This is largely the basis of the whole online sub-community of ‘Game’ and the ‘Seduction Community’. It may well fall under what Eliezer refers to as ‘the dark arts’ but many participants are fairly explicit about applying a rational/scientific approach to success with women.
I am highly familiar with the seduction community, and I’ve learned a lot from it. It’s like extra-systemized folk psychology. It has certain elements of a scientific community, yet it is vulnerable to ideologies developing out of:
(a) bastardized versions of evolutionary psychology being thrown around like the proven truth, often leading to cynical and overgeneralized views of female behavior and preferences and/or overly narrow views of what works,
(b) financial biases,
(c) lack of rigor, because controlled experiments are not yet possible in this field (though I would never suggest that people wait until science catches up and gives us rigorous empirical knowledge before trying to improve their dating lives… who knows how long we will have to wait).
Yet there is promise for the community, because it’s beholden to real world results. Its descriptions and prescriptions seems to have been improving, and it has gone through a couple paradigm shirts since the mid 80′s.
I’ve also learned some useful things from my more limited familiarity with the community. I’d tend to agree with your criticisms but I think the emphasis on rigorous ‘field testing’ and on ‘doing what works’ in much of the community shows some common ground with general efforts at rationality. As you say, this is an area (like many areas of day to day life) that is not easily amenable to controlled scientific experiment for a number of reasons but one of the lessons of Bayesian thinking/‘x-rationality’ that I’ve found useful is the emphasis on being comfortable with uncertainty, fuzzy evidence and making the best decisions given limited information.
It’s treacherous terrain for anyone seeking truth since, like investment or financial advice or healthcare, there is a lot of noise along with the signal. It’s certainly an interesting area with many cross-currents to those interested in applying rationality though.
Do you think it would benefit from knowing some of the OB/LW rationality techniques?
Or from the general OB/LW picture, where inference is a thing that happens in material systems, and that yields true conclusions, when it does, for non-mysterious reasons that we can investigate and can troubleshoot?
Or from the general OB/LW picture, where inference is a thing that happens in material systems, and that yields true conclusions, when it does, for non-mysterious reasons that we can investigate and can troubleshoot?
One problem with interfacing formal/mathematical rationality with any “art that works”, whether it’s self-help or dating, is that when people are involved, there are feed-forward and feed-back effects, similar to Newcomb’s problem, in a sense. What you predict will happen makes a difference to the outcome.
One of the recent paradigm shifts that’s been happening in the last few years in the “seduction community” is the realization that using routines and patterns leads to state-dependence: that is, to a guy’s self-esteem depending on the reactions of the women he’s talked to on a given night. This has led to the rise of the “natural” movement: copying the beliefs and mindsets of guys who are naturally good with women, rather than the external behaviors of guys who are good with women.
Now, I’m not actually involved in the community; I’m quite happily married. However, I pay attention to developments in that field because it has huge overlap with the self-help field, and I’ve gotten many insights about how status perception can influence your behavior—even when there’s nobody else in the room but yourself.
I wandered off point a little there, so let me try and bring it back. The OB/LW approach to rationality—at least as I’ve seen it—is extremely “outside view”-oriented when it comes to people. There’s lots of writing about how people do this or that, rather than looking at what happens with one individual person, on the inside.
Whereas the “arts that work” are extremely focused on an inside view, and actually learning them requires a dedication to action over theory, and taking that action whether you “believe” in the theory or not. In an art that works, the true function of a theory is to provide a convincing REASON for you to take the action that has been shown to work. The “truth” of that theory is irrelevant, so long as it provides motivation and a usable model for the purposes of that art.
When I read self-help books in the past, I used to ignore things if I didn’t agree with their theories or saw holes in them. Now, I simply TRY what they say to do, and stick with it until I get a result. Only then do I evaluate. Anything else is idiotic, if your goal is to learn… and win.
Is that compatible with the OB/LW picture? The top-down culture here appears to be one of using science and math—not real-world performance or self-experimentation.
In an art that works, the true function of a theory is to provide a convincing REASON for you to take the action that has been shown to work. The “truth” of that theory is irrelevant, so long as it provides motivation and a usable model for the purposes of that art.… Is that compatible with the OB/LW picture? The top-down culture here appears to be one of using science and math—not real-world performance or self-experimentation.
Experimenting, implementing, tracking results, etc. is totally compatible with the OB/LW picture. We haven’t build cultural supports for this all that much, as a community, but we really should, and, since it resonates pretty well with a rationalist culture and there’re obvious reasons to expect it to work, we probably will.
