All of gensym's Comments + Replies

gensym30

Yes, that post neglects to mention an obvious fact that makes it come off as hysterical and creepy/potentially dangerous. However, the lesser point that sex-'starved' people (especially men) are unfortunately Acceptable Targets, even though sexual deprivation can be a significant emotional harm, seems true and important.

(It seems to me that people vary a lot in how much they suffer when sexually deprived, and the typical mind fallacy is rampant in both directions, though probably more problematic coming from the low sufferers. As a low sufferer myself, this is not a personal complaint.)

gensym20

A binaural beat converted to mono sounds like a good control. I do plan to test this sometime soon.

gensym40

Seconding methylphenidate for #2, and (specifically) delta-wave-inducing binaural beats for #3.

I've heard good things about weed + Adderall for creative production, but never tried it.

0kodos96
Do you have any recommendations for a currently commercially available (or freely available) source of binaural beats? I experimented with a binaural beat "mind machine" years ago, and saw no significant results, but still find the idea fascinating.
2Risto_Saarelma
Do you know of any way of figuring out if binaural beats actually have a stronger effect than just listening to random ambient noise? The idea's cute, but last I looked at it, there wasn't much research confirming the brainwave entrainment effect.
gensym10

I find that marijuana makes me MUCH more internally honest by suppressing flinch responses. YMMV. (Unsurprisingly, it doesn't help with putting things into effect, but the insight remains, as does the feeling of what it's like to be / alief that I can survive being honest.)

1[anonymous]
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gensym10

Anon demonstrates knowledge about illicit drugs. While it seems atypically conservative, I can easily understand concern about being associated with that.

gensym30

Since SIAI's selection process includes looking at the applicant's posting history here, even writers whose user names cannot be correlated with the name they would put on a job application will tend to avoid taking the unpopular-with-SIAI side in the race-IQ debate.

What makes you think "the unpopular-with-SIAI side" exists? Or that it is what you think it is?

gensym50

The issue about helpless anger at my end seems to be that I'd have to believe I shouldn't have been hurt when I was mistreated if I could choose whether or not I'm angry.

This sounds really interesting, but I'm afraid I can't parse it.

3NancyLebovitz
I was pretty close to incoherent when I posted that. I'm not sure whether I can make it clearer now, but I'll take a crack at it. I grew up with a lot of criticism, and I wasn't supposed to show anger at it. I also was harassed by other students at school, and told to just ignore it. In other words, they were under no obligation to control their actions, while it was my job to control my involuntary reactions. In addition, I realized recently that my mother modeled helpless anger herself. While she could pretty much get away with dumping anger on other people in the immediate family, she rarely got what she wanted from the people she was angry at, and it didn't seem to occur to her that the situation could be made any better. My current emotional reaction is something like if I could have prevented my anger at the situations I was in as a kid, I was obligated to to so. If I can prevent anger now, it proves that I was getting things wrong then, and I deserved the way I was treated. And at that point, I get angry again. I think that's what was going on when I posted-- the objective bit is that I felt very angry and was whaling away at my completely innocent keyboard. I don't know whether sorting things out more clearly to the extent that I have in this post is likely to do any good, but there's some hope. At least there's some handle on the confusion between past and present..
gensym30

More importantly, the good advice you claim women agree with is given side by side with the stuff that's completely ineffective and countereffective (gifts, admiration, letting her make choices -- which by the way does not contradict "knowing what you want").

Or maybe the really effective thing to do is to know which type of behavior to exhibit when (so much of social skill is about context-sensitivity); all-out dominant behavior is more effective in some cases than all-out the other direction ('submissive' seems like the wrong term) or ham-fis... (read more)

0SilasBarta
I don't disagree with any of that, but note that this failure of introspection on the part of (influential) women on this matter is exactly what my thesis has been all along. And I wouldn't tolerate that from myself, or from men either, especially if such advice had the impact that the widely-taught (and wrong) male-to-female engagement rules has.
gensym30

What if you go around saying "almost everyone, whatever their gender, has poor insight into their preferences and responses"?

3HughRistik
I summarized some of the research on stated vs. actual preferences here. It seems to show that both men and women are often wrong about what they go for, but women may well be more wrong. However, I've only found a few studies like this so far, and I want to see more to feel confident about that conclusion.
4RobinZ
By the way: Welcome to Less Wrong!
gensym20

To a low-attractive male, any action taken by a high-attractive male is suspect. Thus, an initially low-status PUA is more likely to describe high-status behaviors in negative terms (e.g. "ordering her around") rather than the terms women would use to describe the behavior they find attractive ("a man who knows what he wants, and isn't afraid to say it").

This is a really good point. Think like reality! Behavior that pleases others and benefits yourself is virtuous!

gensym60

"If you want to appear more attractive to men, show cleavage and arch your back." --> "Duh, already know that, of course that's how men are."

vs.

"If you want to appear more attractive to women, act dominant by ordering her around, thinking of her like a disobedient child, and generally making yourself appear scarce and unavailable." --> "Shut up!!! Shut up, you F*ING terrorist! Women are NOT like that, you worthless misogynist! You should be RESPECTFUL and DEFERENTIAL and give them lots of gifts. That's what we want

... (read more)
2SilasBarta
I accept that the advice I listed can be ambiguous. I also claim that a very large class of men has been so horribly misled by the official line on male-to-female interaction rules, that even the above advice, in its crude form, in its rank misogyny, would actually cause them to be more attractive to women -- which just goes to show the depths of their deception. Btw, what was sarcastic? Men who present the plain truth on this are the target of severe vitriol from women (even and especially those for whom it is true) and men who recognize its truth, but want to appear part of the "reasonable" crowd. My illustration of the vitriol is exaggerated, but not by much. And the misleading advice women promote does in fact mirror the official line (in mainstream books, advice from women, behavior taught in schools, etc.). What are you objecting to?
gensym50

The people that most object to paternalism are male nerds while the people that (I expect to) most approve of paternalism are conservative religious women.

Why those groups in particular? They are toward those ends, but I think I would have (maybe superficially/naively) said "radical feminists" and "conservative religious men", respectively. Don't necessarily disagree, but I'm very curious.

0wedrifid
Those were just listed off the top of my head and biased towards groups and situations in which the advice is most relevant. I suppose you may be right about he radical feminists with respect to paternalism, although I don't naturally distinguish between common behaviour patterns based on the genitalia of the actor. I'm going with Morendil's word here but to the extent that 'paternalism' implies 'when done by males' I would perhaps want to use a different word.
gensym00

Manipulating a man's perception of attractiveness in order to secure short-term mating is in a man's (evolutionary) interest.

Why would men have evolved to have perceptions of attractiveness that don't track (are more conservative, when not manipulated, than would be in) their evolutionary interest?

Also, I thought we were talking about normative interests, what's actually good for someone. Why are you bringing up evolutionary interests in the first place?

Also, you conveniently ignored the bit where both manipulations are enjoyed by the recipients. If

... (read more)