To catalogue beliefs and practices of PUAs and how well they map to reality.
Oops.
Yes, that’s absolutely possible, and is (on reflection) what we have been talking about this whole time.
So the challenge, then, would be to distinguish the black from red ink in PUA, and make sure we’re only talking about the black ink in the ‘no ethics’ thread.
I have no intuitions about how feasible that is, but I withdraw my assertion it is ‘impossible’, as I was clearly talking about something else.
So the challenge, then, would be to distinguish the black from red ink in PUA, and make sure we’re only talking about the black ink in the ‘no ethics’ thread.
Yes! We can’t take PUA’s at their word. Even when they believe with unwavering certainty they are talking black ink, they are in the best of cases as confused as we are and in the worst quite a bit more confused. Also some people just like to lie to others to get to the red destination faster (heh).
It is hard, but apparently enough posters think we can make a decent map of the reality of romance that they try and write up posts and start discussions about them. Limiting ourselves to the more popular PUAs I think we can also get a pretty good idea of what their idea of reality is.
Comparing the two and seeking evidence to prove or disprove our speculations about reality seems like a worthy exercise.
I think this is a horrendously bad idea—“more popular” is not always positively correlated with “more correct”. ;-)
Also, “more popular” isn’t always positively correlated with “more useful”, either. The most popular PUA material is about indirect game, social tricks, and the like… and that’s why it’s popular. That doesn’t mean those things are the most useful ways to get into relationships.
Consider Bob, who believes he is unattractive to women. Will Bob be more interested in course A which tells him there are secrets to make women like him, or course B, which teaches him how to notice which women are already attracted to him? His (quite common) belief makes course B less attractive, even if course B would be far more useful.
Of available courses that fit Bob’s existing belief structure, the ones that will be most popular will be the ones that purport to explain his unattractiveness (and the attractiveness of other men) in a way that Bob can understand. And if they offer him a solution that doesn’t sound too difficult (i.e. act like a jerk), then this will be appealing.
What’s more, because Bob is convinced of his unattractiveness and fundamental low worth where women are concerned, Bob will be most attracted to courses that involve pretending to be someone he is not: after all, if who he is is unattractive, then of course he needs to pretend to be somebody else, right?
I could go on, but my point here is that popularity is a horrible way to select what to discuss, because there’s a systematic bias towards “tricks” as being the most marketable thing. However, even companies that sell tricks on the low end of the market to get people interested, usually sell some form of self-improvement as their “advanced” training. (That is, stuff that involves people actually being a different sort of man, rather than simply pretending to be one.)
(There are probably exceptions to this, of course.)
Anyway, a better selection criterion would be goal relevance. Most PUA sales material has end-user goals explicitly or implicitly stated—why not select materials on the basis of goals that LW has use for, and evaluate them for how well they achieve those stated goals?
What popular PUA is saying matters quite a bit because it helps us understand the PUA community as a cultural phenomena it also can help us by helping expose some biases that probably exist to some degree in harder to detect form in higher quality material. Perhaps well respected or esteemed authors (within the PUA community) rather than the ones that sell the most material (where would we even get that data?), are even better for this purpose.
But overall I’m not saying we shouldn’t extend our analysis to PUA’s that are less well known but seem particularly compelling to LessWrong readers. The thing is they have to be put in context.
I think this is a horrendously bad idea—“more popular” is not always positively correlated with “more correct”. ;-)
How is that bad? The whole point is to locate actual beliefs and test them. If they’re incorrect, all the better—our job is probably easier. By focusing on the general population, we can cull down the potentially-useful beliefs without needing to ourselves bring ethics into the discussion. Thus, we only test “X results in a 20% chance of being handed an aubergine” if that is a belief some PUA practitioner actually holds.
Also, “more popular” isn’t always positively correlated with “more useful”, either. The most popular PUA material is about indirect game, social tricks, and the like… and that’s why it’s popular. That doesn’t mean those things are the most useful ways to get into relationships.
Anyway, a better selection criterion would be goal relevance. Most PUA sales material has end-user goals explicitly or implicitly stated—why not select materials on the basis of goals that LW has use for, and evaluate them for how well they achieve those stated goals?
These are all ‘red ink’ concerns. The ‘black ink’ thread is supposed to evaluate beliefs of PUAs without reference to how effective they are at achieving goals. You can’t presuppose what the goals are supposed to be or determine whether they’re optimal ways of achieving goals. Thus, we can test for the presence of aubergines, but we don’t need to know whether we actually want aubergines.
These are all ‘red ink’ concerns. The ‘black ink’ thread is supposed to evaluate beliefs of PUAs without reference to how effective they are at achieving goals.
My initial response to your comment, is, “WTF?”
My second, more polite response, is simply that your suggestion isn’t particularly compatible with finding out useful things, since your proposed selection criteria will tend to filter them out before you have anything to evaluate.
I’m talking about following the strategy laid out by Konkvistador above. Have you been following this thread?
My second, more polite response, is simply that your suggestion isn’t particularly compatible with finding out useful things, since your proposed selection criteria will tend to filter them out before you have anything to evaluate.
Possibly. But the goal was to have separate threads for non-normative and normative claims, and this is how it will be accomplished. My initial response was “That cannot be done”, probably from intuitions similar to yours, but that turned out to be false.