Claiming that a particular general model of the mind is true, just because you expect that claim to yield good results (and not because you have the kind of evidence that would warrant claiming it as “true in general”), is maybe not so compatible. As a culture, we LW-ers are pretty darn careful about what general claims we let into our minds with the label “true” attached. But is it really so important that your models be labeled “true”? Maybe you could share your models as thinking gimmicks: “I tend to think of the mind in such-and-such a way, and it gives me useful results, and this same model seems to give my clients useful results”, and share the evidence about how a given visualization or self-model produces internal or external observables? I expect LW will be more receptive to your ideas if you: (a) stick really carefully to what you’ve actually seen, and share data (introspective data counts); (b) label your “believe this and it’ll work” models as candidate “believe this and it’ll work” models, without claiming the model as the real, fully demonstrated as true, nuts and bolts of the mind/brain.
In other words: (1) hug the data, and share the data with us (we love data); and (2) be alert to a particular sort of cultural collision, where we’ll tend to take any claims made without explicit “this is meant as a pragmatically useful working self-model” tags as meant to be actually true rather than as meant to be pragmatically useful visualizations/self-models. If you actually tag your models with their intended use (“I’m not saying these are the ultimate atoms the mind is made of, but I have reasonably compelling evidence that thinking in these terms can be helpful”), there’ll be less miscommunication, I think.
we’ll tend to take any claims made without explicit “this is meant as a pragmatically useful working self-model” tags as meant to be actually true rather than as meant to be pragmatically useful visualizations/self-models.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that, which is why my comment history contains so many posts pointing out that I’m an instrumental rationalist, rather than an epistemic one. ;-)
I’m not sure it’s about being an epistemic vs. an instrumental rationalist, vs. about tagging your words so we follow what you mean.
Both people interested in deep truths, and people interested in immediate practical mileage, can make use of both “true models” and “models that are pragmatically useful but that probably aren’t fully true”.
You know how a map of north America gives you good guidance for inferences about where cities are, and yet you shouldn’t interpret its color scheme as implying that the land mass of Canada is uniformly purple? Different kinds of models/maps are built to allow different kinds of conclusions to be drawn. Models come with implicit or explicit use-guidelines. And the use-guidelines of “scientific generalizations that have been established for all humans” are different than the use-guidelines of “pragmatically useful self-models, whose theoretical components haven’t been carefully and separately tested”. Mistake the latter for the former, and you’ll end up concluding that Canada is purple.
When you try to share techniques with LW, and LW balks… part of the problem is that most of us LW-ers aren’t as practiced in contact-with-the-world trouble-shooting, and so “is meant as a working model” isn’t at the top of our list of plausible interpretations. We misunderstand, and falsely think you’re calling Canada purple. But another part of the problem is it isn’t clear that you’re successfully distinguishing between the two sorts of models, and that you have separated out the parts of your model that you really do know and really can form useful inferences from (the distances between cities) from the parts of your model that are there to hold the rest in place, or to provide useful metaphorical traction, but that probably aren’t literally true. (Okay, I’m simplifying with the “two kinds of models” thing. There’s really a huge space of kinds of models and and of use-guidelines matched to different kinds of models, and maybe none of them should just be called “true”, without qualification as to the kinds of use-cases in which the models will and won’t yield true conclusions. But you get the idea.)
In an art that works, the true function of a theory is to provide a convincing REASON for you to take the action that has been shown to work. The “truth” of that theory is irrelevant, so long as it provides motivation and a usable model for the purposes of that art.… Is that compatible with the OB/LW picture? The top-down culture here appears to be one of using science and math—not real-world performance or self-experimentation.
Trying to interpret this charitably, I’ll suggest a restatement: what you call a “theory” is actually an algorithm that describes the actions that are known to achieve the required results. In the normal use of the words, theory is an epistemic tool, leading you to come to know the truth, and a reason for doing something is explanation of why this something achieves the goals. Terminologically mixing opaque heuristic with reason and knowledge is a bad idea, in the quotation above the word “reason”, for example, connotes more with rationalization than with anything else.
what you call a “theory” is actually an algorithm that describes the actions that are known to achieve the required results.
No, I’m using the term “theory” in the sense of “explanation” and “as opposed to practice”. The theory of a self-help school is the explanation(s) it provides that motivate people to carry out whatever procedures that school uses, by providing a model that helps them make sense of what their problems are, and what the appropriate methods for fixing them would be.
In the normal use of the words, theory is an epistemic tool, leading you to come to know the truth, and a reason for doing something is explanation of why this something achieves the goals.
