I don’t think I would be making an unreasonable assumption if I assumed that an arbitrarily chosen woman in a bar would most likely have a preference for the internal experience of happiness, mental health, continued life, orgasms and so on and hence that conduct likely to bring about those outcomes for her would produce utility and conduct likely to bring about the opposite would produce negative utility.
Knowing that her weights on those things are positive gets me nowhere. What I need to know are their relative strengths, and this seems like an issue where (heterosexual) individuals are least poised to be able to generalize their own experience. It seems likely that a man could go through life thinking that everyone enjoys one night stands and sleeps great afterwards, and not until reading PUA literature realizes that women often freak out after them.
the female participant is also using seduction techniques (hopefully defined in some more specific sense than just trying to be attractive)
Suppose she flirts, or the equivalent (that is, rather than just seeking general attraction, she seeks targeted attraction at some point). If she never expresses any interest, it’s unlikely she and Bob will have sex (outside of obviously unethical scenarios).
this scenario avoids arguably the most important ethical questions about PUA behaviour.
What question do you think is most important?
we need to know what are Bob and Alice’s utility functions are, and what Bob and Alice should reasonably think the other party’s utility function is like.
Suppose Bob and Alice both believe that actions reveal preferences.
Bob behaved unethically in getting to this position since he knowingly brought about a negative-utility outcome for a moral stakeholder.
Suppose Alices enjoy one night stands, and Carols regret one night stands, though they agree to have sex after the first date. When Bob meets a woman, he can’t expect her to honestly respond whether she’s a Carol or an Alice if he asks her directly. What probability does he need that a woman he seduces in a bar will be an Alice for it to be ethical to seduce women in bars?
As well, if he believes that actions reveal preferences, should he expect that one night stands are a net utility gain or loss for Carols?
Knowing that her weights on those things are positive gets me nowhere. What I need to know are their relative strengths, and this seems like an issue where (heterosexual) individuals are least poised to be able to generalize their own experience. It seems likely that a man could go through life thinking that everyone enjoys one night stands and sleeps great afterwards, and not until reading PUA literature realizes that women often freak out after them.
Hopefully research like that cited in the OP can help with that. In the meantime we have to do the best we can with what we have, and engage in whatever behaviours maximise the expected utility of all stakeholders based on our existing, limited knowledge.
What question do you think is most important?
I think the most important question is “Is it ethical to obtain sex by deliberately faking social signals, given what we know of the consequences for both parties of this behaviour?”. A close second would be “Is it ethical to engage in dominance-seeking behaviour in a romantic relationship?”.
Suppose Alices enjoy one night stands, and Carols regret one night stands, though they agree to have sex after the first date. When Bob meets a woman, he can’t expect her to honestly respond whether she’s a Carol or an Alice if he asks her directly. What probability does he need that a woman he seduces in a bar will be an Alice for it to be ethical to seduce women in bars?
One approach would be to multiply the probability you have an Alice by the positive utility an Alice gets out of a one night stand, and multiply the probability that you have a Carol by the negative utility a Carol gets out of a one night stand, and see which figure was larger. That would be the strictly utilitarian approach to the question as proposed.
If we’re allowed to try to get out of the question as proposed, which is poor form in philosophical discussion and smart behaviour in real life, a good utilitarian would try to find ways to differentiate Alices and Carols, and only have one night stands with Alices.
A possible deontological approach would be to say “Ask them if they are an Alice or a Carol, and treat them as the kind of person they present themselves to be. If they lied it’s their fault”.
The crypto-sociopathic approach would be to say “This is all very complicated and confusing, so until someone proves beyond any doubt I’m hurting people I’ll just go on doing what feels good to me”.
I think the most important question is “Is it ethical to obtain sex by deliberately faking social signals, given what we know of the consequences for both parties of this behaviour?”.
“Deliberately faking social signals”? But, but, that barely makes any sense. They are signals. You give the best ones you can. Everybody else knows that you are trying to give the best signals that you can and so can make conclusions about your ability to send signals and also what other signals you will most likely give to them and others in the future. That is more or less what socializing is. I suppose blatant lies in a context where lying isn’t appropriate and elaborate creation of false high status identities could be qualify—but in those case I would probably use a more specific description.
A close second would be “Is it ethical to engage in dominance-seeking behaviour in a romantic relationship?”.
A third would be “could the majority of humans have a romantic relationship without dominance-seeking behavior?” and the fourth : “would most people find romantic relationships anywhere near as satisfying without dominance-seeking behavior?” (My money is on the “No”s.)
One more question: What principles would help establish how much dominance seeking behavior is enough to break the relationship or in some other way cause more damage than it’s worth, considering that part of dominance is ignoring feedback that it’s unwelcome?”
One more question: What principles would help establish how much dominance seeking behavior is enough to break the relationship or in some other way cause more damage than it’s worth
Yes, that part is hard, even on a micro scale. I have been frequently surprised that I underestimate how much dominance seeking would be optimal. I attribute this to mind-projection. ie “This means she would prefer me to do that? Wow. I’d never take that shit if it was directed at me. Hmm… I’m going do that for her benefit and be sure not to send any signal that I am doing it for compliance. It’s actually kind of fun.”
(Here I do mean actual unambiguous messages—verbal or through blatantly obvious social signalling by the partner. I don’t mean just “some source says that’s what women want”.)
considering that part of dominance is ignoring feedback that it’s unwelcome?
Fortunately we can choose which dominance seeking behaviors to accept and reject at the level of individual behavioral trait. We could also, if it was necessary for a particular relationship, play the role of someone who is ignoring feedback but actually absorb everything and process it in order to form the most useful model of how to navigate the relationship optimally. On the flip side we can signal and screen to avoid dominance seeking behaviors that we particularly don’t want and seek out and naturally reward those that we do want.
“Deliberately faking social signals”? But, but, that barely makes any sense. They are signals. You give the best ones you can. Everybody else knows that you are trying to give the best signals that you can and so can make conclusions about your ability to send signals and also what other signals you will most likely give to them and others in the future. That is more or less what socializing is. I suppose blatant lies in a context where lying isn’t appropriate and elaborate creation of false high status identities could be qualify—but in those case I would probably use a more specific description.
PUAs have trouble grasping that there is a difference between appearance and reality, which is ironic in some ways. It’s an implicit part of their doctrine that if you can pass yourself off as an “alpha” that you really are an “alpha”, in the sense of being the kind of person that women really do want to mate with.
However it seems obvious to me that the whole PUA strategy is to spoof their external signals in a way they hope will fool women into drawing incorrect conclusions about what is actually going on within the PUA’s mind and what characteristics the PUA is actually bringing to the relationship table. It’s a way for socially awkward nerds to believe they are camouflaging themselves as rough, tough, confident super-studs and helping themselves to reproductive opportunities while so camouflaged.
They excuse this moral failing by saying “Everybody else is doing it, hence it’s okay for me to do it only more so”.
However it’s well-established in general societal morals that obtaining sex by deception is a form of non-violent rape. If you’re having sex with someone knowing that they are ignorant of relevant facts which if they knew them would stop them having sex with you, then you are not having sex with their free and informed consent.
The fact that someone is a PUA using specific PUA techniques to misrepresent their real mind-state seems to me like highly relevant information in relationship decision-making.
A third would be “could the majority of humans have a romantic relationship without dominance-seeking behavior?” and the fourth : “would most people find romantic relationships anywhere near as satisfying without dominance-seeking behavior?” (My money is on the “No”s.)
Is there proper scientific evidence for this? If not do you acknowledge that this is at least potentially a moral excuse of the same form as “Everyone else is doing it, so it’s okay for me to do it”?
I suspect it would actually turn out that correctly socialised people would prefer and flourish more completely in relationships which are free of dominance games, and I think my naive folk-psychological guesswork is just as good as yours.
They excuse this moral failing by saying “Everybody else is doing it, hence it’s okay for me to do it only more so”.
