Sorry if this is a noob question, but what is "the textbook" in this case?

Found out intimate relationships are a part of my life in which I feel I could do better. Found out it is overlooked in x-rationality groups. Bought The textbook on it. Am learning it.

Gosh. New item added to my list of "Not everyone does that."

...I have difficulty imagining what it would be to be like someone who isn't the little voice in their own head, though. Seriously, who's posting that comment?

Hijacking this thread to ask if anybody else experiences this - when I watch a movie told from the perspective of a single character or with a strong narrator, my internal monologue/narrative will be in that character's/narrator's tone of voice and expression for the next hour or two. Anybody else?

Did my best to get Cat to come to Vienna. Applied for C-FAR minicamp. Publicly precommited to doing 4 papers or wouldn't go out on weekend. Have started using music when doing non-important work (raises happiness, minimal work impact). Started using rewards to make myself do work (after a bout of work watch a short tv series or something).

Yes, I know, what I don't like is just that people think it is the author's burden ( [1]on a blog, [2]when giving advice, [3]with good intentions, [4]knowing from the beggining that the topic will make him massively downvoted) to cite every single instance, as if this was a Masters or PHD thesis.
This is sufficiently dis-encouraging that it makes it simply not worth it. After your request, I did the easy thing, saying "From memory, I read this, interacted with these people etc... and after that much enquiry, having read the sequences etc... here is what I have to say" I would not do the complicated thing, which is to transform the entire post, which has no intention to be academic, into an academic writing. You can't be academic when you want to suggest what to do, that is not what science informs you about. It informs you about how people evaluate each other. Then one can concoct suggestions of how to behave when you want to be evaluated as an X.

So yes, I do agree with you that the author should give some reason for the reader to believe he is saying things that relate to reality. I disagree that for every topic there is enough incentive for the author to make it extremely accurate and precise, since I think I'd be snipped and shot writing about these things in this tone even if I did everything right.

From my perspective, this is what the conscious experience of deciding to write this looks like: "People in Lesswrong self-describe as mildly autistic. Great, I may help with that a little. People in Lesswrong, like all people, have some prejudices, that are not compatible with thousands of pages, and thousands of conversations and interactions I had over the years with people. Let me use these facts to make a final text to Main before I start writing my Masters Thesis, and go to Berkeley to later on go to Oxford. Then I think: I'll be paying about 50 karma points for this post, maybe 10 extra people will dislike me, but I may help about a few dozens to have a more complete model of mating. If two relationships become better out of it, the reputational cost I payed will have been worth it. No one else who read as much as I did about this wants to take that many arrows in Lesswrong, so it is counterfactually relevant that I do so. Also, I care, personally, intrinsically, about killing the Status Gospel, so I'll write it, specially in view of the recent 454 comments, specially Nyan's. Given this will be my last text for a while, the reputational cost will subside in the meanwhile, making this the highest expected value moment for writing it. Then I write a few classic diclaimers. This is the end of step one. Step two is thinking very few people will actually read linked material, so I must link only the current books on mating intelligence, something with high status within Leswrong (Eliezer's separation of Cognitive/Evolutionary ) and something really accessible, Buss's video.
If people are overwhelmed by an ocean of information they'll just either remain having their true rejection, or else they'll just believe what I say based on number of sources. Both are undesirable, and putting many sources would be a LOT of work I'm unwilling to do to just help the few who will be helped. Instead, I'll just say, if it stops being helpful, stop using it, and pay 20 more karma for it."

There, a window into my mind. Maybe I'm completely nuts, and over-think too much. That is my after the fact reconstruction of how I thought about the efficacy of this post. If people think like me, they feel like paying a big enough burden just to have to reason through this before posting, and don't think they should provide citations for every piece of advice they'd like to give to a subset of a community that may actually need it. If you think of it, advices are not the kinds of things that require citations, they require compatibility with reality (where book citations work) and goals (which are the 4 states).

There are a lot of people on the internet who tell just so-stories without empirical backing about human mating.

If you want to convince people that a certain believe is a misconception, provide citation to the studies that showed that your point is true. If you don't cite studies for your points it's hard for a reader to know whether you are just expressing flawed internet evolutionary psychology or whether your claims are in line with the claims that scientists who study evolutionary psychology make.

Maybe this should be in the Open Thread?

Nonetheless, I feel that if you can't explain it without using jargon, that gives some evidence for you not understanding it in the first place (whatever it is).

What is your goal? Why would get a PhD help you meet it? Is your goal to have a PhD?

Language note: Your first paragraph sounds like it means, "Under the name 'shminux', I started a blog [...]". It would be better to say, "Like shminux, I started a blog", or "As shminux did, I started a blog". (Assuming I take your meaning correctly.)