As you can see if you read this subthread, they’ve got a mythology going on that renders most of their claims unfalsifiable.
This is an absurd claim. Most of the claims can be presented in the form “If I do X I can expect to on average achieve a better outcome with women than if I do Y”. Such claims are falsifiable. Some of them are even actually falsified. They call it “Field Testing”.
Your depiction of the seduction community is a ridiculous straw man and could legitimately be labelled offensive by members of the community that you are so set on disparaging. Mind you they probably wouldn’t bother doing so: The usual recommended way to handle such shaming attempts is to completely ignore them and proceed to go get laid anyway.
This is an absurd claim. Most of the claims can be presented in the form “If I do X I can expect to on average achieve a better outcome with women than if I do Y”. Such claims are falsifiable. Some of them are even actually falsified. They call it “Field Testing”.
If they conducted tests of X versus Y with large sample sizes and with blinded observers scoring the tests then they might have a basis to say “I know that if I do X I can expect to on average achieve a better outcome with women than if I do Y”. They don’t do such tests though.
They especially don’t do such tests where X is browsing seduction community sites and trying the techniques they recommend and Y is putting an equal amount of time and effort into personal grooming and socialising with women without using seduction community techniques.
Scientific methodology isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law. If you don’t set up your tests correctly you have weak or meaningless evidence.
Your depiction of the seduction community is a ridiculous straw man and could legitimately be labelled offensive by members of the community that you are so set on disparaging. Mind you they probably wouldn’t bother doing so: The usual recommended way to handle such shaming attempts is to completely ignore them and proceed to go get laid anyway.
Or as the Bible says, “But if any place refuses to welcome you or listen to you, shake its dust from your feet as you leave to show that you have abandoned those people to their fate”. It’s good advice for door-to-door salespersons, Jehova’s Witnesses and similar people in the business of selling. If you run into a tough customer don’t waste your time trying to convince them, just walk away and look for an easier mark.
However in science that’s not how you do things. In science if someone disputes your claim you show them the evidence that led you to fix your claim in the first place.
Are you sure you meant to describe my post as a “shaming attempt”? As pejoratives go this seems like an ill-chosen one, since my critique was strictly epistemological. It seems at least possible that you are posting a standard talking point which is deployed by seduction community members to dismiss ethical critiques, but which makes no sense in response to an epistemological critique.
(There are certainly concerns to be raised about the ethics of the seduction community, but that would be a different post).
If they conducted tests of X versus Y with large sample sizes and with blinded observers scoring the tests then they might have a basis to say “I know that if I do X I can expect to on average achieve a better outcome with women than if I do Y”. They don’t do such tests though.
Your claim was:
As you can see if you read this subthread, they’ve got a mythology going on that renders most of their claims unfalsifiable.
Are you familiar with the technical meaning of ‘unfalsifiable’? It does not mean ‘have not done scientific tests’. It means ‘cannot do scientific tests even in principle’. I would like it if scientists did do more study of this subject but that is not relevant to whether claims are falsifiable.
It seems at least possible that you are posting a standard talking point which is deployed by seduction community members to dismiss ethical critiques, but which makes no sense in response to an epistemological critique.
I’d be surprised. I’ve never heard such a reply, certainly not in response to subject matter which many wouldn’t understand (unfalsifiability). I used that term ‘shaming’ because the inferred motive (and, regardless of motive, one of the practical social meanings) of falsely accusing the enemy of behavior that looks pathetic is to provide some small degree of humiliation. This can, the motive implicitly hopes, make people ashamed of doing the behaviors that have been misrepresented. I am happy to conceed that this point is more distracting than useful. I would have been best served to stick purely to the (more conventional expression of) “NOT UNFALSIFIABLE! LIES!”
However in science that’s not how you do things. In science if someone disputes your claim you show them the evidence that led you to fix your claim in the first place.
I assert that the “act like JWs” approach is not taken by the seduction community in general either. For most part they do present evidence. That evidence is seldom of the standard accepted in science except when they are presenting claims that are taken from scientific findings—usually popularizations thereof, Cialdini references abound.
I again agree that the seduction community could use more scientific rigor. Shame on science for not engaging in (much) research in what is a rather important area!
