Let me attempt to incorporate what you mean with specifics to make sure I understand your point.
Say Less Wrong has an overly high proportion of fan fiction writers compared to some baseline. Fan fiction oriented people from other areas might come for the fan fiction and stay for other material, and swapping fan fiction will give people who are here… a community oriented leisure activity? (That doesn’t sound like quite the right phrase but I’m having a hard time thinking of a better one)
As such, we should start and maintain Less Wrong fanfiction writing threads, rather than just sitting around waiting for another chapter of HPMOR.
That seems reasonable to me (As someone who writes a lot of not that great fanfiction and likes reading it from better authors.)
If I were to attempt to think of a potential downside, it would be something along the lines of a PUA person thinking “Well, if we can start Off-topic fanfiction discussions, then we can start off-topic PUA discussions.” And then you seeing that and thinking “Ugh, a PUA discussion?”
Of course someone who liked PUA and disliked Fanfiction might have a switched reaction to those two things.
I think those are very distinct subjects. I know nobody that objects on ethical grounds to people writing or reading fan fiction.
With PUA a lot of people do object on those grounds and don’t want black art social skills that are about manipulating other people to be discussed on LW.
Yes, reactions to fanfiction and reactions to PUA are of a different kind. Fanfiction can be considered boring or irrelevant, but not unethical. So for example, an advice “if you don’t like it, just ignore it” makes more sense for fanfiction than for PUA.
Speaking as a former fan of PUA, I think it would be good to distinguish between two things: “Which beliefs are correct?” and “Which techniques are ethical?” Not to treat them as the same question. People may behave unethically while having a correct model of the world, or behave ethically while having an incorrect model. Also, the “PUA techniques” is a large set; it may contain both ethical and unethical methods. To pick trivial examples, “negging” would be unethical, while “spend some time in the gym” is ethically neutral, and I would consider it instrumentally rational.
Sorry for getting to the object level, but I believe the rational response to PUA is to look at specific details and say: “this is correct”, “this is incorrect”, “this is ethical”, “this is unethical”. Not to accept everything, nor to reject everything. -- This can be further generalized: just because a bunch of ideas comes under the same label, it does not mean that their truth value is the same.
To pick trivial examples, “negging” would be unethical, while “spend some time in the gym” is ethically neutral, and I would consider it instrumentally rational.
I think this is the “motte and bailey” applied to PUA. Normally when people say “PUA techniques,” they mean something narrower than “anything you might do to increase your attractiveness.”
I believe you are using the “motte and bailey” analogy incorrectly here. It is not supposed to mean “the worst thing you can associate with a group”, but rather something like “a central teaching which is rather indefensible in a debate, but they keep returning to it as long as there is no opponent in sight”.
Normally when people say “PUA techniques,” they mean something narrower than “anything you might do to increase your attractiveness.”
Yes, they mean “behaving like (a PUA model of) alpha male”. That includes a lot of things; and different people put emphasis on different subsets. The original approaches had a lot of “hacks to fool the alpha-male detector”, and negging was one of those hacks. (And it was not meant to be used on every woman all the time, but as a way to get attention of a woman way above the man’s level.) The recent approaches are about “just become the alpha male, duh”.
Let me attempt to incorporate what you mean with specifics to make sure I understand your point.
Say Less Wrong has an overly high proportion of fan fiction writers compared to some baseline. Fan fiction oriented people from other areas might come for the fan fiction and stay for other material, and swapping fan fiction will give people who are here… a community oriented leisure activity? (That doesn’t sound like quite the right phrase but I’m having a hard time thinking of a better one)
As such, we should start and maintain Less Wrong fanfiction writing threads, rather than just sitting around waiting for another chapter of HPMOR.
That seems reasonable to me (As someone who writes a lot of not that great fanfiction and likes reading it from better authors.)
If I were to attempt to think of a potential downside, it would be something along the lines of a PUA person thinking “Well, if we can start Off-topic fanfiction discussions, then we can start off-topic PUA discussions.” And then you seeing that and thinking “Ugh, a PUA discussion?”
Of course someone who liked PUA and disliked Fanfiction might have a switched reaction to those two things.
I think those are very distinct subjects. I know nobody that objects on ethical grounds to people writing or reading fan fiction. With PUA a lot of people do object on those grounds and don’t want black art social skills that are about manipulating other people to be discussed on LW.
Yes, reactions to fanfiction and reactions to PUA are of a different kind. Fanfiction can be considered boring or irrelevant, but not unethical. So for example, an advice “if you don’t like it, just ignore it” makes more sense for fanfiction than for PUA.
Speaking as a former fan of PUA, I think it would be good to distinguish between two things: “Which beliefs are correct?” and “Which techniques are ethical?” Not to treat them as the same question. People may behave unethically while having a correct model of the world, or behave ethically while having an incorrect model. Also, the “PUA techniques” is a large set; it may contain both ethical and unethical methods. To pick trivial examples, “negging” would be unethical, while “spend some time in the gym” is ethically neutral, and I would consider it instrumentally rational.
Sorry for getting to the object level, but I believe the rational response to PUA is to look at specific details and say: “this is correct”, “this is incorrect”, “this is ethical”, “this is unethical”. Not to accept everything, nor to reject everything. -- This can be further generalized: just because a bunch of ideas comes under the same label, it does not mean that their truth value is the same.
I think this is the “motte and bailey” applied to PUA. Normally when people say “PUA techniques,” they mean something narrower than “anything you might do to increase your attractiveness.”
I believe you are using the “motte and bailey” analogy incorrectly here. It is not supposed to mean “the worst thing you can associate with a group”, but rather something like “a central teaching which is rather indefensible in a debate, but they keep returning to it as long as there is no opponent in sight”.
Yes, they mean “behaving like (a PUA model of) alpha male”. That includes a lot of things; and different people put emphasis on different subsets. The original approaches had a lot of “hacks to fool the alpha-male detector”, and negging was one of those hacks. (And it was not meant to be used on every woman all the time, but as a way to get attention of a woman way above the man’s level.) The recent approaches are about “just become the alpha male, duh”.
There are quite a few people who think fanfiction (or at least fanfiction without the author’s permission) is unethical.
Of course there are people who believe all kinds of stuff. I haven’t seen that view argued on LW before. Do you?