you should not follow the advice given in the above post, in the case that you have a very specific goal with respect to a relatively small group of women. ... It is not particularly surprising that the advice given in the post only works for most people with most goals.
This goes too far. The vast majority of men are heterosexual, gender-normal, and the vast majority of those are most attracted to women who are not:
Pickup is popular because it tells men how to attract precisely those women who they desire most.
making a strawman out of your own arguments
Listen carefully to what I said, Thomblake:
PU may well apply (to a certain extent) to almost all pre-menopausal hetero/bi women, but the case is much more clear cut for women who are also relatively young, culturally-western, hetero- or bi- sexual and relatively attractive, because that's the subgroup of women where extensive field-testing of the concepts has been done.
One must distinguish carefully between the set of women for which I (in a Bayesian sense) believe PU would apply to, versus the set of women for which I am stably highly confident that it applies to because of overwhelming field-testing.
Indeed, saying that "PU may well apply (to a certain extent) to almost all pre-menopausal hetero/bi women" does not logically entail that I think it doesn't apply to post-menopausal women or lesbians etc. Personally I have no clue about lesbian attraction, and very little about how to attract post-menopausal women, so I make no claim in particular.
Christopher Columbus is believed to have had two estimates of how far his ship had traveled during the first voyage to the New World. One was a deliberate underestimate to reduce the crew's worries, while the other was his best guess, to be used for practical purposes
That is a very nice model for the human mind.
The definition of "pick up artist" from wikipedia is:
Pickup artist describes a man who considers himself to be skilled, or who tries to be skilled at meeting, attracting, and seducing women
So if we are indeed referring to the same thing by the phrase, then I think that I am correct in saying that
"women who are relatively young, culturally-western, hetero- or bi- sexual and relatively attractive, is the subgroup of women where extensive field-testing of the concepts has been done."
There have been small offshoots into "girl game" and some guys focus more on older women, and I am explicitly not denying that there are results and facts there. But the core of the concept, the VAST majority of the field testing and online material is about quickly seducing "women who are relatively young, culturally-western, hetero- or bi- sexual and relatively attractive"
Surely you mean
"the average person could escape the majority of needless wasteful tension if they were just willing to use words ... "
since I am sure there is some person out there who overuses "average" when they really mean "all", yes? And yet you didn't choose to have that word. Why? Was one word so costly to you?
PU may well apply (to a certain extent) to almost all pre-menopausal hetero/bi women, but the case is much more clear cut for women who are also relatively young, culturally-western, hetero- or bi- sexual and relatively attractive, because that's the subgroup of women where extensive field-testing of the concepts has been done.
You comment would be more useful if you said which ways it is oversimplified, and which additions and caveats you think are most important to restore it to being true.
One of the big reasons that LW is unable to be rational about pickup is that we have a small group of vocal and highly non-average women here who take any comment which is supposed to be a useful observation about the mental behavior of the median young attractive woman to be about THEM IN PARTICULAR.
You, NancyLebovitz, are not the kind of woman that PU is aimed at. You do not go to night clubs regularly. You do not read gossip magazines and follow celebrity lifestyles, you do not obsess about makeup . You post on weird rationality websites. You are not the median young, attractive woman. And that goes for Alicorn too.
Even amongst the set of IQ + 1 sigma women you are almost certainly highly nontypical.
Comments about female psychology are not directed at you, they are not about you, your personal experience of YOUR OWN reactions are not meant to be well described by pick-up theory.
I do not mean this in a negative way. I mean you no offence; in fact you should take it as a compliment in the context of intelligence and rationality. I am merely making an epistemological point.
The next time I make a comment about PU, I will carefully disclaim that PU is primarily designed to analyse the average psychology of just one particular kind of woman: namely relatively young, culturally-western, hetero- or bi- sexual and relatively attractive.
Finding ourselves with the ability to reflect on how our instinctual behavior and preferences are derived from inclusive genetic fitness necessitates neither fully accepting, nor fully rejecting these preferences.
Absolutely. Just to be clear, I never said, and in fact explicitly disclaimed the former. I agree 100%.
Probably ~40% of pepople are heterosexual, gender-normal men who are most attracted to women who are young and straight.
It seems like you are using weasel words to describe the goal of ~40% of the people on the planet as a "very specific goal".
Let me put it another way. On a website with a strong majority heterosexual male readership, the article fails to mention what I think is the definitive body of knowledge to improve the dating lives of heterosexual men. You then criticize me because, of all people, just under half are heterosexual males, almost all of whom (surprise) like young, attractive, straight women; you use weasel words saying that my point is for a "very specific goal", when in fact probably ~60-80% of people reading this site have the goal of attracting/keeping a young, attractive, hetero/bi woman.
TBH, I feel that you, and LW in general, are trying to use pedantry/weasel words/motivated cognition to close your eyes to the truth about attraction between men and women. Perhaps there is some subset of people here who want to know, but I feel that if I mention the subject I will end up arguing against some form of denial/motivated cognition, rather than discussing the subject in the spirit of a collaborative enquiry to get at the truth.