Maybe I should refer you to this other comment I made on this topic.
Or, to put it in this particular context: I don't go around saying things like that. This is a discussion about relationships and attraction, and the things I say here are (or so I perceive them to be) very relevant to the subject at hand. You've seen me once say something like that, in a place where saying things like that is both appropriate and productive, and you deduce that I always go around saying things like that to random people I've just met before I even know them? I'd be very afraid if I were a suspect in a murder investigation led by you.
You also seem to have misinterpreted just what it is that "that" was saying. To put it in other words that might be less prone to "pompous elitist" pattern-matching, I'm basically saying that there's a statistical guarantee that I'd be very interested in maintaining an intellectual discourse (and hopefully long-term relationship of some kind, even as acquaintances) with, given enough time to talk with and get to know them, at least one out of every fifty people out there. Even more than that in practice, since there will be many people who are interesting despite not being Mensa material. That sentence just puts a lower boundary on the amount of people I could find very interesting.
You meant to say "despite not being"?
Yes, thanks for catching that. Fixed.
I apologize. Even if my comment had had a small probability of being helpful, I should have stated it differently, and I did jump to more conclusions than was warranted.
I didn't mean to imply a misinterpretation, though. If you did go around saying things like that, the pattern-matching would be the whole problem. If you actually believed something to the effect of "people with IQ less than X are not worth knowing", that might also be an obstacle, but at a later stage of relationship-forming. In any case, that appears to be irrelevant.
1 in 50 people among the whole population has IQ >= 131; in places such as university towns that fraction is likely to be substantially higher.
Yes, it would seem so.
Unfortunately, even living in a very student-dense city and deliberately targeting locales near universities doesn't seem to have quite the effect I was hoping for. Things are not helped by the fact that French, the main language of 2/3 of the population here, distinctly lacks key words and concepts that seem necessary for bayesianism. The word "evidence", for example, has no French equivalents to my knowledge - even the French wikipedia page on Bayes' Theorem struggles with this.
As I've said, I'm most likely doing a lot of things wrong, because even going to places near university campus(es) (which I'd go to anyway, since they're otherwise still the places I'd prefer going to) gives these results. I'm also going with the assumption that the actual odds for people I am meeting there are much higher than 1/50 for the intelligence criterion, but calculating flat minimum ratios for an IQ level I'm certain is high enough seemed like a more appropriate conservative figure.
It has no terribly good Italian equivalent either, but this doesn't make it hard to talk in a Bayesian way: you just say stuff like “it's likely that X, given that Y”. (In particular, ISTM that --among the kind of people usually I hang with at least-- “folk probability” resembles Bayesianism much more than frequentism, and most people who use frequentist statistics only give lip service to it without being actually convinced it makes all that sense.)
Oh, that explains why Quebecois seem to think and behave in such silly ways :). At least it's the way it looks from the other end of the country.
It's the way it looks and feels from here too - I seem to be a rare exception in considering reason, logic and knowledge to have any value (besides the obvious monetary value of "knowledge" of things related to a business) among native French speakers here.
Campaigns to "preserve language and culture" and keep forcing children to go to only French schools and study only in French make me cringe constantly.
That's kinda spurious reasoning. By that standard, people who speak languages where evidentiality is considered so relevant it's marked grammatically (like Turkish, or Apache, or Yukaghir) should on average be much more rational than people who don't. Appeal to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is usually a quick ticket to confusion.
I did not mean to imply an appeal to Sapir-Whorf concepts. Disregarding every other factor, I do seem to be a rare exception among native French speakers in this culture. Whether I would also be a rare exception, a less rare exception, or an even more rare exception in some other language or some other culture, is a different matter, which is itself worth examining in its own separate right for its own reasons.
Other than that, I agree that what you've said does follow, and to the best of my knowledge isn't currently supported by any public research and only has sporadic anecdotal evidence.
My objection to teaching only French is that it's a well-known fact that knowing multiple languages helps immensely with various aspects of cognition and intelligence, and learning multiple languages during childhood has been shown to be an overwhelming net positive. It follows that forcing children to learn only one language has a net negative impact. This fact is perceived, agreed, and then waived by appeal to consequence: "If children learn English, they will only speak English [because all regional neighbors do], so less and less people will speak French, so our culture will die!"
And that's what really makes me cringe.
Well, you've got to consider complicating factors, which makes this hard to measure. Those other countries aren't very affluent compared to the USA and their educational system is probably worse, plus they don't have access to the institutional infrastructure of knowledge like we do. Also, measuring rationality seems hard, etc. there's tons of problems that always pop up when we try to evaluate things like this.
I mean, I think you'd probably be mostly right and that there's not much difference in rationality between different language users, but for other reasons than the apparent average rationality of certain language-users.
I believe that this is a serious problem in itself. It's probably undercutting your quality of life in many ways,
In particular, it's probably on your mind when you're in relationships, distracting you from what's actually going on between you and the other person.
Cognitive behavioral therapy might help. It goes into detail about undercutting that sort of belief.
More generally, I believe that the crucial thing is to believe that it's safe to be on your own side. Getting to that belief can be amazingly difficult (believing that you shouldn't be on your own side is probably the result of gut-level fear from repeated attacks), but it's worth the trouble.
I only mentioned that to explain the origin of a false belief. It is not currently a problem for me, just an annoyance.
By "annoyance" I assume you mean you still have the feeling but work around it?
In that case, it may be a problem in ways you're not aware of. Other people, prospective mates especially, can pick up on that feeling in tricky subtle ways and react to it.
Ok-- sorry for unneccesary advice.
Retracted. I had written some brutally honest advice but realized after reading a bit more that you know a lot of people on here in person, so I'll PM instead.
Have you tried reading PUA-Game material (and then selectively applying the ethical parts of it)? I could /feel/ my attraction to my OH increasing just by getting him to Game me.
It turns out that making friends and attracting mates requires different sorts of social behaviour. For example, women seeking mates tend to be very status-aware, but you can get on with friends perfectly well without any ability to signal high status. If you felt inadequate very often, that itself could mean you were projecting low status and driving off mates.
I might, if I had any idea where to find said material (rather that just people talking about the material), or how to identify the optimal starting point within the material. (Or anyone to apply it to.)
It depends on what data you need. My general recommendation would be:
"The Blueprint Decoded" -- a video about pickup and social skills in general that gives you a greater context, instead of just throwing thousand random details at you. (Buy, or find a torrent.)
Married Man Sex Life -- a blog about maintaining attraction in marriage. I recommend reading the older articles (before he published a book) because they seem to have much better signal:noise ratio.
From all the PUA stuff I have seen, these two seem highest-quality to me. The first one is like "the best of PUA". The second one contains additional information about human chemistry; the author is a nurse. Both of them seem to me ethically OK, but because different people have different degrees of OK-ness, let me add a data point: The author of the second one has a wife who is also reading the blog and commenting on it; and they seem to have a very good relationship. This is also an evidence that the advice is long-term-relationship compatible.
Thanks for actually providing a link. Being told to "just google it" gets frustrating.
However...
I started at the beginning of the archive, the oldest posts, and I am reading them in order. Granted, I have only yet read a handful of posts, but I can't imagine a person who thinks like the author writes having a worthwhile life. What he advocates seems so hollow and dishonest that I've had a steadily growing sense of disgust since I began reading. Frankly, I think I'd rather be alone forever than relate to people in the way he seems to, because I would feel just as alone either way.
