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GabrielDuquette comments on [LINK] Ethical Pick-Up Artistry (Clarisse Thorn) - Less Wrong Discussion
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I like Ran Prieur's treatment of this problem:
Be Transparent. Show what you're feeling; say what you're thinking. Offer and accept communications at face value. Do this from the beginning, and the bad relationships will run from you like shadows from the light. Now, this doesn't mean you can't use non-verbal techniques to make people feel better -- but here is the test: If you were to explain everything you are doing and why, would the other person feel exploited, or honored?
Become Skilled at Being Single. Learn to make good food, pay your bills, motivate yourself, stay sane, and get sexual release, by yourself and with help from friends. Then why do you even need a partner? Exactly. But you might still appreciate a partner, which is a stronger position.
Embrace the Friend Zone. Having friends is a good thing. The suffering of the "friend zone" is an illusion created by desire. Let go of desire and the prison becomes paradise -- or the false friendship is exposed. Of course, you might still fantasize about another kind of relationship. The key is that you are not holding tension between where you are and where you are not.
Broaden Your Standards. Typically, guys who complain that women are attracted to assholes, are themselves attracted to asshole women. (Actually, this explains a lot about pickup artist culture.) Remember that nice person who you rejected for not being sexy enough? That's karma: you must follow the rules you make. At the same time, nobody wants to be settled for. Practice valuing qualities that are valuable.
Be Like Water. Do not push anything, but move instantly to fill any opening. This will not generate nearly as much sex as aggressive seduction, but it will make it better, by filtering out sex for the sake of proving something, and leaving only sex based on strong mutual attraction.
Sex Is Not the Goal. There is no goal. There is only the process: be who you are, and engage with what you encounter on that road.
(Sorry it's not in the official quotation format, but it was messing with the numbering for some reason.)
The context this appears in is also interesting. It's the entry for May 17, 3/4 of the way down the page.
I find this advice has a couple good points, but is mostly pretty bad.
This advice can be helpful if you have a relationship with strong gender roles, but it's not so useful for (a) people with substantial social difficulties, or (b) men in gender traditional relationships.
(a) If you have substantial insecurity or social anxiety, then if you "Show what you're feeling; say what you're thinking," you will just end up voicing your insecurity and anxiety. That's usually a bad idea in most dating situations.
(b) If you are a man dating a woman with gender traditional preferences, you must be careful about displaying vulnerability, because some women with those preferences find it unattractive.
Not bad advice (though good luck getting your friends to help you get sexual release). The main problem this advice is that it fails to recognize how badly people's mental health gets trashed by lack of wanted relationships and intimacy.
This is decent advice.
This could be good advice to someone who generally has narrow standards, but to assume that guys who complain that women are attracted to assholes have narrow standards (or go for asshole women) is baseless prejudice.
Good advice.
This advice is horrible for anyone who is expected to initiate sex. Good luck doing that without any sort of goal-directness.
I was going to ask "why not apply the same energy you put toward PUA techniques to enhancing your awareness of easy, real connection?" but then I realized:
1) I don't know how to isolate the qualities of true connection, so it's unfair to ask anyone else to spontaneously know them. Frankly, I could be bullshitting myself.
2) You might still need the PUA stuff to talk to the person once you've become aware of your connection to them.
I see now that it would be as foolish to dismiss the usefulness of PUA techniques as it would be to dismiss the usefulness of this book.
EDIT: I thought about it even more, and I've used PUA techniques a ton! Except that I figured them out myself, through trial and error, and saw them as a means to an end. The end in this case being to obtain necessary interpersonal nutrients. I never forgot, though (if I may abuse the metaphor), that love is real and it's preferable to pickup in the same way a hot, home-cooked meal is preferable to vitamin supplements. I actually bonded over this fact with many of the girls I successfully picked up. We were on the same quest, after all.
EDIT 2: Furthermore, ignoring existing interpersonal theory and making your own mistakes from scratch may also make you better at paying attention to what is actually going on around you. Unlike a martial arts expert who, instead of resolving a conflict peacefully whenever possible, just wants to kick somebody's ass.
A martial artist who is violating the spirit (and pragmatics) that form the core philosophy of most martial arts communities. There is much that can be taken from this analogy.
Yes, but people are inclined to formalism nonetheless.
I'm not sure how formalism relates to the context.
I might be presenting an unfair caricature of how PUAs operate, but it seems to me that by the very virtue of operating within a prescribed formal structure, you're necessarily going to notice some things more than others. And they might be wrong things. And you might stick to form because it's what you have.
