New Post version 1 (please read this ONLY if your last name beings with a–k)

My relationship story is almost the complete opposite of Luke's. I didn't date anyone until I met my wife through a matchmaker (mutual acquaintance), and we've been happily married for four years.

And then there's Eliezer's story of his girlfriend expressing interest over the Internet due to learning about his work.

Generalizing from three examples, my conclusion is this: in romance, as in all things, seek your comparative advantage. (Mine happens to be coming from a culture with a strong tradition of matchmaking. :)

Completely and clinically selfish, without apology. "I don't blame her" but no claim that her pain ever weighed upon you. Matter of fact and remorseless in admitting to having behaved foolishly (waiting too long to experiment). Bragging.

I wonder if anyone would admit to downvoting for those reasons. The reasons given in comments are more Spock-worthy.

I enjoyed it. Writing that risks such offense parses as honest to me. My reading between the lines fleshes you out quite sympathetically.

The frequency of first letter of last names in the U.S. suggests your split is probably correct.

I wonder why the number of downvotes is hidden.

To my mind, one of the advantages of being poly is that it forces you to rewrite the rules of how relationships run. This is good not only because you'll do better by explicitly thinking about these things than most people do by trying to go with the flow, but also because your assumptions about what the rules are may differ from a partner's.

How did relationships work? How did women work? How did attraction work?

(reading this to Alicorn)

Me: Women! How do they work?!

Alicorn: Well, I consume food, and then it is metabolized, and...

Me: (stares at her, wide-eyed with shock) ...really?!

This kind of post symbolizes a lot of what seems wrong to me about LessWrong. Women are attracted to men who they enjoy spending time with? Fashion matters to a lot of women? Women prefer confident men? It amazes me that many extremely intelligent people are unable to make predictions that could be made by the average truck driver. It indicates, I think, that what is lacking in those people is not analytical intelligence. Because of this, I'm deeply sceptical as to what extent applying rationality techniques such as those taught on LessWrong to social interactions will really improve peoples results.

I'm a very analytical thinker; I excel at math, physics and related subjects. At the same time, I have quite poor social skills. I'd love it if I could read some social psychology books and improve my social and romantic outcomes, but I'm unconvinced, both by this post and the community as a whole. In particular, I think that there is what I'll term the 'rationalists fallacy' -- the hidden assumption, in much of thought by rationalists, that other people and the world in general are supposed to behave rationally. They're not, and by and large they don't. So, to make sense of this, rationalists read evolutionary and social psychology books. Now, armed with these explanations for the seemingly irrational behaviour of the humans around them, they're able to finally understand the cognitive biases and preferences of their fellow human beings, and are then able to successfully interact with them.

This behaviour reminds me of my behaviour in mathematics. When I have not seen a particular result proved and do not intuitively see why it must be true, I'm uncomfortable with using the result. Later, after I've seen it proved, I become comfortable using the result, even if I later forget the proof, and have not gained any insight by reading the proof.

I think this behaviour may be adaptive in mathematics - I've read more proofs than I otherwise would have done - but I think this behaviour is almost certainly maladaptive in social interaction. I don't need to understand why doing things weird will make me unpopular (it signals that I do not subscribe to the group norms), I just need to know that they do, and so only do them in private. I don't need to understand why women tend to be more attracted to confident men (confidence was a strong signal of fitness in the EEA), and men more attracted to pretty women (body symmetry indicates that the person is healthy, and does not have any significant parasitical infection); I just need to know that this is the case, and try and be more confident or more pretty according to gender. Whilst understanding that these preferences are primarily non-concious and so do not necessarily reflect peoples concious preferences is useful, not even that needs evolutionary psychology. One can use the result without proof.

I don't think I'd object to this behaviour so much if I could see real insights that people are gaining from learning more about evolutionary and social psychology -- but I don't. A lot of evolutionary psychology seems to be dangerously close to a just-so story, and there are a large number of conflicting evolutionary psychological explanations for many common human behaviours. If learning something doesn't help me predict anything I don't already know, just provide a (possibly false) explanation for a behaviour I'm already familiar with, why should I learn it?

Having said all this, I'm optimistic about what rationalists can do socially. There are few areas where systematic study as to what works and what doesn't doesn't help; it does. But, I think reading social psychology books should be a very small part of what rationalists do. A very large amount of the social behaviour we engage in is non-concious; being around people enough that you become comfortable with them may be one of the best things one can do to improve ones social skills. Furthermore, do not overestimate what one is able to achieve using deductive logic. Even as a mathematician and as a programmer, most of what I do is intuitive and involves pattern matching. One cannot learn to become a good programmer or a mathematician without writing lots of code, or working on lots of problems; likewise, one cannot become effective socially without meeting people.

tl;dr I see rationalists often engaging in behaviour adaptive in many fields (e.g. math, science), but maladaptive in other fields (e.g. socializing, romance.) I think less emphasis should be placed on attempting to find a deeper meaning behind peoples behaviour, and more on trying to find ways to benefit from peoples existing behaviour. Practice makes perfect in all fields, but especially social.