I find that those with any significant degree of PUA competence are not particularly inclined to try to excuse themselves to others. Apart from being an unhealthy mindset to be stuck in it sends all the wrong signals. They would instead bock out any hecklers and go about their business. If people try to shame them specifically while they are flirting or socializing they may need to handle the situation actively but it is almost certainly not going to be with excuses.
However it’s well-established in general societal morals that obtaining sex by deception is a form of non-violent rape. If you’re having sex with someone knowing that they are ignorant of relevant facts which if they knew them would stop them having sex with you, then you are not having sex with their free and informed consent.
Acting confident and suppressing nervousness is not rape.
Is there proper scientific evidence for this?
It is a third and fourth question added to a list. Unless the first two were supposed to be scientific proclamations this doesn’t seem to be an appropriate demand.
If not do you acknowledge that this is at least potentially a moral excuse of the same form as “Everyone else is doing it, so it’s okay for me to do it”?
No to the “if not” implication—not presenting proper scientific evidence wouldn’t make it an excuse. No to the equivalence of these questions to that form. Most importantly: nothing is an ‘excuse’ unless the person giving it believes they doing something bad.
and I think my naive folk-psychological guesswork is just as good as yours.
I really don’t think naivety is a significant failing of mine.
I find that those with any significant degree of PUA competence are not particularly inclined to try to excuse themselves to others. Apart from being an unhealthy mindset to be stuck in it sends all the wrong signals. They would instead bock out any hecklers and go about their business. If people try to shame the specifically while they are flirting or socializing they may need to handle the situation actively but it is almost certainly not going to be with excuses.
So far in this conversation those I have mentally labelled pro-PUA have inevitably introduced scenarios where both parties are using “seduction techniques”, which I think is a term which is dangerous since it conflates honest signalling with spoofed signalling, or by claiming (as you did) that the idea of spoofing social signals “barely makes any sense”. I take those arguments to be excusing the act of spoofing social signals on the basis either that all women also spoof their social signals and that two wrongs make a right, or that there is in fact no such thing as social spoofing and that hence PUAs cannot be morally condemned for doing something which does not exist.
Acting confident and suppressing nervousness is not rape.
In and of itself, it seems to me that at least potentially it is deliberately depriving the target of access to relevant facts that they would wish to know before making a decision whether or not to engage socially, sexually or romantically with the suppressor.
However unless you believe that pick-up targets’ relevant decision-making would be totally unaffected by the knowledge that the person approaching them was a PUA using specific PUA techniques, then concealing that fact from the pick-up target is an attempt to obtain sex without the target’s free and informed consent. If you know fact X, and you know fact X is a potential deal-breaker with regard to their decision whether or not to sleep with you, you have a moral obligation to disclose X.
I really don’t think naivety is a significant failing of mine.
″ In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know”.
Socrates
Edit in response to edit: I was asked what I thought the most important ethical questions were with regard to PUA, and answered that question with two ethical questions. You responded by asking two factual questions of your own, which if answered in the negative would make my second question redundant, and stated that your money (which since you are posting here I took to mean that you have a Bayesian conviction that your answer is more likely to be right than not) was on the answer to those questions being negative.
You must have some basis for that probability estimate. Saying that it’s not an “appropriate demand” to ask for those bases doesn’t solve the problem that without access to your bases we can’t tell if your probability estimate is rational.
It is also a category error to put ethical questions and factual questions in the same bin and argue that because my ethical questions are not “scientific proclamations” that this means you don’t have to provide support for your factual probability estimates.
It is odd that a reply that is entirely to wedrifid quotes is made in response to NancyLebovitz comment which makes an entirely different point. Did you click the wrong ‘reply’ button?
I think the most important question is “Is it ethical to obtain sex by deliberately faking social signals, given what we know of the consequences for both parties of this behaviour?”.
This question seems malformed. “Deliberating faking social signals” is vague- but is typically not something that’s unethical (Is it unethical to exaggerate?). “What we know of the consequences” is unclear- what’s our common knowledge?
A close second would be “Is it ethical to engage in dominance-seeking behaviour in a romantic relationship?”.
Yes.
That would be the strictly utilitarian approach to the question as proposed.
And, of course, you saw the disconnect between your original statement and your new, more correct one.
Right?
If we’re allowed to try to get out of the question as proposed, which is poor form in philosophical discussion and smart behaviour in real life, a good utilitarian would try to find ways to differentiate Alices and Carols, and only have one night stands with Alices.
The reason I asked that question is because you put forth the claim that Bob’s fault was knowingly causing harm to someone. That’s not the real problem, though- people can ethically knowingly cause harm to others in a wide variety of situations, under any vaguely reasonable ethical system. Any system Bob has for trying to determine the difference between Alices and Carols will have some chance of failure, and so it’s necessary to use standard risk management, not shut down.
This question seems malformed. “Deliberating faking social signals” is vague- but is typically not something that’s unethical (Is it unethical to exaggerate?). “What we know of the consequences” is unclear- what’s our common knowledge?
Rhetorical questions are a mechanism that allows us to get out of making declarative statements, and when you find yourself using them that should be an immediate alert signal to yourself that you may be confused or that your premises bear re-examination.
Deceiving others to obtain advantage over them is prima facie unethical in many spheres of life, and I think Kant would say that it is always unethical. Some role-ethicists would argue that when playing roles such as “salesperson”, “advertiser” or “lawyer” that you have a moral license or even obligation to deceive others to obtain advantage but these seem to me like rationalisations rather than coherent arguments from supportable prior principles. Even if you buy that story in the case of lawyers, however, you’d need to make a separate case that romantic relationships are a sphere where deceiving others to obtain advantage is legitimate, as opposed to unethical.
PUA is to a large extent about spoofing social signals, in the attempt to let young, nerdy, white-collar IT workers signal that they have the physical and psychological qualities to lead a prehistoric tribe and bring home meat. The PUA mythology tries to equivocate between spoofing the signals to indicate that you have such qualities and actually having such qualities but I think competent rationalists should be able to keep their eye on the ball too well to fall for that. Consciously and subconsciously women want an outstanding male, not a mediocre one who is spoofing their social signals, and being able to spoof social signals does not make you an outstanding male.
Yes.
Okay. We come from radically different ethical perspectives such that it may be unlikely that we can achieve a meeting of minds. I feel that dominance-seeking in romantic relationships is a profound betrayal of trust in a sphere where your moral obligations to behave well are most compelling.
And, of course, you saw the disconnect between your original statement and your new, more correct one.
Right?
Can you point me to the text that you take to be “my original statement” and the text you take to be “my new, more correct statement”? There may be a disconnect but I’m currently unable to tell what text these constructs are pointing to, so I can’t explicate the specific difficulty.
The reason I asked that question is because you put forth the claim that Bob’s fault was knowingly causing harm to someone. That’s not the real problem, though- people can ethically knowingly cause harm to others in a wide variety of situations, under any vaguely reasonable ethical system.
People can ethically and knowingly burn each other to death in a wide variety of situations under any vaguely reasonable ethical system too, so that statement is effectively meaningless. It’s a truly general argument. (Yes, I exclude from reasonableness any moral system that would stop you burning one serial killer to death to prevent them bringing about some arbitrarily awful consequence if there were no better ways to prevent that outcome).
Any system Bob has for trying to determine the difference between Alices and Carols will have some chance of failure, and so it’s necessary to use standard risk management, not shut down.
We agree completely on that point, but it seems to me that a substantial subset of PUA practitioners and methodologies are aiming to deliberately increase the risk, not manage it. Their goals are to maximise the percentage of Alices who sleep with the PUA and also to maximise the percentage of Carols who sleep with the PUA.
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to go further and say that in large part the whole point of PUA is to bed Carols. Alices are up for a one night stand anyway, so manipulating them to suspend their usual protective strategies and engage in a one night stand with you would be as pointless as peeling a banana twice. It’s only the Carols who are not normally up for a one night stand that you need to manipulate in the first place. Hence that subset of PUA is all about maximising the risk of doing harm, not minimising that risk.