This is an example of the "good" version of PUA material?
I am going to continue reading in case there is useful information, despite my disgust, but I haven't seen any yet.
If that is what you really want then by all means go ahead. To the external observer that just looks like someone sitting in the corner sulking because the universe doesn't give them what they want.
Isn't that a false dilemma? That's just one relative comparison, which is meant to illustrate just how much he dislikes that particular option by visibly placing and signalling it as even lower than something else generally understood as being a net negative option.
Basically: "I've considered this, but so far found that it was even worse than other options I've already considered, so I'll keep looking" - is what I understand as the main point behind the wording he used.
Please imagine I inserted "would rather" in appropriate places in the grandparent so that the token relativity is duly represented in the declared observations of the typical observer.
I.E. If what you want is magic, magic won't work.
Be specific. Taboo "hollow". Taboo "dishonest".
The important information from that website, and from PUA materials in general, is that (heterosexual) women have sexual preferences, too. Those preferences were shaped by evolution. The preferred traits would statistically increase reproductive success in ancient environment (which is not necessarily true today).
This should not be a surprise, unless you believe that men are beasts, but women are pure angelic souls that only happen to have a body. (Problem is, that idea is implicitly present in our culture. That does not make it true.) However, many (heterosexual) men either don't understand women's preferences, or keep forgetting; simply because those are not their preferences.
Unlike men's preferences, which are mostly about the shape of the body, women's preferences are more behavior-based. This is a problem, because a man, despite once having been selected by a women, can simply forget to display the same behavior that made him attractive to her. He will not notice that he is doing something wrong! She will notice that something is wrong (she feels less attracted), but usually can't pinpoint what! A few months or years later, they have a divorce, and no one really understands what happened. And this happens to maybe 50% of the population, in some cultures.
What exactly is "hollow" about this? Women having sexual preferences? Guess what, evolution does not care about what you decide to label as "hollow". Would you rather not know about it, and worship your ignorance? That actually is what many men do, but then there are consequences like cheating, divorce, and child support.
What exactly is "dishonest" about fulfilling one's wife's sexual preferences? Not more dishonest than a woman applying make-up and dressing nice, to make her husband happy. It's a role-play to satisfy the instinctual need to mate with a tribal leader from ancient environment, which no longer exists. And unlike many other PUA materials, this one recommends it only to maintain a marriage.
Certainly some of these ideas can offend people; especially people with wrong models of the world. Some people are offended by evolution; some people are offended by reductionism; some people are offended by the idea of husband and wife doing something to make each other happy. Unlike other PUA materials, this one has scientific support; the author explains (in a simplified version, accessible to layman) the effects of dopamine, oxytocine, and testosterone on human body; which is more than typical "just so stories" with evolutionary or pseudo-evolutionary explanations.
If this offends you, then I'm afraid that reality offends you. Sure, that happens to many people, too. In which case I cannot recommend you a better material, except maybe to read something PUA-unrelated but still related to sexuality and evolution, for example some books by Matt Ridley, and come back later when the idea of sexual behavior reductionism stops being so offensive.
Who would have thought?
Which culture? I suppose that this misconception might be present in cultures where women are considered little more than chattel, but if you live in a culture where women freely choose their partners, you would have to be stupid or delusional to think they don't have sexual preferences.
Actually, it looks like pseudoscience. Just throwing in the names of a few neurotransmitters and hormones doesn't make a claim scientifically supported.
The idea of individual female sexual preferences is OK, as long as they remain mysterious.
The outrage starts at the moment when someone suggests that they are statistically predictable, and gives specific examples. This is quickly labeled as "offensive to women". And in some sense, the label is correct -- being unpredictable is higher status than being predictable. On the other hand, there is no harm in saying that male sexual preferences are statistically predictable.
I suggest a thought experiment -- imagine starting a discussion in LW Open Thread about which female sexual preferences are most frequent, and what is the easiest way to trigger them. Then, watch the downvotes and offended complaints. (This is just a thought experiment, don't do it really.) The topic is probably instrumentally important to majority of LW readers, yet it will never get the same space as e.g. a rational toothpaste choice. So there is some kind of a taboo, isn't it?
I'm under the impression that hypergamy is common knowledge, but I suppose that it may be politically incorrect to discuss it in public in certain subcultures.
Other aspects of female sexual preferences, like social intelligence, athletic physique, masculine facial bone structure, deep voice, etc. are also well known and not so controversial to discuss.
LW might not be the best place for such an experiment, even as a thought experiment. I think this should actually be experimented in some other, "general-population" forum, perhaps with a control test in a different one replacing "female" with "male" for comparison framing. It would still obviously not be study-material, but it certainly sounds fun.
Um, wow. Clearly you've pattern-matched to something completely different than the objection I was trying to convey. I'm so not in any way offended by sexual behavior reductionism.
To me, the author of MMSL only seems to care about creating something that looks like an intimate relationship from the outside. And he's other-optimizing; very egregiously so. My revulsion stems from my belief that I wouldn't be any happier living the way he advocates than I am now. I want something that feels like an intimate relationship from the inside, and the sort of relationship he depicts as ideal wouldn't.
That's what I mean by hollow.
I also doubt I could ever feel safe with someone with whom, to use the metaphor, appealing to the elephant is more effective than appealing to the rider, but he seems to live in an isolated bubble where he only interacts with other riders through the intermediary of their elephants, which I would find just as lonely as my current life of no interaction at all.
That's what I mean by dishonest.
I'm totally with you there, in that it wouldn't be any fun to be in a relationship with someone who wasn't aware of this stuff.
You have to be aware though that sometimes appealing to the elephant IS more effective than appealing to the rider. It is not possible to consciously reason myself into being turned on. I am /not/ in conscious control of my hormone emitters. I need my environment to influence them for me. Even if I'm consciously aware that you're a great guy and super smart and all that, if you don't press my elephant buttons, so to speak, being in a relationship with you just isn't any fun. Placating the elephant isn't a terminal value for sufficiently awake people, but for most people it's an important instrumental value.
Also, the impression he usually gives is not that he interacts with only his wife's elephant, just that his rider-rider interaction is fine and he never struggled with it. He also occasionally gives advice for female riders regarding male elephants.
Also, take it from me that this stuff adds to rather than detracts from intimate relationships. From the inside. (If it helps you believe me, this is what Athol's wife thinks.)
No you aren't. You're saying something entirely different---a mix of orthogonal points and contradictory ones---but using the form "I'm with you there" because it is typically an amazingly effective tool for leading around and getting along with metaphorical elephants.
Impossible is such a strong term. I'd suggest possible but completely unrealistically implausible, possibly take years of unnatural mental training and being ultimately far less satisfying than just finding a mate that is actually attractive.
Would it be offensive to claim that I'm a woman and I can't help doing that, re your first comment? (The "it wasn't me it was my elephant!" defence?) I've subtly edited the phrasing so it's less objectionable.
And I suppose Buddhists have meditated their way into their reptilian-level hardware before. Though I'm not sure it'd be worth a lifetime of meditation training just so I can think myself into releasing testosterone and oestrogen and dopamine ;) Instrumental and terminal values and all that.
Though if I could release dopamine at will then it's the wireheading discussion all over again...