If you're constantly engaged because you're trying to develop your own understanding of interpersonal stuff, then you're probably less likely to experience formal blindness.
I understand what you mean by formal now. (Without necessarily agreeing with your prediction of how best to facilitate awareness.)
Let's say you'd never heard of PUArtistry. You're in a bar (or venue of your choice). What are your objectives and how do you meet them?
Right now I don't have any such objectives (and so haven't gone to any bars in a while). You would have to specify what objectives prompted me to go there as part of your counterfactual.
This depends on the aforementioned objectives. For most likely objectives a plan would most likely involve approaching many women, flirting and conversing.
I don't have the faintest idea about how I would do that assuming I had no exposure to bodies of knowledge about how such things work. I suspect very badly. Reinventing the wheel would take huge amounts of effort and be a massive waste of my time.
My impression is that two people who spend enough time together and are physically attracted to one another will tend to eventually have sex. It usually takes a lot of willpower for this not to be the case.
Not if you're the sort of person who doesn't know how ordinary people go about signaling they're amenable to having sex.
It was only in retrospect after a lot of social learning that I became aware of all the times in my past that I easily could have been having sex, but wasn't because I didn't recognize the cues I was supposed to be picking up.
Was sex your goal at the time? How much time did you spend with the person(s) in question? Enough for it to be considered a long-term romantic relationship?
No. This
described my outlook, and still does. I would have been happy to be having sex though.
And it varied; there are simply a number of people, who I spent differing amounts, some quite a lot, of time with, who in retrospect were willing to have sex with me.
Having been in the position of needing good advice, I agree with HughRistik that the advice above is mostly pretty bad unless you're the sort of person who doesn't already need the advice.
(Where 'already' probably fits better a few words earlier.)
It's not for nothing that my post history is full of comments with edit marks next to them. But now if I correct this one, it'll have a pointless comment box hanging off of it. See what you did?
Are you sure it's bad advice? Maybe it's good advice, but not written explicitly enough. And maybe other advice that is written more explicitly isn't as good, but is defaulted to out of (reasonable!) fear of feeling incompetent.
It might have been clearer if I'd distinguished between advice that is bad because it suggests unwise courses of action, and advice that is bad because attempting to follow it is not a feasible way to modify your actions for the better. I think it's bad advice of the sort that doesn't provide enough information to be positive or negative.
I see this list is getting upvoted, even though it could serve as an exhibit for the classic "Applause Lights" article. As far as I see, each point sounds like deeply wise and useful advice, but on closer examination turns out to be trivial, absurd, or outright meaningless (or some mix of these).
If anyone thinks otherwise, I challenge them to translate any of these guidelines into some specific instructions for action in a concrete situation that are both non-trivial and useful.
I agree with what you said about the advice being mostly 'deeply wise' and utterly useless or worse. But then you went and made a challenge. I was confident that I could take at least one of the guidelines and find it useful and potentially concrete purely by chance. 2 seemed to be the only candidate (and Skatche has already given a concrete translation.
Mind you Skatche's "MOST IMPORTANT POINT" about 1 is totally wrong. 1 is the worst of the guidelines given. The one that will directly damage the success and enjoyment of life of those that follow it.
Except that I live my entire life this way. Does this mean I get everything I want? Of course not. But it does mean that I have zero suspicions about why people are motivated to know me.
It might just be that I have much more anxiety about dishonesty than your average PUA proponent.
I'm glad you found something that worked for you. What worked for me was a bit different. By learning to hide insecurity and anxiety, rather than display it "honestly," I actually felt those feelings less and less.
There are definitely times that I hide insecurity and anxiety in order to succeed socially. And it does work. What I've noticed, though, is that the need to do that is an excellent barometer of who I should be spending my time with. Meaning, if I feel totally at ease about voicing my insecurity and anxiety, I'm most likely dealing with a "keeper." Do you find this is true for you?
I would agree, once you actually get into the context of a friendship or relationship. I thinking of the earlier stages of interaction, where people who are socially struggling often hit a wall.
Just found your post on this topic. Updating my beliefs accordingly.
If interactions are uncomfortable and confusing, I wonder about the value of a silent, inner acknowledgement like "I may be wrong about what I think I want." It seems to me that the entire PUA community has quietly decided that equal footing in courtship is not only hopelessly naive, but dangerously delusional.
Maybe it's, just, well... hard. A lot of worthwhile things are.
Many would say that equal footing in courtship is not the default and that disadvantage is not something they need to settle for.
