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.
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.
When Luke said that, his “aha” moment wasn’t that these things existed, it’s why they exist. And more importantly, why it’s a good idea to focus on that instead of saying “concentrating on looks is vain, a woman should like me for who I am.”
the hidden assumption, in much of thought by rationalists, that other people and the world in general are supposed to behave rationally.
This assumption is not there. The assumption is that there is a reason people behave how they do, and this behavior is a logical conclusion from evo psych. I doubt anyone would say women’s attraction to red is rational, but it is still used in PUA books.
And yes, you can just use the results, but there aren’t many books that have all the conclusions made without any of the explanation.
When Luke said that, his “aha” moment wasn’t that these things existed, it’s why they exist. And more importantly, why it’s a good idea to focus on that instead of saying “concentrating on looks is vain, a woman should like me for who I am.”
I’m curious about this. What was the reason that Luke found for paying attention on fashion, that needed an insight into the reasons people care about fashion? It seems to me that fashions importance depends primarily on how much other people care about it, irrespective of why they care, but I don’t understand fashion so could easily be missing something.
This assumption is not there. The assumption is that there is a reason people behave how they do, and this behavior is a logical conclusion from evo psych.
I think that part of my post was rather unclear. Of course, people on this site don’t consciously hold the view that people must make sense, but that nevertheless seems to be the direction of a lot of peoples thoughts. To clarify, what I was trying to state is that there is a tendency for many rationalists to try and look for a reason for peoples behaviour and, when failing to find it, to try and find an evo psych explanation for this behaviour. I may be wrong about this, but its something I’ve noticed in my own thoughts, and it seems to be echoed in what many other people here have written. Crucially, if my behaviour is similar to other peoples, a lot of the apparent benefit of learning the explanations for others behaviour is just in coming to accept it. It’s a lot easier to tolerate things about people you disagree with when you know why they’re doing it—even if your wrong about the reason. But, you can also just learn to accept people.
Of course, the assumption that peoples behaviour is a logical conclusion from evo psych is a much more justifiable one. But, even so, I’d challenge this one. Evolutionary psychology is not a scientific model in the same way that something like the standard model in Physics is; from what I know of it, it seems wholly unable to make any firm predictions on any aspect of human behaviour—it can just try and explain the behaviour of humans that is already observed. So, I suppose I’m still failing to see how knowing the evo psych explanation of something will really help you in interacting with others?
Having said this, I feel more optimistic about some applications of evolutionary psychology to ones own thinking. I think thinking in evolutionary psychology terms has helped me work out when I should pay more or less attention to my own feelings. If one is nervous about taking some minor social risk amongst strangers, it helps to know that this reaction made perfect sense in the EEA, but doesn’t now; you then can be confident that its safe to override your emotions.
What was the reason that Luke found for paying attention on fashion, that needed an insight into the reasons people care about fashion?
I would imagine it would depend on the image you’re trying to present. Like Luke said, it conveys “large packets of information about [him] at light speed.”
So, if you’re trying to show you have money you would dress one way, trying to look cool would require a different style of dressing, and just hanging casually with friends requires a third.
There is a tendency for many rationalists to try and look for a reason for peoples behaviour and, when failing to find it, to try and find an evo psych explanation for this behaviour.
Yes, I agree. I mostly use evo psych explanations to increase my internal probability of a PUA trick actually working, though I’m conservative about the credence I give to any evo psych explanation.
Your list of objections is less compelling given that Luke explicitly claims that his approach worked extremely well for him. Unless you want to claim that Luke’s approach is tailored specifically to him.
My attitude towards comments below criticizing Luke for stereotyping women is similar. If the stereotype allowed him to successfully predict behavior, then it seems to be accurate, or at least accurate enough that using it seems instrumentally rational.
I was delivered from fear, fear of man, of heart, from rejection from a woman when I was 29 years old. The ministry team gave a word of knowledge regarding my birthday, May 26, confirmed the calling on my life and what was holding me back. No more timidity. I was delivered from self and was told I would be buried in Him and wake up in Christ. I was just reading Romans 6. Blessings and thank you for your obedience to God!
Testimonials are not strong evidence. I don’t know Luke, so don’t know in any detail what he did, but based on his post it seems like he did a lot of things over a several year period. Peoples personality can change significantly, especially at a young age, in the absence of any external factors over a period of a few years. If Luke was also, as he indicates in his post, trying to spend substantially more time around women, then I don’t see how we can conclude that it was his scholarship that helped him. And, if it was, then it could easily have been that he gained confidence by believing that he understood people.
