The important information from that website, and from PUA materials in general, is that (heterosexual) women have sexual preferences, too. Those preferences were shaped by evolution. The preferred traits would statistically increase reproductive success in ancient environment (which is not necessarily true today).
This should not be a surprise, unless you believe that men are beasts, but women are pure angelic souls that only happen to have a body. (Problem is, that idea is implicitly present in our culture. That does not make it true.) However, many (heterosexual) men either don’t understand women’s preferences, or keep forgetting; simply because those are not their preferences.
Unlike men’s preferences, which are mostly about the shape of the body, women’s preferences are more behavior-based. This is a problem, because a man, despite once having been selected by a women, can simply forget to display the same behavior that made him attractive to her. He will not notice that he is doing something wrong! She will notice that something is wrong (she feels less attracted), but usually can’t pinpoint what! A few months or years later, they have a divorce, and no one really understands what happened. And this happens to maybe 50% of the population, in some cultures.
What exactly is “hollow” about this? Women having sexual preferences? Guess what, evolution does not care about what you decide to label as “hollow”. Would you rather not know about it, and worship your ignorance? That actually is what many men do, but then there are consequences like cheating, divorce, and child support.
What exactly is “dishonest” about fulfilling one’s wife’s sexual preferences? Not more dishonest than a woman applying make-up and dressing nice, to make her husband happy. It’s a role-play to satisfy the instinctual need to mate with a tribal leader from ancient environment, which no longer exists. And unlike many other PUA materials, this one recommends it only to maintain a marriage.
Certainly some of these ideas can offend people; especially people with wrong models of the world. Some people are offended by evolution; some people are offended by reductionism; some people are offended by the idea of husband and wife doing something to make each other happy. Unlike other PUA materials, this one has scientific support; the author explains (in a simplified version, accessible to layman) the effects of dopamine, oxytocine, and testosterone on human body; which is more than typical “just so stories” with evolutionary or pseudo-evolutionary explanations.
If this offends you, then I’m afraid that reality offends you. Sure, that happens to many people, too. In which case I cannot recommend you a better material, except maybe to read something PUA-unrelated but still related to sexuality and evolution, for example some books by Matt Ridley, and come back later when the idea of sexual behavior reductionism stops being so offensive.
Therefore, just as to understand and be successful in your own decision you must be aware of your biases and cognitive quirks, to successfully interact with others you must be aware of theirs. Most biases are shared across the human population, but sexual partner preferences are obviously not. Also, elephants can’t be reasoned with: you correct elephant biases by tricking the elephant. You don’t adjust well for the priming effect by trying to out-reason your instincts. You adjust for the priming effect by making sure you’re primed correctly for achieving your aims.
It’s important therefore to distinguish between tricking the elephant and tricking the rider. Tricking the rider is usually considered unethical, but tricking the elephant can be a case of correcting someone else’s biases for them: the wife thinks (rider, or attachment part of elephant + rationalisation) she should be attracted to the husband, after all she married him, but she (attraction part of elephant) isn’t. There are two ways of resolving that: one the rider decides to leave, or two the husband makes himself more attractive to the elephant.
Beisutsukai unlock Option III at level 25: Get the rider to look down and see the elephant, craft reins for the elephant, and cooperate to steer the elephant.
Also, at level 45, they unlock the legendary Option IV (both riders must have this ability to use successfully): Both riders perform a combo-takedown on the elephants and develop low-maintenance long-term elephant-control plans that guarantees self-perpetuating elephant attraction and automatic steering (e.g. by training the elephants to follow the road/eachother on their own without further direction).
Incidentally, all Beisutsukai unlock Option 0 at level 5: Find a mate that already knows how to ride the elephant in the first place.
I have an elephant riding strategy, it involves throwing rocks at the environment and surrounding elephants to entice/scare it into going the right way. It’s kinda hard work, but elephants don’t really do reins… (How do people actually steer elephants, out of interest?)
(How do people actually steer elephants, out of interest?)