(There are certainly concerns to be raised about the ethics of the seduction community, but that would be a different post).
Yes, I agree that you didn’t get in to ethics and that your claim was epistemological in nature. I do believe that the act of making epistemological claims is not always neutral with respect to other kinds of implication. As another tangential aside I note that if an exemplar of the seduction community were to be said to be sensitive to public opinion he would be far more sensitive to things that make him look pathetic than things than make him look unethical!
Are you familiar with the technical meaning of ‘unfalsifiable’? It does not mean ‘have not done scientific tests’. It means ‘cannot do scientific tests even in principle’. I would like it if scientists did do more study of this subject but that is not relevant to whether claims are falsifiable.
In the case of Sagan’s Dragon, the dragon is unfalsifiable because there is always a way for the believer to explain away every possible experimental result.
My view is that the mythology of the seduction community functions similarly. You can’t attack their theories because they can respond by saying that the theory is merely a trick to elicit specific behaviour. You can’t attack their claims that specific behaviours are effective because they will say that there is proof, but it only exists in their personal recollections so you have to take their word for it. You can’t attack their attitudes, assumptions or claims because they can respond by pointing at one guru or another and saying that particular guru does not share the attitude, assumption or claim you are critiquing.
Their claim could theoretically be falsified, for example by a controlled test with a large sample size which showed that persons who had spent N hours studying and practicing seduction community doctrine/rituals (for some value of N which the seduction community members were prepared to agree was sufficient to show an effect) were no more likely to obtain sex than persons who had spent N hours on things like grooming, socialising with women without using seduction community rituals, reading interesting books they could talk about, taking dancing lessons and whatnot. I suspect but cannot prove though that if we conducted such a test those people who have made the seduction community a large part of their life would find some way to explain the result away, just as the believer in Sagan’s dragon comes up with ways to explain away results that would falsify their dragon.
Of course it’s not the skeptic’s job to falsify the claims of the seduction community. Members of that community very clearly have a large number of beliefs about how best to obtain sex, even if those beliefs are not totally homogenous within that community, and it’s their job to present the evidence that led them to the belief that their methods are effective. If it turns out that they have not controlled for the relevant cognitive biases including but not limited to the experimenter effect, the placebo effect, the sunk costs fallacy, the halo effect and correlation not proving causation then it’s not rational to attach any real weight to their unsupported recollection as evidence.
Their claim could theoretically be falsified, for example <...> I suspect but cannot prove though that if we conducted such a test those people who have made the seduction community a large part of their life would find some way to explain the result away, just as the believer in Sagan’s dragon comes up with ways to explain away results that would falsify their dragon.
It is dramatically different thing to say “people who are in the seduction community are the kind of people who would make up excuses if their claims were falsified” than to say “the beliefs of those in the seduction community are unfalsifiable”. While I may disagree mildly with the former claim the latter I object to as an absurd straw man.
Of course it’s not the skeptic’s job to falsify the claims of the seduction community.
I don’t accept the role of a skeptic. I take the role of someone who wishes to have correct beliefs, within the scope of rather dire human limitations. That means I must either look for and process the evidence to whatever extent possible or, if a field is consider of insufficient expected value, remain in a state of significant uncertainty to the extent determined by information I have picked up in passing.
I reject the skeptic role of thrusting the burden of proof around, implying “You’ve got to prove it to me or it ain’t so!′ That’s just the opposite stupidity to that of a true believer. It is a higher status role within intellectual communities but it is by no means rational.
and it’s their job to present the evidence that led them to the belief that their methods are effective.
No, it’s their job to go ahead and get laid and have fulfilling relationships. It is no skin of their nose if you don’t agree with them. In fact, the more people who don’t believe them the less competition they have.
Unless they are teachers, people are not responsible for forcing correct epistemic states upon others. They are responsible for their beliefs, you are responsible for yours.
It is dramatically different thing to say “people who are in the seduction community are the kind of people who would make up excuses if their claims were falsified” than to say “the beliefs of those in the seduction community are unfalsifiable”. While I may disagree mildly with the former claim the latter I object to as an absurd straw man.