This isn’t evidence against scholarship helping, of course. It may well have done. But I don’t think we can take Luke claiming that it helped him as particularly strong evidence that it actually did.
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.
Often true, but note that if you do not understand the reason for some rule, you run the risk of getting into a situation where you think it should apply but it doesn’t, or vice versa.
This whole post is disturbing to me for several reasons, the least of which is the analysis of relationships—which, to me, have always been emotional, passionate moments—by talking like a machine about optimal universes and utilons. Even Spock wasn’t that cold. This is simply not what rationality means to me.
The most disturbing reason is seeing this post commit such fallacies of sexism as stereotyping and othering. Attempts to pigeonhole the mind-boggling diversity of romantic relationships into premade cookie-cutter recipes are at best doomed to failure and at worst show, if not something so drastic as objectification, at least a failure of empathy, since to the author it only extends to the “us”-group and not to the “them”-group.
analysis of relationships—which, to me, have always been emotional, passionate moments—by talking like a machine about optimal universes and utilons.
If explicit analysis of relationships would completely ruin the joy they bring you, then it is rational not to analyze them. However, for most people who’ve embarked on such analysis programs, this does not seem to be the case. The more important something is to you, the more vital it is to optimize for its good characteristics.
I sympathize with your distaste for taking apart love to see what it’s made from, but that’s the same frame of mind that refuses to put a value on human life, and thus ends up wasting large amounts of it by making scope-insensitive decisions. Refusing to analyze love might similarly waste large amounts of potential future love.
to the author it only extends to the “us”-group and not to the “them”-group.
The PUA experimenters here have noted that modifications of the standard methods may be necessary to appeal to the “rationalist” crowd. But I feel confident that none of them would claim Evolutionary Psychology doesn’t work on us. I think you see as a lack of empathy what Lukeprog sees as analyzing everyone equally—sort of the “don’t anthropomorphize humans” approach.
I sympathize with your distaste for taking apart love to see what it’s made from
More like distaste for trying to reduce love to something it’s not. You cannot reduce an abstract, complex facet of human experience to something simple and easily definable, otherwise you make yourself vulnerable to utopia plans that are doomed to fail.
People I showed lukeprog’s original post to were universal in their reaction: “Wow, talk about neckbeardery”.
As for PUA, I won’t comment on that. If all you care about is one-night stands, then I guess you can be cynical about that. Actual love is a different matter entirely.
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.
When Luke said that, his “aha” moment wasn’t that these things existed, it’s why they exist. And more importantly, why it’s a good idea to focus on that instead of saying “concentrating on looks is vain, a woman should like me for who I am.”
This assumption is not there. The assumption is that there is a reason people behave how they do, and this behavior is a logical conclusion from evo psych. I doubt anyone would say women’s attraction to red is rational, but it is still used in PUA books.
And yes, you can just use the results, but there aren’t many books that have all the conclusions made without any of the explanation.
I’m curious about this. What was the reason that Luke found for paying attention on fashion, that needed an insight into the reasons people care about fashion? It seems to me that fashions importance depends primarily on how much other people care about it, irrespective of why they care, but I don’t understand fashion so could easily be missing something.
I think that part of my post was rather unclear. Of course, people on this site don’t consciously hold the view that people must make sense, but that nevertheless seems to be the direction of a lot of peoples thoughts. To clarify, what I was trying to state is that there is a tendency for many rationalists to try and look for a reason for peoples behaviour and, when failing to find it, to try and find an evo psych explanation for this behaviour. I may be wrong about this, but its something I’ve noticed in my own thoughts, and it seems to be echoed in what many other people here have written. Crucially, if my behaviour is similar to other peoples, a lot of the apparent benefit of learning the explanations for others behaviour is just in coming to accept it. It’s a lot easier to tolerate things about people you disagree with when you know why they’re doing it—even if your wrong about the reason. But, you can also just learn to accept people.
Of course, the assumption that peoples behaviour is a logical conclusion from evo psych is a much more justifiable one. But, even so, I’d challenge this one. Evolutionary psychology is not a scientific model in the same way that something like the standard model in Physics is; from what I know of it, it seems wholly unable to make any firm predictions on any aspect of human behaviour—it can just try and explain the behaviour of humans that is already observed. So, I suppose I’m still failing to see how knowing the evo psych explanation of something will really help you in interacting with others?
