All of usedToPost's Comments + Replies

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)

0thomblake
Also note that I am just as pedantic when I'm talking about a subject that I like, and I'm sure people would back me up on this. Maybe I should step up the pedantry in general to make that clearer, to avoid this sort of accusation. And nowhere here did I say something like "PUA should not be discussed" or "PUA is incorrect about its subject matter" or even "The particular sub-branch of PUA you have in mind is incorrect or useless". Indeed, I think rational inquiry into relationships is a noble goal and often cite PUA as a rare area of discourse where beliefs are tested against the world in rapid iteration. Rather, I was annoyed that you were making patently false claims and then when people called you on it you acted like they were doing something wrong. If you want to assert falsehoods, please do it elsewhere.
3pjeby
Theists comprise a much larger percentage of the global population than 40%, but that doesn't mean we'd consider a goal like "being closer to God" to be particularly important or worthy of discussion here. Just FYI, some of us hate pro-PUA rants as much as we hate anti-PUA rants. Actually, I hate the pro-PUA rants more, because they do more harm than good. Telling people they're closing their eyes to the truth is not a rational method of persuasion in any environment, and certainly not here. If you learned half as much from PUA as you think you have, you should have learned that if you want to catch fish, then don't think like a fisherman, think like a fish. In this discussion, you are not thinking like a fish.
-4thomblake
I don't think that means what you think it means. Ceteris paribus, I would regard pedantry as evidence of a vice in favor of truth-seeking, not in the opposite direction. I'm surprised you think otherwise. I find this hard to believe. As of the last survey only 33% are "single and looking". If we combine that with the 24.2% that were "in a relationship", assume they were all polyamorous, and that all of both groups were men, we still do not approach the lower bound of your estimate. It fails a basic sanity check. I would assert that most people here would benefit more from attracting vastly atypical partners, and we are mostly outliers in more ways than one, so your generalizations are even less helpful here than in the world at large. But that belief is irrelevant to my above statements. ETA: bad sanity check.

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:

  • post-menopause/50+
  • ugly
  • lesbian (i.e. not attracted to men)

Pickup is popular because it tells men how to attract precisely those women who they desire most.

-4thomblake
You left out: Which was apparently important to your case above. It's an interesting claim, though I'm not buying it, and it is anyway irrelevant to my earlier claim. Most people are not heterosexual, gender-normal men who are most attracted to women with none of those qualities. And most relationship goals are not seducing such people. And most people do not have that goal.

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... (read more)

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 ... (read more)

-4thomblake
It certainly looks like you are:: Maybe you forgot a 'not' in there somewhere? It sounds like you're making a strawman out of your own arguments. You made blanket statements about how this is a bad and misleading article because it ignores the truth about how women respond to men. When people pointed out that this is not true of particular women, you amended it to refer just to the vast majority of women, and now you're amending it further to only apply to a particular goal regarding a minority of women. So the takeaway from your arguments seems to be that 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. If that is what you meant to say, then yes you needed to be specific about what special circumstance you thought the post doesn't apply to. It is not particularly surprising that the advice given in the post only works for most people with most goals.

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?

2ArisKatsaris
No, I'm sure I wasn't talking about average people, I was talking about people collectively. If I added the word "all" it would be closer to my meaning that if I had added the word "average". But I guess I was right in my estimation about the intentionality of the signals you were giving, as you're now reinforcing them.

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.

1thomblake
PUA is a large field with many different subfields and schools of thought. There are those who aim for one-night-stands at bars, and those who aim to find the particular soulmate they've been searching for. There is PUA writing from the perspective of homosexuals, both men and women, teens, older folks, and all sorts of different perspectives. If you think there is just one set of techniques in the field and they are only applicable to a small subset of humanity, then you're not very familiar with PUA and should stop making blanket assertions about the field.

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 t... (read more)

1ArisKatsaris
As I've pretty much argued before, people could escape the majority of needless wasteful friction if they were just willing to use words like "average" and/or "median" when that's indeed what they mean instead of "all". You could have said "average women" from the start. Am not talking about "careful" disclaimers here -- I'm just talking about the single word "average", which by itself would have vastly improved your comment. And yet you didn't choose to have that word. Why? Was one word so costly to you? Or was rudeness and stereotyping intentionally being signalled here in a "Alphas don't bother with politeness, that's submissive behaviour" sort-of-thing?
2thomblake
Especially important since major and well-respected proponents of PUA around here do not assume this premise, and in fact it is generally assumed that there are different areas of PUA that will help people of particular sex/gender/sexual orientation accomplish varying sorts of goals.

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%.

