BTW, given the usual reaction to posts about relationships, I expect this post to get a fair number of downvotes. But I would genuinely like to hear from downvoters about why they’re downvoting. Previousexplanations were useful.
Individually very minor, petty reasons, befitting a very minor, petty action:
1) It bored me.
2) Your research skills are very impressive and I’d rather them be directed towards CEV or the like.
3) Ugh field concerning this site and sex/dating questions.
4) There’s no puzzle to it; you’re not illustrating any broader methodological point or coming to any new conclusions, just acting as a clearinghouse for dating advice.
Just to agree with the above, and expand my feelings:
I don’t see a lot of new ideas here. It would surprise me if an average less wrong reader hadn’t spent a little time researching this topic, and all of this is fairly mainstream information.
I have a very strong ugh field set up around instrumentally pursuing females. After a bad break up, I spent about 6 months learning PUA, I had quite good success (my physical appearance is not lacking), but found the whole thing to be so pathetically empty compared to previous “organic” relationship that I felt defeated even though I wasn’t.
I realize that this can probably be accounted for, and note that it is one area that the PUA community seems to be lacking in. Lots of emotionally unfulfilling sex isn’t optimal by a long shot, though it may be beneficial for a certain subset of individuals.
Anyways, one of the most important things I learned was to try and avoid too much theory, and break it down into individual actionable items. Given that with this topic especially, readers will likely come from all over the spectrum of possible skill levels, that might be a hard thing to do. But perhaps behavioral exercises… links to resources and specific suggestions for conversation, fashion, body language.
On #5, part of me wants to agree, because we’re not a sciencer about.com, but another part of me really wants there to be more lesswrong members becoming more instrumentally rational. Maybe even, as an exercise, asking members to find there own ugh field, use the value of scholarship, compile useful material into a quality post (along the same lines as Luke does), apply it in real life, and then report on it, either in a discussion thrsad or in an offshoot of the main post. This seems like a really basic thing that a rationalist gym should/ would do.
In general I’m concerned with the way the community is headed—I joined for the philosophy, I’m less interested in reading about analytic people’s approaches to basic social interaction. Some days I feel like this site has gone from Less Wrong to Wrong Planet.
So I guess I’m downvoting as a political stance, rather than anything to do with the quality of your writing. Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not helpful.
I’d be concerned if the community failed to explore these sort of topics.
Mere “philosophy” would be kind of empty. Once the idea of instrumental rationality was held up, the idea that rationalists should win, then it’s either start trying to apply it to real problems, or concede that we didn’t really mean it and that we just want to talk about stuff that makes us sound intelligent and sophisticated. That “applied rationality” features prominently here adds enormously to the credibility of LW and especially of the authors who have something to say about it, at least in my eyes.
Perhaps the problem is whether this generates the perception of “self-help” as opposed to “becoming awesome”. The former kinda smacks of low status and might turn some people off, while impressive success is obviously not a problem. Perhaps it’s a presentation issue (I suck at PR so I can’t judge), or perhaps we just haven’t amassed a sufficient wealth of evidence of awesomeness to overcome the negative connotations.
I second this position. Despite the fact that I will probably benefit from these self-help kinds of posts, I’m nonetheless more interested in posts about creating new rationality skills and dissolving philosophical dilemmas.
Also, affixing the word “rational” to everything is mildly grating.
I would also prefer more quality philosophy like the original sequences, but I prefer quality posts about relationships to low-quality posts about philosophy that present rambling thoughts or stuff that’s already been covered to death.
In general I’m concerned with the way the community is headed—I joined for the philosophy, I’m less interested in reading about analytic people’s approaches to basic social interaction. Some days I feel like this site has gone from Less Wrong to Wrong Planet.
I joined for the same reason, but since I maintain a Stoic stance I’m actually very comfortable with my philosophy impinging on my practical considerations. Philosophy need not be impractical (although I agree that some things, like “rational gift buying for persons 8 or under”, are too disconnected from the philosophy espoused here that it would be best we didn’t encourage those kinds of posts).
My impression is that sometimes there are more epistemic or otherwise technical articles, and sometimes there are more instrumental rationality articles. I don’t have a feeling for whether it’s mostly random variation, or if articles of one sort tends to inspire more of the same until people run out of ideas and/or get sick of it.
The post is long, yet there isn’t much of value here, just a lot of things that are obvious (e.g. goth dress might help success with goths, here is a graph to demonstrate that already totally intuitive bit of info). People on LW like to see obvious things restated in formal ways, with graphs and footnotes. This feels like accessing secret knowledge via x-rationalist super powers. But it isn’t. It isn’t even standard learning. I see this kind of thing a lot on LW.
Relationship advice is outside of the LW comparative advantage (and I suspect absolute advantage as well).
