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 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.
In a way, being an asshole often comes from insecurity, and so can be a sign of lacking confidence/etc.. I sort of feel like the coolest, winning-est, most comfortable in their own skin dudes are probably also going to be some of the nicest.
But then of course there obviously also exist plenty of alpha male types who are assholes because they don't really care and can get away with it. In the end, I think niceness and confidence are mostly orthogonal traits.
I... really don't see why this would be true.
Well, admittedly, I was going by reasonably widespread anecdotal evidence. You're right that this is something that could be used to make feminism look bad, but - speaking personally here - it struck me as the sort of thing that's quite likely to happen as a purely unintended consequence, with no bearing on the broader issue of feminism as a social or political movement.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to find more nuanced or evidence-based treatments of such issues, because things like feminism tend to have s...
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.