Two methods are anchoring and positive reinforcement. Availability control is also usually very effective. Essentially, the same stuff as for behavior/habit training works best, since as per my best model you’re essentially training a psychological/biological behavior there too. That’s more for “training” elephants though. Direct, in-the-moment steering requires actually training the elephant to respond to steering by whatever reins you craft, in the first place, otherwise it’s very hard and sketchy (and usually, as you say, involves throwing rocks).
I forgot where, but I recall reading a study that concluded that making one kind of sexual stimulus more “present” and reducing the availability/presence of other stimuli would increase the natural response of men to that stimulus later on (with long-term effects) in those subjects. I’m not sure of the specifics anymore, but for “sexual stimulus” think “pictures of mostly-naked ladies in X”, for X being wearing a specific item of clothing, fetish setup, or particular situation/setting.
Most studies I’ve found regarding such things seem to be crafted exclusively around men, so it’s pretty hard to find good “official” scientific data for women in that regard. Most of the data apparently comes from PUA material, unfortunately.
the author explains (in a simplified version, accessible to layman) the effects of dopamine, oxytocine, and testosterone on human body; which is more than typical “just so stories” with evolutionary or pseudo-evolutionary explanations.
Indeed, it is pseudo-endocrinology instead. (I usually take these with the same grain of alt I take the other ‘layman science’ explanations.)
The important information from that website, and from PUA materials in general, is that (heterosexual) women have sexual preferences, too. Those preferences were shaped by evolution. The preferred traits would statistically increase reproductive success in ancient environment (which is not necessarily true today).
Who would have thought?
This should not be a surprise, unless you believe that men are beasts, but women are pure angelic souls that only happen to have a body. (Problem is, that idea is implicitly present in our culture. That does not make it true.)
Which culture? I suppose that this misconception might be present in cultures where women are considered little more than chattel, but if you live in a culture where women freely choose their partners, you would have to be stupid or delusional to think they don’t have sexual preferences.
Unlike other PUA materials, this one has scientific support; the author explains (in a simplified version, accessible to layman) the effects of dopamine, oxytocine, and testosterone on human body; which is more than typical “just so stories” with evolutionary or pseudo-evolutionary explanations.
Actually, it looks like pseudoscience. Just throwing in the names of a few neurotransmitters and hormones doesn’t make a claim scientifically supported.
I suppose that this misconception might be present in cultures where women are considered little more than chattel, but if you live in a culture where women freely choose their partners, you would have to be stupid or delusional to think they don’t have sexual preferences.
The idea of individual female sexual preferences is OK, as long as they remain mysterious.
The outrage starts at the moment when someone suggests that they are statistically predictable, and gives specific examples. This is quickly labeled as “offensive to women”. And in some sense, the label is correct—being unpredictable is higher status than being predictable. On the other hand, there is no harm in saying that male sexual preferences are statistically predictable.
I suggest a thought experiment—imagine starting a discussion in LW Open Thread about which female sexual preferences are most frequent, and what is the easiest way to trigger them. Then, watch the downvotes and offended complaints. (This is just a thought experiment, don’t do it really.) The topic is probably instrumentally important to majority of LW readers, yet it will never get the same space as e.g. a rational toothpaste choice. So there is some kind of a taboo, isn’t it?
I’m under the impression that hypergamy is common knowledge, but I suppose that it may be politically incorrect to discuss it in public in certain subcultures.
Other aspects of female sexual preferences, like social intelligence, athletic physique, masculine facial bone structure, deep voice, etc. are also well known and not so controversial to discuss.
LW might not be the best place for such an experiment, even as a thought experiment. I think this should actually be experimented in some other, “general-population” forum, perhaps with a control test in a different one replacing “female” with “male” for comparison framing. It would still obviously not be study-material, but it certainly sounds fun.
Um, wow. Clearly you’ve pattern-matched to something completely different than the objection I was trying to convey. I’m so not in any way offended by sexual behavior reductionism.
