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mattnewport comments on Instrumental vs. Epistemic -- A Bardic Perspective - Less Wrong
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It's just the one person, and I'm not discounting the luck factor. But if no one would fall in love with me "of their own accord", I should not lie, cheat, and steal to get them to do it anyway. That not only isn't the kind of love I'm interested in achieving, it bears no resemblance to the kind of love I'm interested in achieving.
I am not an unusually wonderful person. I have a mixed bag of traits, and I happened on someone who isn't unduly bothered by my flaws and is remarkably enthralled with my positive characteristics - "honesty" among the latter. That is the way it's supposed to work; and if someone has so many flaws or so few positive traits that they can't find anyone who'll put up with them, the last thing they should do is add "manipulative liar" to the "flaw" column.
I think part of the reason women have a problem with the seduction community is because they have literally no idea what it is like to be a heterosexual male. Any girl within about 2 standard deviations of the mean of physical attractiveness will have been approached on numerous occasions by men who will introduce themselves and suggest further meetings. This tends to reinforce the belief that if you just 'be yourself' then someone out there will recognize you as a unique and special flower and fall for you. The truth is however that a guy who takes that attitude will never meet a woman, unless he's Brad Pitt or a rock star. The life experience of your average man and woman means that they will have great difficulty understanding each other since they literally live in different worlds.
I have a problem with the seduction community because it openly advocates treating women dishonestly.
Some schools are just as vehement about being absolutely, utterly, bluntly honest. But if you're a reporter, which parts of the community are you going to write a story about?
I'm going by the way people talk about it here; most hint darkly, and Sirducer who has spoken most openly has explicitly advocated dishonesty. I'm glad to know there's another side to it - I'd be interested to read more about that, if you have pointers.
One example of that would be Johnny Soporno; in particular, his free "Seductive Reasoning" video series. I've only watched the first couple of tapes, but those made it pretty clear his philosophy is centered on liberating women from the societal slut/whore dynamic.
I know there are others, I'm just not recalling offhand anything else that's available for free or that is this explicit (in the sense of being verbally advocated). In some of my other comments, though, I've mentioned that there are entire methods based on honest SOI, such as the book "Mode One: Let The Women Know What You're REALLY Thinking".
Edit: Soporno's site also has this interesting article on guys who blame women for their problems.
I don't like that analogy, anyway. I don't think any fish would actually want to be caught by you in any circumstance, whether I'd rather women actually would want to have sex with me, as opposed to being ‘baited’ and ‘caught’ by me. (Would want ≅ CEV here; the overwhelming majority of women don't want sex with me right now (e.g. because they've never met me yet) but I guess this doesn't mean I'll never be able to have consensual sex with any of them short of unethically manipulating them. I hope that makes sense.)
The amount of sense it makes to me correlates pretty well with how well I understand the boundaries of categories like "unethical manipulation," "baiting," "catching," etc., are.
Unfortunately, I don't understand the boundaries of those categories very well.
False. False false false.
This applies only to women with a certain social attitude who frequent certain social situations. (I'm bi, and therefore qualified to judge whether the women I've met fall into the physical attractiveness range you specify.)
Look, I have some sympathy. There are some lingering cultural norms and an average sex drive to each gender that probably make things very difficult for heterosexual men to scratch their itches, for free, with women "within about 2 standard deviations", without resorting to either rape or the art of pickup. But you know what? Lots of people have desires they can't satisfy ethically. This isn't just the plight of straight men. It's the plight of physically unattractive or shy or cautious women; it's the plight of gay people in small towns; it's the plight of pedophiles and zoophiles and other people with unconscionable fetishes.
I have some sympathy, but I'm not going to ethically greenlight dishonesty so you can get what you want by exploiting the poor judgment of other members of my gender. I'm just not.
Incidentally, have you heard of the whole thing where "nice guys" are in love with their female friends and pine for them in long laments that they post on the Internet? It happens to girls, too. It is not the case that no one ever falls for a guy based on his personality. It's not even the case that no one ever falls for a basically average guy based on his personality. The difference is she probably doesn't say anything, and she might be a little farther south of the "mean of physical attractiveness" than the more shallow type of guy prefers.
It may have been a slight exaggeration to say that any girl within 2 sd of the mean will be approached but would you accept that overall women are much more likely to be approached by men than the other way around? I would think that's a fairly uncontroversial claim. I can't provide direct evidence for that if you doubt it but there is supporting evidence from studies of online dating. That paper found that the median number of first contacts for men was 0, the mean 2.3 and fully 56% of men received no first contacts. The figures for women were a median of 4, a mean of 11.4 and only 21% of women received no first contacts. My guess would be that real world first approaches are more heavily skewed than that because of the greater pressure of social convention in public situations that men should be the approachers.
Anyway, it would seem your main concern is the ethics of pick up. Specifically it seems to be dishonesty that concerns you. That brings us back to the original discussion of whether your image of the seduction community reflects reality. I think you've picked up on the most unethical/dishonest aspects and letting that blind you to the range of other approaches that fall under the general umbrella.
Dishonesty is not a requirement of pick up. Some people might advocate it but others will strongly advise against it. Neither is it the case that the main goal of pick up is a one night stand by whatever means necessary. Again, there are elements of the community that see that as the primary goal but they are probably in the minority. It's mostly about finding things that work to improve the chances of a positive interaction with women. It's up to the individual to decide whether any given technique is something they are ethically comfortable with and act accordingly.