Indeed, it is pseudo-endocrinology instead. (I usually take these with the same grain of alt I take the other 'layman science' explanations.)
Translation into usual Less Wrong language:
Men and women all have elephants and riders. While female riders are not intrinsically different from male riders, female elephants have lots of differences to male elephants, which is expected if the elephant is the animal hardware/operating system that we are run on.
Therefore, just as to understand and be successful in your own decision you must be aware of your biases and cognitive quirks, to successfully interact with others you must be aware of theirs. Most biases are shared across the human population, but sexual partner preferences are obviously not. Also, elephants can't be reasoned with: you correct elephant biases by tricking the elephant. You don't adjust well for the priming effect by trying to out-reason your instincts. You adjust for the priming effect by making sure you're primed correctly for achieving your aims.
It's important therefore to distinguish between tricking the elephant and tricking the rider. Tricking the rider is usually considered unethical, but tricking the elephant can be a case of correcting someone else's biases for them: the wife thinks (rider, or attachment part of elephant + rationalisation) she should be attracted to the husband, after all she married him, but she (attraction part of elephant) isn't. There are two ways of resolving that: one the rider decides to leave, or two the husband makes himself more attractive to the elephant.
Beisutsukai unlock Option III at level 25: Get the rider to look down and see the elephant, craft reins for the elephant, and cooperate to steer the elephant.
Also, at level 45, they unlock the legendary Option IV (both riders must have this ability to use successfully): Both riders perform a combo-takedown on the elephants and develop low-maintenance long-term elephant-control plans that guarantees self-perpetuating elephant attraction and automatic steering (e.g. by training the elephants to follow the road/eachother on their own without further direction).
Incidentally, all Beisutsukai unlock Option 0 at level 5: Find a mate that already knows how to ride the elephant in the first place.
I have an elephant riding strategy, it involves throwing rocks at the environment and surrounding elephants to entice/scare it into going the right way. It's kinda hard work, but elephants don't really do reins... (How do people actually steer elephants, out of interest?)
Two methods are anchoring and positive reinforcement. Availability control is also usually very effective. Essentially, the same stuff as for behavior/habit training works best, since as per my best model you're essentially training a psychological/biological behavior there too. That's more for "training" elephants though. Direct, in-the-moment steering requires actually training the elephant to respond to steering by whatever reins you craft, in the first place, otherwise it's very hard and sketchy (and usually, as you say, involves throwing rocks).
I forgot where, but I recall reading a study that concluded that making one kind of sexual stimulus more "present" and reducing the availability/presence of other stimuli would increase the natural response of men to that stimulus later on (with long-term effects) in those subjects. I'm not sure of the specifics anymore, but for "sexual stimulus" think "pictures of mostly-naked ladies in X", for X being wearing a specific item of clothing, fetish setup, or particular situation/setting.
Most studies I've found regarding such things seem to be crafted exclusively around men, so it's pretty hard to find good "official" scientific data for women in that regard. Most of the data apparently comes from PUA material, unfortunately.
My wife really didn't appreciate this when I explained it to her. Can't work out what went wrong in that conversation...
MMSL is my personal source and what I had in mind as something that worked when I recommended just googling it. Most Game material sounds weird without being able to put the ideas into practise, which is why I recommended you search for material more applicable to you: I was able to get instant feedback on ideas by getting or prompting my OH or myself (depending on material) to try them.
I don't recommend the start of MMSL though, it sounds cynical because it is; that part is mainly aimed at men who are married to wives who aren't attracted to them, who really need to do something drastic if they want to keep their relationships. I'm not actually sure I'd recommend the blog at all to someone not in a long term relationship; in terms of referring to the science of attraction it doesn't do much different from sites like Hooking Up Smart, which afaics is information of a similar quality aimed at a different audience (college students, in this case). I'm sure there are more sites of a similar quality out there. (Look for references to Helen Fisher, whose research is most commonly cited).
Apologies if the google advice isn't useful, looks like I failed to avoid other-optimising after all! (I usually take a "just google it" approach to these things myself.)
ETA: if you're having ethical "disgust" responses, it may help to keep firmly in mind the elephant/rider (in the usual LW language) or hamster/agent distinction. Manipulation is done from the rider to the other party's elephant. This can be done with or without the other rider's permission, and the ethics of the action where done without permission may well depend on how much the other rider is in control of their own elephant. In the specific case advocated by the opening posts of MMSL, the wife who says things like "I love you but I'm not in love with you" or cheats on their husband without knowing why, has an actively harmful elephant, whose rider is unaware of how to control the elephant, or worse, vehemently denying the existence of the elephant. In cases like this, calling out directly to the elephant may well be an ethical course of action. ("recognising the rider-elephant distinction" translates to "taking the red pill"; the more misogynistic sites assume that females aren't capable of this, but these sites can still have useful advice in terms of elephant-control.)
Thanks for the insights. This is shining more light on just what it is I'm looking for in a relationship, too, which should help me greatly in improving the shape of my sweet-spot-in-personspace.
I didn't really look at much of MMSL either, but I did notice an encouraging sign: the author's wife is listed as a coauthor and adds occasional remarks to the posts, which if nothing else suggests that she reads them. This puts an upper bound on how dishonest it can possibly be.
Yes, it requires that two people be lying about something for their mutual benefit, instead of just one. Two people is practically a conspiracy!
(We need to use another term for where the actual upper bound doesn't change that much at all but the probability of a moderate amount of deception is present is reduced.)
I was assuming that "hollow and dishonest" referred to the author being hollow and dishonest to his wife. And in fact I don't think this can be done very effectively when you document your hollowness and dishonesty on a blog your wife reads.
There are torrents of it. Someone linked a torrent of a bunch of books by some famous PUA a while back, I found it fairly interesting, but "what was true wasn't new." It may be helpful in building your confidence to actually go out and try things, which is the hard part but also rather key.
Where to find said material: I'm going to steer clear of other-optimising here, and suggest what I did (rather than link you to my favourites), which involved basically google, then a breadth-first (affiliated links and commenters with their own blogs will help) search of blogs that seem relevant by sampling critical posts, then reading the most useful blogs in depth from the start chronologically, skipping material that seems irrelevant to you. Since I'm female, I ranked reading material by looking for posts that described their model of women and seeing which applied best. You'll have to decide which posts to look for by your own selection criteria, though I suggest checking any of: the posts that the site owner chooses to highlight, posts that describe the type of relationship the author wants/has/caters for, posts which echo strongly with your personal situation, or just random posts.
Similar principles apply for forums and general websites, though it makes the breadth-first search harder.
I'd be happy to help if you tell me the specifics, either via messaging or replying, since I had to read a lot of material to get to where I am.
As for people to apply it to (assuming heterosexual male), you can try making more female friends by actually going to social activities and clubs/meetups. You can also test the theory by going to places where women go to be approached by strange men, such as bars and clubs if you live near a busy area. You're unlikely to find the type of girl you'll want long-term there, but it can be useful for experimenting theory and confidence-building.
If you're wary of experimenting in person, and are relatively good at applying a general theory to a new situation, I think the principles of Game should also apply well to dating sites, so you may want to give those a go: it's a very low-cost way of experimenting, and you also might find someone you like!
I did not say that. I looked at the chatlog to be sure, and I did not say that.
I was paraphrasing based on my understanding of that conversation. Apologies if I misunderstood and inadvertently misrepresented you.