That they are willing to spend long hours of practice at creating their social skills suggests that they both acknowledge the difficulty and expect the experience to be worthwhile.
Not shooting for equal footing is settling. Unless they are more motivated by winning, in which case, it's a category error on my part.
EDIT: I just want to point out that, in this discussion with you, I'm simultaneously motivated by a desire to win and a desire to have the most accurate understanding of the world. But, I bet you know which one I'm more motivated by. And more importantly, why.
4 - A lot of pick-up artistry seems to be focused on the bar/club scene. This might be a reasonable place to find a one-night stand, if you know the unspoken etiquette (I don't, so I can't comment); if this is what you're after, then best of luck to you. But clubs and bars are really terrible places to find anything longer-term: they're loud, they're crowded, everyone's drunk, and women in particular tend to have their guard up, as they're used to incessant unwanted advances. Also, under the assumption that most of the people here will want to find interesting, intelligent partners, just ask yourself what percentage of the general population actually fits this description, and with a bit of calculation I think you'll find the odds are against you.
How you find a more suitable environment depends a great deal on what your interests are and what kinds of people you relate to best, but basically you want to find a community of some sort. I DO NOT recommend joining a community just to pick people up (unless it's the swinger community or something like that) - see #6. However, if your social skills are especially poor, you might want to aim for a community that is especially accepting of social rejects. Geek communities and some hippie and anarchist communities are a reasonable bet; I'm sure there are others as well. Use this as a springboard; ideally you want to be a part of, or at least linked to, many communities. Attend interesting events and chat with people, and if you don't find any common ground for a conversation, then no loss; just move on.
Now, you don't want to go out looking for Bayesian statisticians and walk away from people who can't recite the Sequences. If you really want to understand what makes people tick, you should also make an effort to be interested in what they're interested in. This will promote cognitive flexibility and expand your conversational repertoire in addition to exposing you to broader walks of life. You might even discover opportunities to genuinely and concretely make the world a better place (big turn on!).
3 - Your goal, now, is to make friends and contacts, not lovers. If you're still keeping up that flirtation, sex will happen anyway, once in awhile, as if by accident. Unless you're insatiable, this should be enough to keep your sex drive satisfied. Some of it will be good, some of it won't be so good, and often it won't continue past the first few times. There's nothing wrong with this; you're learning in the process, both about what you like and don't like, and also about how to be a better lover (more on this later, see #1).
Here's where you want to start to be careful. It is an all-too-common mistake to commit to a relationship (monogamous or otherwise), or - far worse! - to assume you're in a relationship, after the first sexual encounter. You'll want to remain aware and responsive to your own feelings and to the signals you're getting from your partner; don't define things too soon, give it at least a month or two to see what it becomes. If you find you sleep with the same person several times and you start spending more time together, you'll probably want to have a discussion about your respective desires (more about this later). Proceed gently.
Part 3 incoming...
Okay. Challenge accepted.
6 - If you're hitting up PUA sites, it's probably because you've gone a long time without romantic involvement, and you're getting desperate. This is perfectly understandable: sex drive is deeply seated and can become overwhelming if it's not fulfilled. Unfortunately, at a certain point, people start to reify sex: it ceases to be about attraction to any one individual, but simply about "getting" sex from anyone who's just appealing enough.
Unfortunately, people are very perceptive, and if you're desperate, they'll notice. You might be able to pick up other desperate people this way, but unless you're exceptionally lucky, your relationship will be brief and unsatisfying. The truth is, good relationships are somewhat hard to come by, and we're assuming that what you want is a good relationship.
Just for added concreteness, let's explore some of the ways in which desperation for sex will screw you (pun intended). You'll appear overly eager; you'll be visibly nervous; you'll hit on everyone, including people who, if you weren't so desperate, you would realize are not appropriate for you and your circumstances (i.e. they're not your type, you're not their type, you have nothing in common, etc.). When they reject you, you'll feel even worse and more desperate, perpetuating the cycle.
So, your first task is to forget about getting sex. This is difficult, but doable. Use all that tension to fuel your pet projects, to go out and meet new people (men and women alike), just generally distract yourself. Hire an escort if necessary (just remember to treat them with basic respect and decency!). Meditate. Do primal scream therapy. Go on a crazy adventure. Whatever - just find something that takes your mind off sex and go for it. You'll find you're a lot happier for it.
