More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA

Slytherin 2.0, after its triumphant remake following Draco's enlightenment!

The skills in question have appeal across the Houses:

Draco smiled. "Father has, um, a rather refined sense of humor, but he does understand making friends. He understands it very well. In fact he made me repeat that before I went to bed every night for the last month, 'I will make friends at Hogwarts.' When I explained everything to him and he saw that's what I was doing, he not only apologized to me but bought me an ice-cream."

Harry's jaw dropped. "You managed to spin that into an ice-cream?" Draco nodded, looking every bit as smug as the feat deserved. "Well, father knew what I was doing, of course, but he's the one who taught me how to do it, and if I grin the right way while I'm doing it, that makes it a father-son thing and then he has to buy me an ice-cream or I'll give him this sort of sad look, like I think I must have disappointed him."

Harry eyed Draco calculatingly, sensing the presence of another master. "You've gotten lessons on how to manipulate people?"

"For as far back as I can remember," Draco said proudly. "Father bought me tutors."

"Wow," Harry said. Reading Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice probably didn't stack up very high compared to that (though it was still one heck of a book). "Your dad is almost as awesome as my dad."

Ask yourself: How would a cunning but ultimately good-hearted Slytherin commenter get a message they believed useful to others read when there are hundreds of other comments competing for the same limited attention?

By responding to the most-upvoted, and therefore highest-up-in-the-page existing comment, one of the only ones likely to get future eyeballs.

I read the first wave of pick up materials when I was a teenager, way back in the Internet Usenet days. It would not be an exaggeration to say they changed my life – not for romantic reasons, but because they spelled social interaction out in the way I needed at the time and got me on track to leading a fulfilling social life.

I read this thread on Less Wrong a few years back and it deeply resonated with me. Since then I documented over 2000 useful, intriguing or otherwise noteworthy observations of social interactions happening around me – ways people bragged, compliments that warmed my heart, techniques for starting conversations with strangers.

I'm now in the process of coding and analyzing my empirical observations, publishing the results in my blog, Less Penguiny: https://www.lesspenguiny.com/

(Less Awkward, as other commenters suggested, was sadly unavailable.)

PS Sorry for hijacking the comments, but I honestly believe my project is of value to Less Wrong readers for whom this thread was important, and I knew that there would be little chance of getting noticed if I instead appended comment #630.

Right on. To summarize: PUAs succeed because they have something to protect (or rather conquer). The same reason Eliezer succeeded in inventing something new in the Sequences - he had a big external goal (AI) that was more important than intellectual pleasure. (Incidentally, the same goal motivated many people to create many wonderful things, e.g. Lisp.) Here's a quote from his post that could just as well have come from a creepy lonely man setting out to invent PUA:

...beginning with a desperate need to succeed. No one masters the Way until more than their life is at stake. More than their comfort, more even than their pride.

Well said!

I like how you phrase the "superordinate goals" bit. It captures two potential problems that I had considered:

1. PUA's have outcomes ("closes"), which makes it possible to do tests and measure success. What are our outcomes?

2. Motivational power of sex might be necessary and irreplaceable.

I'm still not sure if these are surmountable, but I think it's worth trying.

I really like the idea of your project, but I'd like you to talk a bit more about the ideas in the seduction community that you think will be most relevant (I have some ideas, which I will share at some point).

I'll share my thoughts soon, but someone like you probably has more insight. I have far from comprehensive knowledge of the seduction community's efforts.

Looking forward to hearing more, I'm really encouraged by the quality of the comments so far!

It may be that a big part of what makes pickup work for self development is that you are focusing on improvement in so many areas at the same time that tie together and mutually reinforce each other, and you do it all in service of a greater superordinate goal of mating.

Something to protect.

a name like... "Less Awkward" seems called-for.

Nuts! I was going to suggest that one!

One of the first things you should learn in a Less Awkward class is that the name "Less Awkward" contains 2 words, both of which have negative associations, and thus is a poor choice of name.

(I like it, though.)

"Overcoming bias" has one negative word in conflict with one very strong positive word. "Less Wrong" is two negative words. But this is not a bad thing - Robin would like everyone to read Overcoming Bias, but I don't know if EY wants everyone to read LW. You could use an emotionally-unattractive name as a filter, to keep out less-rational people.

"finishing school" for rationalists... :)

Am I the only one instincively thinking of Bourdieu's 'Cultural Capital' theory here?

i wrote a little bit about looking at pick up artistry as a model for scientific inquiry here:

http://michaelkenny.blogspot.com/2010/09/pickup-artists-and-prussiangerman.html

A quote:

"Pickup artists and the military men of Weimar Germany, and probably before, in Prussia, both seem half nerdy intellectual, half man of action.