(Note that these ethical concerns are orthogonal to, not in conflict with, my equally serious methodological concerns about whether it’s rational to think PUA performs better than placebo given the available evidence).
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to go further and say that in large part the whole point of PUA is to bed Carols. Alices are up for a one night stand anyway, so manipulating them to suspend their usual protective strategies and engage in a one night stand with you would be as pointless as peeling a banana twice.
That sounds wrong. I dabbled in pickup a little bit and I would gladly accept a 2x boost in my attractiveness to Alices in exchange for total loss of attractiveness to Carols. If you think success with Alices is easy, I’d guess that either you didn’t try a lot, or you’re extremely attractive and don’t know it :-)
That sounds wrong. I dabbled in pickup a little bit and I would gladly accept a 2x boost in my attractiveness to Alices in exchange for total loss of attractiveness to Carols. If you think success with Alices is easy, I’d guess that either you didn’t try a lot, or you’re extremely attractive and don’t know it :-)
I wasn’t trying to say that bedding an Alice is “easy” full stop, just that if they find you attractive enough you won’t have to get them to lower their usual protective strategies to get them into bed the same night. That follows directly from how we have defined an Alice. Being an Alice doesn’t mean that they can’t be both choosy and in high demand though.
Carols are the ones who, regardless of how attractive they find you, don’t want to end up in bed that night and hence are the ones where the PUA has to specifically work to get them to lower their defences if the PUA wants that outcome.
ETA: This post seems to be getting hammered with downvotes, despite the fact that it’s doing nothing but clearing up a specific point of confusion about what was being expressed in the grandparent. I find that confusing. If the goal is to hide a subthread which is seen as unproductive it would seem more logical to hammer the parent.
Deceiving others to obtain advantage over them is prima facie unethical in many spheres of life
Irrelevant. Is all fair in love?
I feel that dominance-seeking in romantic relationships is a profound betrayal of trust in a sphere where your moral obligations to behave well are most compelling.
Are you claiming that all romantic relationships which include the domination of one party by the other betray trust? I think we have differing definitions of dominance or good behavior.
Can you point me
Sure! First statement:
Bob behaved unethically in getting to this position since he knowingly brought about a negative-utility outcome for a moral stakeholder.
Second statement:
One approach would be to multiply the probability you have an Alice by the positive utility an Alice gets out of a one night stand, and multiply the probability that you have a Carol by the negative utility a Carol gets out of a one night stand, and see which figure was larger. That would be the strictly utilitarian approach to the question as proposed.
The first statement is judging a decision solely by its outcome; the second statement is judging a decision by its expected value at time of decision-making. The second methodology is closer to correct than the first.
(In the post with the first statement, it was the conclusion of a hypothetical scenario: Bob knew X about Alice, and had sex with her then didn’t contact her. I wasn’t contesting that win-lose outcomes were inferior to win-win outcomes, but was pointing out that the uncertainties involved are significant for any discussion of the subject. There’s no reason to give others autonomy in an omniscient utilitarian framework: just get their utility function and run the numbers for them. In real life, however, autonomy is a major part of any interactions or decision-making, in large part because we cannot have omniscience.)
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to go further and say that in large part the whole point of PUA is to bed Carols.
That does not seem reasonable. Alices may be up for one night stands, but they only have sex with at most one guy a night. The challenge is being that guy.
See, ah, I think I’m against advocating deliberately unethical behavior / defection on LW.
The question is what ethical standard to use. Whether or not exaggeration is unfair in matters of romance has not been established, and I would argue that exaggeration has a far more entrenched position than radical honesty.
That is, I would argue that not exaggerating your desirability as a mate is defection, rather than cooperation, and defection of the lose-lose variety rather than the win-lose variety.
There’s a big difference between asserting something is “irrelevant” versus “incorrect” or “unestablished”.
What was irrelevant is that deceit is unethical in many spheres of life. If deceit is unethical for a scientist* but ethical for a general, then knowing that deceit is unethical for a scientist is irrelevant if discussing generals.
What has not been established is whether romance is more like science or war. I think the former position is far weaker than the latter.
* I had a hard time coming up with any role in which any form of deceit is questionable, and thus I suppose if I were out for points I would question the correctness of the assertion, rather than merely its relevance. Even for scientists, exaggeration- the original behavior under question- is often ethical.
Let me check… nope, it looks like utilitarian ethics holds that ethical actions are those that maximise positive outcomes (however defined) factoring in the consequences for all stakeholders. I can’t see anything in there excluding actions or outcomes related to sex from the usual sorts of calculations. So I’m going to go ahead and say that the answer is no from a utilitarian perspective.
Are you claiming that all romantic relationships which include the domination of one party by the other betray trust? I think we have differing definitions of dominance or good behavior.
If we can exclude those cases where one partner or another honestly and explicitly expresses a free, informed and rational preference to be dominated then mostly yes.
(From a utilitarian perspective we have to at least be philosophically open to the idea that a person who is sufficiently bad at managing their utility might be better off being dominated against their will by a sufficiently altruistic dominator. See The Taming of the Shrew or Overboard. Such cases are atypical).
The first statement is judging a decision solely by its outcome
I have located the source of the confusion. What I actually said in the earlier post was this:
“t might well be that Bob has neither the interest not the ability to sustain a mutually optimal ongoing relationship with Alice and in that case the utility-maximising path from that point forward and hence the ethical option is for Bob to leave and not contact Alice again. However if Bob knew in advance that this was the case and had reason to believe that Alice’s utility function placed a negative value on participating in a one night stand with a person who was not interested in a long-term relationship then Bob behaved unethically in getting to this position since he knowingly brought about a negative-utility outcome for a moral stakeholder.”
I was not judging a situation solely on its outcome, because it was an if/then statement explicitly predicated on Bob knowing in advance that Alice’s utility function would take a major hit.
I guess you just lost track of the context and thought I’d said something I hadn’t. Are we back on the same page together now?
That does not seem reasonable. Alices may be up for one night stands, but they only have sex with at most one guy a night. The challenge is being that guy.
Possibly the recency effect of having skimmed one of Roissy’s blog posts where he specifically singled out for ridicule a female blogger who was expressing regret and confusion after a one night stand colours my recollection, but I am sure I have read PUA materials in the past that had specific sections dedicated to the problem of overcoming the resistance of women who had a preference not to engage in sex on the first/second/nth date, a preference that is certainly not inherently irrational and which seems intuitively likely to correlate with a high probability of regretting a one night stand if it does not turn into an ongoing, happy relationship.
Speaking more broadly a stereo salesperson maximises their sales by selling a stereo to every customer who walks in wanting to buy a stereo, and selling a stereo to as many customers as possible who walk in not wanting to buy a stereo. I’m sure they would prefer all their customers to be the first kind but you maximise your income by getting the most out of both. Game-theory-rational PUAs who don’t have Alices on tap, or a reliable way of filtering out Carols, or who just plain find some Carols attractive and want to sleep with them, would out of either necessity or preference have an interest in maximising their per-Carol chances of bedding a Carol.
It should be noted that, from the perspective of a utilitarian agent in certain environments, it may be the utilitarian action to self-modify into a non-utilitarian agent. That is, an unmodified utilitarian agent participating in certain interactions with non-utilitarian agents may create greater utility by self-modifying into a non-utilitarian agent.
If we can exclude those cases where one partner or another honestly and explicitly expresses a free, informed and rational preference to be dominated then mostly yes.
How prevalent do you think those cases are?
I guess you just lost track of the context and thought I’d said something I hadn’t. Are we back on the same page together now?
Did what you wrote agree with the parenthetical paragraph I wrote explaining my interpretation? If so, we’re on the same page.
a high probability of regretting a one night stand if it does not turn into an ongoing, happy relationship.
Let’s go back to a question I asked a while back that wasn’t answered that is now relevant again, and explore it a little more deeply. What is a utility function? It rank orders actions*. Why do you think stating regret is more indicative of utility than actions taken? If, in the morning, someone claims they prefer X but at night they do ~X, then it seems that it is easier to discount their words than their actions. (An agent who prefers vice at night and virtue during the day is, rather than being inconsistent, trying to get the best of both worlds.)