I’m content to use the term “unfalsifiable” to refer to the beliefs of homeopaths, for example, even though by conventional scientific standards their beliefs are both falsifiable and falsified. Homeopaths have a belief system in which their practices cannot be shown to not work, hence their beliefs are unfalsifiable in the sense that no evidence you can find will ever make them let go of their belief. The seduction community have a well-developed set of excuses for why their recollections count as evidence for their beliefs (even though they probably shouldn’t count as evidence for their beliefs), and for why nothing counts as evidence against their beliefs.
I reject the skeptic role of thrusting the burden of proof around, implying “You’ve got to prove it to me or it ain’t so!′ That’s just the opposite stupidity to that of a true believer. It is a higher status role within intellectual communities but it is by no means rational.
It is not the opposite of stupidity at all to see a person professing belief Y, and say to them “Please tell me the facts which led you to fix your belief in Y”. If their belief is rational then they will be able to tell you those facts, and barring significantly differing priors you too will then believe in Y.
I suspect we differ in our priors when it comes to the proposition that the rituals of the seduction community perform better than comparable efforts to improve one’s attractiveness and social skills that are not informed by seduction community doctrine, but not so much that I would withhold agreement if some proper evidence was forthcoming.
However if the local seduction community members instead respond with defensive accusations, downvotes and so forth but never get around to stating the facts which led them to fix their belief in Y then observers should update their own beliefs to increase the probability that the beliefs of the seduction community do not have rational bases.
Unless they are teachers, people are not responsible for forcing correct epistemic states upon others. They are responsible for their beliefs, you are responsible for yours.
Can you see that from my perspective, responses which consist of excuses as to why supporters of the seduction community doctrine(s) should not be expected to state the facts which inform their beliefs are not persuasive? If they have a rational basis for their belief they can just state it. I struggle to envisage probable scenarios where they have such rational bases but rather than simply state them they instead offer various excuses as to why, if they had such evidence, they should not be expected to share it.
However if the local seduction community members instead respond with defensive accusations, downvotes and so forth but never get around to stating the facts which led them to fix their belief in Y then observers should update their own beliefs to increase the probability that the beliefs of the seduction community do not have rational bases.
On lesswrong insisting a claim is unfalsifiable while simultaneously explaining how that claim can be falsified is more than sufficient cause to downvote. This is false even if—and especially obviously when—that claim is false. Further, in general downvotes of comments by the PhilsophyTutor account - at least those by myself—have usually been for the consistent use of straw men and the insulting misrepresentation of a group of people you are opposed to.
Declaring downvotes of your one’s own comments to be evidence in favor of one’s position is seldom a useful approach.
Can you see that from my perspective, responses which consist of excuses as to why supporters of the seduction community doctrine(s) should not be expected to state the facts which inform their beliefs are not persuasive?
They should not be persuasive and are not intended as such. Instead, in this case, it was an explicit rejection of the “My side is the default position and the burden of proof is on the other!” debating tactic. The subject of how to think correctly (vs debate effectively) is one of greater interest to me than seduction.
I also reject the tactic used in the immediate parent. It seems to be of the form “You are trying to refute my arguments. You are being defensive. That means you must be wrong. I am right!”. It is a tactic which, rather conveniently, become more effective the worse your arguments are!
On lesswrong insisting a claim is unfalsifiable while simultaneously explaining how that claim can be falsified is more than sufficient cause to downvote.
That’s rather sad, if the community here thinks that the word “unfalsifiable” only refers to beliefs which are unfalsifiable in principle from the perspective of a competent rationalist, and that the word is not also used to refer to belief systems held by irrational people which are unfalsifiable from the insider/irrational perspective.
The fundamental epistemological sin is the same in each case, since both categories of belief are irrational in the sense that there is no good reason to favour the particular beliefs held over the unbounded number of other, equally unfalsifiable beliefs which explain the data equally well.
That said, I do find it curious that such misunderstandings seem to exclusively crop up in those posts where I criticise the beliefs of the seduction community. Those posts get massively downvoted compared to posts I make on any other topic, and from my insider perspective there is no difference in quality of posting.
consistent use of straw men and the insulting misrepresentation of a group of people you are opposed to.