"I could see both communities being a good example of what intellectuals should aim for--they should be trying to be practical, as well as being engaged in theory. I guess I'm saying I think intellectuals should be more pragmatic. They can go for this wild theory, and it's super fun to speculate about things, but it's also super fun to test out your ideas and see how they work out."

I could, but every time I've tried to describe this without mentioning PUA people tell me to go to Toastmaster's or take a leadership class. It's the community + field-tests + feedback + iteration that I want. Shitstorm notwithstanding, I think this gets my intention across best. If the PUA part becomes too much of a distraction I might re-label it.

I have my own list topics/problems/thoughts that I cut from this just before posting. I'll bring these up if no one else does.

1. I had the same thought: maybe a subreddit-like thing?
2. Good question. I would look to see how this developed with the PUAs, as I'm sure they encountered the same issue, but I'm not sure.
3. Yup. I think that there would need to be some kind of in-person component, I don't think mastery is attainable via any online forum.
4. I agree that Adams' list isn't ideal, but it's close enough that I went with it. If this thing happens, we should pick our own topics. I would indeed be a little dismayed if this went all corporate. And I fucking hate golf, there's no way I'm learning it.
5. Interesting, I wish he'd followed up. I've had some insights like this while reading PJeby's stuff, this would indeed be a good place to try and find more good stuff.

The idea is that intelligent people have a strong tendency to discount motivational platitudes and self-help books, because those sound (and often are) stupid.

There's a book, "59 Seconds" by psychologist Richard Wiseman, which examines a lot of common self-help claims by looking at actual studies. He shows how many are wrong or are actively harmful. However, the book also has quick tidbits of actually productive things one can do that are comparatively minor. People interested in these issues should read the book.

Intelligent people have a strong tendency to discount motivational platitudes and self-help books, because those sound (and often are) stupid.

Actually, the proportion of "actually stupid" to "just sounds stupid" is very, very low. The problem is that what you might call "action skills" and "satisfaction skills" do not operate using the same parts of the brain that "intelligent" (i.e. analytical) people are accustomed to using.

So, if you evaluate a statement using the machinery you're most accustomed to thinking with, the sayings sound stupid, even when they're not also phrased in new-agey or pseudoscientific ways.

I've found that most of my advances in personal development came after I realized that my intellectual bullshit-detectors were filtering out everything that was useful in the self-help field, simply because it wasn't true.

IOW, if you ignore the truthiness of a piece of advice, and simply attempt to adopt the state of mind and mental/physical behaviors given, you will very often find that the stupidest, most nonsensical theories are shielding you from some incredibly useful practical advice.

Scott Aaronson once began a series of posts called "Geek Self-Help," though unfortunately he never followed up.

For reference: http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?cat=33

A quick point on 3, it seems like a general rule of learning can handle this fairly well. More specifically the idea of using your conscious mind to direct your attention to conscious practice of one thing at a time. It would be much more trying to remember 3 things to do than one. If a person can remember just one, then they can practice that item deliberately until it becomes more unconscious. There's always room to improve, but at some point it becomes more natural to do X than to not do X, and that leaves you free to focus on incorporating Y. Advice to "remember to do X, Y, and Z" might be better interpreted as "ultimately you'll want to be doing X, Y, and Z."

Not to say it's not difficult to remember to practice things once I actually get into social skills. I usually forget to practice anything at all, but when I do remember to practice I usually learn something (I should consider making at a habit to ask myself if there's anything I want to practice as I go into a social situation). Practicing with assistance is great as people can point things out and be sure to remind you, but "going solo" can also be very productive.

In regards to 1, while I think a sub-lesswrong would work alright, I do think you'd either want separate karma scores for the sites, or to have a separate site based on the same architecture. I don't think it's too controversial to suggest that people can do well on less wrong without having great social skills, likewise the advice of people who are accomplished socially might not carry over into great less wrong advice.

I am skeptical that we can win without the Dark Arts.

There are lots of people out there with bad goals and wrong beliefs and powerful skills at persuading and manipulating people to take on those beliefs and help those goals. Like marketers and politicians. If we want resources for our goals, and to spread our beliefs, we need to learn the techniques of persuasion and memetics.

This isn't a video game, the world doesn't care about Light and Dark, and it isn't set up so that the good guys can win. Those who employ the best techniques for achieving their goals are more likely to achieve their goals. In a world where good people refuse to learn how to persuade others and gain power, the world will be ruled by bad people. That's how it is now, and I'm sick of it.

I'm Gray and proud of it. Shades of gray matter - a lot - but White is for losers.

I acknowledge that this appears to be on the Dark Side of the Arts Spectrum, but I'd like to keep it as light a gray as possible.

I just want to be effective at something that is important to achieving my goals. I'll do good with my powers, honest!

How can you disavow Dark Arts? This is the Dark Arts.