To me, the author of MMSL only seems to care about creating something that looks like an intimate relationship from the outside. And he’s other-optimizing; very egregiously so. My revulsion stems from my belief that I wouldn’t be any happier living the way he advocates than I am now. I want something that feels like an intimate relationship from the inside, and the sort of relationship he depicts as ideal wouldn’t.
That’s what I mean by hollow.
I also doubt I could ever feel safe with someone with whom, to use the metaphor, appealing to the elephant is more effective than appealing to the rider, but he seems to live in an isolated bubble where he only interacts with other riders through the intermediary of their elephants, which I would find just as lonely as my current life of no interaction at all.
I’m totally with you there, in that it wouldn’t be any fun to be in a relationship with someone who wasn’t aware of this stuff.
You have to be aware though that sometimes appealing to the elephant IS more effective than appealing to the rider. It is not possible to consciously reason myself into being turned on. I am /not/ in conscious control of my hormone emitters. I need my environment to influence them for me. Even if I’m consciously aware that you’re a great guy and super smart and all that, if you don’t press my elephant buttons, so to speak, being in a relationship with you just isn’t any fun. Placating the elephant isn’t a terminal value for sufficiently awake people, but for most people it’s an important instrumental value.
Also, the impression he usually gives is not that he interacts with only his wife’s elephant, just that his rider-rider interaction is fine and he never struggled with it. He also occasionally gives advice for female riders regarding male elephants.
Also, take it from me that this stuff adds to rather than detracts from intimate relationships. From the inside. (If it helps you believe me, this is what Athol’s wife thinks.)
No you aren’t. You’re saying something entirely different—a mix of orthogonal points and contradictory ones—but using the form “I’m with you there” because it is typically an amazingly effective tool for leading around and getting along with metaphorical elephants.
It is not possible to consciously reason myself into being turned on.
Impossible is such a strong term. I’d suggest possible but completely unrealistically implausible, possibly take years of unnatural mental training and being ultimately far less satisfying than just finding a mate that is actually attractive.
Would it be offensive to claim that I’m a woman and I can’t help doing that, re your first comment? (The “it wasn’t me it was my elephant!” defence?) I’ve subtly edited the phrasing so it’s less objectionable.
And I suppose Buddhists have meditated their way into their reptilian-level hardware before. Though I’m not sure it’d be worth a lifetime of meditation training just so I can think myself into releasing testosterone and oestrogen and dopamine ;) Instrumental and terminal values and all that.
Though if I could release dopamine at will then it’s the wireheading discussion all over again...
Would it be offensive to claim that I’m a woman and I can’t help doing that, re your first comment?
I imagine some women may conceivably be offended by the stereotyping.
I’ve subtly edited the phrasing so it’s less objectionable.
I wouldn’t have said “objectionable” so much as “fascinating example of exactly the kind of influence technique either a PUA or business social skills adviser may recommend”.
Though I’m not sure it’d be worth a lifetime of meditation training just so I can think myself into releasing testosterone and oestrogen and dopamine ;)
Especially since any one of those things can be injected far more simply routinely. Purely mental wireheading tactics are just terribly inefficient these days!
You’re letting your elephant loose on this stuff? And it actually moves? Darn.
Mine’s just been standing there munching on some rationality leaves all along, completely uninterested. It’s more annoyed about the rider jumping in excitement on its back, if anything.
Letting my elephant loose? I don’t know about you, but my elephant is almost always loose. I just try to pay attention to what it does, because, well, isn’t that the point of this site?
This conversation is making my elephant very confused… Based on interpreting my reactions, did I just get negged?
Analyzing...
...Not in the pure sense of “negative compliment”. Because, well, I seem to have neglected the ‘compliment’ part. Let’s see… You have beautiful eyelashes… Are they real?
Nevertheless, the style of interaction could be used in a similar social role to the neg—that is, demonstrating playfulness, arrogance and a willingness to assert themselves higher in status (at least for the purpose of that one social transaction.)