5 - Still with me? Good. Now that you've got your sex drive under control, it's time to start flirting. Note: flirting, not seducing. Flirting is playful and casual and is never overtly (and sometimes not even remotely) sexual. As a rubric, you should be just as comfortable flirting with the gender you're not attracted to as with the one you are (if you're bi, then you should be comfortable flirting with your grandmother). Indeed, you should flirt with everyone - male, female, or otherwise. It helps you build important social skills, makes people want to be around you more, and helps you clue in to signs of attraction in others (trust me, you'll notice 'em eventually if you pay attention (and if you're neurotypical - I don't know enough about people on the autistic spectrum to comment, sorry)).
To give some idea of how flirtation works, the most common form of flirtation is humour: making ironic observations about current circumstances, obvious shit-talking, telling jokes (if you can pull them off well), etc. Stay positive; avoid really bitter humour, or follow up nastier observations with positive comments. Physical contact is another common one, but this is for skilled practitioners only - the slightest miscalculation can turn your friendly hand on their shoulder into creepy, unwanted touching. Third, you can ask people friendly questions about how they're doing, then either share their good mood or commiserate with their frustrations as appropriate.
Occasionally, flirtation does turn into making a date or even having sex. This is a delicate practice, involving a gradual escalation while maintaining plausible deniability. I don't suggest trying to initiate this at first; just learn to notice when it happens, and see if you can keep up the game. Again, this takes some practice, but if they're already hitting on you you're likely to get the benefit of the doubt for smaller mistakes. This is where the water metaphor becomes most crucial: the game works not by pushing, but by opening up and revealing interest in subtle ways: through body language, tone of voice, slightly sexual but still playful comments. With practice, you'll learn to recognize and accept these openings, as well as to offer your own in return.
To be continued in a bit...
You don't seem to have distinguished flirting from ordinary social interaction. Are you certain you're using the term in the standard way?
"Ordinary" social interaction encompasses a wide range of different kinds of exchanges, most of which are not flirting (although some especially outgoing people appear to flirt all the time). Think of how many people you interact with on a daily basis in a perfunctory, business-as-usual fashion, putting out just the bare minimum of communication necessary to buy coffee, ask for directions, etc. Also think of situations in which flirtation would probably be quite inappropriate: in deep, intellectual conversations, when requesting a loan, during a job interview, and so on.
Also think of conversations that happen on this site. Pretty dour, a lot of them. About as flirtatious as margarine on Melba toast.
I've had a lot of really flirtatious deep, intellectual conversations. Fewer flirtatious loan applications and job interviews, but that seems to leave "purely functional communication" as the sole alternative.
Hm, I guess I was insufficiently specific. I mean, uh, ordinary talking with friends? What would you call it... well, do you see what I'm intending to refer to? :P
Yeah, I see what you mean, and you may be right (depending how you relate to your friends). Even then, though, there are aspects of friendly interactions that don't carry over to more general flirtation. I'm talking about a mode of conversation you can use with friends and acquaintances and even total strangers. That requires that it stays light and friendly and brief.
I have little idea what concrete distinction you might be getting at. Meanwhile the fact that you characterize it as "more general" suggests you are using the word in a way more general sense than is helpful.
2 - By now, if you've done as instructed, you should have a pretty interesting life. Nonetheless, I think it's worth exploring this in more detail. If there's one thing pick-up artists get right, it's the value of confidence; but it's important to remember that this doesn't mean dominance, aggressiveness, or surliness. Confidence means being comfortable in your own skin, remaining centred in a conversation, listening with calm interest but also having something interesting to say about yourself and about your projects, your passions, the adventures you've had. It means having a life of your own beyond the object of your affections, and being friendly and courteous but not too eager to please. And yeah, a bit of a teasing or arrogant streak doesn't hurt. Above all, though, you want to be self-reliant: keep your own shit together and you'll be more attractive.
1 - THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT, not only for getting laid but also as a general principle: you must learn to communicate. Healthy communication is a very complex skill, and there's no simple formula; I may yet get around to writing a full post or two on the topic. Nevertheless, one way or another, you need to learn to be honest while still showing respect and courtesy, and you need to learn to inspire honesty in others. Try to foster this attitude in your broader community and everyone will benefit (this is how the communal house I live in still functions as well as it does, despite a number of difficult circumstances we've faced over time).
I do want to say a word about communication in the bedroom. Sex is an attempt to create a mutually enjoyable and fulfilling interaction of an intimate sort, and you simply can't do that without indicating, in some fashion, what you want and how you want it. A lot of this communication ends up being nonverbal, but you should learn to be comfortable voicing your desires. You'll also want to pay attention to what your partner wants, whether based on their vocalizations and body language or sometimes by asking questions: "Is that good?" rolls off the tongue nicely.
