post proposal: Attraction and Seduction for Heterosexual Male Rationalists

Thanks so much for this. I've been following your comments on PUA since first stumbling upon one of them buried deep on an obscure thread of this forum a few months ago, and it's extremely useful to have them all listed and organized in one place.

EDIT: Also, it would be great if you could keep this comment updated.

Most excellent.

Thanks for this post, bookmarked.

This collection of links not just merits but definitely needs to be a Discussion post at least! Just copy it as a standalone post, your work is excellent and deserves to be in the spotlight.

That message is that the typical reader of LW is 20-34 and heterosexual and single and male and we prefer it that way

Why does a self-improvement article aimed at 20-34 heterosexual single males communicate that we prefer such a membership at LessWrong? Is it because of the particular subject of pickup?

I think it's a good thing that lukeprog has the humility to avoid overgeneralizing his advice to other populations.

if you do not fit that demographic then you may very well find that conversations here may well revolve around strategizing for how to manipulate you into doing things that, in a more reflective state, you would much prefer not to do

Your reaction presupposes a certain view of sexual and social ethics. Your characterization of pickup as "manipulating women into doing things that in a more reflective state, they would much prefer not to do" is loaded:

"Manipulation" is thrown around a lot, yet in a recent discussion I noted that nobody had given any concrete examples of "manipulation," or made attempts to demarcate it from ethical behavior (though at least the difficulty of doing so was acknowledged). As I remarked in that post, "manipulation" does point to a meaningful and valid objection. Yet if that objection isn't articulated, then we risk the category of manipulation creeping until it also encompasses forms of social skills that should be regarded as ethical.

Moral false-positives (failing to recognize an unethical behavior as unethical) are probably more costly than false-negatives (failing to recognize an ethical behavior as ethical). But moral false-negatives are costly, too.

As for "reflective states" and sexuality: do PUAs deprive women of reflection over sex any more that people typically having sex in our culture deprive each of reflection by arousing each other in the process of moving towards sex? How much of women being sexual with PUAs is explained by a lack of reflection that the PUA somehow induced?

What exactly is the appropriate amount of reflection prior to sex? At what point does concern over your partner's decision process become paternalism? How much do different sorts of women want to reflect about sex in order to feel comfortable? Should men treat women like experienced chess players treat beginning chess players, with a constant litany of "are you sure you want to do that?" Is more reflection over sex always better? If so, then we could see conversations like this:

"Hey, baby... I know you're all over me and probably want to get to it... but you know what? I really don't think you've sufficiently reflected on the consequences of us having sex. You just think you want to have sex in the moment, but your decision process is biased because you've been led through a series of emotional states thanks to my seductive studliness. I'd like you to take a couple days, get a piece of paper, and write down the pros of us having sex on side, and the cons on the other. Then we will hang out, and I will act as unattractive as possible for an hour, because attractive behavior could bias you. This will help you make an objective decision about whether we should have sex or not. Now put your pants back on."

Why shouldn't we conduct sex with such procedures? These are exactly the sorts of questions and calculations about sexual ethics that LW could discuss; they aren't discussed anywhere else.

Just like with the notion of "manipulation," the notion of "reflective states" around sex is championed by very good people with very good intentions... and it certainly points to something meaningful. In a culture that often fails to value sexual consent, an emphasis on consent and ethics is a laudable contrarian position. I think that this laudable contrarian position needs balance from a meta-contrarian position explaining where certain ethical principles (e.g. avoiding whatever "manipulation" is, encouraging reflection over consent) stop. Knowing where ethical principles start is important. But it's also important to know where those principles end, or else we will see "ethics creep" that frightens scrupulous people out of social and sexual behavior that should be considered moral and healthy.

Inability to combat ethics creep is a common failure mode of intelligent, ethical people attempting to improve themselves socially. They think that they are being saintly for abstaining from certain behavior, but a more careful ethical analysis would reveal that they are just handicapping themselves for no good reason.

Shouldn't you suspect that any topic that compels you to make a disclaimer like that is probably very ethically worrying and that, on some level, you yourself already know that it is?

Perhaps lukeprog holds the view of many PUAs that pickup is a set of morally neutral "tools," and these tool can be used for good or evil. Although I believe that most pickup techniques are morally neutral or positive, such a view presupposes a certain view of ethics, some pickup techniques are far more conducive to having a negative impact on people than others. Furthermore, even discussing the viability of a particular technique could locate it as potentially ethical. I think it's reasonable to want to lukeprog to "show his work" on why we can have a morally neutral discussion of pickup, before he attempts to do so.

