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Cyan comments on Instrumental vs. Epistemic -- A Bardic Perspective - Less Wrong
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(Warning: My reactions to this topic have become affected by emotion. This doesn't change my actual opinions, but it is likely to change how I present them.)
I object to all forms of manipulation. I wish businesses, for example, would purely and simply be honest about the features of their product and compete on those alone. Advertisements annoy me unless they have independent entertainment or social value.
However, I think socially manipulative behavior is especially repulsive in dating/romantic relationships and between (ostensible) friends, because these are supposed to be paradigmatic cases of personal closeness and genuine affection. The closeness and affection seem to me much less than genuine if they're wrapped up in layers of showmanship. Whether I think retailers will live up to their ad promises or not, at least I don't operate under the delusion that they value me deeply and individually for my hard-earned personal traits and accomplishments. They want my money.
I recommend Elana Clift's honors thesis on the subject.
Before I download a PDF, could you say a bit about what is in the thesis and why you recommend it?
Here, let me do you the inestimable service of pasting from the intro...
Long story short: the author's brother couldn't get a girl, so he joined them; this is her account of the motivation of such people, tied in with an attempt at a comprehensive account (as she notes, the best general overview of the seduction community seems to be Wikipedia!).
Thanks, Gwern. I would add only that the thesis highlights that although prestige in the seduction community depends on having good game, this isn't the only or even the main thing men get from membership.
If a man's prestige in the seduction community depends on his reports of how many women he has seduced, then, in the absence of non-gameable standards of observational evidence, this potentially invalidates everything they have ever concluded about anything.
As I understand it, gurus usually compete in the field, with students watching. It's not how many you did pick up in the past, it's how many can you pick up today, with what degree of elegance/speed, and with how "hot" of girls, as judged by the watching students. Such a rating method may not be objective, and lead to debates over who "won" a showdown, but it keeps them from devolving into complete non-usefulness.
By the way, in-field trainers and coaches are routinely expected to demonstrate for their students in the field, usually when, like Luke with Yoda, the student says that, "but that's impossible!" (Trainers sometimes remark that this is the most pressure-filled part of their job, not because they need validation from the woman or fear rejection, but because they'll be embarrassed in front of several students if they can't show some kind of positive result on cue.)
Okay. That works.
Well, yes and no -- not every PUA is a guru. Go on the forums and you'll see tons of pick-up stories. I'm not a PUA so I have no first-hand knowledge, but I think talking a good game gets eyes and respect.
Doesn't that make the problem worse, though?
If the feedback is esteem of students in the field, then you're rewarding the mentor who picks his battles carefully, who can sell what happened on any encounter in a positive and understandable light. The honest mentors and 'researchers' who approach a varied population, analyze their performance without upselling, and accrete performance over time(as you'd expect with a real, generic skill) will lose out.
If I may: based on my minimal reading of PUA blogs & essays, I get the impression that picking battles carefully, & spinning losses, is exactly what is valuable about the techniques.
Consider the previously mentioned thesis: the author's brother was not interested in a goal like 'increasing, over the population of all females, the success of an approach' or 'learning how to pick up any girl', but rather something like 'how to get a reasonably attractive girl, period'. If the seduction techniques worked on only one girl in an entire bar (but infallibly), that'd be fine by them.
(I was particularly struck by one PUA who spent at least 2000 words discussing how to differentiate women who might sleep with him that night from 'princesses' who would require many dates and gifts before even considering sex.)
Exactly, which is why talking about statistical models in this context is "academic", in the sense of "interesting to academics, but not particularly relevant to practitioners". Statistical models from experimental research can certainly inform practical approaches, but sometimes, one has to be "sorry for the Good Lord" in reverse: the theory may be utterly, totally, wrong, and yet still work.
If you want your rationality to protect something, let it protect results rather than "truth".
Well, as long as it was a girl they were interested in! ;-)
But by the same token, the reader of a self-help book is only interested in whether a technique fixes their problem, not a problem or all problems. The bigger picture of truth and generalizability is -- rightly and rationally -- not their concern.
barfs
That would be the case if the students were buying just the experience of watching the guru. The students expect rather more than that.