Hopefully she PM'd you her best estimate of her real reason for losing interest.
I would if he asked. Until then I can't be sure he wants to know.
Ask him whether he wants to know?
I would prefer not to do that. (At least not directly. Having this oblique conversation in public is fine.)
Aww, too bad he never invoked Crocker's Rules. That would give you immediate license and confirmation that he does want to know.
Also, he'd probably go batshit insane.
This might come out a little harsh, but...
whining about having been rejected, in public, in front of the woman who rejected you, is not exactly a turn on, I suppose.
There aren't enough italics in the world to sufficiently emphasize how much whining about being rejected was not the intent of my comment.
It may not have been the intent, but that was what it looked like to me also.
Well, it didn't sound like that to me. (Mmm... Should I start up a karma poll to know how it sounded to other people?)
I have a hack which usually gets such points across efficiently, though:
"How did you - that's exactly, completely what I was thinking! You're totally right!
...(short pause)...
Now put that in parenthesis, and put a minus sign in front. You'll see what I mean."
I'd also add that the whining itself could not possibly have caused the rejection, since you'd have some kind of causal loop.
I agree on the implied denotation that such a general attitude, if applied in other circumstances, would be detrimental. I disagree about the also-implicit conclusion that EphemeralNight does use that attitude in general. Nothing in particular seems to indicate that this person is prone to whining about rejection in general. We've only seen one single instance of some person kicking the soda machine, without knowing about their brother that just got arrested and the 5K$ debt they just learned about - to reuse an old example.
Ask someone who knows you and has seen you interacting with women to give you honest feedback. Such feedback will help you spot the actual causes of your inability to attract suitable mates more than anything anyone could tell you here.
When I ask that, the answer is usually “I have no idea, you are not ugly nor unpleasant nor stupid after all” or “You just haven't found the right one yet.”
(Oh, and the people who give me the former answer are almost invariably already taken, or otherwise not looking for a relationship at the moment.)
Actually, if you find the comment on this page (among the thousands) about useless studies (I recall it being highly upvoted), in a lot of people self-reporting is highly inaccurate. I suspect this is mostly either via automatic face-saving or via only reporting conscious reactions when unconscious ones are equally important.
I recommend either asking friends who both understand how the conscious/unconscious division works for them, and are willing to be brutally honest (actually if they have both these qualities they don't need to be a friend, just anyone willing to talk to you will do), or if no such person is available, form hypotheses yourself and get evidence by changing your behaviour and observing the responses, rather than asking outright.
When you approached these people, did you make it clear that you were looking for honest feedback, however painful it might be?
Well... I though I had, but now that I think about that... (OTOH, I usually ask that when we're both drunk, so that --I'd expect-- there are fewer filters in place than usual.)
I've also created an account on whatiswrongwithme.com and share it on Facebook once in a while -- promising I won't get offended no matter what I read, but I didn't get much feedback there either.
You may consider offering money in exchange for good feedback. A while ago, I agreed to pay a friend of mine $5 per individual piece of feedback that I judged to be sufficiently valuable. I learned a lot about myself as a result.
That had never occurred to me. Maybe I'll try that some day.
There is no such person.
First, accumulate 117 acquaintances who would trust you to relay an unimportant piece of information accurately, and four true friends who would trust you to provide support in a situation which unexpectedly became violent.
Then I think you might benefit from improving your social skills after all.
"Long-term monogamy should not be done on the pretense that attraction and arousal for one's partner won't fade. It will."
This is precisely the point of monogamy. Polyamory/sleeping around is a young man's game. Long-term monogamy is meant to maintain strong social units throughout life, long after the thrill is gone.
Way too many coments to reed, but..
"We are even more likely to marry someone with a similar-sounding name.15"
Perhaps not. I googled it and found this: http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/workshops/marketing/archive/sp10/Spurious20100424.pdf
I would like to propose that any post immediately become locked once its number of comments reaches 1337.
Having read every single one of the 1337 comments, I have concluded that there is nothing to be gained from any further comments that might be added, and that the above solution should be applied immediately so as not to waste anyone else's time or karma.
On December 7th, your prediction was falsified.
Wow.
The greater the value of your comment, the greater benefit there has been from allowing more than 1337 comments on posts.
But seriously, I don't think the risk of this discussion being continued in an unrelated, peaceful post is worth it.
Loved the link, especially this part:
I can read that almost as fast as I can read normal text. Or, at least, I can read it faster than I can read normal text out loud. Our pattern recognition is incredible!
NOT discussing the moral implications here, but I saw this study and found it relevant. One of the arguments re: PUA is that there have been no scientific studies as to whether it works or not. Apparently, that isnt true. Here is a link to an article about a study that shows that a light non-sexual touch (what the PUA folks would call "kino") ups the chances that a woman will give you her phone number.
The relevant part is #7 "Touch for a Date". Excerpt:
I can't access the full text of the actual study, but maybe some of the university students here can read and summarize.
I have purposefully stayed out of the PUA discussion so far, but as it is still going on and no one seems to have taken a macro view, I am going to just this once give some of my opinion on it:
I think that the vast majority of people on this site want a general egalitarianism between the sexes. I’m not saying that I think men and women are completely equal in all ways, but rather that I think that women making 80 cents to the dollar is bad. Males growing up being taught to be ashamed to talk about feelings (especially in cases like PTSD or suicide) is bad. All the hidden messages society teaches our children about what they can’t do because of their gender is bad.
Rationalize it however you want. Call it utilitarianism or values ethics or whatever. But I for one want to live in a society where the children I care for don’t have their choices limited (directly or indirectly) by their gender. I am willing to bet that the majority of people on this site, both male and female, agree with me. If I am wrong about that, well then I wouldn’t want to be on this site anyway. But how does that apply to PUA?
Parts of PUA may work. Parts may be moral. Parts may be immoral. I will definitely say that I think SOME of it is misogynist. I will also agree that there is stuff out there that is completely OK. But all of that is irrelevant to the point I want to make now, which is that PUA is bad for gender equality in the macro view.
Don’t focus on the ethics of ONE guy seducing ONE girl, who may or may not want to be seduced. Think about the affect of MANY guys thinking of women as “things to be seduced”, and countless young girls stumbling upon PUA on the internet or on the tv, and consequently thinking of THEMSELVES as things to be seduced.
In other words, my problem with PUA is that it precipitates a CULTURE that is not conducive to gender equality. Of course, PUA isn’t the only problem, nor is it even the main problem. For example, I think this is a WAY more important fight than PUA.
That being said, I do not think all PUA stuff is bad. I myself am, for all intents and purposes, a professional PUA, and when I looked it up on the internet (after reading so much about it here), I actually thought it was pretty amazing that they had terms for the stuff I learned through trial and error. So I definitely don’t want to bash everything that PUA can teach on an individual basis.
What then to do about men who lack the confidence and social skills to obtain relationships? Firstly, I would like to say that I think this is another way that gender inequality raises its head. Females are socialized from childhood to have high social skills. Men are not. Therefore they have trouble interacting with the generally much higher social skills of women. (Guys, think of a person you know with the lowest level of social skills. Imagine having a conversation with them. Get the picture?)
