I answered "not at all", even though I was for some years very shy, anxious and fearful about asking girls out, because I never felt anything like the specific fears both Scotts wrote about, of being labelled a creep, sexist, gross, objectifier, etc. It was just "ordinary" shyness and social awkwardness, not related at all to the tangled issues about feminism and gender relations that the current discussion centers on. I interepreted the question as being interested specifically in the intersection of shyness with these issues, otherwise I might have answered "sort of".

Typically, it's polite to add a "I just want to see the results" option, so that people who don't fit into the class of desired voters can still see the votes without corrupting them.

Could you be more specific as to who should respond? If nerdy means high IQ + low social skills, I'm not sure I should respond, because I don't have low social skills, but I am an otherwise... Geeky hetero male.

I answered "sort of", but I've thought about it more and now think "not at all" may have been a better answer. I think the two Scotts are talking about a real problem but the main commonalities between my experience and theirs are:

1. not particularly successful with women (I was single for most of high school and have been single for long stretches of my adult life)
2. afraid to let people know I was interested in them
3. depressed about lack of romantic success

and I don't think it's particularly controversial that those are common straight male nerd experiences (or common experiences for other demographics, especially the second and third things on the list). The controversial thing is whether these problems were caused or worsened by feminist ideas, which in my case was not true at all.

Possibly relevant:

• I am about ten years older than both Scotts.
• I did not "go to college" in the sense of earning a degree. (I took a bunch of music classes at a community college -- i.e., a college without dorms. I never attended anything like the sexual-assault prevention workshops Scott Aaronson mentions.)

I had zero experience with women in high school, but found I was well ahead of the curve after college. My experience is most single people under 30 have relationship issues to some degree or another. I find just generally being more socialable is the best cure. Trying to specifically get good at relationships without learning the rest of it is setting yourself up for failure.

The results so far are 10, 25, 13.

Being a non-frequent commenter, I didn't know that you had to vote to see the results. I'm not in target demographic so I voted not at all. 10, 25, 13 are the correct poll results after tossing out my response.

Well I'm very surprised and grateful to the people who voted. I thought both Scotts were probably significant outliers. But the poll results seem to show that their experiences are not that uncommon.

Perhaps a distinction should be made between the different reasons for asking someone out, because there's a gender imbalance in them. Namely, one could desire someone mainly for sex (because the target is one of several attractive people around) or mainly because they want a relationship with that specific person (and none other), i.e. a crush. At least what I get from SSC's account of Aaronson's experience was that the latter was more motivated by sex.

If lonely male nerds are motivated by the first and lonely female nerds (or girls in general) are motivated by the second, and both parties know this, then obviously the guy is going to be rejected. Both the guy and the girl need to have significantly more sexual experience than the typical high schooler in order for the idea of casual sex / friends with benefits to appeal to the girl. (Otherwise, the sex is probably going to suck for her in every way possible, from the burden of contraception to failure of the inexperienced boy to please her sexually.) If both guy and girl were to be looking for a mainly romantic partner (in a relationship that would obviously include sex, if at a later date), then the guy's chances for approaching her would go up.

(That is not to say that they would go up by much above 0 in the given context. Expressing ("that kind of") interest in someone you're not on a chatting basis with, which apparently is how many nerdy guys approach the situation, with is a horrible social move that only the most charming and attractive can pull off. Flirting precedes confessions, people.)