I don’t see any incompatibility between those concepts; per DeBono (Six Thinking Hats, lateral thinking, etc.) a theory is a “proto-truth” rather than an “absolute truth”. Something that we treat as if it were true, until something better is found.
Ideally, a school of self-help should update its theories as evidence changes. Generally, when I adopt a technique, I provisionally adopt whatever theory was given by the person who created the technique, unless I already have evidence that the theory is false, or have a simpler explanation based on my existing knowledge.
Then, as I get more experience with a technique, I usually find evidence that makes me update my theory for why/how that technique works. (For example, I found that I could discard the “parts” metaphor of Core Transformation and still get it to work, ergo falsifying a portion of its original theoretical model.)
Also, I sometimes read about a study that shows a mechanism of mind that could plausibly explain some aspect of a technique, for example. Recently, for example, I read some papers about “affective asynchrony”, and saw that it not only experimentally validated some of what I’ve been doing, but that it provided a clearer theoretical model for certain parts of it. (Clearer in the sense of providing a more motivating rationale, and not just because I can point to the papers and say, “see, science!”)
Similar thing for “reconsolidation”—it provides a clear explanation for something that I knew was required for certain techniques to work (experiential access to a relevant concrete memory), but had no “theoretical” justification for. (I just taught this requirement without any explanation except “that’s how these techniques work”.)
There seems to be a background attitude on LW though, that this sort of gradual approximation is somehow wrong, because I didn’t wait for a “true” theory in a peer-reviewed article before doing anything.
In practice, however, if I waited for the theory to be true instead of useful, I would never have been able to gather enough experience to make good theories in the first place.
One common theme is recognizing when your theories aren’t working and updating in light of new evidence. Many people are so sure that their beliefs about what ‘should’ work when it comes to dating are correct that they will keep trying and failing without ever considering that maybe their underlying theory is wrong. A common exercise used in the community to break out of these incorrect beliefs is to force yourself to go out and try things that ‘can’t possibly work’ 10 times in a day, and then every day for a week or a month, until the false belief is banished.
I actually think the LW crowd could learn something from this approach—sometimes all the argument in the world is not as convincing as repeated confrontations with real world results. When it comes to changing behaviour (a key aspect of allowing rationality to improve results in our lives), rational argument is not usually the most effective technique. Rational argument may establish the need for change and the pattern for new behaviour but the most effective way to change behavioural habits is to just start consciously doing the new behaviour until it becomes a habit.
In any rational art of dating in which I would be interested, “winning” would be defined to include, indeed to require, respect for the happiness, well-being, and autonomy of the pursued. I don’t know enough about these sub-communities to say whether they share that concern—what is the impression you’ve gotten?
Many but by no means all in the community share that concern. I’m finding it interesting to note my own reluctance to link to some of the material since even among those who do share that concern there is discussion of some techniques that might be considered objectionable. One of the cornerstones of much of the material is that people are so conditioned by conventional beliefs about what ‘should’ work that they are liable to find what actually does work highly counter-intuitive at first. Reactions to the challenging of strongly held beliefs can be equally strong and I’ve often observed this in comment threads on the material.
The most mainstream introduction to the community is probably “The Game” by Neil Strauss. I’m not sure it’s the best starting point from the point of view of connections to rationality but it’s an entertaining read if nothing else.
I certainly believe it’s possible to benefit from some of the ideas while maintaining your definition of ‘winning’ but equally there are some parts of the community which are less appealing.
I have extensive knowledge in that matter and I would say that the techniques are value neutral. To make an analogy, think of Cialdini’s science of influence and persuasion(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini).
What Evolutionary Psychology, Cialdini and others showed is that we humans can be quite primitive and react in certain predetermined ways to certain stimuli. The dating community has investigated the right stimuli for women and figured out the way to “get” her. You have to push the right buttons in the right order and we males are not different(although the type of buttons is different).
In other words, what you learn in the dating community will teach you how to win the hearts of women. It’s up to you how to use this skillset(yes, it’s a skillset) IF you manage to acquire it, which btw. is not easy at all. It’s just a technique, you can use it for good or bad, although admittedly it lends itself more for selfish purposes IMHO.
Btw, women are also very selfish creatures, so don’t make the mistake to hold yourself to a too high moral standard.
I also think that you might be misguided in that you start with the wrong assumption of what dating is all about. Evolutionarily speaking, dating alias mating is not to make the other people better off. On the contrary, having kids is mostly a disadvantage for the parents, but most people do it anyways because we have this desire to have kids. Rationally speaking we all would probably be better off without them. Of course if you factor in emotions it becomes more complicated.