To a certain extent there is the reverse of a neg. Surface level cavalier contradiction which nevertheless serves to overall lend support to your position. In particular the replies in the grandparent could be replaced with “Not to me.”, “Oh, no, I didn’t want to imply that you were being objectionable and using that strategy is OK.” and “You are totally right.” respectively without changing the object level meaning drastically. Yet that would have conveyed an entirely invalid connotations of supplication and wishy-washy backtracking. Complimentary-contradiction and then flippant elaboration avoids that frame.
In summary: No, but with that style of interaction adding negs would be overkill!
Be specific. Taboo “hollow”. Taboo “dishonest”.
The important information from that website, and from PUA materials in general, is that (heterosexual) women have sexual preferences, too. Those preferences were shaped by evolution. The preferred traits would statistically increase reproductive success in ancient environment (which is not necessarily true today).
This should not be a surprise, unless you believe that men are beasts, but women are pure angelic souls that only happen to have a body. (Problem is, that idea is implicitly present in our culture. That does not make it true.) However, many (heterosexual) men either don’t understand women’s preferences, or keep forgetting; simply because those are not their preferences.
Unlike men’s preferences, which are mostly about the shape of the body, women’s preferences are more behavior-based. This is a problem, because a man, despite once having been selected by a women, can simply forget to display the same behavior that made him attractive to her. He will not notice that he is doing something wrong! She will notice that something is wrong (she feels less attracted), but usually can’t pinpoint what! A few months or years later, they have a divorce, and no one really understands what happened. And this happens to maybe 50% of the population, in some cultures.
What exactly is “hollow” about this? Women having sexual preferences? Guess what, evolution does not care about what you decide to label as “hollow”. Would you rather not know about it, and worship your ignorance? That actually is what many men do, but then there are consequences like cheating, divorce, and child support.
What exactly is “dishonest” about fulfilling one’s wife’s sexual preferences? Not more dishonest than a woman applying make-up and dressing nice, to make her husband happy. It’s a role-play to satisfy the instinctual need to mate with a tribal leader from ancient environment, which no longer exists. And unlike many other PUA materials, this one recommends it only to maintain a marriage.
Certainly some of these ideas can offend people; especially people with wrong models of the world. Some people are offended by evolution; some people are offended by reductionism; some people are offended by the idea of husband and wife doing something to make each other happy. Unlike other PUA materials, this one has scientific support; the author explains (in a simplified version, accessible to layman) the effects of dopamine, oxytocine, and testosterone on human body; which is more than typical “just so stories” with evolutionary or pseudo-evolutionary explanations.
If this offends you, then I’m afraid that reality offends you. Sure, that happens to many people, too. In which case I cannot recommend you a better material, except maybe to read something PUA-unrelated but still related to sexuality and evolution, for example some books by Matt Ridley, and come back later when the idea of sexual behavior reductionism stops being so offensive.
Translation into usual Less Wrong language:
Men and women all have elephants and riders. While female riders are not intrinsically different from male riders, female elephants have lots of differences to male elephants, which is expected if the elephant is the animal hardware/operating system that we are run on.
Therefore, just as to understand and be successful in your own decision you must be aware of your biases and cognitive quirks, to successfully interact with others you must be aware of theirs. Most biases are shared across the human population, but sexual partner preferences are obviously not. Also, elephants can’t be reasoned with: you correct elephant biases by tricking the elephant. You don’t adjust well for the priming effect by trying to out-reason your instincts. You adjust for the priming effect by making sure you’re primed correctly for achieving your aims.
It’s important therefore to distinguish between tricking the elephant and tricking the rider. Tricking the rider is usually considered unethical, but tricking the elephant can be a case of correcting someone else’s biases for them: the wife thinks (rider, or attachment part of elephant + rationalisation) she should be attracted to the husband, after all she married him, but she (attraction part of elephant) isn’t. There are two ways of resolving that: one the rider decides to leave, or two the husband makes himself more attractive to the elephant.
My wife really didn’t appreciate this when I explained it to her. Can’t work out what went wrong in that conversation...