I have to say, I went Googling for PUA next to words like "honesty" and "feminism" in the hope of finding a PUA community that was loud about ethical principles, and what I found was more exactly the opposite. What I read makes me want to press the work of sex-positive feminists like Susie Bright, Pat Califia, Carol Queen, Avedon Carol, or Greta Christina into the hands of everyone in the PUA community.
I think it's probably fair to say that the community is primarily 'results driven' - you won't find a tremendous amount of normative ethics there. The most common ethical principle (if you can call it that) would be the idea that the ultimate goal is self improvement (inner game) - become the kind of person who is attractive without needing to rely on any kind of 'tricks' or dishonesty.
If the sex-positive feminists you mention had advice that would actually produce positive results I imagine it would find a positive reception. I followed a link here to Greta Christina's blog and didn't find anything very enlightening there in the time I looked around it but if you have specific links to material you think is representative of the ideas you would like to spread please share them. My impression is that sex-positive feminists represent a very small percentage of women and so their views are not likely to be helpful in understanding how to relate better to most women. I am open to being persuaded otherwise though.
In PUA lingo, the term for "honesty" is "direct game": From a page by one Vin DiCarlo:
In contrast, "indirect game" is the term for approaching someone without letting them know that you're attracted to them, and the bulk of "material"-oriented schools focus on it, whereas "natural game" or "inner game" schools are more likely to also be "direct".
The reason you don't see much mention of honesty in relation to PUA, is because direct schools treat it as flat-out obvious, and indirect schools treat it as irrelevant, except where they're making excuses for why an opening line like, "Did you see that fight outside?" isn't "really" a lie.
I believe Soporno is the only trainer who makes sex-positive feminism a focal point in his work, although I don't think he ever uses the word explicitly. Nonetheless, there are many natural game schools, although the google results for "natural game" are dominated by spam at the moment. TheApproach, CharismaArts, and UltimateNaturalGame are a few of the schools that are strongly or excusively "natural" in bent, and some, like Real Social Dynamics have a mixed bag of training, moving increasingly towards emphasis on natural/direct game and away from material except for overall logistics.
Viewed as an outsider, I'd say that the trend among established training companies is increasingly towards natural and direct game, away from indirect/material. In part, this is a response to the fact that "canned material" gets played out through overexposure, but also just because as the trainers get older and more experienced, they tend to get more mature outlooks on life. (A lot of these guys start really young!)
(The main reason I even follow the field these days is because competition in the increased emphasis on "inner" game aspects means that the PUGs are driven to innovate in the area of training people to believe in themselves and act confidently... which of course crosses over into my own area a bit. Back when the industry consisted mainly of Ross Jeffries, David D., and Mystery, there was really little of interest for me.)
Over the course of human history, about twice as many women as men have been able to reproduce at all. How do you propose to end the inequality?
Even supposing the inequality needs to be ended, what makes you confident that it can be, ethically?
Pickup techniques are already ameliorating the inequality by giving the loser guys a shot. Laws that encourage more equal paternal investment, and a more equal distribution of alimony and child custody decisions among sexes, could attack the problem from the other side.
Point taken.
Inequalities are only bad if they deprive someone of a right. You don't have a right to sex that you don't provide yourself - no one does. You certainly don't have an absolute right to father children. No way in hell do you have that right.
I do not believe that you seriously subscribe to this thesis. For example, even the most severe rich/poor divide doesn't deprive anyone of a right - no one has a right to someone else's money. Discrimination against women in the workplace doesn't deprive women of a "right" to be promoted - no such absolute right exists for anyone. Any other ideas?
I do hold it, but obviously it's more complicated than a single sentence. Severe poverty deprives people of rights to various forms of safety and health, or if not those, then to independence or freedom, that I think everyone has. Discrimination against women in the workplace deprives them of the right to be considered on their relevant merits. (If women really didn't have the relevant merits, then I wouldn't think the inequality needed resolution.)
I can invent similarly sounding vacuous rights to justify anything at all. For example, let's ban cars to give everyone the right to clean air. Or, alternatively, let's give everyone free cars: the right to transportation. Surely such a right is less far-fetched than your "right" to financial independence or the "right" to be considered, by me, on some "merits" that some organization defined as "relevant". (Thoughtcrime alert?)
The point of this whole exchange being, of course, that your idea about rights is just a rationalization for defending the status quo of women having higher reproductive chances. No. Severe inequality can be bad for us all even when no "rights" are involved.
Look, I'm obviously not going to sufficiently explain and justify my entire novel ethical system in comments within comments within comments here on Less Wrong. Ask me about it in five years and I'll e-mail you a copy of my thesis, okay? That is, if you're actually interested in what I think about ethics instead of looking for excuses to put me down for not thinking you are entitled to reproductive opportunities.
Sorry, I'll repeat it once again because your reply didn't really address my words. Reproductive inequality is not about anyone's personal entitlement to sex. Yes, it's bad, and it's bad despite being not about rights. It's bad because it entails inequal average chances of good stuff happening to random people who were unlucky enough to be born a certain way. It's bad in the same way that severe inborn IQ and ability gaps between people are bad. It's not, not, not about rights or "entitlements".
Maybe your ethical system says in advance that if some issue isn't about personal rights, then it can't require a communal solution. Well... then your ethical system is wrong by the criterion of my ethical system and (I imagine) those of many other people.
Upvoting you doesn't seem like quite enough.
There needs to be a "this comment is strongly confirmed by my experiences" button