Also there is a fundamental difference between males and females. Males don’t get pregnant, they want to have as much sex(pleasure) with as many partners as possible. Women get pregnant(at least before birth control was invented) and so their emotional circuitry is designed to be extremely selective towards which males they will have sex with. Also they want their males to stick around as long as possible(to help them take care of the offspring). So you have to be aware that there is a fundamental difference in the objectives of the two which will make it extremely difficult or impossible to make BOTH happy at the same time. In practice usually one will suffer and/or have to concede some ground and it’s usually the “weaker” one. Weak in this context means the one with less options in dating. Usually women are stronger in this respect so the dating community is essentially a way to empower males.
This is getting long, I could write more, if you guys are interested I could start a post on this topic.
In general, I would agree that the teachings are value-neutral. Yet some of these tools are more conducive towards negative uses, while others are more conducive towards positive uses.
I also think that you might be misguided in that you start with the wrong assumption of what dating is all about. Evolutionarily speaking, dating alias mating is not to make the other people better off.
It’s true that people are not adapted to necessarily make each other optimally happy. Yet in spite of this, our skills give us the capability to find solutions that make both people at least somewhat happy.
So in my case, winning is “defined to include, indeed to require, respect for the happiness, well-being, and autonomy of the pursued,” as MBlume puts it.
Also there is a fundamental difference between males and females.
Yes, but the description in your post is contaminated by the oversimplified presumptions about evolutionary psychology in the community. I think you would get a lot out of reading more of real evolutionary psychologists, not just reading popularizations, or what the community says evolutionary psychologists are saying. I can find some cites when I’m at home.
Males don’t get pregnant, they want to have as much sex(pleasure) with as many partners as possible.
Typically, males are more oriented towards seeking multiple partners than women, yet that doesn’t mean that they want “as many partners as possible.” Some males are wired for short-term mating strategies, and other males are more wired for long-term mating strategies.
Women get pregnant(at least before birth control was invented) and so their emotional circuitry is designed to be extremely selective towards which males they will have sex with.
Yes, and this is well-demonstrated experimentally. I don’t have the citations on hand because I’m not at home, but a guy named Fisman has done some interesting work in this area.
Also they want their males to stick around as long as possible(to help them take care of the offspring).
Yet this is again oversimplified, because some present day females follow short-term mating strategies and do not necessarily want males to stick around.
So you have to be aware that there is a fundamental difference in the objectives of the two which will make it extremely difficult or impossible to make BOTH happy at the same time.
True, though pretty good compromises exist. In a lot of cases, dating is like a Prisoner’s Dilemma (though many other payoff matrices are possible). Personally, what I like the most about the community is that it gives me the tools to play C while simultaneously raising the chance that the other person will play C.
Even when happiness for both people can’t be achieved, it’s at least possible for both people to treat each other with respect, even if someone can’t give the other person what they would want.
This is getting long, I could write more, if you guys are interested I could start a post on this topic.
I’m not really sure how you can claim “techniques are value-neutral” without assuming what values are. For example, if my values contain a term for someone else’s self-esteem, a technique that lowers their self-esteem is not value-neutral. If my values contain a term for “respecting someone else’s requests”, techniques for overcoming LMR are not value-neutral. Since I’ve only limited knowledge of the seduction techniques advanced by the community, I did not offer more—after seeing some of the techniques, I decided that they are decidedly not value neutral, and therefore chose to not engage in them.
A top-level post would be very welcome, I don’t want to take this one too far off track. I’ve slept (and continue to sleep) with a lot of people, and my experience very much contradicts what you say here.
So you have to be aware that there is a fundamental difference in the objectives of the two which will make it extremely difficult or impossible to make BOTH happy at the same time.
ciphergoth:
my experience very much contradicts what you say here.
That’s because it’s a great example of theory being used to persuade people to take a certain set of “actions that work”. There are other theories that contradict those theories, that are used to get other people to take action… even though the specific actions taken may be quite similar!
People self-select their schools of dating and self-help based on what theories appeal to them, not on the actual actions those schools recommend taking. ;-)
In this case, the theory roland is talking about isn’t theory at all: it’s a sales pitch, that attracts people who feel that dating is an unfair situation. They like what they hear, and they want to hear more. So they read more and maybe buy a product. The writer or speaker then gradually moves from this ev-psych “hook” to other theories that guide the reader to take the actions the author recommends.
That people confuse these sales pitches with actual theory is a well-understood concept within the Marketing Conspiracy. ;-) Of course, the gurus don’t always know themselves what parts of their theories are hook vs. “real”… I just found out recently that a bunch of stuff I thought was “real” was actually “hook”, and had to go through some soul-searching before deciding to leave it in the book I’m writing.