I get the feeling this is about to turn into a commercial for polyamory, and I don’t want that to happen. There have now been several posts devoted to advocating polyamory as a “rational” relationship style. To me this feels a lot like hearing people talking about creating “rationally-planned” utopian communes. (It’s no coincidence that polyamory and utopian socialism have so often been found together, from the early Christian Adamites, to the Radical Swedenborgians, to the counterculture hippies in the 1970s.) It’s depressing and non-productive to see people falling into the same traps over and over.
I didn’t downvote, but I didn’t upvote, and I’d actually be a bit embarrassed if it were the first thing that a friend of mine saw on Less Wrong. This is mostly due to a few lingering phrases that, although I know you don’t intend them that way, have widely known sexist connotations. For instance:
Girls seeking rationalist guys are at an advantage because the gender ratio lies in their favor
I know you mean to say “the current community of self-identified rationalists contains many more men than women”, but you can easily imagine what connotations someone else might imbue it with. I got an ‘ugh’ reaction upon first reading it, even though I know you meant better.
Some women say they want a long-term relationship but date ‘bad boys’ who are unlikely to become long-term mates.
Similarly, for reasons of connotation/signaling I’d prefer it if you avoided examples that fit the “nice guy’s lament” genre, or at least put a citation to them rather than treating them as too obvious to bother backing up.
ETA: I should mention that I hold the language of Main-level posts to a much higher standard than I do Discussion posts or comments. If you’re making something public, then you have the burden of proper communication.
You might recall that (befitting my very nature) I was extremely grouchy about a previous foray of yours into this territory. I’m not downvoting the current post because I think you’ve more-or-less successfully avoided the worst of the problems I foresaw if you went down the previously outlined path.
I also haven’t upvoted the current post. First, I endorse Nominull and Tetronian’s comments above, with respect to this kind of topic not really being central to the LW mission (but that’s okay as long as community members find it valuable and it doesn’t do any harm). However, following on those, I think it is much more important that LW remain a welcoming and inclusive place than that this topic be discussed. By that I mean that I would very strongly encourage you to keep these posts gender- and orientation-neutral—not just nominally so, but really at the level of substance. This post certainly succeeds in that, which is encouraging. (The co-authors are indispensable here, I think.)
And I hope you will be open to simply shutting this series of posts down if the comments on them can’t maintain a similar level of decorum and inclusivity. (I can hardly imagine new women joining this community if PUA and “seduction” are routinely discussed in comments.)
BTW, given the usual reaction to posts about relationships, I expect this post to get a fair number of downvotes. But I would genuinely like to hear from downvoters about why they’re downvoting. Previous explanations were useful.
Individually very minor, petty reasons, befitting a very minor, petty action:
1) It bored me.
2) Your research skills are very impressive and I’d rather them be directed towards CEV or the like.
3) Ugh field concerning this site and sex/dating questions.
4) There’s no puzzle to it; you’re not illustrating any broader methodological point or coming to any new conclusions, just acting as a clearinghouse for dating advice.
5) “A Rational Approach to...”
Just to agree with the above, and expand my feelings:
I don’t see a lot of new ideas here. It would surprise me if an average less wrong reader hadn’t spent a little time researching this topic, and all of this is fairly mainstream information.
I have a very strong ugh field set up around instrumentally pursuing females. After a bad break up, I spent about 6 months learning PUA, I had quite good success (my physical appearance is not lacking), but found the whole thing to be so pathetically empty compared to previous “organic” relationship that I felt defeated even though I wasn’t.
I realize that this can probably be accounted for, and note that it is one area that the PUA community seems to be lacking in. Lots of emotionally unfulfilling sex isn’t optimal by a long shot, though it may be beneficial for a certain subset of individuals.
Anyways, one of the most important things I learned was to try and avoid too much theory, and break it down into individual actionable items. Given that with this topic especially, readers will likely come from all over the spectrum of possible skill levels, that might be a hard thing to do. But perhaps behavioral exercises… links to resources and specific suggestions for conversation, fashion, body language.
On #5, part of me wants to agree, because we’re not a sciencer about.com, but another part of me really wants there to be more lesswrong members becoming more instrumentally rational. Maybe even, as an exercise, asking members to find there own ugh field, use the value of scholarship, compile useful material into a quality post (along the same lines as Luke does), apply it in real life, and then report on it, either in a discussion thrsad or in an offshoot of the main post. This seems like a really basic thing that a rationalist gym should/ would do.
So thorough! Thanks.
As for being boring, I will admit this post was written before I decided to sometimes try harder with my writing style.
In general I’m concerned with the way the community is headed—I joined for the philosophy, I’m less interested in reading about analytic people’s approaches to basic social interaction. Some days I feel like this site has gone from Less Wrong to Wrong Planet.
