I kind of assume that a well-rounded woman should both be able to show indipendence/confidence, and have the social skills of a good team-player and negotiator. If commonly reported anecdotes are any guide, these qualities are not really fostered by either of these memeplexes. Conservative/traditional social norms do little more than stunt women's confidence and assertiveness, but modern feminism does not really encourage them to be more assertive; it just makes them more rude and complaining, even in intimate contexts where this would otherwise be seen as highly inappropriate. Few people would describe an old curmudgeon as "independent", "assertive" and "confident", but somehow this description gets applied to women who do not behave in an appreciably different way.
What's most likely is that becoming "awesome" in this context requires learning a complex set of strategies, which can't be boiled down to any simple ideology. Men actually tend to face comparable issues, which is why you tend to see such a sharp divergence between "nice pushovers" and "naturally confident, overly aggressive jerks" - well-rounded personalities (i.e. not a pushover, but not inclined to physical aggression either) do exist, but they are comparatively rare. Some PUA practitioners have suggested that the women they approach can intuitively tell that they have such a conflation of good traits, and find it especially attractive.
but modern feminism does not really encourage them to be more assertive; it just makes them more rude and complaining, even in intimate contexts where this would otherwise be seen as highly inappropriate
I... really don't see why this would be true. This kind of sounds like something a misogynist would come up to justify their beliefs. (Not to imply that you're a misogynist, just that it feels to me like you might have absorbed a misogynist meme and forgotten to question it.)
...Men actually tend to have comparable issues, which is why you tend to see suc
I took part in a recent discussion in the current Open Thread about how instrumental rationality is under-emphasized on this website. I've heard other people say similar things, and I am inclined to agree. Someone suggested that there should be a "Instrumental Rationality Books" thread, similar to the "best textbooks on every subject" thread. I thought this sounded like a good idea.
The title is "resources" because in addition to books, you can post self-help websites, online videos, whatever.
The decorum for this thread will be as follows:
I think depending on how this thread goes, in a few days I might make a meta post on this subject in an attempt to inspire discussion on how the LessWrong community can work together to attempt to reach some sort of a consensus on what the best instrumental rationality methods and resources might be. lukeprog has already done great work in his The Science of Winning at Life sequence, but his reviews are uber-conservative and only mention resources with lots of scientific and academic backing. I think this leaves out a lot of really good stuff, and I think that we should be able to draw distinctions between stuff that isn't necessarily drawing on science but is reasonable, rational, and helps a lot of people, and The Secret.
But I thought we should get the ball rolling a little before we have that conversation. In the meantime, if you have a meta comment, you can just go ahead and post it as a reply to the top-level post.