Yet I would like to point out that the sexual ethics surrounding pickup have actually already been discussed a lot on LW, in the corners of various threads, so it's not like lukeprog is trying to start a discussion of pickup prior to any discussion of its ethics on LW.

If pickup was discussed in top level posts on LW, perhaps it would be best to invite ethical discussion, or even have the post discuss sexual ethics. Another option would be to pick one specific idea from pickup that might be minimally ethically controversial.

As it is, if the proposed post gets written and upvoted, only my knowledge of the huge value this community provides on other topics will get me to swallow my disgust and stick around.

What exactly disgusts you? Feel free to not answer that, but I'm curious. As far as I can tell, people find pickup disgusting due to some of following factors:

• pickup pattern-matches some icky notions about sexuality (e.g. intentionally fulfilling women's sexual criteria gets mapped to "manipulation", "seduction" gets mapped to "trying to get women to do things they don't really want to do"), sometimes correctly
• some ideas in pickup conflict with the unarticulated sexual ethics that people are carrying around

Any more?

There's little point in pretending that LW would be an equally welcoming forum for those hypothetical posts.

I disagree. I don't think people would mind or downvote them, perhaps they might even get more traffic than one aimed at straight males.

However it is true that the articles in question are much less likley to be made. And this would indeed send some unfortunate signals about who is welcomed.

Thanks. Your comment is more useful than a downvote, anyway, as I can't see how many up-votes and down-votes this post gets - only their sum.

HughRistik linked to a very helpful FAQ on women attracting men.

I'm in agreement on all points. We've had several PUA discussions, it's a popular topic, the discussions seem to be evolving from yay/boo debates to pragmatic analysis, and lukeprog can distill colossal amounts of information, which would help here.

Advice for women would be good, I agree. But I don't feel qualified to write one either.

Mating is perceived (and mostly is) a zero sum game on the level of every individual human. There is a constant evolutionary arms race between everyone and especially among the sexes in this regard.

I hope this clears up some of the psychology around this, especially why it seems so tribal or dare I say mind killing in nature.

I wonder if part of the reason we see so few queer or trans people into the seduction community (in addition to their lower population) is that such folks will get hated on by practically everyone. Not only do they get marginalization by the mainstream culture, while encountering homophobia in the seduction community, but they may get marginalized within progressive/feminist circles for studying pickup. Notice how the lesbian woman with pickup background I quote got negative reactions when trying to discuss the pragmatics of dating with her queer or feminist female friends.

If you are a lesbian female or bisexual male PUA... who is gonna be your friend?

I liked the Q & A for straight women. Fits my intuition and what has worked/is working for me.

I would like to address the perception that pickup excludes people other than single heterosexual males.

Allow me to emphasise that the skills are not only useful for single people either. And I don't just mean in case you want someone on the side. Attraction and the social side of communication remain important within a relationship.

The "excellent FAQ" link doesn't work.

none of it has ever helped me one bit

I should be more specific:

• It would have helped me a great deal to have read this material when I was in college. It would have destroyed the dysfunctional things I had been taught (e.g., "Dating leads to sin; banter is rude; sex is dirty; women don't want sex; love is spiritual, not physical; just be yourself; just wait, and the right woman for you will be attracted to you"), and I probably would have been able to connect with at least some of the women who threw themselves at me when I was in college.

• It has helped me get a lot of phone numbers and emails from women - not using specific techniques, which I'm lousy at, but just knowing that nothing awful will happen if I walk up to a strange woman and talk to her and ask for her number. But those phone #s and emails that I got using PUA techniques, don't usually convert! And I've lost at least one woman by using those techniques, so I'm maybe breaking even.

• Bodybuilding was a more effective way of pickup up women. For me, spending an hour a day in the gym, and fifteen minutes talking to women, is more effective than spending an hour and fifteen minutes in a bar. For many guys that is probably not the case. I am a bar-environment-defective personality. Being the quiet type is appealing if you are muscular, possibly because women know it's by choice and not out of fear, and definitely because some women are intrigued by the contrast. Women like the strong and silent type, not the silent type.

I don't care if people are turned away by it. We've gotta have one place that is pure, where people can speak truth and be as politically incorrect and offensive as they dare, and not make reason bend over backwards in the name of popularity. And this is that place.

No, it isn't. There's already a pretty strong taboo against discussing politics, even though there's a lot of important ways politics interacts with rationality. And that's because even though it is theoretically possible to talk about politics safely, rationally, in practice it simply doesn't last, and has an overall negative effect on the community as people descend into tribalism.