I think two ideas from the field of security are relevant here.

1) In order to design good security, one must be willing and able to think like a criminal.

2) Security through obscurity generally doesn't work.

Applied to the current discussion this suggests that:

• in order to be able to successfully defend against the Dark Arts one must be able to think like a Dark Artist.
• Attempting to reduce the use of the Dark Arts by attempting to quarantine knowledge about them isn't going to work.

Also, maybe if more people understood the methods by which politicians and marketers manipulated them, they'd be less taken in by them.

Sure, on average it's negative sum. But I have to guess that society as a whole suffers greatly from having many (most?) of its technically skilled citizens at the low end of the social-ability spectrum. The question would be whether you could design a set of institutions in this area which could have a net positive benefit on society. (Probably not something I'll solve on a Saturday afternoon...)

How can you disavow Dark Arts? This is the Dark Arts.

Influencing other humans is hugely beneficial to almost any goals a human can have. I don't think the techniques of effectively influencing people are Dark Arts. If you use them to make people believe falsehoods, or act against their own interests, that would be Dark. Otherwise, it's just Arts.

Your claim that most people who studied these Arts would use them in Dark ways seems likely to me. But, if I expect to master these Arts myself, I will still support their research by default. I don't know how to truly calculate the net utility here; I'm very interested in learning. What do you think?

It's negative-sum if it results in lots of people, say, obtaining sex by deception and creating lots of annoyed or hurt partners. But if it makes people more attractive and gives them better social skills? Sounds good to me.

I disagree. This is Magic, perhaps, but at most a subset of this is the Dark Arts.

Taking the list as a starting point, seperate it into the first seven and then the remaining twelve. I would claim that the remaining twelve are all positive sum and I would prefer a world in which more people had those skills, although I wish we could move off of the golf equilibrium. I can also personally vouch for hypnosis.

The top part of the list is more troubling, no doubt, especially cults and propaganda which are clearly Dark. You can go too far. But it's a poor art that can't be turned Dark.

Sure, an increased scientific understanding of our weaknesses could be used for negative purposes, but it could just as easily lead to societal improvements designed to prevent manipulation (i.e. laws banning the use of certain manipulative techniques in advertisements).

This is a good point. To the extent that social competency is zero-sum, we want to learn an exclusive, secret art (I am sure it is not, taken as a whole, for the same reason that trade and cooperation aren't only zero-sum, but individual skills as actually employed may be).

The desire for powerful secrets biases us - for example, toward accepting nonsense from a cult leader. I'd rather instead include all the available similarly-minded smart people (who may occasional offer fresh insights), even though they would also be my most effective competition.

So the worry is that if this community gains many adepts, most of them will use the Art in Dark ways, making the world a less pleasant place to live overall? Then perhaps the founder of such a community should take care to make the community as obscure and low-status as possible, to prevent it from gaining a wide following.

The problem with a small community is that it might not acquire sufficiently many clever ideas to become a useful tool for achieving any goals, Dark or otherwise. So it might make sense to become part of a larger community, whose goals are similar enough to be worth learning from, yet different enough that its adepts are not dangerous.

In short, it might make sense to disguise this community as PUA. Perhaps even become part of the existing PUA community, whose members, after all, seem to have improved success in other social arts as well.

I was also under the impression that the entire field of PUA was basically a giant Dark Arts grimoire. Now I'm not sure what it is. But even if PUA is Dark Arts, an argument could still be made for teaching it in college -- in order to build the students' skills at Defending against these Dark Arts.

I think people here don't distinguish enough between "X is a socially harmful arms race but given something to protect it's an obvious good idea to participate" and "X is not a socially harmful arms race".

Clip Up Artist?

So are we to expect anecdotes of Clippy negging HBs and getting "clip closes"? :P

So are we to expect anecdotes of Clippy negging HBs and getting "clip closes"? :P

Clippy, how much are you willing to change in order for humans to be justified in thinking that it is worthwhile to help you?

I'm engaged to a very nice lady, thanks.

That's almost too good to pass up!

One thing that surprised me is this: for people with technical jobs--programmers, engineers, research scientists--very few of these things matter at all. You only need two things to possess social capital in technical fields: first you need to be aware of current political and business news (like look at the Google News front page and business page daily); and second you need to know at least three good restaurants to eat at in your neighborhood and at least three good restaurants to eat at in your office's neighborhood. And that is all.

You mean, of the things they looked at, that is all. If you want to succeed in engineering management (instead of as a low-level grunt engineer), you need to read Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat. This book is vitally important for anyone hoping to understand the social dynamics of large organizations.

Not being an engineer or particularly concerned with low-status-by-association on a semi-anonymous forum, and having witnessed several rooms being made people's bitches, I'm going to try anyway. I promise not to mistake any comic writers for domain experts in the process.