Down-voted for being a "Just-so story". I don't see any evidence that rationality was actually a major factor here. How much time did you spend practicing (i.e. the "use science and drugs" section)? Do you believe that a "control group" that read a random self help book and then just practiced for the same time would do significantly worse?

I think this may be one of the weirdest posts I have ever read on LW. Deconstructing that feeling it's probably because it's combining near and far mode subjects, relationships and scholarship. Examining that it's unlikely because I've been reading around the PUA subculture for a while, so it might be the framing, the tone and description of your intellectual learning is like nothing I've read in that. The style is also different from HughRistik's writing on PUA on this site, which is also markedly different in tone to normal PUA stuff but doesn't push the weird button.

The description of your breakup filled me with awe-struck horror. I'm not sure at what point I would have been able to say why that was such an awful idea but even before I could explain then I wouldn't have done it, more because I have had the misfortune never to have had a relationship with someone who was all that interested in discussing abstract ideas than anything else, but also because it's been obvious to me for a long time that the supermajority of people aren't into intellectual conversation ever.

It's extremely clear, coherent and provides actionable advice all the way through. The finale ends with a hip, hip hooray! that's good although I dislike the "by golly" and am ambivalent on "Rationality for the win"

I'm neither upvoting nor downvoting this, because a lot of it meshes too well with my preconceptions on the subject and I don't trust myself to make an objective decision on its quality. From that quite-probably-biased perspective it seems sane, and I particularly like the emphasis on being willing to modify deep parameters, but gender politics is such a volatile subject around here that I very strongly suspect any substantial analysis of dating behavior would benefit from having at least one cowriter of a different gender and/or orientation, if only for signaling purposes.

By this time my misgivings about the idea of owning another's sexuality had grown into a full-blown endorsement of polyamory. I needed to deprogram my sexual jealousy, which sounded daunting. Sexual jealousy was hard-wired into me by evolution, right?

How did you determine that monogamy and jealousy are not terminal values of yours? How is this not a simplification of value, or at least an exchange of terminal value? What safety measures did you use?

I agree with your ultimate points - I have recently traveled a similar self-improvement journey. But somehow your presentation is slightly off-putting. It seems just right to draw in someone like myself but leave a bad taste afterwards despite being objectively good advice.

On further reflection, I think it may be entirely due to the feeling that attraction is being reduced to an algorithm which can be run to draw in a female of the species. It's extremely emotionally alienating. I much prefer the method employed by The Last Psychiatrist, which gives the same results but makes the pick-up process be about the woman rather than about the process the man is using.

To give an example (not a good one, I'm not Alone and can't mimic his style well, but it'll give some idea of the flavor):

Typical advice reads like: "Act confident. Women are attracted to confidence like moths are attracted to light. Flash confidence and they will be drawn to you." <-- focus is on process, women are subject to their programming and not volitional beings.

Alone's advice reads like: "Of course she doesn't want to sleep with you. What have you ever done in life? You have a fast car, a black belt, a great job. Notice how those are all nouns, not verbs. Be a better human. Do something of value. If you can't stand yourself, how do you expect her to want you?" <-- focus is on improving oneself, women are treated as volitional beings who can choose their mates based on the same criteria any sane person would. Note also that the confidence comes naturally simply by being better and/or doing things of consequence so there's no need to say "act confident."

I would wager many comments of being skeeved out spring from the impression that you are trying to manipulate other's perceptions of yourself instead of improving oneself directly and letting others be attracted to what they see naturally. I assume that's not actually what you did (because it generally doesn't work), but it's how it reads.

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So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked.

I do not get this but it would be immediately clear if you were more specific, e. g. you said you decided she is too fat.

So, what was it?

(I am not going to comment on this thread again because I am curious and I am going to go read the l-z version right now.)

Well, now this is going to make my post on hacking myself poly, which I was going to publish after confirming success with a month or two of field-testing, look redundant.

Also, I register disapproval for trying to split the audience of the post this way.

I felt proud, but even Luke2005 also felt a twinge of "the universe is suboptimal," because she hadn't been able to engage that connection any further. The cultural scripts defining our relationship said that only one man owned her heart. But surely that wasn't optimal for producing utilons?

I think you're too quick to ascribe to poorly optimized social norms behaviors that are entirely sensible as preference optimization. If an individual is wired for monogamy by nature, then social behaviors that protect the monogamy of their relationships will improve their utility.

Were you dissatisfied because your utility function wasn't compatible with hers or those which produced the norms she was following, or were you finding that utility function itself suboptimal?