But the goal was to have separate threads for non-normative and normative claims,
My understanding was that the goal was to have a useful discussion, minus the mindkilling. AFAICT your proposal of the means by which to accomplish this, is to throw out the usefulness along with the mindkilling.
Different goals. The goal was indeed to have a useful discussion mins the mindkilling. The proposed subgoal was to have one thread for non-normative claims and another for normative claims. It might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but if you think so then you should (at a much lower level of nesting) propose a different strategy for having the discussion minus the mindkilling. Or at least say you have a problem with that subgoal at the start of the thread, rather than the end.
Oops.
Yes, that’s absolutely possible, and is (on reflection) what we have been talking about this whole time.
So the challenge, then, would be to distinguish the black from red ink in PUA, and make sure we’re only talking about the black ink in the ‘no ethics’ thread.
I have no intuitions about how feasible that is, but I withdraw my assertion it is ‘impossible’, as I was clearly talking about something else.
Yes! We can’t take PUA’s at their word. Even when they believe with unwavering certainty they are talking black ink, they are in the best of cases as confused as we are and in the worst quite a bit more confused. Also some people just like to lie to others to get to the red destination faster (heh).
It is hard, but apparently enough posters think we can make a decent map of the reality of romance that they try and write up posts and start discussions about them. Limiting ourselves to the more popular PUAs I think we can also get a pretty good idea of what their idea of reality is.
Comparing the two and seeking evidence to prove or disprove our speculations about reality seems like a worthy exercise.
I think this is a horrendously bad idea—“more popular” is not always positively correlated with “more correct”. ;-)
Also, “more popular” isn’t always positively correlated with “more useful”, either. The most popular PUA material is about indirect game, social tricks, and the like… and that’s why it’s popular. That doesn’t mean those things are the most useful ways to get into relationships.
Consider Bob, who believes he is unattractive to women. Will Bob be more interested in course A which tells him there are secrets to make women like him, or course B, which teaches him how to notice which women are already attracted to him? His (quite common) belief makes course B less attractive, even if course B would be far more useful.
Of available courses that fit Bob’s existing belief structure, the ones that will be most popular will be the ones that purport to explain his unattractiveness (and the attractiveness of other men) in a way that Bob can understand. And if they offer him a solution that doesn’t sound too difficult (i.e. act like a jerk), then this will be appealing.
What’s more, because Bob is convinced of his unattractiveness and fundamental low worth where women are concerned, Bob will be most attracted to courses that involve pretending to be someone he is not: after all, if who he is is unattractive, then of course he needs to pretend to be somebody else, right?
I could go on, but my point here is that popularity is a horrible way to select what to discuss, because there’s a systematic bias towards “tricks” as being the most marketable thing. However, even companies that sell tricks on the low end of the market to get people interested, usually sell some form of self-improvement as their “advanced” training. (That is, stuff that involves people actually being a different sort of man, rather than simply pretending to be one.)
(There are probably exceptions to this, of course.)
Anyway, a better selection criterion would be goal relevance. Most PUA sales material has end-user goals explicitly or implicitly stated—why not select materials on the basis of goals that LW has use for, and evaluate them for how well they achieve those stated goals?
What popular PUA is saying matters quite a bit because it helps us understand the PUA community as a cultural phenomena it also can help us by helping expose some biases that probably exist to some degree in harder to detect form in higher quality material. Perhaps well respected or esteemed authors (within the PUA community) rather than the ones that sell the most material (where would we even get that data?), are even better for this purpose.
But overall I’m not saying we shouldn’t extend our analysis to PUA’s that are less well known but seem particularly compelling to LessWrong readers. The thing is they have to be put in context.
How is that bad? The whole point is to locate actual beliefs and test them. If they’re incorrect, all the better—our job is probably easier. By focusing on the general population, we can cull down the potentially-useful beliefs without needing to ourselves bring ethics into the discussion. Thus, we only test “X results in a 20% chance of being handed an aubergine” if that is a belief some PUA practitioner actually holds.
These are all ‘red ink’ concerns. The ‘black ink’ thread is supposed to evaluate beliefs of PUAs without reference to how effective they are at achieving goals. You can’t presuppose what the goals are supposed to be or determine whether they’re optimal ways of achieving goals. Thus, we can test for the presence of aubergines, but we don’t need to know whether we actually want aubergines.
My initial response to your comment, is, “WTF?”
My second, more polite response, is simply that your suggestion isn’t particularly compatible with finding out useful things, since your proposed selection criteria will tend to filter them out before you have anything to evaluate.
I’m talking about following the strategy laid out by Konkvistador above. Have you been following this thread?
Possibly. But the goal was to have separate threads for non-normative and normative claims, and this is how it will be accomplished. My initial response was “That cannot be done”, probably from intuitions similar to yours, but that turned out to be false.
My understanding was that the goal was to have a useful discussion, minus the mindkilling. AFAICT your proposal of the means by which to accomplish this, is to throw out the usefulness along with the mindkilling.
Different goals. The goal was indeed to have a useful discussion mins the mindkilling. The proposed subgoal was to have one thread for non-normative claims and another for normative claims. It might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but if you think so then you should (at a much lower level of nesting) propose a different strategy for having the discussion minus the mindkilling. Or at least say you have a problem with that subgoal at the start of the thread, rather than the end.