badger comments on Instrumental vs. Epistemic -- A Bardic Perspective - Less Wrong

66 Post author: MBlume 25 April 2009 07:41AM

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Comment author: divia 29 April 2009 06:11:40AM *  39 points [-]

Just to provide a different female perspective, I'd heard about the seduction community a while back, and a few months ago decided to find out more about it. I read some (admittedly not all) of The Game, watched The Pickup Artist, and read a very substantial amount of material online, including most of the archives of a few blogs, my favorite of which was The Sinns of Attraction.

I take almost no issue with the seduction community, in fact my response is closer to the opposite. Insofar as the techniques advocated work, and I have every reason to believe they do, this seems to me to be, if anything, positive-sum.

Maybe I'm unusual girl, but what I remember thinking when I saw most of the advice was that it would totally work on me, and that that would be a good thing! For example, consider body language when approaching a group of girls. I hadn't given all that much thought in the past to what made me feel creeped out by some guys when they came up to me, but I always knew I didn't like that feeling! If more guys are learning to approach girls in a way that makes them more attractive and less creepy, I'm all for that, because that makes my life better.

To me, guys learning pickup seems analogous to girls putting on makeup or wearing heels, deceptive only in a way that everyone wants to be deceived anyway, since it's usually more fun to be attracted to people than not to be. As a few people have said elsewhere in the thread, learning "game" allows normal guys to have the sort of success with women they would have if they were much better looking. If someone offered to wave a magic wand and make all the guys in the world twice as hot, I wouldn't have a problem with it, so I don't have a problem with the seduction community either.

I think one of the biggest things to remember when talking about attraction is that, at least for most people to a great extent, attraction is not a choice. A girl may logically think a guy is great, and nice, and would probably be wonderful for her in a lot of ways, but not be attracted to him. Can the seduction community train guys to get girls to sleep with them who wouldn't have otherwise? Sure. I think the guys have made themselves more attractive, and girls prefer to sleep with people they are attracted to.

That being said, I acknowledge there may also be some less positive-sum aspects to the seduction community, but this blog post covers them better than I could.

Comment author: badger 29 April 2009 06:26:21AM 11 points [-]

I've thought similar things. As a married man, I've also wondered whether certain aspects of the seduction community could be repurposed to maintain a high level of attraction within a long-term relationship. The misogyny of some PUAs is very troubling like you note, though.

Comment author: divia 29 April 2009 06:52:41AM 5 points [-]

Well, some people do write about relationship game, but it's certainly the minority of the material. And some of what I have read I find either a mixed bag or decidedly unappealing.

Comment author: patrissimo 29 September 2010 03:04:33PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: jkaufman 03 September 2011 12:53:53AM 6 points [-]

I started reading this some, and it's perspective is jarring. From the introduction:

""" Let’s be real here – maybe you had some good reasons for marrying your wife – but we both know what really counted was you wanting to have sex with her. You might have done that “Pro and Con” thing with a line down the middle of the page, but whatever was on the “Con” column didn’t matter a damn compared to “I get to screw her!” on the “Pro” side of the page.

I also know that apart from your hobbies, pretty much everything else in your life is just a hoop that you have to jump through to get back to having sex with her. """

They present as an authority on what people think, yet they are way far off in explaining my motivations for marriage and work.