[Edit: That reads as snarkier than I intended. You make some good points.]

(e.g. take caffeine pills at 6 AM and you'll wake naturally at 8 AM. That sort of thing.)

Is there a typo here? Otherwise you seem to be suggesting either taking pills whilst asleep or sleeping for only 2 hours...

Pretty close indeed, although their website still seems to emphasize meeting women (I'd assume because that's where the money is).

We’re AJ & Jordan Harbinger, founders of The Art of Charm. In our early twenties, we decided it was time to take our lives to the next level, especially in the realm of women and relationships. We learned from the best dating coaches, attraction experts, fashion and image consultants from around the world and created a program unlike anything available anywhere.

The material's probably similar, but I want a leaderless mob of brilliant geeks out doing experiments instead of cool people selling a product. What can I say, I'm a sucker for self-organization!

snowballing chain of reinforcements

This study points out that if you think about (or have) just a single episode of past success or failure, that it has the opposite effect you'd expect on future performance (i.e. what works in the direction you would expect is to reflect on a pattern of experience of failure or success, then you will have summarized/abstracted from the individual events and expect them to serve as the rule, not the exception).

That is, remembering a single failure made people perform better (I assume because they were able to avoid some of the mistakes, or simply try harder, without feeling completely helpless and likely to fail).

You're exactly right. I see this as one of the key challenges, actually.

That's absurdly expensive for a product with no guarantee of value. Admittedly I'd pay more than that for a college course... but in a college course I know that the content is already validated and socially approved of. Whereas if I tell people that I've ordered these $600 social-skills videos, looks askance are inevitable.

I've been asking this question myself for, like, 5 years. If anyone wants to do some research, I'm happy to help.

The most attention I think it's gotten is by psychologist Paul Dobransky, and undergraduate feminist Elana Clift's honors thesis. Both are reasonably well-written, but I think they underestimate the interest of PUAs in relationships.

Dobransky portrays himself as a Moses-like figure bringing mature masculinity to the seduction community, yet many experienced guys in the community already hold the ideas about masculinity that he advocates. His piece has some good observations, but I also find it a bit condescending.

While there is a lot of support for men in the seduction community interested in one-night stands and short-term dating, and there are cynical ideas about relationships, there still is a lot of support for relationships (every large pickup forum has a relationships board).

Lots of guys in the seduction community have had either very little success with women, or are coming out of a bad relationships. Since the community is probably growing, the largest segments are probably newbies. Once these guys start getting women to notice them consistently, I think it's understandable that they want to date around a bit and feel that they are desirable and have options. Is it really the most mature thing for a beginning PUA to jump into a relationship with the first girl who is nice to him?

In my experience, once a PUA has a couple years experience and some success under his belt, then he is a lot more likely to be interested in relationships. It's the same process that other people go through, they just do it earlier in their social development, while the PUA was sitting on the sidelines.

Of the 10 or so guys with pickup experience I know well in real life (counting myself), here is the breakdown of how they are doing in relationships:

• 2 want to be in relationships specifically, but aren't yet very successful with women

• 5 have been going in and out of relationships that haven't worked out. They do casual dating or sometimes one-night stands in between finding people they like.

• 2 had fun with a bunch of women, and are now in long-term monogamous relationships.

• 1 slept with a few women once he found pickup, then met a woman he really liked, dated her for a year or so, then got married. Unfortunately, they aren't very happy, but I think that's mainly because they are both very busy, and they have different attachment and communication styles.

Of the pickup instructors that I've encountered, most of them do relationships.

Of course, my sample isn't representative, and I deliberately hang out with guys who I think are more mature. That's exactly why we need some empirical research on this subject.

Deal.

Same here.

Also are there any existing google study or self improvement groups from Less Wrong? I would be really interested in joining those.

Golf is expensive, isn't it? (It's certainly more expensive than WoW...)

Fair enough. If we're ever in the same part of the world I'll take you up on a round and see if it takes.

I have some preliminary thoughts on that subject here. I discovered Cialdini through pickup.

I would argue that much of the time it's actually impossible to get people to consider your ideas without some social slickness. Not here, of course.

I am somewhat baffled as to why the "PUA" discussion has had a strong negative connotation. As you say, there's a ton of benefits for everyone involved

There's at least two groups of people who potentially stand to lose from widespread discussion of PUA: women, who may fear that they will be duped into choosing low quality mates by males emulating the behaviours they use to identify high quality mates and men who are already successful with women who may fear increased competition.

These sources of antipathy to PUA are rarely consciously expressed but given how crucial mate selection has been to reproductive success throughout evolutionary history you might expect strong negative reactions from those who sense a threat to their interests. Much of the strong reaction to PUA seems to me to stem from this.