Neither upvoting nor downvoting, prior to reading the other post. Most of this lines up with other things I've heard rationalists say about romance. I don't have enough experience to know for sure what I think about it.

upvoted because it was an enjoyable read and I definitely don't want it to fall under karma-barricade. I'm now going to go read the other post, but before I do I'd say this is really not particularly new information, and feels to me like just a testimonial about the effectiveness of PUA-like thinking.

The most interesting part to me is the mind-hacking into polyamory, and I think work on choosing your own preferences could be expanded usefully.

I like this post. I also wish that it had a more explicit list of books to read (though there is a small list in the center, the post doesn't make it as explicitly clear as I would like it to whether you think these are the best.)

I'd also welcome a post from you on fashion.

I have non-voted, because there's something unclear from the text. I appreciate the retelling of the journey taken and the lessons learned, I took a similar path myself. However: you've learned to signal extremely well the things that women are attracted to, like confidence and humour, or you have confidence and are a humourous person? You learned to dress well to impress women, but are you dressing the way you like to dress? You have taken a suboptimal social norm and substituted it with a more optimal norm.

I did not upvote or downvote, because I thought it was a decent post as anecdotes go, but too scattered and kitchen-sinky to be really useful. It also plays into stereotypes about LessWrong, but that's just you being you, so I'm not worried about it.

This passage is really funny, because I would find this unbelievable behavior in a fictional character, but here a fully adult intelligent man is doing it:

So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked. I thought she would appreciate this because she had previously expressed admiration for detailed honesty.

I'm not voting on this because, um, well, okay. I completely understand your point about how "monogamy good, non-monogamy bad" is largely a cached thought, but a part of my current beliefs it is nonetheless. Does it pay rent? Well, in our current monogamy-dominated society, it does pay in the form that "if you are a faithful partner you will be appreciated and if you are an 'unfaithful' partner you experience negative consequences", but whether polygamy is actually optimal is another question entirely. Whether "relationships that are purely sexual are damaging to all parties involved and sexual relationships should always be tied to reciprocated romatnic feelings" pays the same amount of rent, god knows what. Extricating genuine harm caused by the actions themselves from the intense shame and other negativity that's culturally imposed is way too difficult. That and as a virgin I'm really not qualified to speak on that matter at all. So all these are points in your favor, but I have reservations.

I find the paragraph after the "Rationality Lessons from Romance" somewhat confusing in its structure and had to reread it a second time, but cannot put my finger on exactly why it confused me on the first reading, now that I understand it.

But what REALLY puts a bad taste into my mouth is the casual mention that you basically slept with several different women for research purposes. This is due to a combination of the aforementioned cached thoughts, and... seriously, dude? I mean, are you down with animal testing? Because if you are that's cool, but... gosh. Seriously. It just bothers me and... I can't really be coherent here, it's a cached reaction but damn.

I also would have liked to see some mention of bisexuality as "rational" orientation as I've heard many LWers discuss, though for all I know that might be in the other piece.

This is hysterical. :) Very entertainingly told, with excellent self-awareness.

What does my last name count as for purposes of determining which post to read? Clippy? Or Paperclips? (My Google handle is clippy.paperclips.)

I think I've seen parts of this before on LW somewhere, but I don't remember where. V ibgrq va na hcjneq qverpgvba, if you want to screen out my contribution to the results.

I am impressed that you seem to have written a non-creepy post on essentially the same skillset as PUA.

Upvoting for being an interesting life-story that a good chunk of the LessWrong demographic can probably relate to, though I'm not sure I agree with all the conclusions you draw. I wouldn't mind seeing more posts in this vein from different perspectives.

I also like the idea of splitting up the two versions of the post, I don't know what it's for (I haven't read the other version), but it can be interesting to compare responses to the same story with different spins (though I'm not sure you'll get enough responses to have a sufficiently significant difference). I expect the other version to be less upbeat and maybe have a tone of "how being an overanalytical nerd ruined my relationship, be careful!". A lot of weirdness in this post sounds like it comes from an attempt to make it as different from the other as possible.

Upvoted for the first lesson.

The obvious fix for the gender-related drama these posts tend to cause, and the uncertainty caused by small smaples sizes, is for people interested in that kind of topics to co-write posts.

"Aha! It's not that women prefer jerks to nice guys, but they prefer confident, ambitious men to pushovers."

This whole chunk skeeves me out, since it seems to treat women as something "other" than men, all built to a specific template.

Politics, religion, math, and programming are basically never the right subject matter when flirting.

This also felt like an unsupported generalization. I think the post would benefit a lot if you framed these as "worked for me to accomplish X". i.e. "When trying to pick up attractive women for a one-night stand, math was never the rights subject for me" (And if you still can't flirt about math and programming, and those are important to you, then you either live in a very suboptimal city, or you're doing it wrong >.>)

Okay, I don't want to be excessively rude, but...

What the hell, Luke?!