I would be totally ok, if certain aspects of PUA were taught instead as general social skills. Not “how to seduce women”, but rather “how to strike up conversations with random people and have them like you”. I would even be ok if there were UNDER THE GENERAL RULES some specific exceptions for how to interact with women, and how to interact with men. However the very one-sided way it is right now (with some small exception to girl game) is NOT helpful to humanity overall, regardless of whether it actually works or not. And regardless of whether it is moral on a case-by-case basis or not.
That's already been proposed.
You'd probably be interested in Clarisse Thorn's Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser. She spent quite a bit of time researching PUA, both in theory and in practice.
Short version: There are a lot of kinds of PUA, ranging from types which are generally benevolent through types which are iffy to flat out misogyny. PUA is probably better for men who learn some skills, then leave the subculture(s).
Having a strong habit of maintaining "strategic ambiguity" (I think this is Thorn's phrase) can lead to loneliness, no matter how many people it attracts.
Note: there's a section about Thorn's relationship with a PUA which isn't terribly interesting. You may want to skip to the end which gets back to good stuff. She's aware of the problem with the section, but no one could agree on what needed to be cut.
She says that feminists have been working on explicit verbal consent, and PUAs have been working on understanding non-verbal consent, and the two groups have useful things to learn from each other.
For more on the subject: Confessions of a Pick-up Artist Chaser by Clarisse Thorne. It's an extensive overview of PUA practices and subculture, with many quotes from HughRistik.
After reading your comment, my thoughts are somewhat confused. The first half seemed like a censorship by association: "some people feel that X is related to Y, we agree that Y is bad, therefore we should never tolerate a discussion about X".
Then, the last paragraph seemed very reasonable, which makes me wonder whether the rest of the comment was just one huge disclaimer necessary to remove the guilt of speaking about X (which as we know is associated with Y, which is bad).
Now on the topic -- Teaching about general social skills, with some gender-specific sidenotes, seems to me like a great idea. But I feel that this version somehow removes the most motivating part for some people. The "you should learn this because it can make your life awesome!!!" motivation turns into rather anemic "you should learn this because we told you so".
Is this a necessary cost? It is even allowed to discuss things that seem awesome to a typical guy but not to a typical girl, or does any such discussion automatically deepen gender inequality? Seems to me that focusing too much on inequality leads to a zero-sum worldview. Generally, creating a positive utility for some people and zero utility for other people seems like a net improvement; but if it happens to statistically deepen some inequality, should we percieve it as bad and try to avoid it? So even things that highly motivate men to learn social skills should be replaced by their less attractive alternatives, simply because men are already having it too awesome today.
If people are willing to learn calculus, so that they can learn physics, so that they can go out and actually do engineering, I think it would be feasible to have entry-level training in general etiquette and ethics as a prerequisite before someone can learn rigorously scientific flirting.
Upvoted for:
I can talk to anyone, you're engaging, he's a creepy PUA?
I don't understand the question, sorry. Will you rephrase?
I'm playing the usual game: I'm <something positive>, you're <something neutral>, he's <something negative>. It's not really a question.
I'm still chewing this one over. Can you give me an example of persuasion that doesn't follow this format in some way? How would I convince <someone neutral> to stop doing <something negative> without first qualifying my idea as <something positive>? Is it bad if these categories are personified?
I still don't really get it. Are you opposed to repurposing PUA soft technology to help teach social skills?
I don't care if people use PUA otherwise and I certainly don't want to get caught in this thread's quagmire.
It's a lighthearted cultural reference (which does have something of a useful moral embedded within). A common form is "I'm strong willed, you're stubborn and she's pig headed". It is just a comment about the same thing being labelled differently depending on how closely we associate with it. It tends to be approximately neutral to the subject matter.
Ah, ok. Thanks for the clarification.
I don't have an opinion on PUA. I'm just playing a game.
That phrase doesn't mean just one thing. I think that the vast majority of people on this site want a fair system of college admissions. That just means the label "fair", like "general egalitarianism" points inward at the speaker towards the speaker's values. "General" backs away from meaning anything too specific, and its use provides the opportunity for readers to insert their own idea of reasonableness.
Meta comment
There are more than a thousand comments on this thread now (is that an LW record?). This makes it very difficult for newcomers to navigate the threads and arguments. As such it might be worth summarising some of the discussions and splitting them into separate discussion threads.
Why did you not mention PUA? This sucks. No, PUA sucks. This post is almost ok because it is mostly gender neutral. No, it does suck because it is censored. Why is the word 'rational used?' Boo! Ethics! Morals! You're a bunch of one-dimensional stereotypes! Women like jerks - or not. Nice guys are grossly obese and smelly girls - or not. Utilitarianism! I deny Bayes theorem! No, Bayes is awesome, even better than science. You are a rapist. No I'm not. You forgot polygynous relationships under the polyamoury category. Ooh, ooh meta, let's discuss whether this was good or bad, with polls!
On second thoughts let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
If nothing else, I am now convinced there's nothing to be gained from trawling through the thread.
Do the dangling variable dance! It goes something like this:
I'm a conservative! Dangle dangle dangle dangle!
Abortion is murder! Dangle dangle dangle dangle!
I'm a libertarian! Dangle dangle dangle dangle!
Taxation is slavery! Dangle dangle dangle dangle!
I'm a liberal! Dangle dangle dangle dangle!
Acting confident and suppressing nervousness is rape! Dangle dangle dangle dangle!
This just saved me so much time.
I figure this comment was mostly intended as a joke but it is honestly a useful summary (and a useful overview of some LW memes, especially ones relating to relationships).
My favorite humor tends to be flippantly sincere. :)
Followed by: this thread is lame, everything's lame.
("Followed by followed by" coming soon?)
In any case, sing it with me: I respect women when I'm on a date/I take them to the park/or maybe a museum...
(Upvoted)
Adding to the pile of comments:
I don't know if it is because I might be compulsively questioning my emotions in general putting thing out of focus but when it comes to romance I often find myself often utterly confused; I've been in three relatively short (monogamous) relationships - relationships that I have actively perused or at least tangoed - with women that I genuinely liked and felt attracted to, but a feeling of "you are probably not romantically interested in her" or "probably not on the same wave length as you" always seems to hang over me, in relationships and even some times during brief sparks of interest. I find myself only being able to think romantically about idolised images of people without the constant guilty feeling . . .
Any advise?
This comes from personal experience, not reading.
Your incredible questioning/self-examination is not that unusual. If you're not sure of your feelings it says less about the (potential) relationship than it does about you. And all it says about you is that you have high levels of self-consciousness, really. The longer a relationship lasts the more ending it, or having it ended on you is likely to hurt, even if you don't think you fit well together etc.
Alcohol relaxes people and makes them maudlin. As such it can be a good way to get relatively sane, sobre people to discuss their feelings together. Drinking excessively (whatever that means in context) can also get people to speak freely and give them an excuse to "not remember" the next day.
You're probably going to get over her, even if it doesn't feel like it. Any relationship or fling is likely to make the getting-over-it period shorter.
One idealises people and while I may advise you, or anyone else, I give advice. Feel free to PM me, if for some reason you'd like to.
Sorry for taking so long to answer, but I think you might have misunderstood my problem slightly, I don't have any problem with getting over anyone - at the moment). I do agree that a couple of beers helps out with suppressing excessive self-questioning, but my problem is really - though I'm making progress - that I don't know what I'm feeling as well as feeling guilt about not not feeling butterflies in my tummy and the likes.
Anyway thanks for your advise - and the offer!