So I guess I’m downvoting as a political stance, rather than anything to do with the quality of your writing. Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not helpful.
I’d be concerned if the community failed to explore these sort of topics.
Mere “philosophy” would be kind of empty. Once the idea of instrumental rationality was held up, the idea that rationalists should win, then it’s either start trying to apply it to real problems, or concede that we didn’t really mean it and that we just want to talk about stuff that makes us sound intelligent and sophisticated. That “applied rationality” features prominently here adds enormously to the credibility of LW and especially of the authors who have something to say about it, at least in my eyes.
Perhaps the problem is whether this generates the perception of “self-help” as opposed to “becoming awesome”. The former kinda smacks of low status and might turn some people off, while impressive success is obviously not a problem. Perhaps it’s a presentation issue (I suck at PR so I can’t judge), or perhaps we just haven’t amassed a sufficient wealth of evidence of awesomeness to overcome the negative connotations.
I second this position. Despite the fact that I will probably benefit from these self-help kinds of posts, I’m nonetheless more interested in posts about creating new rationality skills and dissolving philosophical dilemmas.
Also, affixing the word “rational” to everything is mildly grating.
Seconded.
Rationally seconded?
Thanks for explaining, Nominull and Tetronian!
I would also prefer more quality philosophy like the original sequences, but I prefer quality posts about relationships to low-quality posts about philosophy that present rambling thoughts or stuff that’s already been covered to death.
I joined for the same reason, but since I maintain a Stoic stance I’m actually very comfortable with my philosophy impinging on my practical considerations. Philosophy need not be impractical (although I agree that some things, like “rational gift buying for persons 8 or under”, are too disconnected from the philosophy espoused here that it would be best we didn’t encourage those kinds of posts).
My impression is that sometimes there are more epistemic or otherwise technical articles, and sometimes there are more instrumental rationality articles. I don’t have a feeling for whether it’s mostly random variation, or if articles of one sort tends to inspire more of the same until people run out of ideas and/or get sick of it.
I downvoted for several reasons.
The post is long, yet there isn’t much of value here, just a lot of things that are obvious (e.g. goth dress might help success with goths, here is a graph to demonstrate that already totally intuitive bit of info). People on LW like to see obvious things restated in formal ways, with graphs and footnotes. This feels like accessing secret knowledge via x-rationalist super powers. But it isn’t. It isn’t even standard learning. I see this kind of thing a lot on LW.
Relationship advice is outside of the LW comparative advantage (and I suspect absolute advantage as well).
I get the feeling this is about to turn into a commercial for polyamory, and I don’t want that to happen. There have now been several posts devoted to advocating polyamory as a “rational” relationship style. To me this feels a lot like hearing people talking about creating “rationally-planned” utopian communes. (It’s no coincidence that polyamory and utopian socialism have so often been found together, from the early Christian Adamites, to the Radical Swedenborgians, to the counterculture hippies in the 1970s.) It’s depressing and non-productive to see people falling into the same traps over and over.
I didn’t downvote, but I didn’t upvote, and I’d actually be a bit embarrassed if it were the first thing that a friend of mine saw on Less Wrong. This is mostly due to a few lingering phrases that, although I know you don’t intend them that way, have widely known sexist connotations. For instance:
I know you mean to say “the current community of self-identified rationalists contains many more men than women”, but you can easily imagine what connotations someone else might imbue it with. I got an ‘ugh’ reaction upon first reading it, even though I know you meant better.
Similarly, for reasons of connotation/signaling I’d prefer it if you avoided examples that fit the “nice guy’s lament” genre, or at least put a citation to them rather than treating them as too obvious to bother backing up.
ETA: I should mention that I hold the language of Main-level posts to a much higher standard than I do Discussion posts or comments. If you’re making something public, then you have the burden of proper communication.
You might recall that (befitting my very nature) I was extremely grouchy about a previous foray of yours into this territory. I’m not downvoting the current post because I think you’ve more-or-less successfully avoided the worst of the problems I foresaw if you went down the previously outlined path.
I also haven’t upvoted the current post. First, I endorse Nominull and Tetronian’s comments above, with respect to this kind of topic not really being central to the LW mission (but that’s okay as long as community members find it valuable and it doesn’t do any harm). However, following on those, I think it is much more important that LW remain a welcoming and inclusive place than that this topic be discussed. By that I mean that I would very strongly encourage you to keep these posts gender- and orientation-neutral—not just nominally so, but really at the level of substance. This post certainly succeeds in that, which is encouraging. (The co-authors are indispensable here, I think.)
And I hope you will be open to simply shutting this series of posts down if the comments on them can’t maintain a similar level of decorum and inclusivity. (I can hardly imagine new women joining this community if PUA and “seduction” are routinely discussed in comments.)