(As well, Augustine’s prayer is relevant here: Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.).
*Typically, utility functions are computed by assigning values to consequences, then figuring out the expected value of actions, but in order to make practical measurements it has to be considered with regards to actions.
I’m sure they would prefer all their customers to be the first kind but you maximise your income by getting the most out of both.
Right. But it’s not clear to me that it’s unethical for a salesman to sell to reluctant buyers. If you consider a third woman- Diana- who does not agree to have sex on the first date, then both of us would agree that having sex with Diana on the first date would be unethical, just like robbing someone and leaving them a stereo in exchange would be unethical. But pursuing Diana would not be, especially if it’s hard to tell the difference between her and Carol (or Alice) at first glance. Both Carols and Alices have an incentive to seem like Dianas while dating (also car-buying, though not stereo-buying), and so this isn’t an easy problem.
It seems odd to me to suggest a utilitarian should act as though Carols are Dianas.
Interesting question! However I think that we’d need to agree on a definition of “dominated” before any estimate would be meaningful. I’m happy to supply my estimate of prevalence for any definition that suits you.
For the definition I had in mind, which might be something like “in a relationship where one partner routinely makes the majority of important decisions on the basis of superior status” I would be surprised if it was below 0.1% or above 5%.
Did what you wrote agree with the parenthetical paragraph I wrote explaining my interpretation? If so, we’re on the same page.
Well no, I wouldn’t agree with that either, but that’s a separate issue. I don’t think it can be philosophically consistent to apply techniques which purportedly manipulate people by spoofing social signals that act on an unconscious level, distorting their sense of time and so forth and then excuse this on the basis that the agent you are manipulating has autonomy. If they had autonomy in the sense that excused you for attempts at manipulation you could not manipulate them, and if you can manipulate them then they lack the kind of strong autonomy that would give you a moral blank cheque.
Let’s go back to a question I asked a while back that wasn’t answered that is now relevant again, and explore it a little more deeply. What is a utility function? It rank orders actions*. Why do you think stating regret is more indicative of utility than actions taken?
I think it’s more indicative for a few reasons. Firstly conclusions made sober, rested and with time to reflect are more reliable than conclusions made drunk, late at night, horny and in the heat of the moment, and both parties to any such decisions know this in advance. Secondly wishful thinking (which you could also call self-delusion) plays a role, and before being—to borrow a phrase from Roissy—“pumped and dumped” by a PUA a woman might be a victim of cognitive bias that makes her act as if a long-term relationship with a supportive partner is a possibility whereas with hindsight this bias is less likely to distort her calculations. Thirdly the PUA literature that I have read explicitly advocates playing on these factors by not giving the target time to pause and reflect, and by deflecting questions about the future direction of the relationship rather than answering those questions honestly.
I conclude from this that part of PUA strategy is to attempt to manipulate women into making decisions which the PUA knows the women are less likely to make when they are behaving rationally. So not only do I think that stated regret is more indicative of someone’s reflective preferences than their actions the night before in general, but I also think that PUAs know this too.
As always there will be individual exceptions to the general rule.
But it’s not clear to me that it’s unethical for a salesman to sell to reluctant buyers.
Considering only the two parties directly involved, the salesperson and the buyer, it seems fairly clear to me that on average reluctant buyers are more likely to regret the purchase, and that transactions in which one party regrets the transaction are win/lose and not win/win.
Being a highly effective salesperson is not seen as unethical conduct in our current society, and that tends to very strongly influence people’s moral judgements, but I think from a utilitarian standpoint salesmanship that goes beyond providing information is obviously ethically questionable once you get past the default socialisation we share that salespersons are a normal part of life.
It seems odd to me to suggest a utilitarian should act as though Carols are Dianas.
I’m not completely clear on the Carol/Diana distinction being made here. Could you give me the definitions of these two characters as you were thinking of those definitions at the time you posted the parent?
The PUA mythology tries to equivocate between spoofing the signals to indicate that you have such qualities and actually having such qualities but I think competent rationalists should be able to keep their eye on the ball too well to fall for that.
This. But you forgot “using canine social structure as if it were identical to human social structure.”
My complaint with the whole “alpha” and “beta” terminology is that it doesn’t seem to be derived from canine social structure. The omega rank seems more appropriate to what PUAs call “beta.”
Reading more, it doesn’t seem like any of these terms are accurate even to canine society. They were based on observing unrelated gray wolves kept together in captivity, where their social structures bore little resemblance to their normal groupings in the wild (a breeding pair and their cubs). More accurate terms for would be “parents” and “offspring”, which match nicely to human families but aren’t that useful for picking up women in bars.
What about just “until someone proves scientifically”?
Even that weaker position still seems incompatible actually being a utility-maximising agent, since there is prima facie evidence that inducing women to enter into a one-night-stand against their better judgment leads to subsequent distress on the part of the women reasonably often.
A disciple of Bayes and Bentham doesn’t go around causing harm up until someone else shows that it’s scientifically proven that they are causing harm. They do whatever maximises expected utility for all stakeholders based on the best evidence available at the time.
Note that this judgment holds regardless of the relative effectiveness of PUA techniques compared to placebo. Even if PUA is completely useless, which would be surprising given placebo effects alone, it would still be unethical to seek out social transactions that predictably lead to harm for a stakeholder without greater counterbalancing benefits being obtained somehow.
Even that weaker position still seems incompatible actually being a utility-maximising agent, since there is prima facie evidence that inducing women to enter into a one-night-stand against their better judgment leads to subsequent distress on the part of the women reasonably often.
That isn’t a utility maximising agent regardless of whether it demands your ‘proof beyond any doubt’ or just the ‘until someone proves scientifically’. Utility maximising agents shut up and multiply. They use the subjectively objective probabilities and multiply them by the utility of each case.
The utility maximising agent you are talking about is one that you have declared to be a ‘good utilitarian’. It’s maximising everybody’s utility equally. Which also happens to mean that if Bob gains more utility from a one night stand than a Carol loses through self-flaggelation then Bob is morally obliged to seduce her. This is something which I assume you would consider reprehensible. (This is one of the reasons I’m not a good utilitarian. It would disgust me.)
Neither “utility maximiser” nor “good utilitarian” are applause lights which match this proclamation.
(Edited out the last paragraph—it was a claim that was too strong.)
That isn’t a utility maximising agent regardless of whether it demands your ‘proof beyond any doubt’ or just the ‘until someone proves scientifically’. Utility maximising agents shut up and multiply. They use the subjectively objective probabilities and multiply them by the utility of each case.
I took it for granted that the disutility experienced by the hypothetical distressed woman is great enough that a utility-maximiser would seek to have one-night-stands only with women who actually enjoyed them.
The utility maximising agent you are talking about is one that you have declared to be a ‘good utilitarian’. It’s maximising everybody’s utility equally. Which also happens to mean that if Bob gains more utility from a one night stand than a Carol loses through self-flaggelation then Bob is morally obliged to seduce her. This is something which I assume you would consider reprehensible. (This is one of the reasons I’m not a good utilitarian. It would disgust me.)
Given that Bob has the option of creating greater average utility by asking Alices home instead I don’t see this as a problem. What you are saying is true only in a universe where picking up Carol and engaging in a win/lose, marginally-positive-sum interaction with her is the single best thing Bob can do to maximise utility in the universe, and that’s a pretty strange universe.
I also think that PUAs are going to have to justify their actions in utilitarian terms if they are going to do it at all, since I really struggle to see how they could find a deontological or virtue-ethical justification for deceiving people and playing on their cognitive biases to obtain sex without the partner’s fully informed consent. So if the utilitarian justification falls over I think all justifications fall over, although I’m open to alternative arguments on that point.
