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bogus comments on Open thread, July 16-22, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'm somewhat familiar. My impression is that the steelman version of it is a blanket label for views that reject the controversial empirical and philosophical claims of the left-wing mainstream:
Pointing out that an idea has stupid people who believe it is not really a good argument against that idea. Hitler was a vegetarian and a eugenicist, but those ideas are still OK.
So?
Here's why that's true: "Red Pill" covers empirical revisionism of mainstream leftism. What kind of people do you expect to be attracted to such a label without considering which ideas are correct? I would expect bitter social outcasts, people who fail to ideologically conform, a few unapologetic intellectuals, and people who reject leftism for other reasons.
Then how are those people going to appear to someone who is "blue pilled" (ie reasonable mainstream progressive) for lack of a better word? They are going to appear like the enemy. The observer has been brought up with the assumption that anyone who disagrees on point X Y and Z are evil. Along comes a label that covers exactly disagreement with the mainstream on X Y and Z, so of course the people who identify with that label are going to appear evil.
Note that I've offered a plausible explanation for the existence of idiots and jerks in the red-pill cluster, and their appearance of evil without reference to the factual or moral accuracy of the "red-pill" claims. Your impressions are orthogonal to the facts.
Now of course, by the selection effect you mention and I explain, the "red pill" space is going to be actually filled with idiots and evil people, who will tend to influence things a lot. But I'm from 4chan, so I have the nasty habit of filtering out the background noise of idiots and evil to find the good stuff, and the "red-pill" space has a lot of good stuff in it, once you start ignoring the misogynists, conspiracy theorists, misanthropes, and antisocial idiots.
ALERT. Fully General Counterargument detected in line 1.
Seriously, how many people would actually refer to thoughtful critique and even rejection of mainstream views as "Red Pill" material? Basically nobody would, unless they are already committed to the "Red Pill" identity for unrelated reasons. That's just not what Red Pill means in the first place.
And yes, the 'Red Pill' thing attracts jerks and losers, but that's the least of its problems. A very real issue is that this ensures that ideas in the Red Pill space achieve memetic success not by their practical usefulness or adherence to truth-seeking best practices, but by shocking value and being most acceptable or even agreeable to jerks and losers.
Yes, you can go looking for diamonds in the mud: there's nothing wrong with that and sometimes it works. But that does not require you, or anyone else, to provide enablement to such a deeply toxic and ethically problematic subculture.
Arguing about what a term means is bound to go nowhere, but in my experience, "red pill" has been associated with useful and interesting ideas. Maybe that's just me and my experience isn't valid though.
I don't think it's fair to characterize an entire space of ideas by it's strawest members (shock-value seeking "edgy" losers). I could use that technique to dismiss any given space of ideas. See for example Yvain's analysis of how mainstream ideas migrate to crazytown by runaway signalling games.
I think there is a high proportion of valuable ideas in the part of "redpillspace" that I've been exposed to. Maybe we are looking at different things that happen to be called the same name, though.
But based on your terminology and attitude here, I think you are cultivating hatred and negativity, which is harmful IMO. In general, I think it is much better to actively look for the good aspects of things and try to like more things rather than casting judgement and being outraged at more things.
Correct, I attempt to see the good parts of things and ignore the crud with full generality.
This is beside the point, IMHO; Moldbug's references to "taking the red pill" are well explained by his peculiar writing style. I think they are mostly unrelated to how Athol Kay, reddit!TheRedPill and others use the term. OTOH, Multiheaded's comment upthread provides proof that Kay's views are genuinely problematic, in a way that's closely related and explained by his involvement in TheRedPill meme cluster. For the time being, I make no claim one way or the other about other "high quality PUAs".
Do also note that I really am criticizing a subculture and meme cluster here. AIUI, this has nothing to do with idea spaces in a more general sense, or even factual claims about the real world. Again, connotations and attitudes are what's most relevant here. Moreover, I'm not sure what gave you the feeling that I am "cultivating hatred and negativity", of all things. While it's quite true that I am genuinely concerned about this subculture, because of... well, you said it already, the real issue here is Kay's providing enablement to it, with the attendant bad effects. (Of course, this may also apply to other self-styled PUAs).
If you refer to the linked article, and by "proof" you mean "strawmanning and non-sequitur"...
Seriously: Imagine a comment or an article written in a similar tone on LW. How many votes would it get?
An example:
Where exactly in Athol's article, or even anywhere on his website, did anyone say that anything about women's decaying beauty over the age of 14? Citation needed!
Yeah, this is the argumentation style we refer to when saying "raising the sanity waterline"... not!
Who exactly is the manipulative hateful douchebag in this article? Are you sure it was Athol Kay?
Um, I think this is a silly argument, honestly. As the name makes reasonably clear, Man Boobz is a humor and satire website. Unlike most articles posted here at LW, they do not claim to qualify for any standard of rational argument. What's useful about them is in their pointing to some of Athol Kay's published opinions, and perhaps pointing out some undesirable connotations of these opinions.
Let me try to steel-man MB's critique of this statement. Why is it especially important for a RPW to understand this - especially when the basic notion is clearly understood by any COSMO reader (which is a rather low standard)? Athol Kay does not explain how this understanding is supposed to pay rent in terms of improved results. And it is clear that, unless some special care is taken (which Athol Kay does not point out), a naïve interpretation of such "understanding" has unpleasant and unhelpful connotations.
Keep in mind that PUA/game works best when it manages to disrupt the mainstream understanding of "sexual market value" as opposed to accepting it uncritically, and the seduction community is successfully developing "girl game" methods which can allow women to be more successful in the market. By failing to point this out, Kay is under-serving Red Pill women especially badly.
This falls under Bastiat's fallacy of "what is seen and what is not seen". We see that divorce sucks; what we do not see is that divorce is nonethess rational whenever not divorcing would suck even more.
Strawmanning could be a technique used in humor and satire, but even then it isn't a "proof" that someone's views are "genuinely problematic".
How about this: Two women in their 50s compare their husbands with men who were attracted to them when they were 18, and both see that their husband's "market value" is lower. Let's assume there is no other problem in the marriage; they just want to be maximizers, not merely satisficers.
One of them is a "Red pill woman", she does not divorce and keeps a relatively good relationship. The other one is encouraged by success stories in popular media, gets a divorce... and then finds that the men who were interested in her when she was 18 are actually not interested anymore, and that she probably would have maximized her happiness by staying married. -- This is how the belief can pay its rent.
I wouldn't advocate staying married for example in cases of domestic violence, and I guess neither would Athol Kay. So we are speaking about "sucking" in sense of "not being with the best partner one could be with", right? In that case, understanding one's "market value" is critical in determining whether staying or leaving is better. (By the way, a significant part of Athol's blog is about how men should increase their "market value", whether by exercise or making more money or whatever.)
And then, there is the impact on children. We should not expect that even if mommy succeeds to get a more attractive partner, that it will make them automatically happy. This trade-off is often unacknowledged.