There’s a philosophical joke that goes like this:
“Zabludowski has insinuated that my thesis that p is false, on the basis of alleged counterexamples. But these so- called “counterexamples” depend on construing my thesis that p in a way that it was obviously not intended—for I intended my thesis to have no counterexamples. Therefore p”.
It’s not clear to me at all that I have used straw men or misrepresented a group, and from my perspective it seems that it’s impossible to criticise any aspect of the seduction community or its beliefs without being accused of attacking a straw man.
They should not be persuasive and are not intended as such. Instead, in this case, it was an explicit rejection of the “My side is the default position and the burden of proof is on the other!” debating tactic. The subject of how to think correctly (vs debate effectively) is one of greater interest to me than seduction.
Perhaps we should drop this subtopic then, since it seems solely to be about your views of what you see as a particular debating tactic, and get back to the issue of what exactly the evidence is for the beliefs of the seduction community.
If we can agree that how to think correctly is the more interesting topic, then possibly we can agree to explore whether or not the seduction community are thinking correctly by means of examining their evidence.
That’s rather sad, if the community here thinks that the word “unfalsifiable” only refers to beliefs which are unfalsifiable in principle from the perspective of a competent rationalist, and that the word is not also used to refer to belief systems held by irrational people which are unfalsifiable from the insider/irrational perspective.
Then you should indeed be sad. An unfalsifiable claim is a claim that can not be falsified. Not only is it right there in the word it is a basic scientific principle. The people who present a claim happening to be irrational would be a separate issue.
Just say that the seduction community is universally or overwhelmingly irrational when it comes to handling counterevidence to their claims—and we can merrily disagree about the state of the universe. But unfalsifiable things can’t be falsified.
If we can agree that how to think correctly is the more interesting topic, then possibly we can agree to explore whether or not the seduction community are thinking correctly by means of examining their evidence.
I would update only slightly from the prior for “non-rationalists are dedicated to achieving a goal through training and practice”.
EDIT: In case the meaning isn’t clear—this translates to “They’re probably about the same as most folks are when they do stuff. Haven’t seen much to think they are better or worse.”
An obvious improvement would be to instead use “non-rationalists are dedicated to achieving a goal through training and practice, and find a system for doing so which is significantly superior to alternative, existing systems”.
It is no great praise of an exercise regime, for example, to say that those who follow it get fitter. The interesting question is whether that particular regime is better or worse than alternative exercise regimes.
However the problem with that question is that there are multiple competing strands of seduction theory, which is why any critic can be accused of attacking a straw man regardless of the points they make. So you need to specify multiple sub-questions of the form “Group A of non-rationalists were dedicated to achieving a goal through training and practice, and found a system for doing so which is significantly superior to alternative, existing systems”, “Group B of non-rationalists...” and so on for as many sub-types of seduction doctrine as you are prepared to acknowledge, where the truth of some groups’ doctrines precludes the truth of some other groups’ doctrines. As musical rationalists Dire Straits pointed out, if two guys say they’re Jesus then at least one of them must be wrong.
So then ideally we ask all of these people what evidence led them to fix the belief they hold that the methods of their group perform better than alternative, existing ways of improving your attractiveness. That way we could figure out which if any of them are right, or whether they are all wrong.
However I don’t seem to be able to get to that point. Since you position yourself as outside the seduction community and hence immune to requests for evidence, but as thoroughly informed about the seduction community and hence entitled to pass judgment on whether my comments are directed at straw men, there’s no way to explore the interesting question by engaging with you.
Edit to add: I see one of the ancestor posts has been pushed down to −3, the point at which general traffic will no longer see later posts. Based on previous experience I predict that N accounts who downvote or upvote all available posts along partisan lines will hit this subthread pushing all of wedrifid’s posts up by +N and all of my posts down by -N.
I actually agree mainly with you, but am downvoting both sides on the principle that I’m tired of listening to people argue back and forth about PUAs/Seduction communities.
This is an absurd claim. Most of the claims can be presented in the form “If I do X I can expect to on average achieve a better outcome with women than if I do Y”. Such claims are falsifiable. Some of them are even actually falsified. They call it “Field Testing”.
