There are multiple levels of duping.

Now that the cat is out of the bag so to speak and the PUA game is well known, I've found that many women are actually surprisingly interested in it. To the extent that PUA skills increase unconscious signals that women find attractive, it may have a net benefit for women by upping the typical attractiveness of the dating pool, as Sarah points out. It could have an effect like tasty but safe artificial sweeteners, or widespread effective invisible makeup and cosmetic surgery.

That level of false signaling is probably harmless and even net benefit for women, but the aspect that many women rightly dislike or hate is the darker side to PUA which focuses solely on manipulating women into one night stands using whatever techniques work - which mainly includes alot of bullshit and dishonesty.

So it depends on what exactly is being faked and to what extent. As we all know men have less risk with casual sex, have higher net demand for it than women, and thus women have to be more choosy in finding mates. PUA 'dark art' persuasion techniques thus give women legitimate reasons for concern. (and reasons to be familiar with PUA game in general).

Can anyone suggest any blogs giving advice for serious romantic relationships? I think a lot of my problems come from a poor theory of mind for my partner, so stuff like 5 love languages and stuff on attachment styles has been useful.

Thanks.

Maybe consider an another term, PUA as a term can drag many shitstorms and divide community even if you are trying to avoid dark arts.

The whole "happiness limited by shyness/social awkwardness which results in no dates" stereotype does not apply to many people here.

e.g. I consider job interviews much more terrifying than finding new people (which seems mostly limited by the amount of free time).

I agree. I'm also tired of "Hey look! There's overlap between the distributions, so let's pretend the difference doesn't matter!"

The problem with the corelation with homosexuality is that homosexuals are frequently up against violent prejudice, though less so in recent years.

Suicide rates for gay teens have been dropping like a rock for the past two decades (though they remain above the heterosexual rate.) Homophobia is still awful but it's one of the most obvious ways in which the world is getting better.

For what? I don't mind having a sweet tooth. I have gained a small amount of weight over the past 10 years, but it hasn't been too dramatic...

I should have made it more clear in the post that the primary target of the post was not professional, academic evolutionary psychology. Rather, I was primarily cautioning amateurs (such as LW regulars) about some of the caveats involved in evpsych and noting the rigor required for good theories. While the post does also serve as a warning to be cautious about sloppy research (or sloppy science journalism) that doesn't seem to be taking these issues into account, I don't question the claim that the people doing serious evpsych are aware of all the issues I mentioned, and are probably taking them into account.

Could you give an example of someone making this error?

My wording was probably a bit too strong. Anyway, I'll try to look up some examples once I wake up.

Ah, but why do women have less strength, and men have more? See the excerpts from David Geary's Male, Female here arguing that greater male strength is related to sexual selection. (The mere fact that females have the babies isn't enough, because many monogamous primates exhibit minimal dimorphism.)

We know that there were different selection pressures on men and women. It doesn't make sense to believe that these selection pressures were strong enough to change body morphology, but somehow had no effect on psychology and behavior. That would be "neck-down Darwinism."

Huh. This is an excellent point; I'm now updating in favor of an increased probability for mental sex differences.

I think your post could use a couple citations for this claim. Off the top of my head, this claim may be true for some traits, but I've also seen evidence that it is false for others.

I was thinking of a study mentioned in one of Buss' textbooks, which I unfortunately don't have at hand right now. I will look up the exact citation.

So, just because we see a certain sort of variation, it doesn't necessarily strike down the hypothesis of universal, or quasi-universal, evolved human predispositions.

Right. I should have been clearer on this, too. I did not mean to argue that the variation would disprove an evolutionary or biological basis for these traits. Instead, I was using it as a caution against making too many assumptions of specific individuals.

It may have been a bit misplaced in this post, as it's more of a general caveat about psychological research than a criticism of evpsych in particular: not many results in psychology are truly universal in that you couldn't find individuals who were counterexamples. I should possibly remove it and make it into its own post.

Semi-random thought:

I think that my current antidepressant medication (Venlafaxine) gave me a sweet tooth; shortly after beginning to take it, I wanted sweets much more than I used to, and the effect hasn't subsided. (My mom says that many psychoactive medications tend to cause weight gain.)

Candidate: Don't pursue an idea unless it came to your attention by a method that actually finds good ideas. (Paraphrased from here.)

Count to ten.

Learning one was wrong (and updating) is a good thing.

One should be more interested in obtaining information than winning debates.