Wanna practice? ;-)
(Wait, you're not one of those "straight" people I keep hearing about, are you?)
Unfortunately I am one of those infamous people. But if stray I'll promise to get back to you. Even though my narrow-mindedness might have ruled "practice" out of the question (I realize your preference might have done so as well) I'm awfully curious of what this "practice" might have consisted of? (I feel just like child).
A naive method is simply to use available opportunities to observe the development, or failure to develop, of various types of interest, both in yourself and in others. Now I don't claim an advantage in this area.
However, simply practicing a lot with no underlying techniques is often very inefficient, as Raemon points out about drawing. Long-time Less Wrong readers have skills in integrating data, running experiments, luminosity and going outside defaults that can prove extremely useful in figuring out how your interest manifests and what increases or lessens it; not to mention willingness and even eagerness to figure it out rather than throwing a fit if you don't spontaneously emit bluebirds at the required step in the dating instruction manual.
Moreover, once you start to recognize what romantic interest feels like and what courting styles spark it in you, you'll have to learn how to apply them in practice, even if they're common enough ones that you can start from cultural templates. You'll get good at this faster with someone who practices LW-style conflict resolution, has repertoried feelings other than "like" and "like-like" and interpersonal relationships other than "friend", "friend with benefits" and "soulmate", and has experience with compromising on nonstandard preferences.
An example of this would be exchanging comments with people who are interested in you, and measure your reactions to them directly asking you out, flirting more or less obviously, or leaving the topic entirely off the table and hoping interest develops on its own.
This is probably the best relationship advice I've ever got, as far as a can remember. But there are a few general obstacles that need to be addressed before I'm actually able to widely applying a strategy.
Motivation: Of course other things go into motivation but I think that expectancy of success and cost failure (rejection) are the biggest hurdles for a lot of people (including me).
Feedback: Sometimes it's not so easy to really know if a person is interested in you or whether one particular strategy working or not. You could ask but "asking" about peoples reactions can sometimes (in my experience) be intrepid as a way of saying that your VERY interested in that person.
I don't know if I make ANY sense but again thanks for your advice, I will try to apply it. I could get back to you if I strike gold(?).
You might want to think of asking people out as asking for the option of developing and acting on mutual interest, rather than saying "Let's suck face now".
The cost of rejection is usually extremely low. You feel slightly awkward and disappointed for a few minutes, then go back to acting less flirty than the average Victorian priest.
I'm bad at reading people, but if you're just asking "Are they at all interested?", asking them out is the way to go. And if you get a "yes" to that, it creates a situation where it's acceptable to test more or less directly how interested they are.
Now that this thread has gathered around a thousand comments, and with presumably two more such threads ahead of us, let's have a poll to help us figure out whether deciding to discuss such subjects as gender and politics was a good idea.
All things considered, has this comment thread made LessWrong more or less valuable to you? (ETA: This is excluding Luke's original post, and relative to what you would have expected the site to be like if the comment thread had not taken place, not relative to what it would be like if the comment thread disappeared now.)
See the child comments for the poll options. If neither applies, don't vote.
I dislike the loud and bad-feelings-producing retread of old topics that the comment thread appears (I have skimmed and sampled only) to have become, but I specifically wish that posts like this one are not prohibited/avoided in the future.
Right now, the poll is at 14 to 1. Poll results don't translate straightforwardly to net harm, but these numbers are pretty clear. So shall we implement some sort of official or unofficial safeguard against it happening again, either by banning certain topics, or by imposing stricter rules on how to discuss them?
Hi, this comment caused me to vote in this poll, in protest of its validity. I do agree actually that sanctions should be made, preferably norm based ones like lessdazed suggested. The protest is what the poll is clear of exactly. Such a poll is representative of the outliers. Specifically, anyone past the threshold it takes to make a vote. If you conclusions are based on that subset of people, then I have no disagreement.
I distinctly remember it being something to 2 earlier. In any case, other options might be even worse. A new norm of approving of people posting in the middle of threads "This is a happy death spiral but it would be impolite to say why" might be a net good.
Less. A bunch of bickering about ethics with almost no actual practical content describing the world. Basically it is embarrassing to be associated with.
I agree that this whole thread, while admittedly I have been following it myself, is a net negative for LW.
It's my contention that (1) some people will be attracted to PUA tenets with a largely negative outlook regarding women, (2) some people will be attracted to PUA tenets with a largely positive outlook regarding women (3) some people will just organically figure it out without any significant use of literature and (4) people that enjoy reading/writing/debating about this will continue to do that and may or may not actually pursue relationships.
I don't think lukeprog's writing is going to substantially change anyone's inclinations or abilities in this area because relationships and dating are something one learns by doing and becoming, not talking and thinking.
Apologies for cluttering up the poll area, but it seems like relevant information that I haven't read much of the comment thread at all because I don't think it'll be valuable to me. If I had to break it down, I'd say that I don't expect it to be particularly useful or interesting to me.
More valuable because it's the weekend and I will read most but not all of it, but bad for signal/noise ratio overall.
Thank you for this poll!
I would like to endorse an idea that there should be a separate PUA discussion post. It's acceptable if LW-ers want to discuss PUA at length, but the main disutility I get from it, is that it seems to constantly rear its head in posts that aren't explicitly about PUA (such as this one.)
I would have loved to have been involved in a discussion on the original post topic, and do not at all think that the subjects of gender and relationships should be discouraged. I just think it would make more sense if there were a separate thread for PUA-related discussion, and any time someone tried to bring up PUA in a non-PUA post they were referred to the PUA post.
I would post it myself, but I doubt I have the karma to handle the inevitable downvoting that would ensue without going deep into the negatives.
EDITED: see below
A post entitled "[censored] Romantic Relationships" is non-PUA? That's assuming conclusions to all kinds of open questions.
At the least all non-PUA relationship posts would require giant Happy Death Spiral warnings atop them.
Good point. I should have phrased better. I will edit my post to say "posts that aren't explicitly about PUA.
It's been awhile since I read the OP, and honestly I forgot about all the social interaction stuff that was posted. Being poly, I focused on the first part, and was sorta hoping there would be a discussion about different relationship styles. :)
I got to agree here. having a single discussion thread with PUA would let out some steam, and if some people feel wierded out/ threatened by it, they can just not read the thread. As it is, avoiding the topic seems very hard, since it comes up almost every time relationships, polyamory. dark arts, or rational social skills are mentioned. This makes the tabooing of PUA pretty moot.
I'm pretty okay with modding posts with PUA outside of the designated area, though, if only because it's so damn mindkilling.
Indeed PUA discussion has proven impossible to avoid without tabooing relationship/romance to the same extent as politics (which is something I advocated should be done in a different comment here).
I like this suggestion. One thread where the beliefs, practice and theory of PUA can be discussed. Actually to make any progress whatsoever, I think we need to go further, lets make that thread explicitly devoid of any ethical recommendations implied or explicit.
A thread that just discusses the theories, practices and beliefs of the PUA community. First establish what they are, then how well they map to reality.
Only after this is done open a separate thread where we discuss ethical implications and recommendations related to PUA. It has been demonstrated time and time again since at least 2008, that LW/OB blow up when this is discussed. "Is" is constantly interpreted as should and vice versa. I am convinced that quarantining and breaking up the debate in two such threads would drastically improve the signal to noise ratio on the comment sections of all romance and relationships discussions and might even eventually allow us to begin making progress on something we have systematically failed on as a community for years.