I don’t think the Weak Gor Hypothesis holds and I don’t think that you maximise a woman’s utility function by treating her the way the misogynistic schools of PUA adovcate, but if you did then I would buy PUA as a utility-maximising strategy. I think it’s about the only way I can see any coherent argument being made that PUA is ethical, excluding the warm-and-fuzzy PUA schools mentioned earlier which I already acknowledged as True Scotsmen.
The second sentence is correct… and conclusively refutes the first.
I cannot reconstruct how you are parsing the first sentence so that it contradicts the second, and I’ve just tried very hard.
Given that Bob has the option of creating greater average utility by asking Alices home instead I don’t see this as a problem.
This seems to be a straw man. I don’t recall ever hearing someone advocating having sex with people that would experience buyers remorse over those that would remember the experience positively. That would be a rather absurd position.
What you are saying is true only in a universe where picking up Carol and engaging in a win/lose, marginally-positive-sum interaction with her is the single best thing Bob can do to maximise utility in the universe, and that’s a pretty strange universe.
Yes, Bob should probably be spending all of his time earning money and gaining power that can be directed to mitigating existential risk. This objection seems to be a distraction from the point. The argument you made is neither utilitarian nor based on maximising utility. That’s ok, moral assertions don’t need to be reframed as utilitarian or utility-maximising. They can be just fine as they are.
This seems to be a straw man. I don’t recall ever hearing someone advocating having sex with people that would experience buyers remorse over those that would remember the experience positively. That would be a rather absurd position.
If so forgive me—I have not seen a PUA in the wild ever mentioning the issue of differentiating targets on the basis of whether or not being picked up would be psychologically healthy for them, so my provisional belief is that they attached no utility or disutility to the matter of whether the pick-up target would remember the experience positively. Am I wrong on that point?
Yes, Bob should probably be spending all of his time earning money and gaining power that can be directed to mitigating existential risk. This objection seems to be a distraction from the point.
This is a general argument which, if it worked, would serve to excuse all sorts of suboptimal behaviour. Just because someone isn’t directing all their efforts at existential risk mitigation or relieving the effects of Third World poverty doesn’t mean that they can’t be judged on the basis of whether they are treating other people’s emotional health recklessly.
The argument you made is neither utilitarian or based on maximising utility. That’s ok, deontological moral assertions don’t need to be reframed as utilitarian or utility-maximising. They can be just fine as they are.
I don’t see how you get to that reading of what I wrote.
I see this as a perfectly valid utilitarian argument-form: There is prima facie evidence X causes significant harm, hence continuing to do X right up until there is scientifically validated evidence that X causes significant harm is inconsistent with utility maximisation.
There’s a suppressed premise in there, that suppressed premise being “there are easily-available alternatives to X”, but since in the specific case under discussion there are easily-available alternatives to picking women up using PUA techniques I didn’t think it strictly necessary to make that premise explicit.
There are separate, potential deontological objections to PUA behaviour, some of which I have already stated, but I don’t see how you got to the conclusion that this particular argument was deontological in nature.
If so forgive me—I have not seen a PUA in the wild ever mentioning the issue of differentiating targets on the basis of whether or not being picked up would be psychologically healthy for them, so my provisional belief is that they attached no utility or disutility to the matter of whether the pick-up target would remember the experience positively. Am I wrong on that point?
The goalposts have moved again. But my answer would be yes anyway.
Strictly speaking you moved them first since I never claimed that anyone was ” advocating having sex with people that would experience buyers remorse over those that would remember the experience positively.” (Emphasis on over). As opposed to advocating having sex with people disregarding the issue of whether that person would experience remorse, which is what I’d seen PUA advocates saying. I just put the goalposts back where they were originally without making an undue fuss about it, since goalposts wander due to imprecisions in communication without any mendacity required.
I think this conversation is suffering, not for the first time, from the fuzziness of the PUA term. It covers AMF and Soporno (who has a name which is unfortunate but memorable, if it is his real name) who do not appear to be advocating exploiting others for one’s personal utility, and it also covers people like Roissy who revel in doing so.
So I think I phrased that last post poorly. I should have made the declarative statement “many but not all of the PUA writers I have viewed encourage reckless or actively malevolent behaviour with regard to the emotional wellbeing of potential sexual partners, and I think those people are bad utilitarians (and also bad people by almost any deontological or virtue-ethical standard). People who are members of the PUA set who do not do this are not the intended target of this particular criticism”.
Knowing that her weights on those things are positive gets me nowhere. What I need to know are their relative strengths, and this seems like an issue where (heterosexual) individuals are least poised to be able to generalize their own experience. It seems likely that a man could go through life thinking that everyone enjoys one night stands and sleeps great afterwards, and not until reading PUA literature realizes that women often freak out after them.
Suppose she flirts, or the equivalent (that is, rather than just seeking general attraction, she seeks targeted attraction at some point). If she never expresses any interest, it’s unlikely she and Bob will have sex (outside of obviously unethical scenarios).
What question do you think is most important?
Suppose Bob and Alice both believe that actions reveal preferences.
Suppose Alices enjoy one night stands, and Carols regret one night stands, though they agree to have sex after the first date. When Bob meets a woman, he can’t expect her to honestly respond whether she’s a Carol or an Alice if he asks her directly. What probability does he need that a woman he seduces in a bar will be an Alice for it to be ethical to seduce women in bars?
As well, if he believes that actions reveal preferences, should he expect that one night stands are a net utility gain or loss for Carols?
Hopefully research like that cited in the OP can help with that. In the meantime we have to do the best we can with what we have, and engage in whatever behaviours maximise the expected utility of all stakeholders based on our existing, limited knowledge.
I think the most important question is “Is it ethical to obtain sex by deliberately faking social signals, given what we know of the consequences for both parties of this behaviour?”. A close second would be “Is it ethical to engage in dominance-seeking behaviour in a romantic relationship?”.
One approach would be to multiply the probability you have an Alice by the positive utility an Alice gets out of a one night stand, and multiply the probability that you have a Carol by the negative utility a Carol gets out of a one night stand, and see which figure was larger. That would be the strictly utilitarian approach to the question as proposed.
If we’re allowed to try to get out of the question as proposed, which is poor form in philosophical discussion and smart behaviour in real life, a good utilitarian would try to find ways to differentiate Alices and Carols, and only have one night stands with Alices.
A possible deontological approach would be to say “Ask them if they are an Alice or a Carol, and treat them as the kind of person they present themselves to be. If they lied it’s their fault”.
The crypto-sociopathic approach would be to say “This is all very complicated and confusing, so until someone proves beyond any doubt I’m hurting people I’ll just go on doing what feels good to me”.
“Deliberately faking social signals”? But, but, that barely makes any sense. They are signals. You give the best ones you can. Everybody else knows that you are trying to give the best signals that you can and so can make conclusions about your ability to send signals and also what other signals you will most likely give to them and others in the future. That is more or less what socializing is. I suppose blatant lies in a context where lying isn’t appropriate and elaborate creation of false high status identities could be qualify—but in those case I would probably use a more specific description.
A third would be “could the majority of humans have a romantic relationship without dominance-seeking behavior?” and the fourth : “would most people find romantic relationships anywhere near as satisfying without dominance-seeking behavior?” (My money is on the “No”s.)
One more question: What principles would help establish how much dominance seeking behavior is enough to break the relationship or in some other way cause more damage than it’s worth, considering that part of dominance is ignoring feedback that it’s unwelcome?”
Yes, that part is hard, even on a micro scale. I have been frequently surprised that I underestimate how much dominance seeking would be optimal. I attribute this to mind-projection. ie “This means she would prefer me to do that? Wow. I’d never take that shit if it was directed at me. Hmm… I’m going do that for her benefit and be sure not to send any signal that I am doing it for compliance. It’s actually kind of fun.”
(Here I do mean actual unambiguous messages—verbal or through blatantly obvious social signalling by the partner. I don’t mean just “some source says that’s what women want”.)
Fortunately we can choose which dominance seeking behaviors to accept and reject at the level of individual behavioral trait. We could also, if it was necessary for a particular relationship, play the role of someone who is ignoring feedback but actually absorb everything and process it in order to form the most useful model of how to navigate the relationship optimally. On the flip side we can signal and screen to avoid dominance seeking behaviors that we particularly don’t want and seek out and naturally reward those that we do want.