Having said this, I feel more optimistic about some applications of evolutionary psychology to ones own thinking. I think thinking in evolutionary psychology terms has helped me work out when I should pay more or less attention to my own feelings. If one is nervous about taking some minor social risk amongst strangers, it helps to know that this reaction made perfect sense in the EEA, but doesn’t now; you then can be confident that its safe to override your emotions.
I would imagine it would depend on the image you’re trying to present. Like Luke said, it conveys “large packets of information about [him] at light speed.” So, if you’re trying to show you have money you would dress one way, trying to look cool would require a different style of dressing, and just hanging casually with friends requires a third.
Yes, I agree. I mostly use evo psych explanations to increase my internal probability of a PUA trick actually working, though I’m conservative about the credence I give to any evo psych explanation.
Your list of objections is less compelling given that Luke explicitly claims that his approach worked extremely well for him. Unless you want to claim that Luke’s approach is tailored specifically to him.
My attitude towards comments below criticizing Luke for stereotyping women is similar. If the stereotype allowed him to successfully predict behavior, then it seems to be accurate, or at least accurate enough that using it seems instrumentally rational.
From Spiritual Healing Testimonies
Testimonials are not strong evidence. I don’t know Luke, so don’t know in any detail what he did, but based on his post it seems like he did a lot of things over a several year period. Peoples personality can change significantly, especially at a young age, in the absence of any external factors over a period of a few years. If Luke was also, as he indicates in his post, trying to spend substantially more time around women, then I don’t see how we can conclude that it was his scholarship that helped him. And, if it was, then it could easily have been that he gained confidence by believing that he understood people.
This isn’t evidence against scholarship helping, of course. It may well have done. But I don’t think we can take Luke claiming that it helped him as particularly strong evidence that it actually did.
Often true, but note that if you do not understand the reason for some rule, you run the risk of getting into a situation where you think it should apply but it doesn’t, or vice versa.
I agree with your overall point, however.
This whole post is disturbing to me for several reasons, the least of which is the analysis of relationships—which, to me, have always been emotional, passionate moments—by talking like a machine about optimal universes and utilons. Even Spock wasn’t that cold. This is simply not what rationality means to me.
The most disturbing reason is seeing this post commit such fallacies of sexism as stereotyping and othering. Attempts to pigeonhole the mind-boggling diversity of romantic relationships into premade cookie-cutter recipes are at best doomed to failure and at worst show, if not something so drastic as objectification, at least a failure of empathy, since to the author it only extends to the “us”-group and not to the “them”-group.
Isn’t it too much of a convenient coincidence to say that it’s impossible and also immoral to rationally understand something?
If explicit analysis of relationships would completely ruin the joy they bring you, then it is rational not to analyze them. However, for most people who’ve embarked on such analysis programs, this does not seem to be the case. The more important something is to you, the more vital it is to optimize for its good characteristics.
I sympathize with your distaste for taking apart love to see what it’s made from, but that’s the same frame of mind that refuses to put a value on human life, and thus ends up wasting large amounts of it by making scope-insensitive decisions. Refusing to analyze love might similarly waste large amounts of potential future love.
The PUA experimenters here have noted that modifications of the standard methods may be necessary to appeal to the “rationalist” crowd. But I feel confident that none of them would claim Evolutionary Psychology doesn’t work on us. I think you see as a lack of empathy what Lukeprog sees as analyzing everyone equally—sort of the “don’t anthropomorphize humans” approach.
More like distaste for trying to reduce love to something it’s not. You cannot reduce an abstract, complex facet of human experience to something simple and easily definable, otherwise you make yourself vulnerable to utopia plans that are doomed to fail.
People I showed lukeprog’s original post to were universal in their reaction: “Wow, talk about neckbeardery”.
As for PUA, I won’t comment on that. If all you care about is one-night stands, then I guess you can be cynical about that. Actual love is a different matter entirely.
You got multiple people to use that sentence? In fact, I will be nearly as impressed if multiple people independently used the word “neckbeardery”.
I said “to the effect of”. I didn’t mean literally the same wording.
Where?
...I didn’t? Drat. Sorry.
This is what I get for not looking over my own comments before I post them. I’ll be more vigilant in the future.