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Tesseract comments on New Post version 2 (please read this ONLY if your last name beings with l–z) - Less Wrong
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Comments (185)
Downvoted.
It's interesting and potentially useful, and I liked some of the links; however, I felt seriously skeeved-out throughout, probably due to the combination of uncomfortably personal authorial bildungsroman (with connotations of "if you do this right, you can be just like me"), and the implied promotion of polyamory. Would work much better if you could remove the autobiographical aspects.
I felt skeeved as well. I didn't mind the polyamory plugs, and in general I like autobiographical bits, as they bring more of a human element into posts.
What bothered me was that the discussion about romance felt very cold, somehow. Talking about "suboptimal" relationships, saying that you "scored" your first one-night stand, and such. It sounded like you weren't interested in other people as, well, people.
The interesting thing is that I don't really endorse these emotional reactions to your writing. In general, I'm completely fine with PUA stuff as long as it stays ethical, which I think your post did. Nor do I feel, on an intellectual level, that there's anything wrong with considering a relationship "suboptimal" - many relationships are that. Yet the post managed to push buttons on an emotional level anyway. For that reason, I'd very strongly prefer to not see this post on the front page, as I suspect it would give a lot of people an unreasonably negative image of this community.
I agree with you on the skeeviness of the terminology of "scoring" a one night stand; interestingly, version 1 of the post instead states that Luke "had [his] first one-night stand." Although I haven't compared the versions carefully, it therefore seems like version 1 may make more of an attempt to avoid that sort of language.
One thing that bothered me on that level was the "awesome girlfriend"-- does lukeprog like her, or does she just meet a set of specs?
I think I understand where you are coming from approximately, but for clarity what specifically would liking her entail above and beyond a set of specs?
Some sense that there's something distinct about her which would mean that lukeprog would care if she were replaced by a different woman who was as good-looking and as interested in sex with him.
This something distinct, would a more detailed set of specs qualify? In your mind, is it that lukeprog seems to have few and shallow specs that bothers you? Or is your "distinct" distinct from specs entirely?
Upvoted for distinguishing between emotional reactions and endorsed ones.
I agree with the "skeevy" description, although I have to admit that as I read on, I became somewhat less skeeved.
I also worry that you gloss over the negative aspects of polyamory (and I say this as someone who is in favor of polyamory) -- mainly, that it takes a lot of time and energy to get right. I also worry that you don't link to any of the literature on polyamory, despite citing literature on everything else.
I also don't know to what degree your experience generalizes: do people who study relationships actually have better relationships? Couldn't your new success be due to not being 18 years old anymore (or however old you were in 2005)?
Also, found the bite-sizing of the lessons made them feel like distractions to be skipped over rather than principles that the anecdotes were illustrating.
Agree with both of these, downvoted as well. I have other comments that are not related to these, and I'll post them separately.
I upvoted this comment, but would like to qualify that I didn't feel very skeeved out - you were just doing things wrong, making most of the autobiography not all that useful. You try to draw general lessons, but they seemed to be explaining or justifying what didn't need to be explained or justified. I'd rather see practical lessons derived from your experiences, with no fear of saying "this is what I could have done better in that situation."
Interesting. I don't see any problem with bildungsroman. Did you have a similar reaction to Eliezer's Coming of Age posts?
Also, what's wrong with a promotion of polyamory? I definitely think it's an option that will be more optimal for some people than the default of serial monogamy.
Finally, the entirety of The Sequences proclaims "if you do this right, you can be just like me (Eliezer, trained rationalist)." Were you similarly made uncomfortable by that aspect of The Sequences?
I found the Coming of Age series to be both self-indulgent and quite dull, and I think that it's very difficult to use yourself as an example of vice or virtue without running into one or both of those issues. I also find that I (more-or-less automatically) downgrade an author's ethos by a lot when he's talking about himself as an illustrative example. But for this one, it's the skeeviness factor that dominates — it's just plain creepy to hear about your love life as a source of telling anecdotes. And that's distracting.
Polyamory may be great, but the right way to promote it is not by slipping into a post the implication that it's the endpoint of rational thinking about romance. Which is what this reads as, whether you intended it to or not. If you want to advocate polyamory here (and honestly, I'm not sure that Less Wrong is the right place to do so), you should devote an entire post to it, and set forth clear arguments as to why it's the better option, rather than presuming it in your advice.
The Sequences do not consist of Eliezer promoting himself as a master rationalist, nor do they assume that you already think he is. He argues for certain positions, and the reader comes to believe that he is a good rationalist as a result of being convinced that the positions he holds are rational. The tone of this is much closer to the motivational-seminar pitch of "I turned my life around using these three simple principles", with the additional difficulty that we're just taking your word for your romantic success. It's not credible.
In the particular subject of dating and relationships, for anything practical or prescriptive, I actually find it really valuable when people talk about their own experiences. It helps me evaluate if (a) they are basing their conclusions on real world experience, (b) their outlook is similar to mine.
Ah, okay. Yes, if you don't like the personal-story approach in general then, well... this post isn't for you. :)
Your contrast between my post and the sequences makes some sense, except that the point of the post wasn't particularly to argue for those rationality lessons. The posts arguing for those lessons are generally the ones I link to when describing each lesson.
Maybe an exploration of the notion would be a better way to go about it. Many/most people have negative reactions to polyamory, and thus an article that takes a default view that polyamory is something to work toward will garner more negative reaction than you intended/desired.
Better when it's framed as "if we work on this, we can do better," not "if you do this, you can be just like me." Some community members see this place as mutual-improvement, not aspire-to-be-Eliezer (or Luke, or Anna, etc.).
Upvoted for appropriate use of "bildungsroman".