I think there is plenty of good stuff to talk about regarding PUA. But it is going to have consequences. Women will be turned off unless it is discussed extremely carefully. Sooner or later someone will slip up and say something NOT careful, which comes across as sexist. The first few slip ups will be accidental and forgiveable, but unless there is a constant pushback from women and female-advocates, it's going to gradually get worse, and most of the males won't even notice. If there IS constant pushback and reminders whenever people inadvertently point out sexist thinking, many people will not say "oh, my bad," they will say "come on stop overreacting" which a) often ends up being sexist all by itself and b) creates a dichotomy which leads to tribalism. So for most intents and purposes, PUA counts as politics.

In this case, the slip up was in the very first line of the post: Lukeprog started with the words "Attraction and Seduction for Heterosexual Male Rationalists." This already suggests to women perusing the site that this is a site for heterosexual males, and the word "seduction" already is implicitly objectifying women. It's possible for someone to have done it tastefully and carefully, but this post wasn't it and the people reacting negatively to it are perfectly justified.

I would agree with your call for rationalist debate on the matter and agree that branding such debate "wrong" is well wrong. But I must disagree with the venue, because of signalling reasons. I would also to a limited extent endorse your criticism of the effectiveness of PUA for some (our?) kinds of people.

The main value I got out of PUA is its excellent predictive value, not any particular benefit via applying said knowledge.

The main tangible practical benefit I got from PUA can be summed up in the following four points:

1. Preform many many light-hearted social experiments, you need data.
2. Most of everyday casual communication is status signalling
3. The meaning of a communication is the response it elicits.
4. "Natural game" is practised by millions who don't think about what they are doing at all. They are not punished, resented or reviled for it at all in fact they are admired and appreciated. What you are doing is developing a substitute for the black box in their brain that you seem to be missing. The behaviour itself is attractive, its not used as a shorthand for some other qualities (which is not to say that some other qualities can't be attractive in their own right). The behaviour itself is all that is attractive, the machinery that is behind it doesn't matter one bit unless it fails to emulate the output or if it demonstrates other undesirable traits. But the set of appropriate behavioured in themselves are still attractive. If undesirables traits overcome the positive effect upon objective analysis this is not a call against reverse engineering, it is a call to use a different design for emulation.

But I would like very much to read it. And I am offended by people who try to prevent people from saying things that offend them. So you have to offend somebody!

I know what you mean!

The branches of the PUA industry descended from Copeland, DeAngelo, and Mystery (we need a phylogenetic tree here) are focused on picking up the type of shallow, party-girl, bitchy woman that is not interested in intellectuals.

In the case of DeAngelo I have to disagree. He is basically just a 'intellectual' himself and his best work is targeted to similar audience as himself. It is well suited to non-bitch-party-girl girls and for most part is just stuff that is overwhelmingly obvious if you have lived in the world for a while or have read psychology books. Especially the parts where he literally just stands there and reads said psychology books.

As for Mystery and co, however, you have the caricature down pat. He even says pretty much the same thing himself. His method is aimed at 'particularly beautiful women', where his appreciation of beauty explicitly includes being 'dolled up' in such a way that most women of the class that you mention would be excluded.

Most are just non-introspective/shallow/high-energy/arrogant/cheerful/sociopathic (pick at least two). But none of them were taught.

Signals associated with the dark triade don't seem to be hard to replicate.

I don't care if people are turned away by it. We've gotta have one place that is pure, where people can speak truth and be as politically incorrect and offensive as they dare, and not make reason bend over backwards in the name of popularity. And this is that place.

But what about those who are turned away by the post? Don't they need such a place too? Do they not count in "we", or do we need more than one place?

In women-dominated communities, it is a truism that this sort of statement is generally uttered by guys who are jerks but don't realize it.

I'm aware of this discourse, if by "women-dominated" communities, you mean "feminist-women-dominated" communities.

Do you think this truism is actually true? It seems awfully convenient that once a guy starts complaining about lack of success with women on the grounds of "niceness," he can be categorized as a jerk who isn't really "nice," and who is different from the non-complaining good type of "nice guy."

What do you think is a realistic breakdown of self-identified "nice guys" who report lack of success with women?

I very much agree with siduri's comment, as well as grouchymusicologist's below. I don't know for sure which way the pros and cons of the proposed post go, but I do think it's important to consider not just the possible benefit to the current "average Less Wrong Reader" but also the other effects Siduri and grouchymusicologist identify - as Siduri says, not attracting women to the community/possibly driving women away, and as grouchymusicologist says, communicating the message "that the typical reader of LW is 20-34 and heterosexual and single and male and we prefer it that way." I think those effects are real - I would personally feel that LW was just a tiny bit less welcoming with such a post - even if I don't have a good sense of how to measure them.