4pjeby
Perhaps the reason you're being downvoted is because you're confusing game theory with behaviorism. Variable reinforcement schedules, and all that. Also, I expect if you phrased the last part of your comment, say, as: "People enjoy a little variety and unpredictability from their partners, and generally prefer not to have to come up with all the ideas for what to do." It'd be less likely to be perceived as some sort of chauvinism. That statement, as it happens is true of both men and women. (Likewise, the first part of your comment describes things that men do in response to women's behavior, despite your writing it as if it were unique to women's response to men.)
5jklsemicolon
Note that "utility" is not the same thing as "sexual pleasure".

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.

7NancyLebovitz
Well, no. I've received quite a bit of help and favors from men who didn't seem creepy or clingy, and have found a few creepy who weren't being helpful. I don't think my experience is unusual.
0quentin
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. I understand that, in seeking a romantic partner, there are qualities I value above those as determined by the blind idiot god. One of these qualities is reflectively the ability to rationally self-determine preferences, to the extent that such a thing is possible. I liken my understanding to the fable of the oak and reed. I prefer, and indeed expect, potential romantic partners to signal appropriate ... fertility, in a reductive sense. Likewise, I exhibit desirable behavioral cues (actually, much of the alpha male mentality is worthwhile in itself): confidence, leadership, non-neediness, etc. In neither case (hopefully) are these the qualities that are primarily desired, but merely the minimum threshold that our biology imposes on such endeavors. Is finding a partner with such an understanding realistic, or even possible? Yes, to an extent. It is a very unfortunate fact of our society that females aren't socialized in a way that facilities rationality, relative to males; a scarcity which makes such an individual that much more appealing. I have met some, and dated a very few of these. I'm still optimistic.
4PhilosophyTutor
Assuming for the sake of argument that women are sentient, but also that they have absolutely no free will when it comes to sexual relationships and that they can be piloted like a remote-controlled drone by a man who has cracked the human sexual signalling language (a hypothesis only slightly more extreme than the PUA hypothesis), that would still leave us with the question of how to maximise the utility of these strange, mindless creatures given that they are sentient and their utility counts as much as any other sentient being's. PUA might be compatible with this if you assume that just by chance the real utility function of the human female just happens to be maximised by the behaviour which maximises the utility of the PUA, which is to say that you maximise the utility of all human females by having a one night stand with them if you find them physically attractive but not inclined to be subservient, and a longer-term relationship with them under some circumstances if you want regular sex and you can manage the relationship so that you are dominant. (We could call this the Weak Gor Hypothesis). However this has not been demonstrated, and it might turn out that in some cases women are happier if they are communicated with honestly, treated as equal partners in a relationship, given signals that they are high-status in the form of compliments and "romantic" gestures and so forth. If that was the case then ethically some weight would have to be given to these sources of utility, and it would be ethically questionable to talk down such behaviour as "beta" since it would have turned out that the alpha/beta distinction did not match up with a real distinction between utility-maximising and non-utility-maximising behaviour in all cases.

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... (read more)

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... (read more)

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... (read more)

5JoachimSchipper
I'm confused - 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'm by no means an expert, but I'd be surprised if PUA worked as well for, say, a woman trying to extend her list of partners with a man with a shared interest in classical music. (Quickly glancing at some lists, "get out there and meet people" seems to be good advice; but quickly approaching lots of partners may not work well in this case.) Isn't it possible that the broader scope of this article justifies de-emphasizing pickup artistry? Even if you don't think that PUA should be avoided for its mind-killing properties, shouldn't we at least give lukeprog the benefit of the doubt? If nothing else, there may be follow-up articles dealing with this.

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... (read more)

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

... (read more)
2PhilosophyTutor
I should disclose immediately that I am one of the people who find the PUA community distasteful on a variety of levels, intellectual and ethical, and this may colour my viewpoint. The PUA community may present themselves, and think of themselves, as a "disreputable source of accurate information" but in the absence of controlled trials I don't think the claim to accuracy is well-founded. Sticking strictly to the scientific literature is not so much ignoring the elephant in the room as suspending judgment as to whether the elephant exists until we can turn the lights on. If it's been said already I apologise, but it seems obvious to me that an ethical rationalist's goals in relationship-seeking should be to seek a relationship that creates maximal utility for both parties, and that scientific evidence about how to find suitable partners and behave in the relationship so as to maximise utility for both partners is a great potential source of human happiness. It's obvious from even the briefest perusal of PUA texts that the PUA community are concerned very much with maximising their own utility and talking down the status of male outgroup members and women in general, but not with honestly seeking means to maximise the utility of all stakeholders. Given that their methodology is incompatible with scientific reasoning and their attitudes incompatible with maximising global utility for all sentient stakeholders, I think it's quite correct to leave their claims out of a LW analysis of human sexual relationships.

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... (read more)