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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, almost all of whom (surprise) like young, attractive, straight women; you use weasel words saying that my point is for a "very specific goal", when in fact probably ~60-80% of people reading this site have the goal of attracting/keeping a young, attractive, hetero/bi woman.
TBH, I feel that you, and LW in general, are trying to use pedantry/weasel words/motivated cognition to close your eyes to the truth about attraction between men and women. Perhaps there is some subset of people here who want to know, but I feel that if I mention the subject I will end up arguing against some form of denial/motivated cognition, rather than discussing the subject in the spirit of a collaborative enquiry to get at the truth.
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.
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 women for which I am stably highly confident that it applies to because of overwhelming field-testing.
Indeed, saying that "PU may well apply (to a certain extent) to almost all pre-menopausal hetero/bi women" does not logically entail that I think it doesn't apply to post-menopausal women or lesbians etc. Personally I have no clue about lesbian attraction, and very little about how to attract post-menopausal women, so I make no claim in particular.
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 game" and some guys focus more on older women, and I am explicitly not denying that there are results and facts there. But the core of the concept, the VAST majority of the field testing and online material is about quickly seducing "women who are relatively young, culturally-western, hetero- or bi- sexual and relatively attractive"
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.
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 the median young, attractive woman. And that goes for Alicorn too.
Even amongst the set of IQ + 1 sigma women you are almost certainly highly nontypical.
Comments about female psychology are not directed at you, they are not about you, your personal experience of YOUR OWN reactions are not meant to be well described by pick-up theory.
I do not mean this in a negative way. I mean you no offence; in fact you should take it as a compliment in the context of intelligence and rationality. I am merely making an epistemological point.
The next time I make a comment about PU, I will carefully disclaim that PU is primarily designed to analyse the average psychology of just one particular kind of woman: namely relatively young, culturally-western, hetero- or bi- sexual and relatively attractive.
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%.
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 they see this behavior from a stranger, they hate it like a bad smell. Yuck.
If they see a lot of this in a relationship, they begin to lose attration for him, and in the end hate him and cheat on him.
By the way, have you studied game theory? A man who always gives you treats and compliments is signalling his own low value, therefore his treats and compliments are devalued. Yes?
My personal belief is that female utility is maximized by a man who is alpha, who leads them rather than treating them as an equal, who keeps them "on their toes" by flirting with other chicks, but who occasionally surprises them with a big romantic gesture like a surprise weekend break, champagne on ice, hot sex in the penthouse suite. But he doesn't do it all the time, his rewards are unpredictable. This is in line with what game theory would predict.
incompatible with maximising global utility for all sentient stakeholders
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.
Think about the effect on her inclusive genetic fitness if she bears the child of a nice-guy who tries to maximize other people's utility before his own, versus having the child of an alpha who puts himself first and likes to impregnate lots of women.
And let me disclaim: I don't like it that the world is this way, I don't morally support the programming that evolution has given to women. But I accept it and work within its bounds.
Perhaps one day we will reprogram ourselves? Maybe transhuman love will be of a different. But in human love, the heart is not heart shaped, it is shaped like a clenched fist.
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?
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 which are low-status behaviours, all in amongst a morass of irrelevant, non-field-tested nonsense.
Academics who write papers on dating "science" are simply not in the same kind of tight feedback relationship with reality that pickup artists are, so they produce a collection of half truths and irrelevant effects, as well as missing out the most important aspects of the game. So the fact that he has referenced this stuff is pretty useless. Far better to take a look at what others who have tried stuff have found. The PU community can be thought of as a giant social psychology experiment, except without the arbitrary restrictions of academic science. Mystery is rumoured to have done 10,000 cold approaches and sexed 200-300 women. All the way from meet to penis-in-vagina, with a sample size of 10,000. Then multiply that by all the hundreds of highly successful PU artists. Compare that to a social science experiment which has a small sample size (~30) and only looks at one aspect of relationships and dating, and probably looks at correlations rather than causation. By the way, props for actually pursuing these references. It is a shame that this is hard and tiring to do.
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 better solution would be for Lukeprog to just tell people to google pick up. That way, nobody could flame him on LW, and he wouldn't be spreading actively harmful information.
Now he seems to be writing more or less the same thing, but communicating it in a less offensive way
he is telling people to display "agreeableness" - pretty much the opposite of PUA advice, he is telling you to "like" others - a dangerous piece of advice which could quickly turn into desperate, supplicative behavior, complimenting, etc. He is emphasizing physical looks over dominance and alpha-male behavior, again the opposite of PUA advice.
I will edit my comment to take account of what you said.
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 anyone who wants to formulate practical advice in this area. Without referencing it explicitly, one can either ignore it altogether and thus inevitably talk nonsense, or pretend to speak based solely on official academic literature, which is disingenuous and unfair in its failure to attribute credit and also misleading for those who would like to pursue their own research in the matter.....
he continues:
On the whole, the article is based on the premise that an accurate and no-nonsense analysis of the topic will result in something that sounds not just inoffensive, but actually strongly in line with various fashionable and high-status norms and ideals of the broader society. This premise however is flawed, and those who believe that this has in fact been accomplished should apply the powerful debiasing heuristic that says that when a seemingly rational discussion of some deeply problematic and controversial topic sounds pleasant and reassuring, there's probably something fishy going on
And finally:
So, what about the quality of advice that will be produced by a LW discussion on these topics operating under such constraints of respectability, where disreputable sources of accurate information are tabooed, a pretense must be maintained that the discourse is grounded in officially accredited scholarship and other high-status sources of information, and -- most important of all -- the entire discourse and its bottom line must produce a narrative that is in line with the respectable, high-status views of humanity and society? I am not at all optimistic, especially having seen what has been produced so far!
Yvain is also on point:
shy, nerdy men who can't find anyone who will love them because they radiate submissiveness and non-assertiveness, and women don't find this attractive. Most women do find dominant, high-testosterone people attractive
In three worlds collide, we were introduced to the "Order of Silent Confessors", which is "charged with guarding sanity, not morality". In this post especially, I feel that sanity is lying beaten and abused on the floor. I think we need the "Order of Silent Confessors" now.
As a start, Lukeprog, I think you should include the exerpts by vladimir_M and Yvain above in your article.