I'm torn because I'm sure that lukeprog's post would probably benefit some members of the LW community. I've read enough of the comments about PUA here to recognize that the PUA community is diverse and some of the voices that are most known/infamous outside of the community (e.g., Roissy) are not representative of what a lot of members of the PUA community (and certainly the LW community) study and admire.

I'm also sympathetic that to those PUA members who don't like the Roissy-type approach, it must be frustrating to be lumped in with him. But, at least from what I can tell, that kind of PUA is all a lot of people casually familiar with the subject know, and so the mere mention of PUA evokes negative feelings for a lot of people. So I fear lukeprog's post would evoke those feelings and turn people away from LW, even if it also had the more agreeable effect of providing more balanced information to those who stuck past the original negative reaction to "PUA" and read on.

Anyway, lukeprog, if you're collecting votes, I would have to vote no. At any rate, thank you for asking for input from the community.

In women-dominated communities, it is a truism that this sort of statement is generally uttered by guys who are jerks but don't realize it.

That may be true generally; I don't date men. However, I know some serious past relationships have been destroyed by my being too nice and not sufficiently asserting my own interests. Women generally get put-off by guys who make a serious effort to cater to their every whim, regardless of the jerkishness of their motives, and a lot of guys fail to understand this. While there is certainly the strain of guys who are overly nice because they think it'll get them some, there are also guys out there who are genuinely nice because they obliviously think it will actually accomplish their goals.

ETA: There's a difference between "Nice Guys (TM)" and nice guys. The former are perhaps justly disadvantaged. The latter can often find themselves unjustly disadvantaged, and PUA does a lot to counter that.

Love that wiki article!

BTW, I didn't say women only go out with "jerks", but they often do. And don't expect me to say that evolution programmed women to love jerks. My bet is that evolution programmed women to be attracted to confident men (many of whom are jerks) - a point so obvious I doubt anyone will seriously disagree.

In women-dominated communities, it is a truism that this sort of statement is generally uttered by guys who are jerks but don't realize it.

It is a truism in a some male communities too - in particular, among those who have started to take responsibility for their own dating success but are not willing to surrender their idealistic view that the dating world should somehow be fair or even that people should be rationally self interested. It isn't and they aren't.

It is troubling to see that opinion put forward here as if it is a belief that might actually be about reality - or more to the point that it must be believed or else be alienating and generally shameful and offensive, which seems to be message being conveyed here.

A post that claims to explain why women only go out with jerks is therefore very liable to be extremely alienating to most female readers, especially when the answer turns out to be "because evolution."

It would seem to be more alienating to any male readers who has ever dated a female. At least, any of us that mind being called 'jerks'. :)

Seconded. There are obviously a lot of people who think they would benefit from reading this article, so if its not suitable LW material, write it and post it somewhere other than LW. This seems to meet all the objections raised in this thread so far as I can see.

Do you want to find a date, or determine whether the person you're talking to is queer?

If the former, use the internet, a university club, or an interest group where membership is correlated with alternative lifestyle (e.g. social activist or vegetarian societies work well).

If the latter, well...I always tell people there's a really simply rule-based system that gives you 95% accurate gaydar in most situations: unless you're reliably informed otherwise, assume they're straight.

Generally I find that once I ask the question, "I wonder whether this person is queer?", I can't weight the low prior against the subtle signals I'm receiving properly. Once I've asked the question, I feel like I'm weighing evidence for two equally likely scenarios, and I end up with a lot of false positives.

So I've found my overall prediction accuracy is higher if I just assume people are straight.

I find dropping the phrase "my ex-girlfriend" into conversations to be a useful way of announcing that I like girls. I'm not aware of a good way to inquire, though.

The information on PUA is already out there. There's enough of it out there that the limiting reagent is not my ability to discuss it in a rationalist environment, it's my willingless to go out and do the actual work required to put it into practice. The slight advantage of having a nicer place to discuss it is outweighed by a failure of this site to reach more women.

Wouldn't the optimal solution be a rationalist discussion of the subject away from LW?

The major posts appear to be 'Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics' and 'More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA'.

Thanks for your comment.

Is it just me, or are the terms "dark arts" and "mind-killer" becoming some of the biggest mind-killers and forms of dark arts on LessWrong?

I think we can gain most of the benefits of such a debate, with nearly none of the downsides if this is discussed by interested parties from LW somewhere disassociated from LW.