Your depiction of the seduction community is a ridiculous straw man and could legitimately be labelled offensive by members of the community that you are so set on disparaging. Mind you they probably wouldn’t bother doing so: The usual recommended way to handle such shaming attempts is to completely ignore them and proceed to go get laid anyway.
If they conducted tests of X versus Y with large sample sizes and with blinded observers scoring the tests then they might have a basis to say “I know that if I do X I can expect to on average achieve a better outcome with women than if I do Y”. They don’t do such tests though.
They especially don’t do such tests where X is browsing seduction community sites and trying the techniques they recommend and Y is putting an equal amount of time and effort into personal grooming and socialising with women without using seduction community techniques.
Scientific methodology isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law. If you don’t set up your tests correctly you have weak or meaningless evidence.
Or as the Bible says, “But if any place refuses to welcome you or listen to you, shake its dust from your feet as you leave to show that you have abandoned those people to their fate”. It’s good advice for door-to-door salespersons, Jehova’s Witnesses and similar people in the business of selling. If you run into a tough customer don’t waste your time trying to convince them, just walk away and look for an easier mark.
However in science that’s not how you do things. In science if someone disputes your claim you show them the evidence that led you to fix your claim in the first place.
Are you sure you meant to describe my post as a “shaming attempt”? As pejoratives go this seems like an ill-chosen one, since my critique was strictly epistemological. It seems at least possible that you are posting a standard talking point which is deployed by seduction community members to dismiss ethical critiques, but which makes no sense in response to an epistemological critique.
(There are certainly concerns to be raised about the ethics of the seduction community, but that would be a different post).
Your claim was:
Are you familiar with the technical meaning of ‘unfalsifiable’? It does not mean ‘have not done scientific tests’. It means ‘cannot do scientific tests even in principle’. I would like it if scientists did do more study of this subject but that is not relevant to whether claims are falsifiable.
I’d be surprised. I’ve never heard such a reply, certainly not in response to subject matter which many wouldn’t understand (unfalsifiability). I used that term ‘shaming’ because the inferred motive (and, regardless of motive, one of the practical social meanings) of falsely accusing the enemy of behavior that looks pathetic is to provide some small degree of humiliation. This can, the motive implicitly hopes, make people ashamed of doing the behaviors that have been misrepresented. I am happy to conceed that this point is more distracting than useful. I would have been best served to stick purely to the (more conventional expression of) “NOT UNFALSIFIABLE! LIES!”
I assert that the “act like JWs” approach is not taken by the seduction community in general either. For most part they do present evidence. That evidence is seldom of the standard accepted in science except when they are presenting claims that are taken from scientific findings—usually popularizations thereof, Cialdini references abound.
I again agree that the seduction community could use more scientific rigor. Shame on science for not engaging in (much) research in what is a rather important area!
Yes, I agree that you didn’t get in to ethics and that your claim was epistemological in nature. I do believe that the act of making epistemological claims is not always neutral with respect to other kinds of implication. As another tangential aside I note that if an exemplar of the seduction community were to be said to be sensitive to public opinion he would be far more sensitive to things that make him look pathetic than things than make him look unethical!
In the case of Sagan’s Dragon, the dragon is unfalsifiable because there is always a way for the believer to explain away every possible experimental result.
My view is that the mythology of the seduction community functions similarly. You can’t attack their theories because they can respond by saying that the theory is merely a trick to elicit specific behaviour. You can’t attack their claims that specific behaviours are effective because they will say that there is proof, but it only exists in their personal recollections so you have to take their word for it. You can’t attack their attitudes, assumptions or claims because they can respond by pointing at one guru or another and saying that particular guru does not share the attitude, assumption or claim you are critiquing.
Their claim could theoretically be falsified, for example by a controlled test with a large sample size which showed that persons who had spent N hours studying and practicing seduction community doctrine/rituals (for some value of N which the seduction community members were prepared to agree was sufficient to show an effect) were no more likely to obtain sex than persons who had spent N hours on things like grooming, socialising with women without using seduction community rituals, reading interesting books they could talk about, taking dancing lessons and whatnot. I suspect but cannot prove though that if we conducted such a test those people who have made the seduction community a large part of their life would find some way to explain the result away, just as the believer in Sagan’s dragon comes up with ways to explain away results that would falsify their dragon.