Beisutsukai unlock Option III at level 25: Get the rider to look down and see the elephant, craft reins for the elephant, and cooperate to steer the elephant.
Also, at level 45, they unlock the legendary Option IV (both riders must have this ability to use successfully): Both riders perform a combo-takedown on the elephants and develop low-maintenance long-term elephant-control plans that guarantees self-perpetuating elephant attraction and automatic steering (e.g. by training the elephants to follow the road/eachother on their own without further direction).
Incidentally, all Beisutsukai unlock Option 0 at level 5: Find a mate that already knows how to ride the elephant in the first place.
I have an elephant riding strategy, it involves throwing rocks at the environment and surrounding elephants to entice/scare it into going the right way. It’s kinda hard work, but elephants don’t really do reins… (How do people actually steer elephants, out of interest?)
Two methods are anchoring and positive reinforcement. Availability control is also usually very effective. Essentially, the same stuff as for behavior/habit training works best, since as per my best model you’re essentially training a psychological/biological behavior there too. That’s more for “training” elephants though. Direct, in-the-moment steering requires actually training the elephant to respond to steering by whatever reins you craft, in the first place, otherwise it’s very hard and sketchy (and usually, as you say, involves throwing rocks).
I forgot where, but I recall reading a study that concluded that making one kind of sexual stimulus more “present” and reducing the availability/presence of other stimuli would increase the natural response of men to that stimulus later on (with long-term effects) in those subjects. I’m not sure of the specifics anymore, but for “sexual stimulus” think “pictures of mostly-naked ladies in X”, for X being wearing a specific item of clothing, fetish setup, or particular situation/setting.
Most studies I’ve found regarding such things seem to be crafted exclusively around men, so it’s pretty hard to find good “official” scientific data for women in that regard. Most of the data apparently comes from PUA material, unfortunately.
Indeed, it is pseudo-endocrinology instead. (I usually take these with the same grain of alt I take the other ‘layman science’ explanations.)
Who would have thought?
Which culture? I suppose that this misconception might be present in cultures where women are considered little more than chattel, but if you live in a culture where women freely choose their partners, you would have to be stupid or delusional to think they don’t have sexual preferences.
Actually, it looks like pseudoscience. Just throwing in the names of a few neurotransmitters and hormones doesn’t make a claim scientifically supported.
The idea of individual female sexual preferences is OK, as long as they remain mysterious.
The outrage starts at the moment when someone suggests that they are statistically predictable, and gives specific examples. This is quickly labeled as “offensive to women”. And in some sense, the label is correct—being unpredictable is higher status than being predictable. On the other hand, there is no harm in saying that male sexual preferences are statistically predictable.
I suggest a thought experiment—imagine starting a discussion in LW Open Thread about which female sexual preferences are most frequent, and what is the easiest way to trigger them. Then, watch the downvotes and offended complaints. (This is just a thought experiment, don’t do it really.) The topic is probably instrumentally important to majority of LW readers, yet it will never get the same space as e.g. a rational toothpaste choice. So there is some kind of a taboo, isn’t it?
I’m under the impression that hypergamy is common knowledge, but I suppose that it may be politically incorrect to discuss it in public in certain subcultures.
Other aspects of female sexual preferences, like social intelligence, athletic physique, masculine facial bone structure, deep voice, etc. are also well known and not so controversial to discuss.
LW might not be the best place for such an experiment, even as a thought experiment. I think this should actually be experimented in some other, “general-population” forum, perhaps with a control test in a different one replacing “female” with “male” for comparison framing. It would still obviously not be study-material, but it certainly sounds fun.
Um, wow. Clearly you’ve pattern-matched to something completely different than the objection I was trying to convey. I’m so not in any way offended by sexual behavior reductionism.
To me, the author of MMSL only seems to care about creating something that looks like an intimate relationship from the outside. And he’s other-optimizing; very egregiously so. My revulsion stems from my belief that I wouldn’t be any happier living the way he advocates than I am now. I want something that feels like an intimate relationship from the inside, and the sort of relationship he depicts as ideal wouldn’t.