Wow, really? How? I make the opposite mistake all the time (at least I think I do) so I’d be interested in hearing some examples.
PUAs have trouble grasping that there is a difference between appearance and reality, which is ironic in some ways. It’s an implicit part of their doctrine that if you can pass yourself off as an “alpha” that you really are an “alpha”, in the sense of being the kind of person that women really do want to mate with.
However it seems obvious to me that the whole PUA strategy is to spoof their external signals in a way they hope will fool women into drawing incorrect conclusions about what is actually going on within the PUA’s mind and what characteristics the PUA is actually bringing to the relationship table. It’s a way for socially awkward nerds to believe they are camouflaging themselves as rough, tough, confident super-studs and helping themselves to reproductive opportunities while so camouflaged.
They excuse this moral failing by saying “Everybody else is doing it, hence it’s okay for me to do it only more so”.
However it’s well-established in general societal morals that obtaining sex by deception is a form of non-violent rape. If you’re having sex with someone knowing that they are ignorant of relevant facts which if they knew them would stop them having sex with you, then you are not having sex with their free and informed consent.
The fact that someone is a PUA using specific PUA techniques to misrepresent their real mind-state seems to me like highly relevant information in relationship decision-making.
Is there proper scientific evidence for this? If not do you acknowledge that this is at least potentially a moral excuse of the same form as “Everyone else is doing it, so it’s okay for me to do it”?
I suspect it would actually turn out that correctly socialised people would prefer and flourish more completely in relationships which are free of dominance games, and I think my naive folk-psychological guesswork is just as good as yours.
I find that those with any significant degree of PUA competence are not particularly inclined to try to excuse themselves to others. Apart from being an unhealthy mindset to be stuck in it sends all the wrong signals. They would instead bock out any hecklers and go about their business. If people try to shame them specifically while they are flirting or socializing they may need to handle the situation actively but it is almost certainly not going to be with excuses.
Acting confident and suppressing nervousness is not rape.
It is a third and fourth question added to a list. Unless the first two were supposed to be scientific proclamations this doesn’t seem to be an appropriate demand.
No to the “if not” implication—not presenting proper scientific evidence wouldn’t make it an excuse. No to the equivalence of these questions to that form. Most importantly: nothing is an ‘excuse’ unless the person giving it believes they doing something bad.
I really don’t think naivety is a significant failing of mine.
So far in this conversation those I have mentally labelled pro-PUA have inevitably introduced scenarios where both parties are using “seduction techniques”, which I think is a term which is dangerous since it conflates honest signalling with spoofed signalling, or by claiming (as you did) that the idea of spoofing social signals “barely makes any sense”. I take those arguments to be excusing the act of spoofing social signals on the basis either that all women also spoof their social signals and that two wrongs make a right, or that there is in fact no such thing as social spoofing and that hence PUAs cannot be morally condemned for doing something which does not exist.
In and of itself, it seems to me that at least potentially it is deliberately depriving the target of access to relevant facts that they would wish to know before making a decision whether or not to engage socially, sexually or romantically with the suppressor.
However unless you believe that pick-up targets’ relevant decision-making would be totally unaffected by the knowledge that the person approaching them was a PUA using specific PUA techniques, then concealing that fact from the pick-up target is an attempt to obtain sex without the target’s free and informed consent. If you know fact X, and you know fact X is a potential deal-breaker with regard to their decision whether or not to sleep with you, you have a moral obligation to disclose X.
″ In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know”.
Socrates
Edit in response to edit: I was asked what I thought the most important ethical questions were with regard to PUA, and answered that question with two ethical questions. You responded by asking two factual questions of your own, which if answered in the negative would make my second question redundant, and stated that your money (which since you are posting here I took to mean that you have a Bayesian conviction that your answer is more likely to be right than not) was on the answer to those questions being negative.
You must have some basis for that probability estimate. Saying that it’s not an “appropriate demand” to ask for those bases doesn’t solve the problem that without access to your bases we can’t tell if your probability estimate is rational.
It is also a category error to put ethical questions and factual questions in the same bin and argue that because my ethical questions are not “scientific proclamations” that this means you don’t have to provide support for your factual probability estimates.
I certainly wouldn’t say is true either.
Like what?
It is odd that a reply that is entirely to wedrifid quotes is made in response to NancyLebovitz comment which makes an entirely different point. Did you click the wrong ‘reply’ button?
It looks like I did. Is the correct move in this situation to delete the misplaced post, repost it in the correct spot, and delete this one too?
I would just leave it. No big deal and there are already replies.
This question seems malformed. “Deliberating faking social signals” is vague- but is typically not something that’s unethical (Is it unethical to exaggerate?). “What we know of the consequences” is unclear- what’s our common knowledge?
Yes.
And, of course, you saw the disconnect between your original statement and your new, more correct one.
Right?
The reason I asked that question is because you put forth the claim that Bob’s fault was knowingly causing harm to someone. That’s not the real problem, though- people can ethically knowingly cause harm to others in a wide variety of situations, under any vaguely reasonable ethical system. Any system Bob has for trying to determine the difference between Alices and Carols will have some chance of failure, and so it’s necessary to use standard risk management, not shut down.
Rhetorical questions are a mechanism that allows us to get out of making declarative statements, and when you find yourself using them that should be an immediate alert signal to yourself that you may be confused or that your premises bear re-examination.
Deceiving others to obtain advantage over them is prima facie unethical in many spheres of life, and I think Kant would say that it is always unethical. Some role-ethicists would argue that when playing roles such as “salesperson”, “advertiser” or “lawyer” that you have a moral license or even obligation to deceive others to obtain advantage but these seem to me like rationalisations rather than coherent arguments from supportable prior principles. Even if you buy that story in the case of lawyers, however, you’d need to make a separate case that romantic relationships are a sphere where deceiving others to obtain advantage is legitimate, as opposed to unethical.
PUA is to a large extent about spoofing social signals, in the attempt to let young, nerdy, white-collar IT workers signal that they have the physical and psychological qualities to lead a prehistoric tribe and bring home meat. The PUA mythology tries to equivocate between spoofing the signals to indicate that you have such qualities and actually having such qualities but I think competent rationalists should be able to keep their eye on the ball too well to fall for that. Consciously and subconsciously women want an outstanding male, not a mediocre one who is spoofing their social signals, and being able to spoof social signals does not make you an outstanding male.
Okay. We come from radically different ethical perspectives such that it may be unlikely that we can achieve a meeting of minds. I feel that dominance-seeking in romantic relationships is a profound betrayal of trust in a sphere where your moral obligations to behave well are most compelling.
Can you point me to the text that you take to be “my original statement” and the text you take to be “my new, more correct statement”? There may be a disconnect but I’m currently unable to tell what text these constructs are pointing to, so I can’t explicate the specific difficulty.
People can ethically and knowingly burn each other to death in a wide variety of situations under any vaguely reasonable ethical system too, so that statement is effectively meaningless. It’s a truly general argument. (Yes, I exclude from reasonableness any moral system that would stop you burning one serial killer to death to prevent them bringing about some arbitrarily awful consequence if there were no better ways to prevent that outcome).
We agree completely on that point, but it seems to me that a substantial subset of PUA practitioners and methodologies are aiming to deliberately increase the risk, not manage it. Their goals are to maximise the percentage of Alices who sleep with the PUA and also to maximise the percentage of Carols who sleep with the PUA.
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to go further and say that in large part the whole point of PUA is to bed Carols. Alices are up for a one night stand anyway, so manipulating them to suspend their usual protective strategies and engage in a one night stand with you would be as pointless as peeling a banana twice. It’s only the Carols who are not normally up for a one night stand that you need to manipulate in the first place. Hence that subset of PUA is all about maximising the risk of doing harm, not minimising that risk.