Certainly something to keep in mind if Luke goes and posts a "Part 2" on the subject. He (or someone else) should also post a corresponding "trolling about morals" thread so as to minimize the damage.
That sounds completely impossible to me. Surely PUA is primarily about what one should do.
For example, if we have the background assumption that Billy is trying to achieve X, and we note that stabbing 10 people would make him 20% more likely to achieve X, then it is not an unwarranted inferential leap that Billy should stab 10 people. To prohibit anyone from replying that Billy should not stab people for other reasons doesn't prohibit implied ethical recommendations, it just heavily biases them.
If you think I'm wrong, I'd like to see an explanation of how this could work.
ETA: Explanation given - it's not impossible. See subthread.
Can I thus generalize your objection that the optimal course of action for achieving X is impossible to discuss sans ethics in the first analysis? Or do you think that PUA is something special in this regard? And if so, why?
Yes. Discussing the optimal course of action for achieving X is absolutely under the purview of ethics. Else you're not really finding what's optimal. Editing grandparent.
ETA: Leaving the first 'PUA' since that it is about courses of action motivates the rest.
I agree that finding the optimal course of action for humans dosen't mean much if it dosen't include ethics. But humans in order to do that often construct and reason within systems that don't include ethics in their optimization criteria.
There is a sometimes subtle but important difference between thinking and and considering "this is the optimal course of action optimizing for X and only X" and discussing it and between saying "you obviously should be optimizing for X and only X."
I argue that this is former is sometimes a useful tool for the latter, because it allows one to survey how possible action space differs taking away or adding axiom to your goals. It is impossible to think about what people who might have such axioms do, or how dangerous or benign to your goals the development of such goals seeking systems might be. You need to in essence know the opportunity costs of many of your axioms and how you will measure up either in a game theoretic sense (because you may find yourself in a conflict with such an agent and need to asses it capabilities and strategic options) or in a evolutionary sense (where you wish to understand how much fitness your values have in the set of all possible values and how much you need to be concerned with evolution messing up your long term plans).
In short I think that: generally It is not unethical to think about how a specific hypothetical unethical mind would think. It may indeed perhaps be risky for some marginal cases, but also very potentially rewarding in expected utility.
One can say that while this is theoretically fine but in practice actually quite risky in people with their poor quality minds. But let me point out that people are generally biased against stabbing 10 people and similar unpleasant courses of action. One can perhaps say that a substantial minority isn't, and using self-styled ethical agents cognitive capacity to emulate thinking of (in their judgement) unethical agents and sharing that knowledge willy-nilly with others will lead to unethical agents having lower enough costs and greater enough efficiency that it cancels out or overwhelms the gains of the "ethical agents".
This however seems to lead towards a generalize argument against all rationality and sharing of knowledge, because all of it involves "morally constrained" agents potentially sharing the fruits of their cognitive work with less constrained agents who then out compete them in the struggle to order the universe into certain states. I maintain this is a meaningless fear unless there is good evidence that sharing particular knowledge (say schematics for a nuclear weapon or death ray) or rationality enhancing techniques will cause more harm than good one can rely on more people being biased against doing harmful things than not and thus using the knowledge for non-harmful purposes. But this is a pretty selected group. I would argue the potential for abuse among the readers of this forum is much lower than average. Also how in the world are we supposed to be concerned about nuclear weapons or death rays if we don't have any good ideas if they are even possible? Can you ethically strongly condemn the construction of non-functioning death ray? Is it worth invading a country to stop the construction of a non-functioning death ray?
And note that at this point I'm already basically blowing the risks way out of proportion because quite honestly the disutility from a misused death ray is orders of magnitude larger than anything that can arise from what amounts to some unusually practical tips on improving one's social life.
How can something not include "ethics" in its "optimization criteria"? Do you just mean that you're looking at a being with a utility function that does not include the putative human universals?
ETA: Confusion notwithstanding, I generally agree with the parent.
EDIT: (responding to edits)
I actually wasn't thinking anything along those lines.
Sure, but people do unhealthy / bad things all the time, and are biased in favor of many of them. I'm not supposing that someone might "use our power for evil" or something like that. Rather, I think we should include our best information.
A discussion of how best to ingest antifreeze should not go by without someone mentioning that it's terribly unhealthy to ingest antifreeze, in case a reader didn't know that. Antifreeze is very tasty and very deadly, and children will drink a whole bottle if they don't know any better.
Our disagreement seems to boil down to:
A ... net cost of silly biased human brains letting should cloud their assessment of is.
B ... net cost of silly biased human brains letting is cloud their assessment of should.
Statement: Among Lesswrong readers: P(A>B) > P(B>A)
I say TRUE. You say FALSE.
Do you (and the readers) agree with this interpretation of the debate?
Sorry for posting the first few paragraphs and then immediately editing to add the later ones. It was a long post and I wanted to stop at several points but I kept getting hit by "one more idea/comment/argument" moments.
Ethics is a whole different thing than putative human universals. Very few things that I would assert as ethics would I claim to be human universals. "Normative human essentials" might fit in that context. (By way of illustration, we all likely consider 'Rape Bad' as an essential ethical value but I certainly wouldn't say that's a universal human thing. Just that the ethics of those who don't think Rape Is Bad suck!)
I like the idea of having a designated PUA discussion thread, and I absolutely love the idea of making that thread explicitly ethics-free. The idea seems good enough to just try it and see what happens! Do you want to write that post (in the discussion area, I guess) and lay down the rules?
Upvoted, but... it looks like the kind of shiny clever idea nerds love and that blows up in their faces big time. "Purely factual questions discussed separately from ethics" sounds like something Paul Graham would pat you on the back for. Specific instances thereof, such as "Do people have more sex if they ignore body language expressing discomfort?" are significantly less tasteful.
The problem is that this is a public forum. In our ivory towers - inside our own heads, and with other people who like to toy with weird ideas - we can totally argue that genocide is legitimate if there's a genetic disorder spreading whose carriers only have male children with the disorder. But we don't expect it to be harmless to discuss that in front of the neonazis (or even ourselves, really). There are people I don't want looking at a factual discussion of how to get away with rape.
For onlookers wondering about the genetic disorder thing, it was discussed in Evolving to Extinction. The relevant part:
It just occurred to me that such a situation can rectify itself without the need for genocide :-) If females can detect males carrying the segregation-distorter, they will avoid mating with such males, because having female children is a reproductive advantage in a population where males outnumber females. Or am I getting confused again?
There would also be strong selective pressure for any genes which can override the segregation-distorter, even if the females can't recognize the males which carry it.
Rather than rely on females recognizing things about males, what about genes that capitalize on the difference between regular males and those with the disorder - sisters!
Females could more greatly than presently value aggression (this would only need a boost, the trait already exists), and a gene could make females intervene to break up their brothers' fights. Young males with the disorder would tear each other to shreds or be too timid to reproduce, and males without the disorder would have sisters preventing them from killing each other.
A modest proposal:
If mothers made a habit of snacking on (each other's) litters of all sons, that would counteract the problem. That wouldn't require being able to differentiate among adult males, just between male and female children.
If the species takes a long time to wean children and doesn't reproduce until that process ends, this works better.
