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 wome...
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 ...
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.
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 t...
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%.
You make a very good point here. But you see, women don't find men who try to be nice to them attractive. They call it "clingy", "creepy" behavior. Human male-female interaction is actually a signalling game, where the man being nice simply sends a signal of weakness. Women are genetically programmed to only let alpha sperm in, and the alpha is not a character who goes around being nice to strangers.
Oversimplified to the extent that it is basically not true.
This is starting to remind me of what happened to nutritional advice in the 1980s:
In nutrition "complex carbohydrates good! fats bad!" was widely promulgated
In dating "niceness/agreeableness good! alpha behavior bad!" was widely promulgated
in about the same time frame - and looks like it was comparably bad advice...
Given that their methodology is incompatible with scientific reasoning
They write stuff on their version of ArXiv (called pick-up forums) then they go out and try it, and if it works repeatably it is incorporated into PU-lore.
What definition of science did you have in mind that this doesn't fit?
There are a significant number of methodological problems with their evidence-gathering.
PUAs don't change just one variable at a time, nor do they keep strict track of what they change and when so they can do a multivariate regression analysis. Instead they change lots of variables at once. A PUA would advocate that a "beta" change their clothes, scent, social environment(s), social signalling strategies and so forth all at once and see if their sexual success rate changed. However if this works you don't know which changes did what.
The people do...
I would consider the article misleading in the sense that "Women like alpha males, men like beautiful women" is the central truth of dating, in the same sense that evolution is the central truth of biology.
A creationist pamphlet which briefly mentioned a watered-down version of evolution - such as "microevolution"- in small print on page 7 is seriously misleading a student. Likewise, this article briefly mentions status, but then gives a lot of contradictory tips about being "agreeable" and "liking her", both of whi...
you seem to take it as a given that PUA techniques are the only/best tool for pursuing the many forms of relationship mentioned in the article
I didn't say that, let me explicitly disclaim: PU works for hetero men who want to have relationships of any kind with attractive hetero/bi women.
If you are female and looking to have more success dating guys, then I make no claim to be an expert or give advice.
Luke originally tried to write an article referring to PUA. People told him this was controversial
Yes, I would also like to congratulate Lukeprog for caving in to social pressure and posting information which is deliberately misleading. I am sure that all the (male) people who read this article, and start using his politically correct nonsense to improve their dating lives will really appreciate it too! (As for female dating advice, I don't know what I am talking about, so I will shut up)
Since the advice given in the article is actively harmful, a bett...
Your point about agreeableness is well taken, so I looked up his reference, Figueredo et al. (2006).
First, keep in mind he's using agreeableness in the OCEAN sense, not in the sense of "a person who always agrees to everything". So it's not diametrically opposed to PUA belief, although I agree there's still a problem that has to be explained.
That brings us to the reference. Figueredo's study itself found no impact of agreeableness, but in the introduction, it cites eight previous studies that it said found "extraversion, openness, and agreea...
Lukeprog, you have produced exactly that which we have been warned against: an article and a paradigm which has all the appearances and dressings of rationality (lots of citations, links to articles on decision theory, rationalist lingo), but which spectacularly fails to actually pursue the truth.
Vladimir_M puts it better than I could:
...First, there is the conspicuous omission of any references to the PUA elephant in the room. The body of insight developed by this particular sort of people, whatever its faults, is of supreme practical importance for anyon
Thank you for the positive mention, but I'm afraid I disagree with your model of me. Luke is a far braver man than I to even enter this minefield; I won't condemn him for not dancing a merry jig on top of it too.
Luke originally tried to write an article referring to PUA. People told him this was controversial, not just among ignorant people but among long-time readers of this site, that it had always led to unpleasant flame wars in the past, and that it was making us look bad "abroad".
Now he seems to be writing more or less the same thing, but co...
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, ... (read more)