I should also say a word about consent. Body language and other implicit cues can only take you so far; before you hit the bedroom, you'd better make sure your partner is enthusiastic about the prospect, and that requires verbal communication. This can be a little awkward, but it becomes significantly less so with practice. Remember: this is YOUR responsibility. "I thought s/he seemed into it" or "They seemed to go along with it" is no excuse.
So there you have it: how to have a satisfying sex life - by extension of an otherwise satisfying life - in six monumental steps.
Trouble is, most of what you write is extended far beyond what's written in the original list, or it's equally vague and thus of no practical use.
Take for example your advice to "start flirting." (Which, by the way, it would be quite a stretch to see as an interpretation of the original point five, except insofar as it's vague and allegoric enough to mean anything you want to see in it.) For a man who is socially inept, or even just clueless about women, flirting is like differential equations for someone who is stumped by basic algebra -- and useful and systematic learning materials to remedy this situation can be found only you-know-where.
On all other points, you similarly extend and reinterpret the original statements creatively and liberally, but even so, the advice you give falls far short of practical usefulness. Insofar as your advice makes sense, the only men who are able to imagine some concrete and workable ideas for action based on it are those who already understand these issues well enough that they don't even need it. For those who actually have such problems, much more concrete, detailed, and practical guidance is needed, and again, I know of only one sort of venues that offer it. (And in fact, at a few places where your advice approaches something resembling useful guidelines, it says basically the same things you'll read there.)
If you said that verbal communication was one of the most effective ways to communicate enthusiastic consent, I would agree. But is it really required? That notion seems to counter-intuitive to me, because I can think up some ways to nonverbally communicate enthusiastic consent that don't seem ambiguous (to me). What if your partner tries something like the following:
I can understand the reluctance to admit nonverbal ways of communicating, since so many of those methods are indeed ambiguous. But saying that verbal communication is required seems to either miss out on the possibility of non-ambiguous nonverbal communication like the above, or be some sort of noble lie.
That one made me laugh. Reading the quote you provided prompted me to think of all sorts of body language and non-verbal cues that are more than sufficient in communicating physical consent. Such as him to the bedroom herself, tearing off his clothes or touching him on the penis. But waving a condom at you while pointing at her crotch takes the prize.
Everything I said about consent applies just as much to women as to men. If he's actually uninterested, tearing his clothes off or grabbing his crotch isn't a signal, it's sexual assault.
Everything I say about consent applies to men as much as women. A guy does not have to verbally express a wish to have his clothes torn off for it to be ok. He too can use more natural means of communicating.
Furthermore judging either of these two as engaging in sexual assault is not a neutral or innocent act. It is invasive and damaging to your victims. As well as slandering their reputation the act of giving that label implies the need for and potentially causes a direct punishment and restriction of freedom. That is something I consider unacceptable (when done so aggressively and obviously dependent on degree of credible social threat.)
Well I'm no fan of the criminal justice system either, but I'm trying to keep this on the topic of sexuality; if my anarchist leanings come into the conversation we'll be here all week. :p
But anyway, please see my comment here. A person can nonverbally express their desires, and a person can correctly pick up on that expression and act upon it, but they can also incorrectly interpret the signals they're getting. I'm saying that mistakes, although still rare, happen a lot more often than you'd think, and the consequences are serious enough that this is not an ethically acceptable position to take with a new partner. You need to ask.
Am I correctly inferring here that you believe, by contrast, that desires expressed in language, in response to a question asked in language, cannot be incorrectly interpreted? Or at least that such mistakes don't happen "a lot more often than you'd think"?
If so, I'd say this is simply false.
I have never done so in the past and do not intend to start. I believe my behavior is appropriate and a desirable norm.
Okay, so it's not a fundamental necessity, but it's not a noble lie either; it's a matter of ethics. The consequences of misunderstanding, probabilistically weighted, are still serious enough that it's ethically better to maintain a habit of making a bit of sexy talk before hopping in bed with any new partner.
For the record, I have indeed misinterpreted what I thought were totally unambiguous "go" signals. Fortunately things did not progress far, but it was a big wake-up call for me.
So it's an ethical necessity? Or something that's just a good thing to do but not ethically required?
I lean in the same direction, but there are some things that make me uncomfortable about this argument.
The practice you advocate is only one point along a continuum of certainty over consent. Why does a "bit" of sexy talk put you other the ethical cutoff, but those body language cues aren't good enough? Why not draw the cutoff line somewhere less restrictive, or somewhere even more restrictive?