Of course it’s not the skeptic’s job to falsify the claims of the seduction community. Members of that community very clearly have a large number of beliefs about how best to obtain sex, even if those beliefs are not totally homogenous within that community, and it’s their job to present the evidence that led them to the belief that their methods are effective. If it turns out that they have not controlled for the relevant cognitive biases including but not limited to the experimenter effect, the placebo effect, the sunk costs fallacy, the halo effect and correlation not proving causation then it’s not rational to attach any real weight to their unsupported recollection as evidence.
It is dramatically different thing to say “people who are in the seduction community are the kind of people who would make up excuses if their claims were falsified” than to say “the beliefs of those in the seduction community are unfalsifiable”. While I may disagree mildly with the former claim the latter I object to as an absurd straw man.
I don’t accept the role of a skeptic. I take the role of someone who wishes to have correct beliefs, within the scope of rather dire human limitations. That means I must either look for and process the evidence to whatever extent possible or, if a field is consider of insufficient expected value, remain in a state of significant uncertainty to the extent determined by information I have picked up in passing.
I reject the skeptic role of thrusting the burden of proof around, implying “You’ve got to prove it to me or it ain’t so!′ That’s just the opposite stupidity to that of a true believer. It is a higher status role within intellectual communities but it is by no means rational.
No, it’s their job to go ahead and get laid and have fulfilling relationships. It is no skin of their nose if you don’t agree with them. In fact, the more people who don’t believe them the less competition they have.
Unless they are teachers, people are not responsible for forcing correct epistemic states upon others. They are responsible for their beliefs, you are responsible for yours.
I’m content to use the term “unfalsifiable” to refer to the beliefs of homeopaths, for example, even though by conventional scientific standards their beliefs are both falsifiable and falsified. Homeopaths have a belief system in which their practices cannot be shown to not work, hence their beliefs are unfalsifiable in the sense that no evidence you can find will ever make them let go of their belief. The seduction community have a well-developed set of excuses for why their recollections count as evidence for their beliefs (even though they probably shouldn’t count as evidence for their beliefs), and for why nothing counts as evidence against their beliefs.
It is not the opposite of stupidity at all to see a person professing belief Y, and say to them “Please tell me the facts which led you to fix your belief in Y”. If their belief is rational then they will be able to tell you those facts, and barring significantly differing priors you too will then believe in Y.
I suspect we differ in our priors when it comes to the proposition that the rituals of the seduction community perform better than comparable efforts to improve one’s attractiveness and social skills that are not informed by seduction community doctrine, but not so much that I would withhold agreement if some proper evidence was forthcoming.
However if the local seduction community members instead respond with defensive accusations, downvotes and so forth but never get around to stating the facts which led them to fix their belief in Y then observers should update their own beliefs to increase the probability that the beliefs of the seduction community do not have rational bases.
Can you see that from my perspective, responses which consist of excuses as to why supporters of the seduction community doctrine(s) should not be expected to state the facts which inform their beliefs are not persuasive? If they have a rational basis for their belief they can just state it. I struggle to envisage probable scenarios where they have such rational bases but rather than simply state them they instead offer various excuses as to why, if they had such evidence, they should not be expected to share it.
On lesswrong insisting a claim is unfalsifiable while simultaneously explaining how that claim can be falsified is more than sufficient cause to downvote. This is false even if—and especially obviously when—that claim is false. Further, in general downvotes of comments by the PhilsophyTutor account - at least those by myself—have usually been for the consistent use of straw men and the insulting misrepresentation of a group of people you are opposed to.
Declaring downvotes of your one’s own comments to be evidence in favor of one’s position is seldom a useful approach.
They should not be persuasive and are not intended as such. Instead, in this case, it was an explicit rejection of the “My side is the default position and the burden of proof is on the other!” debating tactic. The subject of how to think correctly (vs debate effectively) is one of greater interest to me than seduction.
