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ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, Feb. 2 - Feb 8, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Similarly to political topics, label "PUA" refers to a diverse set of beliefs and techniques. In such situations, humans have an instinct to choose one of the following options: "accept all beliefs" or "reject all beliefs" (internally represented as "the label is good" or "the label is bad"). Therefore whenever we start debating the topic, it quickly becomes a debate about whether PUAs are good or bad.
To prove that PUAs are good: select one belief that makes sense, preferably one that many people ignore. Then say "this is the real PUA".
To prove that PUAs are bad: select one belief that seems harmful and is offensive to many people. Then say "this is the real PUA".
We have already played a few rounds of this game, and it wasn't productive.
I think there are two separate issues:
(1) The label PUA and who uses it for what purpose.
(2) Individual beliefs hold by the crowd that calls itself PUA.
I have a handful facebook friends who I have meet face to face who make money in the male dating advise market. I have got to know them in different personal development contexts. Not one of them likes to be called a PUA and there are reasons for why that's the case.
It often happens that guys who have little success with women read PUA material and then buy into the marketing promise. They want to believe and then argue for PUA. At that point it can make sense to point out that they have a false idea of what PUA happens to be.
Look at Mystery, he's an archtypical PUA, who self labels that way. The guy can approach. He even can do it successfully. As far as I know he never lost approach anxiety. That's in itself no big deal, but the guy is depressed. His fate is not a state that the usual person who buys into the PUA marketing myth wants to achieve. Quite many guys, also don't have the consciousness required to even get those kinds of results.
That's the label. When it comes to individual techniques and beliefs, you don't need to use the PUA label to discuss them. It's useful to discuss social skills and we do so from time to time.
I agree that the "PUA" label has some problems, but I'd still consider it very much worthwhile. Talking about "dating advice" just doesn't pinpoint much about what cluster of beliefs, techniques and attitudes you're referring to. Yes, some folks may have false expectations about PUA, but a broader and more confusing label is likely to score worse on this metric, not better.
Also, Mystery is definitely not a typical case among PUAs. The book The Game describes his depression in detail, in a way that makes this quite clear. Overall, PUA 'gurus', people who are driven to expend a lot of effort on the training and techniques, are likely to be weirder than most. But it's not clear that this should put off average folks.
Tucker Max had feminists demonstrating against him for advocating misogyny. When he gives evolutionary psychology based male dating advice by teaming up with evolutionary psychology professor Geoffrey Miller, the impulse to cluster him as PUA comes easily. At the same time he rejects the label.
He thinks that PUAs wrongly objectify women. He thinks that it's important to understand the female perspective as women articulate it themselves.
There are good reasons why misogyny is associated with the label. It worthwhile to distance oneself from that. For ethical reasons, for reasons of building a genuine connection and for general emotional wellbeing.
I don't think you get anywhere with that framework if you aren't driven to expend a lot of effort. Quite a few people spend time going to PUA lairs and reading PUA material but not getting any results because they don't really put in the effort.
I don't know the mental state of everybody of Project Hollywood but Tyler was also depressed. Both of them were also depressed 5 years later.
As Villiam_Bur said above, you can prove anything simply by selecting biased samples. Some PUAs definitely have unhelpful attitudes towards women, and PUA jargon clearly shows a legacy of bad attitudes from past "gurus". But AIUI, many PUA gurus nowadays understand that these are not just ethically problematic, but also have very real drawbacks for their more specific goals. At the same time, we have a new "red pill" label for folks who are even more misogynistic than PUAs used to be.
Yes, but a PUA "guru" is still someone who is putting in a lot more effort than most. Many people only engage with PUA as far as they strictly need to. Once they've gotten a few dates and started a LTR, they just drop out of the scene. I'd argue that these should count as successes.
The point is that even some people who do have speaking slots at PUA events don't like to be called a PUA to disassociate from those values.
If you read David Burns "The Feel Good handbook" he makes the point that showing vunerability is a condition to get someone to love you. A lot of behavior that a lot of beginning PUA's adopt go in the other direction and might make it less likely that the person get's into a long term relationship.
If you listen to Tucker Max et al podcast you will find the advice to have a clean flat to signal consciousness when a woman comes over. For most people here, that's likely good advice. On the other hand most self labeled PUA will tell you that thinks like that don't matter. They have gotten women over when their flat was in an awful state and things still worked.
Tucker Max et al did run a study on mechanical turk to see what kind of shoes woman prefer men to wear on dates. The result is that leather shoes are good but the price doesn't really matter. I could go with a PUA who tells you to peacock or that looks don't matter but if you are a nerd, then likely just wearing leather shoes is a good bet.
Telling people to clean their flat and wear leather shoes doesn't help with selling bootcamps. Telling people to go cold approach in bars and clubs does. It's produces a lot of painful anxiety and makes guys think that it's important do spent large sums of money to learn to deal with it.
