Epistemic status: Exploring new area, making bold claim
What is a shittest?
In conventional usage, a shit-test is a behavior strategy in which a woman challenges a man's status/value/loyaly/ by observing his response. Some common variants include: giving a man an unreasonable task to see if he does it (where negotiating or refusing the request would signal high status), insulting a suitor, or behaving in a particularly unpleasant way to test for loyalty. The phrase "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best" is sometimes the idea. I won't link to any PUA or romance blogs becuase most of them suck: as always I recommend Geoffrey Miller's Mate for practical advice.
What are they good for
Despite the bad reputations, I think shit-testing is instrumentally rational for the tester. In the right situation, more men should do it.
I recently moved from a female-minority mating market to a male-minority mating market in a US coastal city. I'm also a better match for people's preferences here. Because of the new market, it takes me far fewer hours of bumbling/socializing to get a date on average. It looks like I can have 1 +/- .5 dates a week at the cost of only a 4-5 hours of texting/week. I will also live in this city for a much longer time. Therefore its worthwhile to take my time in mate selection and meet a few preferences. Shittesting helps me sort people.
I have two main behavioral preferences I shit test for.
How do they argue?
I want partners with:
- low need for closure (NFC) - they should have be willing to change ideas on new evidence and accept that there is not one definitive answer
- are able to supply arguments I find compelling
- evaluate arguments I make in a compelling way
I want low NFC partners because they are much more fun to talk to. Talking to someone who hears one argument for a position then adopts that position and ignores all future arguments is just really really boring. Also I have found people with high NFC have more one-dimensional, less nuanced views (anecdotal). Furthermore, I seek partners who can supply compelling arguments because I don't want to have to fake finding their arguments compelling. If she can rip apart my arguments, that's the cherry on top because I'll improve my arguments every time we hang out.
Shit-testing for this is easy to do on a first date. I wait for my date to make an interesting proposition, then I supply contradictory evidence or state that I am unconvinced. This test gets diverse responses. The responses I dislike are: repeating the assertion/evidence, arguing to authority, ad hominem, avoiding the disagreement, a non-compelling critique of my evidence. The low NFC responses are: supplying an additional argument, motte-and-bailey[^1], a compelling critique of my evidence, supplying multiple new arguments, clarifying the original position. I've given the shit-test 4 times and had 1 pass and 2 failures and 1 tie.
For example, last night my date asserted that the Belgian racial policies caused the Rwandan genocide. I countered that ethnic divisions are common and mostly nonviolent, positing a food insecurity explanation. She supplied an argument about the unusually disorganized quality of the violence and the targeting of the killings. Iirc, she also pointed to the partition of India. She pointed out that while ethnic division is common, equal size ethnic groups are much less common. HOT.
How do they train me?
I accept basically accept Diana Fleischman's argument that people subconsciously reinforce and punish behaviors to shape their partners. She is giving a SSC online meetup talk this Sunday, which I am excited about. People both subconsciously and consciously train their partners by punishing behaviors they dislike and rewarding behaviors they prefer. Fleischman argues that women have evolved to train more effectively than man.
My preference is for a woman that
- Trains me in traits I myself want to change
- Trains me more with rewards and less with punishment
- Is willing to watch the Diana Fleishman lectures and think about the best relationship for both of us
So I need a shit test for that, but I'm not sure how. The problem is that people probably don't start punishing partners during the "honeymoon" period. I need behaviors I can observe or test in the honeymoon period which are strongly correlated with my preferences. Ideas welcome!
[^1] Fallacies are fine. I want a smart women with an open mind, not an ideal Bayesian Homonculus.
I'm not a native english speaker or completely familiar with the term, but it seems to me that the behaviour you are proposing is simply "testing" rather than "shit-testing".
From what I understood, shit-testing refers to behaviours that stress, impact negatively or try to entrap the partner to check his/her reactions.
Debating or discussing issues is an enjoyable activity for many people, and providing contrary evidence or asking someone to better explain or prove his position shouldn't have any negative consequence for the target (if it does, then running for the hills seems a reasonable response), so it seems just a way as any other to investigate his interests or traits while conversing with him.
Purposefully providing bad behaviour to see how she'd try to shape it does seems more like shit-testing.
I'd expect that in the early stage of a relationship such attempts would either be ignored, as you suppose, or reduce the chances a partner would want the relationship to become long term. I think most people expects their partner to be on their "best behaviour" in the early stage, since it's what they are doing, so seeing bad behaviour then would 1) make them assume even the partner's best behaviour isn't that good and 2) cause them to evaluate whether tolerate it and continue the relationship or not when there would be a lot less reasons to than later on. Even if you don't mind this outcome on the first date, I hardly imagine someone who is reconsidering the chances of the date to evolve in a relationship would provide a shaping attempt, since they wouldn't see many reasons to put in that effort. My impression is that shit-testing is only effective at selecting for meek, insecure or remissive partners, since they are the ones who most likely wouldn't consider early bad behaviour as a deal breaker.
So, especially taking in your priorities where the information have to be gained quickly, and even accounting that you don't mind having many dates not work out as long as you can avoid bonding with the wrong partner, it seems to me that "shit-testing" wouldn't serve you well, since the responses you'd get to negative behaviour would almost always be extremely different than the ones you'd get later in the relationship. I'd advise to stick to "testing" and refer to it that way, since the term shit-testing would likely cause your brain to suggest needlessly "mean" strategies.
To test the shaping behaviour, I think you could:
I'd renounce straight away to test for watching the Diana Fleishman lecture unless you are dating partners coming from very specific knowledge backgrounds (cognitive-behavioural studies and rationality studies), I'd expect it would be very, very hard to not have early mentions of such arguments read as you wanting to control your partner or manipulate it. To clarify: I'm 100% aware that is not what it is about and that it isn't what you want, just stating that people who aren't really familiar with that background or really trusting toward you would see it as a huge red warning sign and would react negatively.
You could try to introduce the theme as:
When they have a good sense of how you feel about such subjects, you could try showing them the lecture and ask them what they think about it. The more time they had to get used to how you think about positive feedbacks and to build trust toward you the better.
Also: the average person seems to be 100% against the idea of shaping behaviour and providing reinforcements, but 100% for showing appreciation and providing positive feedback, the term and frame used really makes a world of difference even if you are describing the same process, applied to the same goals and with the same methods.