(Note that these ethical concerns are orthogonal to, not in conflict with, my equally serious methodological concerns about whether it’s rational to think PUA performs better than placebo given the available evidence).
That sounds wrong. I dabbled in pickup a little bit and I would gladly accept a 2x boost in my attractiveness to Alices in exchange for total loss of attractiveness to Carols. If you think success with Alices is easy, I’d guess that either you didn’t try a lot, or you’re extremely attractive and don’t know it :-)
I wasn’t trying to say that bedding an Alice is “easy” full stop, just that if they find you attractive enough you won’t have to get them to lower their usual protective strategies to get them into bed the same night. That follows directly from how we have defined an Alice. Being an Alice doesn’t mean that they can’t be both choosy and in high demand though.
Carols are the ones who, regardless of how attractive they find you, don’t want to end up in bed that night and hence are the ones where the PUA has to specifically work to get them to lower their defences if the PUA wants that outcome.
ETA: This post seems to be getting hammered with downvotes, despite the fact that it’s doing nothing but clearing up a specific point of confusion about what was being expressed in the grandparent. I find that confusing. If the goal is to hide a subthread which is seen as unproductive it would seem more logical to hammer the parent.
You admit it’s not easy, then turn right back around and say it shouldn’t require a lot of effort.
Irrelevant. Is all fair in love?
Are you claiming that all romantic relationships which include the domination of one party by the other betray trust? I think we have differing definitions of dominance or good behavior.
Sure! First statement:
Second statement:
The first statement is judging a decision solely by its outcome; the second statement is judging a decision by its expected value at time of decision-making. The second methodology is closer to correct than the first.
(In the post with the first statement, it was the conclusion of a hypothetical scenario: Bob knew X about Alice, and had sex with her then didn’t contact her. I wasn’t contesting that win-lose outcomes were inferior to win-win outcomes, but was pointing out that the uncertainties involved are significant for any discussion of the subject. There’s no reason to give others autonomy in an omniscient utilitarian framework: just get their utility function and run the numbers for them. In real life, however, autonomy is a major part of any interactions or decision-making, in large part because we cannot have omniscience.)
That does not seem reasonable. Alices may be up for one night stands, but they only have sex with at most one guy a night. The challenge is being that guy.
See, ah, I think I’m against advocating deliberately unethical behavior / defection on LW.
Prude. :P
The question is what ethical standard to use. Whether or not exaggeration is unfair in matters of romance has not been established, and I would argue that exaggeration has a far more entrenched position than radical honesty.
That is, I would argue that not exaggerating your desirability as a mate is defection, rather than cooperation, and defection of the lose-lose variety rather than the win-lose variety.
That’s… not what you said.
There’s a big difference between asserting something is “irrelevant” versus “incorrect” or “unestablished”.
The treatment of ethics in PUA threads makes me somewhat nervous.
What was irrelevant is that deceit is unethical in many spheres of life. If deceit is unethical for a scientist* but ethical for a general, then knowing that deceit is unethical for a scientist is irrelevant if discussing generals.
What has not been established is whether romance is more like science or war. I think the former position is far weaker than the latter.
* I had a hard time coming up with any role in which any form of deceit is questionable, and thus I suppose if I were out for points I would question the correctness of the assertion, rather than merely its relevance. Even for scientists, exaggeration- the original behavior under question- is often ethical.
Let me check… nope, it looks like utilitarian ethics holds that ethical actions are those that maximise positive outcomes (however defined) factoring in the consequences for all stakeholders. I can’t see anything in there excluding actions or outcomes related to sex from the usual sorts of calculations. So I’m going to go ahead and say that the answer is no from a utilitarian perspective.
If we can exclude those cases where one partner or another honestly and explicitly expresses a free, informed and rational preference to be dominated then mostly yes.
(From a utilitarian perspective we have to at least be philosophically open to the idea that a person who is sufficiently bad at managing their utility might be better off being dominated against their will by a sufficiently altruistic dominator. See The Taming of the Shrew or Overboard. Such cases are atypical).
I have located the source of the confusion. What I actually said in the earlier post was this:
“t might well be that Bob has neither the interest not the ability to sustain a mutually optimal ongoing relationship with Alice and in that case the utility-maximising path from that point forward and hence the ethical option is for Bob to leave and not contact Alice again. However if Bob knew in advance that this was the case and had reason to believe that Alice’s utility function placed a negative value on participating in a one night stand with a person who was not interested in a long-term relationship then Bob behaved unethically in getting to this position since he knowingly brought about a negative-utility outcome for a moral stakeholder.”
I was not judging a situation solely on its outcome, because it was an if/then statement explicitly predicated on Bob knowing in advance that Alice’s utility function would take a major hit.
I guess you just lost track of the context and thought I’d said something I hadn’t. Are we back on the same page together now?
Possibly the recency effect of having skimmed one of Roissy’s blog posts where he specifically singled out for ridicule a female blogger who was expressing regret and confusion after a one night stand colours my recollection, but I am sure I have read PUA materials in the past that had specific sections dedicated to the problem of overcoming the resistance of women who had a preference not to engage in sex on the first/second/nth date, a preference that is certainly not inherently irrational and which seems intuitively likely to correlate with a high probability of regretting a one night stand if it does not turn into an ongoing, happy relationship.
Speaking more broadly a stereo salesperson maximises their sales by selling a stereo to every customer who walks in wanting to buy a stereo, and selling a stereo to as many customers as possible who walk in not wanting to buy a stereo. I’m sure they would prefer all their customers to be the first kind but you maximise your income by getting the most out of both. Game-theory-rational PUAs who don’t have Alices on tap, or a reliable way of filtering out Carols, or who just plain find some Carols attractive and want to sleep with them, would out of either necessity or preference have an interest in maximising their per-Carol chances of bedding a Carol.
It should be noted that, from the perspective of a utilitarian agent in certain environments, it may be the utilitarian action to self-modify into a non-utilitarian agent. That is, an unmodified utilitarian agent participating in certain interactions with non-utilitarian agents may create greater utility by self-modifying into a non-utilitarian agent.
(This seems obviously true. I removed the downvote!)
How prevalent do you think those cases are?
Did what you wrote agree with the parenthetical paragraph I wrote explaining my interpretation? If so, we’re on the same page.
Let’s go back to a question I asked a while back that wasn’t answered that is now relevant again, and explore it a little more deeply. What is a utility function? It rank orders actions*. Why do you think stating regret is more indicative of utility than actions taken? If, in the morning, someone claims they prefer X but at night they do ~X, then it seems that it is easier to discount their words than their actions. (An agent who prefers vice at night and virtue during the day is, rather than being inconsistent, trying to get the best of both worlds.)
(As well, Augustine’s prayer is relevant here: Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.).
*Typically, utility functions are computed by assigning values to consequences, then figuring out the expected value of actions, but in order to make practical measurements it has to be considered with regards to actions.
Right. But it’s not clear to me that it’s unethical for a salesman to sell to reluctant buyers. If you consider a third woman- Diana- who does not agree to have sex on the first date, then both of us would agree that having sex with Diana on the first date would be unethical, just like robbing someone and leaving them a stereo in exchange would be unethical. But pursuing Diana would not be, especially if it’s hard to tell the difference between her and Carol (or Alice) at first glance. Both Carols and Alices have an incentive to seem like Dianas while dating (also car-buying, though not stereo-buying), and so this isn’t an easy problem.
It seems odd to me to suggest a utilitarian should act as though Carols are Dianas.
Interesting question! However I think that we’d need to agree on a definition of “dominated” before any estimate would be meaningful. I’m happy to supply my estimate of prevalence for any definition that suits you.
For the definition I had in mind, which might be something like “in a relationship where one partner routinely makes the majority of important decisions on the basis of superior status” I would be surprised if it was below 0.1% or above 5%.
Well no, I wouldn’t agree with that either, but that’s a separate issue. I don’t think it can be philosophically consistent to apply techniques which purportedly manipulate people by spoofing social signals that act on an unconscious level, distorting their sense of time and so forth and then excuse this on the basis that the agent you are manipulating has autonomy. If they had autonomy in the sense that excused you for attempts at manipulation you could not manipulate them, and if you can manipulate them then they lack the kind of strong autonomy that would give you a moral blank cheque.
