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This is a nice example of a division of labor based on relative strengths (at least when your partner does not happen to have a similar aversion). For me, such a division is preferable to the idea that roles in (heterosexual) relationships are determined by the sexes of the respective partners.
You mean the relative strengths of having money versus being a woman? I'm not seeing the division here.
Diets DO work
That depends on what you mean by "work". If your intent is to improve your life through achieving some goal, but the side effects of a strategy cause a net cost in quality of life even if the intermediate goal is achieved, then I'd say that the method doesn't work.
What if your intent is to lose weight? You're pre-defining "work" for the benefit of your argument.
Part of what you label as common sense, avoiding certain "turn-off" subjects is on the list of things I don't understand. Why shouldn't people talk about their exes? Presumably if someone was an SO or close to being an SO then they were, you know, significant. Not talking about them places a substantial limit on what subjects the person is able to talk about. And are guys really so insecure that they feel uncomfortable just being reminded that the person they are dating has had other relationships?
Aside from the possibility that you had a bad breakup and you end up complaining for several minutes, which isn't a good sign in a date. It raises the question of "What did those people find out about this person that I don't know yet that it caused them to break up with them.".
I agree that if you want to know "effect on women if one has mastered the technique" people who do not try or fail to learn PUA techniques are not of interest. One probably has to study the successes of PUAs to get a complete picture on women's psyche.
However, if you want to know the "expected payoff if one starts to study the technique" the failure rate given a serious time investment is hugely relevant. If I would have known that 90% of the math students fail within the first semester (note: this is not the case), I would not have tried it at all, as I am not in the top 10% of any measure, however I would construct it.
Note: I do not know what success-rate PUAs claim and/or achieve.
You might be interested to know that Style says roughly one out of twenty people who start to learn PUA reach a high level of skill.
I personally agree with Martin however; especially in relation to diets. Diets DO work, they are just difficult to implement, changing your lifestyle often is; that applies to exercise, studying a new language or anything that requires a large time investment before you see payoffs. The math comparison is especially appropriate. In this way PUA is no different from any other self improvement course that you might decide to undertake.
Someone needs to write a Romantic comedy/tragedy where two people fall in love but they can never get together because the man is following PUA and the woman is following The Rules. They keep rushing to be the one to end phone conversations and both are always pretending to be too busy to go out with each other. The woman won't have sex until she gets flowers and the man won't give flowers until they have sex. Since both methods work they just fall more and more madly in love with each other but can never tell each other for fear of seeming too needy or desperate.
That would end pretty quickly. PUA tells you to drop a woman if she seems cagey about going out or you're not making progress by the second date. It's very much a numbers game, there are tens of thousands of unattached women in even the smallest city and on average, 4% are willing to do anything without any PUA skills being applied; if it's not working out just give up and go find someone else.
In response to
Justified Expectation of Pleasant Surprises
I think one reason for giving the player full information is to prevent the player from agonizing too much about the early choices he makes
That seems like an astoundingly naive "homo economicus" view of video game players. Unless the choices are overwhelmingly lopsided, more info = more agonizing.
You say it "seems like". Do you play video games yourself? Not just one, but as a significant percentage of your time.
In response to
Justified Expectation of Pleasant Surprises
Was it Fallout3?
If there's a tree, it might be Diablo 2 or Dragon Age.
In response to
Dunbar's Function
Though it's a side issue, what's even more... interesting.... is the way that our brains simply haven't updated to their diminished power in a super-Dunbarian world. We just go on debating politics, feverishly applying our valuable brain time to finding better ways to run the world, with just the same fervent intensity that would be appropriate if we were in a small tribe where we could persuade people to change things.
Thank you. That's one of those insights that makes this blog worth reading.
Or in looking at it another way... we can change politics but choose not to. For example, a researcher at TED was explaining how politicians are far more receptive to written letters than any other method of communication; even to the point where a well written letter was enough to change their vote on a topic.
Failing that, we always joke about how special interest groups have enough money to get close to and negotiate with politicians. However; nothing stops any of us from starting our own group, taking donations and having our hired employees go to the capital and get our word in.
It sounds more and more like the monkey sphere is an argument for not bothering to do any of the things that could change the particular problems affecting us
I certainly agree that the situation has improved, but I'm not sure I'd call warfare, raids, and banditry 'totally solved.' Muggings, rape, burglary and riots still happen sometimes in civilized parts of the world. It's not just some mysterious, unpleasant thing from the increasingly distant past, like diptheria or smallpox or scurvy.
You're right Strange7, they're not totally solved. However I think taw's point has some merit. While the "Magic Bullet" didn't completely solve it's problem, it did ameliorate them to a huge degree. For example pre and post genetic-engineering farming is massively different... over 2 times as good. Doing the same for willpower would change society.
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The division is that Alicorn is not strong with money; she lets her date sort out the money because (while not necessarily strong with money absolute) they are stronger with money than her. Relatively, the date is stronger, so they do the labour of paying.
One possible reason for someone being strong with money is they have lots of it.
Arundelo is making the point that it could have turned out that Alicorn was strong with money and her date was not; in this case Alicorn would have paid. It was not a case of "man pays, woman doesn't." It was a case of "those who can most pay, pay."
That's not the impression I got. The date ended up paying because Alicorn didn't want to, and the date not paying would have led to fewer dates. She stated she was prepared to pay half, not prepared to pay full like her date was doing.
In the comment just next to mine, she says...
Which illustrates the reasoning behind PUA advice being to split the bill. It explicitly states that she should only bother spending time with you for your company. If the idea that you two would work out something that didn't involve spending money never comes up, then she just wasn't into you.