I also reject the tactic used in the immediate parent. It seems to be of the form “You are trying to refute my arguments. You are being defensive. That means you must be wrong. I am right!”. It is a tactic which, rather conveniently, become more effective the worse your arguments are!
That’s rather sad, if the community here thinks that the word “unfalsifiable” only refers to beliefs which are unfalsifiable in principle from the perspective of a competent rationalist, and that the word is not also used to refer to belief systems held by irrational people which are unfalsifiable from the insider/irrational perspective.
The fundamental epistemological sin is the same in each case, since both categories of belief are irrational in the sense that there is no good reason to favour the particular beliefs held over the unbounded number of other, equally unfalsifiable beliefs which explain the data equally well.
That said, I do find it curious that such misunderstandings seem to exclusively crop up in those posts where I criticise the beliefs of the seduction community. Those posts get massively downvoted compared to posts I make on any other topic, and from my insider perspective there is no difference in quality of posting.
There’s a philosophical joke that goes like this:
“Zabludowski has insinuated that my thesis that p is false, on the basis of alleged counterexamples. But these so- called “counterexamples” depend on construing my thesis that p in a way that it was obviously not intended—for I intended my thesis to have no counterexamples. Therefore p”.
Source
It’s not clear to me at all that I have used straw men or misrepresented a group, and from my perspective it seems that it’s impossible to criticise any aspect of the seduction community or its beliefs without being accused of attacking a straw man.
Perhaps we should drop this subtopic then, since it seems solely to be about your views of what you see as a particular debating tactic, and get back to the issue of what exactly the evidence is for the beliefs of the seduction community.
If we can agree that how to think correctly is the more interesting topic, then possibly we can agree to explore whether or not the seduction community are thinking correctly by means of examining their evidence.
Then you should indeed be sad. An unfalsifiable claim is a claim that can not be falsified. Not only is it right there in the word it is a basic scientific principle. The people who present a claim happening to be irrational would be a separate issue.
Just say that the seduction community is universally or overwhelmingly irrational when it comes to handling counterevidence to their claims—and we can merrily disagree about the state of the universe. But unfalsifiable things can’t be falsified.
I would update only slightly from the prior for “non-rationalists are dedicated to achieving a goal through training and practice”.
EDIT: In case the meaning isn’t clear—this translates to “They’re probably about the same as most folks are when they do stuff. Haven’t seen much to think they are better or worse.”
That seems to be a poorly-chosen prior.
An obvious improvement would be to instead use “non-rationalists are dedicated to achieving a goal through training and practice, and find a system for doing so which is significantly superior to alternative, existing systems”.
It is no great praise of an exercise regime, for example, to say that those who follow it get fitter. The interesting question is whether that particular regime is better or worse than alternative exercise regimes.
However the problem with that question is that there are multiple competing strands of seduction theory, which is why any critic can be accused of attacking a straw man regardless of the points they make. So you need to specify multiple sub-questions of the form “Group A of non-rationalists were dedicated to achieving a goal through training and practice, and found a system for doing so which is significantly superior to alternative, existing systems”, “Group B of non-rationalists...” and so on for as many sub-types of seduction doctrine as you are prepared to acknowledge, where the truth of some groups’ doctrines precludes the truth of some other groups’ doctrines. As musical rationalists Dire Straits pointed out, if two guys say they’re Jesus then at least one of them must be wrong.
So then ideally we ask all of these people what evidence led them to fix the belief they hold that the methods of their group perform better than alternative, existing ways of improving your attractiveness. That way we could figure out which if any of them are right, or whether they are all wrong.
However I don’t seem to be able to get to that point. Since you position yourself as outside the seduction community and hence immune to requests for evidence, but as thoroughly informed about the seduction community and hence entitled to pass judgment on whether my comments are directed at straw men, there’s no way to explore the interesting question by engaging with you.
Edit to add: I see one of the ancestor posts has been pushed down to −3, the point at which general traffic will no longer see later posts. Based on previous experience I predict that N accounts who downvote or upvote all available posts along partisan lines will hit this subthread pushing all of wedrifid’s posts up by +N and all of my posts down by -N.
I actually agree mainly with you, but am downvoting both sides on the principle that I’m tired of listening to people argue back and forth about PUAs/Seduction communities.