I think it’s more indicative for a few reasons. Firstly conclusions made sober, rested and with time to reflect are more reliable than conclusions made drunk, late at night, horny and in the heat of the moment, and both parties to any such decisions know this in advance. Secondly wishful thinking (which you could also call self-delusion) plays a role, and before being—to borrow a phrase from Roissy—“pumped and dumped” by a PUA a woman might be a victim of cognitive bias that makes her act as if a long-term relationship with a supportive partner is a possibility whereas with hindsight this bias is less likely to distort her calculations. Thirdly the PUA literature that I have read explicitly advocates playing on these factors by not giving the target time to pause and reflect, and by deflecting questions about the future direction of the relationship rather than answering those questions honestly.
I conclude from this that part of PUA strategy is to attempt to manipulate women into making decisions which the PUA knows the women are less likely to make when they are behaving rationally. So not only do I think that stated regret is more indicative of someone’s reflective preferences than their actions the night before in general, but I also think that PUAs know this too.
As always there will be individual exceptions to the general rule.
Considering only the two parties directly involved, the salesperson and the buyer, it seems fairly clear to me that on average reluctant buyers are more likely to regret the purchase, and that transactions in which one party regrets the transaction are win/lose and not win/win.
Being a highly effective salesperson is not seen as unethical conduct in our current society, and that tends to very strongly influence people’s moral judgements, but I think from a utilitarian standpoint salesmanship that goes beyond providing information is obviously ethically questionable once you get past the default socialisation we share that salespersons are a normal part of life.
I’m not completely clear on the Carol/Diana distinction being made here. Could you give me the definitions of these two characters as you were thinking of those definitions at the time you posted the parent?
This. But you forgot “using canine social structure as if it were identical to human social structure.”
My complaint with the whole “alpha” and “beta” terminology is that it doesn’t seem to be derived from canine social structure. The omega rank seems more appropriate to what PUAs call “beta.”
Reading more, it doesn’t seem like any of these terms are accurate even to canine society. They were based on observing unrelated gray wolves kept together in captivity, where their social structures bore little resemblance to their normal groupings in the wild (a breeding pair and their cubs). More accurate terms for would be “parents” and “offspring”, which match nicely to human families but aren’t that useful for picking up women in bars.
We hope.
What about just “until someone proves scientifically”?
Even that weaker position still seems incompatible actually being a utility-maximising agent, since there is prima facie evidence that inducing women to enter into a one-night-stand against their better judgment leads to subsequent distress on the part of the women reasonably often.
A disciple of Bayes and Bentham doesn’t go around causing harm up until someone else shows that it’s scientifically proven that they are causing harm. They do whatever maximises expected utility for all stakeholders based on the best evidence available at the time.
Note that this judgment holds regardless of the relative effectiveness of PUA techniques compared to placebo. Even if PUA is completely useless, which would be surprising given placebo effects alone, it would still be unethical to seek out social transactions that predictably lead to harm for a stakeholder without greater counterbalancing benefits being obtained somehow.
That isn’t a utility maximising agent regardless of whether it demands your ‘proof beyond any doubt’ or just the ‘until someone proves scientifically’. Utility maximising agents shut up and multiply. They use the subjectively objective probabilities and multiply them by the utility of each case.
The utility maximising agent you are talking about is one that you have declared to be a ‘good utilitarian’. It’s maximising everybody’s utility equally. Which also happens to mean that if Bob gains more utility from a one night stand than a Carol loses through self-flaggelation then Bob is morally obliged to seduce her. This is something which I assume you would consider reprehensible. (This is one of the reasons I’m not a good utilitarian. It would disgust me.)
Neither “utility maximiser” nor “good utilitarian” are applause lights which match this proclamation.
(Edited out the last paragraph—it was a claim that was too strong.)
I took it for granted that the disutility experienced by the hypothetical distressed woman is great enough that a utility-maximiser would seek to have one-night-stands only with women who actually enjoyed them.
Given that Bob has the option of creating greater average utility by asking Alices home instead I don’t see this as a problem. What you are saying is true only in a universe where picking up Carol and engaging in a win/lose, marginally-positive-sum interaction with her is the single best thing Bob can do to maximise utility in the universe, and that’s a pretty strange universe.
I also think that PUAs are going to have to justify their actions in utilitarian terms if they are going to do it at all, since I really struggle to see how they could find a deontological or virtue-ethical justification for deceiving people and playing on their cognitive biases to obtain sex without the partner’s fully informed consent. So if the utilitarian justification falls over I think all justifications fall over, although I’m open to alternative arguments on that point.
I don’t think the Weak Gor Hypothesis holds and I don’t think that you maximise a woman’s utility function by treating her the way the misogynistic schools of PUA adovcate, but if you did then I would buy PUA as a utility-maximising strategy. I think it’s about the only way I can see any coherent argument being made that PUA is ethical, excluding the warm-and-fuzzy PUA schools mentioned earlier which I already acknowledged as True Scotsmen.
I cannot reconstruct how you are parsing the first sentence so that it contradicts the second, and I’ve just tried very hard.
This seems to be a straw man. I don’t recall ever hearing someone advocating having sex with people that would experience buyers remorse over those that would remember the experience positively. That would be a rather absurd position.
Yes, Bob should probably be spending all of his time earning money and gaining power that can be directed to mitigating existential risk. This objection seems to be a distraction from the point. The argument you made is neither utilitarian nor based on maximising utility. That’s ok, moral assertions don’t need to be reframed as utilitarian or utility-maximising. They can be just fine as they are.
If so forgive me—I have not seen a PUA in the wild ever mentioning the issue of differentiating targets on the basis of whether or not being picked up would be psychologically healthy for them, so my provisional belief is that they attached no utility or disutility to the matter of whether the pick-up target would remember the experience positively. Am I wrong on that point?
This is a general argument which, if it worked, would serve to excuse all sorts of suboptimal behaviour. Just because someone isn’t directing all their efforts at existential risk mitigation or relieving the effects of Third World poverty doesn’t mean that they can’t be judged on the basis of whether they are treating other people’s emotional health recklessly.
I don’t see how you get to that reading of what I wrote.
I see this as a perfectly valid utilitarian argument-form: There is prima facie evidence X causes significant harm, hence continuing to do X right up until there is scientifically validated evidence that X causes significant harm is inconsistent with utility maximisation.
There’s a suppressed premise in there, that suppressed premise being “there are easily-available alternatives to X”, but since in the specific case under discussion there are easily-available alternatives to picking women up using PUA techniques I didn’t think it strictly necessary to make that premise explicit.
There are separate, potential deontological objections to PUA behaviour, some of which I have already stated, but I don’t see how you got to the conclusion that this particular argument was deontological in nature.
The goalposts have moved again. But my answer would be yes anyway.
Strictly speaking you moved them first since I never claimed that anyone was ” advocating having sex with people that would experience buyers remorse over those that would remember the experience positively.” (Emphasis on over). As opposed to advocating having sex with people disregarding the issue of whether that person would experience remorse, which is what I’d seen PUA advocates saying. I just put the goalposts back where they were originally without making an undue fuss about it, since goalposts wander due to imprecisions in communication without any mendacity required.
I think this conversation is suffering, not for the first time, from the fuzziness of the PUA term. It covers AMF and Soporno (who has a name which is unfortunate but memorable, if it is his real name) who do not appear to be advocating exploiting others for one’s personal utility, and it also covers people like Roissy who revel in doing so.
So I think I phrased that last post poorly. I should have made the declarative statement “many but not all of the PUA writers I have viewed encourage reckless or actively malevolent behaviour with regard to the emotional wellbeing of potential sexual partners, and I think those people are bad utilitarians (and also bad people by almost any deontological or virtue-ethical standard). People who are members of the PUA set who do not do this are not the intended target of this particular criticism”.