PUA functions to support the unstated assumptions it seeks to exploit. PUA Bob has beliefs about how women should behave, and he behaves consistent with those beliefs. Bob's behavior tends to reinforce those beliefs in others. That would be true even if the beliefs were not considered "unstated" by society. But because society does consider them unstated (and punishes making them explicit), reinforcing the beliefs includes reinforcing that they should be unstate-able.
The assumptions of society are not the same as assumptions of PUAs. For example, society assumes that men should buy women drinks; but PUAs assume that women prefer men that assertively step out of the crowd -- for example by not buying them drinks when socially expected to.
I fail to see how exactly PUA Bob by not buying women drinks reinforces the societal beliefs. He exposes them and invalidates them, though he does not do it explicitly, so it leaves open door to alternative interpretations, such as: "If you are Bob, you don't have to buy women drinks, but otherwise you have to"; but then is it really Bob's fault if someone comes to this anti-Occam conclusion?
Bob has assumptions that he perhaps shares on his website, such as "if you [man] step out of the crowd, you become more attractive to a [typical] [heterosexual] woman". Are these assumptions secret? No. By being a minority opinions, they are not as widely known as "men should buy women drinks", but if every other PUA writes them on their webpage, I wouldn't call them "unstated".
So it seems to me that the only unstated thing is that Bob, while refusing to buy a drink to Alice, did not explicitly say: "Alice, I am not buying you a drink, because I would like to have sex with you, and according to my hypothesis (which if you are interested to know more you can find fully explosed on my website "www.bob.pua"), not buying you a drink makes you percieve me as standing out of the crowd, which increases my chances." This would be most honest. But can we really expect everyone to speak like this in any situation?
I admit I chose "not buying drink" as the most harmless example. For other examples the analysis may be different. I'm trying to say that a PUA may be etically OK, while still essentially remaining a PUA -- a person trying to increase their sexual pleasure by analyzing human true sexual preferences and optimizing according to them. Again, I admit other people may disagree with this definition of PUA, but this is how I perceive it.
My takeaway from this is that we still don't share a definition of what an unstated assumption is.
PUA has some explicit techniques to seem more appealing to target women. Some of the power of some of those techniques is that they transgress certain norms. I assert that one property of those norms is that society disapproves of discussing them.
But that's independent of the empirical question that I'd state as follows:
...If the effectiveness of behavior X depends on the fact that it transgresses norm A, is it more accurate to say that behavior X supports or
You folks probably know how some posters around here, specifically Vladimir_M, often make statements to the effect of:
"There's an opinion on such-and-such topic that's so against the memeplex of Western culture, we can't even discuss it in open-minded, pseudonymous forums like Less Wrong as society would instantly slam the lid on it with either moral panic or ridicule and give the speaker a black mark.
Meanwhile the thought patterns instilled in us by our upbringing would lead us to quickly lose all interest in the censored opinion"
Going by their definition, us blissfully ignorant masses can't even know what exactly those opinions might be, as they would look like basic human decency, the underpinnings of our ethics or some other such sacred cow to us. I might have a few guesses, though, all of them as horrible and sickening as my imagination could produce without overshooting and landing in the realm of comic-book evil:
- Dictatorial rule involving active terror and brutal suppression of deviants having great utility for a society in the long term, by providing security against some great risk or whatever.
- A need for every society to "cull the weak" every once in a while, e.g. exterminating the ~0.5% of its members that rank as weakest against some scale.
- Strict hierarchy in everyday life based on facts from the ansectral environment (men dominating women, fathers having the right of life and death over their children, etc) - Mencius argued in favor of such ruthless practices, e.g. selling children into slavery, in his post on "Pronomianism" and "Antinomianism", stating that all contracts between humans should rather be strict than moral or fair, to make the system stable and predictable; he's quite obsessed with stability and conformity.
- Some public good being created when the higher classes wilfully oppress and humiliate the lower ones in a ceremonial manner
- The bloodshed and lawlessness of periodic large-scale war as a vital "pressure valve" for releasing pent-up unacceptable emotional states and instinctive drives
- Plain ol' unfair discrimination of some group in many cruel, life-ruining ways, likewise as a pressure valve
+: some Luddite crap about dropping to a near-subsistence level in every aspect of civilization and making life a daily struggle for survival
Of course my methodology for coming up with such guesses was flawed and primitive: I simply imagined some of the things that sound the ugliest to me yet have been practiced by unpleasant cultures before in some form. Now, of course, most of us take the absense of these to be utterly crucial to our terminal values. Nevertheless, I hope I have demonstrated to whoever might really have something along these lines (if not necessarily that shocking) on their minds that I'm open to meta-discussion, and very interested how we might engage each other on finding safe yet productive avenues of contact.
Let's do the impossible and think the unthinkable! I must know what those secrets are, no matter how much sleep and comfort I might lose.
P.S. Yeah, Will, I realize that I'm acting roughly in accordance with that one trick you mentioned way back.
P.P.S. Sup Bakkot. U mad? U jelly?
CONCLUSION:
Fuck this Earth, and fuck human biology. I'm not very distressed about anything I saw ITT, but there's still a lot of unpleasant potential things that can only be resolved in one way:
I hereby pledge to get a real goddamn plastic card, not this Visa Electron bullshit the university saddled us with, and donate at least $100 to SIAI until the end of the year. This action will reduce the probability of me and mine having to live with the consequences of most such hidden horrors. Dixi.
Sometimes it's so pleasant to be impulsive.
Amusing observation: even when the comments more or less match my wild suggestions above, I'm still unnerved by them. An awful idea feels harmless if you keep telling yourself that it's just a private delusion, but the moment you know that someone else shares it, matters begin to look much more grave.