If the costs of misunderstanding are so high, then why only make a "bit" of sexy talk? If you should ask once, why shouldn't you ask twice? If you should ask twice, why not ask three times? If you should ask three times, why not give a week-long cool-off period and see if you two still want to have sex? Why not have consent forms? Actually, to completely avoid any probabilistic costs, why not stay home?
To make up some numbers, let's say that the body language cues I mentioned give a conditional probability of 95% person that someone is communicating consent to sex, and verbal communication gives 96%. Meanwhile, even more extensive communication could get you up to 99%. Lawyers could get you up to 99.9%.
Until we identify the moral principle behind picking a point on this continuum, there is no way to avoid a reductio ad absurdum.
The other factor not present in your comment is the benefits of sex, and the costs of attempting communication. Your comment only recognizes the probabilistic cost of abstaining from verbal communication. Recognizing the costs of various forms of verbal communication could explain why we aren't bringing in consent forms and lawyers. But if you say that those extra measures aren't necessary, or that they are costly, then why is explicit verbal communication necessary over the forms of nonverbal communication I suggested? Why does just a bit of sexy talk just happen to hit the sweet spot of costs vs. benefits of communication?
Some people find communication over consent to be costly: not just to themselves, but to the other partner. If a sufficient fraction of the class of people you date find it undesirable when you attempt to communicate verbally about consent, then you must consider that possibility in your moral calculation about how to initiate sex with them. You must not only consider the cost of failing to communicate verbally when the other person wants you to; you must also consider the cost of communicating verbally when the other person expects you to initiate purely based on a nonverbal signal. Those costs are not symmetrical, but both most get some kind of weight.
You might hold that even if communicating about consent verbally is probabilistically costly, the expected value (to the other person) of communicating is still positive. I would agree, for the class of people that I generally date, and my skills and level of attractiveness. With pickup skills, I can take the potential attractiveness loss of sexual communication, or avoid that loss altogether by knowing how to frame my communication in an attractive way.
I don't find basic communication over consent around sex to be too costly, but I do find other sorts of sexual communication to be costly. For example, asking someone what they want to do sexually, or how I can please them, usually results in women looking at me like I'm an alien (they prefer that I just initiate something, or that they do so, "spontaneously"). So I've stopped asking that question unless I am sure that the other person would enjoy that sort of communication.
However, I am uncomfortable taking what works for you and me, and ethically requiring it of other people. If you are trying to date a population of people who absolutely hate verbal communication over sex, then resorting to strong nonverbal signals might actually be way to initiate with the highest expected value. If you did attempt communication, you might simply be discarded as a mate in favor of people who are even less scrupulous than you, and who are more likely to harm others. In such a (sub)culture, the ethical strategy (at least, from a consequentialist standpoint) might be to do everything in your power short of verbal communication to confirm consent.
I'm uncomfortable with people like you and me (who are probably psychometric outliers) taking our preferences and defining them as the "right" way to do things, while the preferences of others are defined as "wrong," without them getting any say. And then we go and demand that everyone initiate in the way that we say, or they are being "unethical." If we are going to make a demand like that, we better be damn sure that we are right.
What goals do you think you'd be unable to achieve by following these guidelines?
Well, for example, take the point (1). Taken as literal and universal advice, "[s]how what you're feeling; say what you're thinking" is insane -- obviously, if you really blurt out your honest feelings and opinions to everyone at all times, you will destroy your whole life rapidly. Ah, but of course, it's not meant to be taken literally, but with subtlety and finesse. However, for those who are capable of grasping this subtlety and finesse, the advice is completely trite, and for those who aren't, it merely says "[s]how what you're feeling; say what you're thinking -- except when you shouldn't." That's not at all helpful to someone who is clueless about when he shouldn't do it, and what he should do instead in each such situation. The rest of the list is no better.
I defend this approach not because I discovered it and then used it, but because I came to it independently through years of trial and error. I was that inept guy you describe, and what worked for me was deciding to make every mistake I could make on purpose. I learned that many social conventions are quite flexible and somewhat easily manipulated by someone who has developed an immunity to shame by exposing themselves to it over and over again... but ultimately not manipulating the situation you're in is more beneficial. With some exceptions.
So, finding these guidelines so coincidentally well laid out was a pleasant surprise.
Surely you meant to ask a more specific question.
Hmm. Is it considered poor etiquette on LW to establish your question through conversation? I'm really asking.
I'm teasing!