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
“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.”
Meanwhile I’ve gone back over it a couple of times working out the optimal tone and cadence to use in order to say that without breaking the flow of attraction. It’d be a lot of fun to make it work so it’s tempting to try!
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.
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.
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.
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?
That got a laugh out of me.
Meanwhile I’ve gone back over it a couple of times working out the optimal tone and cadence to use in order to say that without breaking the flow of attraction. It’d be a lot of fun to make it work so it’s tempting to try!