If someone who gives seminars to teach social skills uses vocabulary that has effects that he doesn't want, that says something about that persons abilities. In my experience the people I know who are skilled with language don't do that.
What does "vulnerable" mean in this context? People use the word a lot, but nothing listed against it in the dictionary strikes me as a positive thing: susceptible of receiving wounds or physical injury, open to attack or injury of a non-physical nature, in need of special care because of age, disability, risk of abuse or neglect. The general Google hits on the word are even more unattractive.
I think he means it in Mark Manson's sense.
Ah. I'll pass.
Exactly what the dictionary says: open to attack or injury of a non-physical nature. It doesn't sound very good when put in those terms, granted, but the main idea is that showing vulnerability is a way of signalling trust. You give someone the power to harm you, but you trust them not to abuse it. One form is sharing secrets or personal details (if you read HPMOR, this point comes up).
You do need to be open to injury of a non-physical nature to empathize in a way with another person where you feel their pain. The act of caring about another person opens you up to feel bad when they get hurt.
But the openness for negative emotions also means an openness for positive emotions. You feel good when the other person feels good. If you are vulnerable to a girl and she smiles to you in deep happiness that feels good. The ability to do that makes the girl feel agentship. She's not just an object but an agent.
A lot of that is also unconscious. Emotional flow is part of most healthy relationships and a lot of people have barrier against that.
It's a balancing act. Most people are a lot more likely to show too much vulnerability as opposed to too little, so the advice to appear less vulnerable would seem to be justified. Similarly, a lot of the things PUAs say "don't matter" actually do matter, but only as a last resort. It's silly to put a lot of extra effort into things like making your flat extra squeaky clean, when you can pick the low hanging fruit of improvements in your social image and attitude.
And if PUA always involved spending "large sums of money" on bootcamps or proprietary material, you'd be quite right - it wouldn't be nearly as interesting as it is. But much basic advice is freely available online, although it may require some time and effort to find the best communities. (And that's one reason why I think one should be aware of the label, despite its problems: it's an easy way to find interesting material.)
I don't think that's true. Openly and directly speaking about one's desires for example isn't an easy skill. Many guys are tense because they are afraid to fail or to be rejected and put up a lot of barriers towards genuine intimacy.
It's also worth noting that you speak about "appearing vulnerable" while I speak about vulnerability.
If a woman touches you, do you tense up or do you relax? If you tense up because you are afraid of intimacy, it's going to make connection harder. It's even worse if you engage in physical contact because you read on the internet that you should and then tense up because you are afraid of physical contact.
There are many sources for improving social image and attitude. It's happens frequently that people who start with PUA start to behave in a way that burns existing social connections.
I didn't say "extra squeaky clean" I just said clean. Don't strawman.
A lot of woman openly state that they judge man by their shoes. Wearing leather shoes instead of sneakers isn't a high hanging fruit.
Much of that basic advice is given in a way to maximize bootcamp attendence.
That's a higher-level skill though. What makes this possible in the first place is having a secure and well-defined "frame", which is an intended result of pursuing what you call "lower vulnerability". Perhaps the term "vulnerability" is simply too ambiguous.
You're right about this pitfall of physical contact; somewhat ironically, this is one thing that can be easily spotted and addressed by an actual PUA coach, while it's really hard to self-correct on one's own. You say that PUAs seek to "maximize bootcamp attendance" and this makes their free advice less than trustworthy, but that just doesn't reflect my experience. There's quite a bit of annoying commercialism, but overall development of the community largely occurs through free-ranging discussion.
Sure, but how many of these sources are as clear and (loosely) empirically based? (One of the tenets of PUA is A/B field testing of every innovation: this is the actual underlying reason for their focus on the unforgiving bar- and club-environment. It's not about making it harder for newcomers and selling more bootcamps - that's just a convenient side effect.)
But the former is what people whose flat is already clean are likely to hear when you say the latter -- which is why one should reverse all the advice that one hears.
The main point is about sources of advice and not about advising the reader to adopt a specific behavior. Tucker Max does go into more detail on his podcast.
Even if we go on advice level, the advice is to signal conscientiousness. Not cleaning your dishes for three days and having them pile up in the kitchen signals low conscientiousness.
The difference between clean and "extra squeaky clean" doesn't signal additional conscientiousness but being neurotic.
The great thing about seeing that you signal conscientiousness towards woman is that developing conscientiousness is useful in general in life. Impressing woman happens a quite good motivator.
Following advice without understanding the reasons behind the advice is seldom optimal. It leads to cargo-culting. Especially for online advice it's foolish.
In person I can ask a lot of question to understand what someone's issue happens to be and then give targeted advice. Giving advice is usually not the main goal when I write something on LW. It's intellectual exchange.
Also dialectics.