Mice, pigs, rabbits etc. (animals with large litters) already eat weak children fairly often, so this is somewhat plausible.
I love lesswrong!
"Strong" for sure. Unfortunately for the species it would have to emerge fully functional in the time it takes for the species to evolve to extinction. Not so easy.
Nice!
Now I wonder why Eliezer's post calls the original problem unsolved. Surely such elementary solutions couldn't have evaded the experts in the field? I'm guessing that I made a mistake somewhere...
Unfortunately, this will only work in a population with a weak segregation distorter. Remember, mutations that do a specific thing are rare, and detecting the presence of a specific allele that doesn't have large-scale phenotypic effects is tough. By the time the segregation distorting allele is a large fraction of the population it is almost too late for the population.
It seems easier to evolve a preference for incest.
Almost certainly not! That's valuable information needed to calibrate optimal seduction technique, even for a PUA of perfect soullessness.
My cursor was literally hovering over the upvote button from the first paragraph on... and then I got to the last sentence, which completely reversed my view of it. Then I went back and parsed it more carefully, and now it looks to me like there's some pretty sketchy rhetoric in there.
Specifically: there's mindkilling ideas and then there's ideas which represent a physical propagation risk, and while PUA is undoubtedly the former, framing it with rape and genocide implies the latter. Now, I suppose it might look like that to some of its more extreme opponents, those who see it as not just squicky or disrespectful but actively dangerous. But that's not the consensus, and there are substantial differences in the way we should be approaching it if it was.
On the other hand, if you'd cast your objection in terms of signaling or associational problems, I'd be right there with you. I'm pretty much neutral on PUA as such, but it's an incredibly polarizing topic, and this isn't a big enough site that we can discuss stuff that volatile in public and expect it not to reflect substantially on the site as a whole.
You've got the karma for it. Why not you?
Thanks for the offer! Konkvistador has a prior claim to the idea, so I'll do that if he/she prefers me to do that.
I'm considering posting such a thread, but I'm thinking very very carefully if this is a good idea. It seems best to me to wait a few days, perhaps even consider a meta thread or two in preparation.
Discussion in the absence of ethics, dosen't really cover discussion that may hurt the community image or the image of posters, at least not explicitly. And while the current situation is intolerable I don't want to cause any damage with a botched fix.
See here. I'm inclining more and more toward the opinion that this topic-cluster simply doesn't belong here, any more than (other) controversial contemporary political issues do. It's too fraught with (perceived) implications for tribal struggles that people (even unconsciously) feel themselves to be party to.
In all honesty, I'm not even terribly enthused about Luke's proposed sequence being here, especially in Main. (It might well be okay in Discussion.) It sends the signal that LW is full of people who have trouble with these sorts of relationships. Maybe that's true, but it's not exactly something one would want to showcase, it seems to me.
Thanks for replying. I think you're right.
Seriously now. Konkvistador?
I didn't know! (Though my guess would have been accurate.) I went wading through old comments:
I'm indifferent to the primary point, but curious about a tangent -- do you believe that LW is capable of creating that first thread? Or only that, if it did so, that would help?
I belive most LWers are capable of this. However those who aren't make this in my opinion very difficult for the community to pull off. And then there are the signalling concerns, one big reason behind the politics taboo was for LW to not look bad. This is why I previously proposed tabooing the subject (romance ect.) in the same way we did for that other problematic topic. I also found someone's proposal to set up a rather elitist and private mailing list for certain delicate and difficult discussion appealing.
If LW did that we might actually make some progress on the issue for a change in that we would at least unambiguously establish what people's maps of reality are (allowing everyone involved to update accordingly) and engage in a, you know, dialogue instead of speaking past each other and slipping into factionalism.
I'd almost as soon we just banned the ethical discussion entirely; as that's the part that's actually mindkilling. People with "PUA=bad" or "PUA=good" labels basically trash the place over that argument, and neither are particularly interested in listening to the "PUA=lots of different stuff with varying levels of good, bad, and effective-ness" folks.
All in all, we might get rid of some of the need for the "PUA=evil misogynist manipulation" rants by banning the "PUA=good, righteous savior of downtrodden oppressed men" ones (and vice versa). There are plenty enough people here who've shown themselves capable of avoiding either trap; we just need someone who can be trusted to swing the banhammer hard on comments that are more about signaling who they're for and against, than they are about informing or problem-solving.
Actually, I suppose it's not really a problem of ethics discussion per se, just that ethics is a useful wedge topic for partisans on either side to get their foot in the door.
Hm. Maybe we'd be better off just not answering partisan posts. I suspect that (counter to my intention), trying to moderate partisans on either side just prolongs the amount of ranting the forum is subjected to. If I'd just downvoted people (instead of trying to educate them), it might've been better for all concerned.
If you're going to conduct such a poll, I'd recommend asking a similar question about some other thread on some other topic (or possibly several) to act as a control group. (I would also recommend these be staggered in time in the hopes of simulating independent measurement, and the results reported as ratios to the number of posts in the thread.)
Meh. It's not like anyone forced me to read the whole thread (which I haven't done).
Vote this comment up if this comment thread has made LessWrong less valuable to you.
Vote this comment up if this comment thread has made LessWrong more valuable to you.
We've hit over 800 comments. Is it time for a new thread?
Maybe even one with a new topic? ;)
I just deleted the two paragraphs about OkTrends. Also, see here.
Sure, that explains the weakly negative (-.1) coefficient on 4. The real meat of the effect, though, is the positive coefficient (.4) on 1. Each person who rates you a 1 gives you about half as many messages as each person who rates you a 5 (.9), which does strongly suggest 'play up what you think will turn some people off.'
Lukeprog, you have produced exactly that which we have been warned against: an article and a paradigm which has all the appearances and dressings of rationality (lots of citations, links to articles on decision theory, rationalist lingo), but which spectacularly fails to actually pursue the truth.
Vladimir_M puts it better than I could:
he continues:
And finally:
Yvain is also on point:
In three worlds collide, we were introduced to the "Order of Silent Confessors", which is "charged with guarding sanity, not morality". In this post especially, I feel that sanity is lying beaten and abused on the floor. I think we need the "Order of Silent Confessors" now.
As a start, Lukeprog, I think you should include the exerpts by vladimir_M and Yvain above in your article.
I should disclose immediately that I am one of the people who find the PUA community distasteful on a variety of levels, intellectual and ethical, and this may colour my viewpoint.
The PUA community may present themselves, and think of themselves, as a "disreputable source of accurate information" but in the absence of controlled trials I don't think the claim to accuracy is well-founded. Sticking strictly to the scientific literature is not so much ignoring the elephant in the room as suspending judgment as to whether the elephant exists until we can turn the lights on.
If it's been said already I apologise, but it seems obvious to me that an ethical rationalist's goals in relationship-seeking should be to seek a relationship that creates maximal utility for both parties, and that scientific evidence about how to find suitable partners and behave in the relationship so as to maximise utility for both partners is a great potential source of human happiness. It's obvious from even the briefest perusal of PUA texts that the PUA community are concerned very much with maximising their own utility and talking down the status of male outgroup members and women in general, but not with honestly seeking means to maximise the utility of all stakeholders.
Given that their methodology is incompatible with scientific reasoning and their attitudes incompatible with maximising global utility for all sentient stakeholders, I think it's quite correct to leave their claims out of a LW analysis of human sexual relationships.