That’s what I mean by hollow.
I also doubt I could ever feel safe with someone with whom, to use the metaphor, appealing to the elephant is more effective than appealing to the rider, but he seems to live in an isolated bubble where he only interacts with other riders through the intermediary of their elephants, which I would find just as lonely as my current life of no interaction at all.
That’s what I mean by dishonest.
I’m totally with you there, in that it wouldn’t be any fun to be in a relationship with someone who wasn’t aware of this stuff.
You have to be aware though that sometimes appealing to the elephant IS more effective than appealing to the rider. It is not possible to consciously reason myself into being turned on. I am /not/ in conscious control of my hormone emitters. I need my environment to influence them for me. Even if I’m consciously aware that you’re a great guy and super smart and all that, if you don’t press my elephant buttons, so to speak, being in a relationship with you just isn’t any fun. Placating the elephant isn’t a terminal value for sufficiently awake people, but for most people it’s an important instrumental value.
Also, the impression he usually gives is not that he interacts with only his wife’s elephant, just that his rider-rider interaction is fine and he never struggled with it. He also occasionally gives advice for female riders regarding male elephants.
Also, take it from me that this stuff adds to rather than detracts from intimate relationships. From the inside. (If it helps you believe me, this is what Athol’s wife thinks.)
No you aren’t. You’re saying something entirely different—a mix of orthogonal points and contradictory ones—but using the form “I’m with you there” because it is typically an amazingly effective tool for leading around and getting along with metaphorical elephants.
Impossible is such a strong term. I’d suggest possible but completely unrealistically implausible, possibly take years of unnatural mental training and being ultimately far less satisfying than just finding a mate that is actually attractive.
Would it be offensive to claim that I’m a woman and I can’t help doing that, re your first comment? (The “it wasn’t me it was my elephant!” defence?) I’ve subtly edited the phrasing so it’s less objectionable.
And I suppose Buddhists have meditated their way into their reptilian-level hardware before. Though I’m not sure it’d be worth a lifetime of meditation training just so I can think myself into releasing testosterone and oestrogen and dopamine ;) Instrumental and terminal values and all that.
Though if I could release dopamine at will then it’s the wireheading discussion all over again...
I imagine some women may conceivably be offended by the stereotyping.
I wouldn’t have said “objectionable” so much as “fascinating example of exactly the kind of influence technique either a PUA or business social skills adviser may recommend”.
Especially since any one of those things can be injected far more simply routinely. Purely mental wireheading tactics are just terribly inefficient these days!
This conversation is making my elephant very confused… Based on interpreting my reactions, did I just get negged? (more power to you if I did)
You’re letting your elephant loose on this stuff? And it actually moves? Darn.
Mine’s just been standing there munching on some rationality leaves all along, completely uninterested. It’s more annoyed about the rider jumping in excitement on its back, if anything.
Letting my elephant loose? I don’t know about you, but my elephant is almost always loose. I just try to pay attention to what it does, because, well, isn’t that the point of this site?
Analyzing...
...Not in the pure sense of “negative compliment”. Because, well, I seem to have neglected the ‘compliment’ part. Let’s see… You have beautiful eyelashes… Are they real?
Nevertheless, the style of interaction could be used in a similar social role to the neg—that is, demonstrating playfulness, arrogance and a willingness to assert themselves higher in status (at least for the purpose of that one social transaction.)
To a certain extent there is the reverse of a neg. Surface level cavalier contradiction which nevertheless serves to overall lend support to your position. In particular the replies in the grandparent could be replaced with “Not to me.”, “Oh, no, I didn’t want to imply that you were being objectionable and using that strategy is OK.” and “You are totally right.” respectively without changing the object level meaning drastically. Yet that would have conveyed an entirely invalid connotations of supplication and wishy-washy backtracking. Complimentary-contradiction and then flippant elaboration avoids that frame.
In summary: No, but with that style of interaction adding negs would be overkill!
...I think I’m just going to leave it at “you are far too good at this”. :P