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HughRistik comments on Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great - Less Wrong
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I have extensive knowledge in that matter and I would say that the techniques are value neutral. To make an analogy, think of Cialdini's science of influence and persuasion(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini).
What Evolutionary Psychology, Cialdini and others showed is that we humans can be quite primitive and react in certain predetermined ways to certain stimuli. The dating community has investigated the right stimuli for women and figured out the way to "get" her. You have to push the right buttons in the right order and we males are not different(although the type of buttons is different).
In other words, what you learn in the dating community will teach you how to win the hearts of women. It's up to you how to use this skillset(yes, it's a skillset) IF you manage to acquire it, which btw. is not easy at all. It's just a technique, you can use it for good or bad, although admittedly it lends itself more for selfish purposes IMHO.
Btw, women are also very selfish creatures, so don't make the mistake to hold yourself to a too high moral standard.
I also think that you might be misguided in that you start with the wrong assumption of what dating is all about. Evolutionarily speaking, dating alias mating is not to make the other people better off. On the contrary, having kids is mostly a disadvantage for the parents, but most people do it anyways because we have this desire to have kids. Rationally speaking we all would probably be better off without them. Of course if you factor in emotions it becomes more complicated.
Also there is a fundamental difference between males and females. Males don't get pregnant, they want to have as much sex(pleasure) with as many partners as possible. Women get pregnant(at least before birth control was invented) and so their emotional circuitry is designed to be extremely selective towards which males they will have sex with. Also they want their males to stick around as long as possible(to help them take care of the offspring). So you have to be aware that there is a fundamental difference in the objectives of the two which will make it extremely difficult or impossible to make BOTH happy at the same time. In practice usually one will suffer and/or have to concede some ground and it's usually the "weaker" one. Weak in this context means the one with less options in dating. Usually women are stronger in this respect so the dating community is essentially a way to empower males.
This is getting long, I could write more, if you guys are interested I could start a post on this topic.
In general, I would agree that the teachings are value-neutral. Yet some of these tools are more conducive towards negative uses, while others are more conducive towards positive uses.
It's true that people are not adapted to necessarily make each other optimally happy. Yet in spite of this, our skills give us the capability to find solutions that make both people at least somewhat happy.
So in my case, winning is "defined to include, indeed to require, respect for the happiness, well-being, and autonomy of the pursued," as MBlume puts it.
Yes, but the description in your post is contaminated by the oversimplified presumptions about evolutionary psychology in the community. I think you would get a lot out of reading more of real evolutionary psychologists, not just reading popularizations, or what the community says evolutionary psychologists are saying. I can find some cites when I'm at home.
Typically, males are more oriented towards seeking multiple partners than women, yet that doesn't mean that they want "as many partners as possible." Some males are wired for short-term mating strategies, and other males are more wired for long-term mating strategies.
Yes, and this is well-demonstrated experimentally. I don't have the citations on hand because I'm not at home, but a guy named Fisman has done some interesting work in this area.
Yet this is again oversimplified, because some present day females follow short-term mating strategies and do not necessarily want males to stick around.
True, though pretty good compromises exist. In a lot of cases, dating is like a Prisoner's Dilemma (though many other payoff matrices are possible). Personally, what I like the most about the community is that it gives me the tools to play C while simultaneously raising the chance that the other person will play C.
Even when happiness for both people can't be achieved, it's at least possible for both people to treat each other with respect, even if someone can't give the other person what they would want.
Sure, I would find it interesting.