Why? Because if I change the hook, I won’t be able to reach people who have the same wrong beliefs that I did. Better to hook people with wrong things they already believe, and then get them to take the actions that will get them to the place where they can throw off those beliefs. (And of course, believing those things didn’t stop me from making progress.) But I’ve restricted it to being only in chapter 1, and the revelation of the deeper model will happen by chapter 5.
Anyway. Actually helping people change their actions and beliefs—as opposed to merely telling them what they should do or think—is the very Darkest of the Dark arts.
Perhaps we should call it “The Coaching Conspiracy”. ;-)
What exactly would you like to know? The subject is very broad, it would be easier if you made me a list of questions that are relevant to LW. There are already TONS of sites about this topic so please don’t ask me to write another post about seduction in general.
I think a post tailored to the particular interests and language of LW/OB readers would be fairly different from the ones already out there, but if you have a pointer that you think would be particularly appealing to us lot I’m interested.
I would personally love to see more cross-fertilization between that sub-community and LW, “dark arts” or no. (At least, I think I would; I don’t know the community well and might be mistaken.) We need to make contact between abstract techniques for thinking through difficult issues, and on the ground practical strategicness. Importing people who’ve developed skilled strategicness in any domain that involves actual actions and observable success/failure, including dating (or sales, or start-ups, or … ?), would be a good way to do this. If you could link to specific articles, or could create discussion threads that both communities might want to participate in, mattnewport, that would be good.
I second that. Here in the LW/OB/sci-fi/atheism/cryonics/AI… community, many of us fit quite a few stereotypes. I’ll summarize them in one word that everybody understands: we’re all nerds*. This means our lives and personalities introduce many biases into our way of thinking, and these often preclude discussions about acting rationally in interpersonal situations such as sales, dating etc. because we don’t have much experience in these fields. Anything that bridges this gap would be extremely useful.
*this is not a value judgment. And not everybody conforms to this stereotype. I know, I know, but this is not the point. I’m talking averages here.
I would say that it is largely the ostensible basis of the seduction community.
As you can see if you read this subthread, they’ve got a mythology going on that renders most of their claims unfalsifiable. If their theories are unsupported it doesn’t matter, because they can disclaim the theories as just being a psychological trick to get you to take “correct” actions. However they’ve got no rigorous evidence that their “correct” actions actually lead to any more mating success than spending an equivalent amount of time on personal grooming and talking to women without using any seduction-community rituals. They also have such a wide variety of conflicting doctrines and gurus that they can dismiss almost any critique as being based on ignorance, because they can always point to something written somewhere which will contradict any attempt to characterise the seduction community—not that this ever stops them making claims about the community themselves.
They’ll claim that they develop such evidence by going out and picking up women, but since they don’t do any controlled tests this cannot even in theory produce evidence that the techniques they advocate change their success rate, and even if they did conduct controlled studies their sample sizes are tiny given the claimed success rates. I believe one “guru” claims to obtain sex in one out of thirty-three approaches. I do not believe that anyone’s intuitive grasp of statistics is so refined that they can spot variations in such an infrequent outcome and determine whether a given technique increases or decreases that success rate. To do science on such a phenomenon would take a very big sample size. Ergo anyone claiming to have scientific evidence without having done a study with a very big sample size is a fool or a knave.
The mythology of the seduction community is highly splintered and constantly changes over time, which increases the subjective likelihood that we are looking at folklore and scams rather than any kind of semi-scientific process homing in on the truth.
It’s also easy to see how it could be very appealing to lonely nerds to think that they could download a walkthrough for getting women into bed the way they can download a walkthrough for Mass Effect or Skyrim. It’s an empowering fantasy, to be sure.
If that’s what it takes to get them to groom themselves and go talk to women it might even work in an indirect, placebo-like way. So if you prioritise getting laid over knowing the scientific truth about the universe it might be rational to be selectively irrational about seduction folklore. However if you want to know the truth about the universe there’s not much to be gained from the seduction community. If they are doing better than chance it’s because a stopped clock is right twice a day.
My own view is that the entire project is utterly misguided. Instead of hunting for probably-imaginary increases in their per-random-stranger success at getting sex they should focus on effectively searching the space of potential mates for those who are compatible with them and would be interested in them.
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 largely the basis of the whole online sub-community of ‘Game’ and the ‘Seduction Community’. It may well fall under what Eliezer refers to as ‘the dark arts’ but many participants are fairly explicit about applying a rational/scientific approach to success with women.
I am highly familiar with the seduction community, and I’ve learned a lot from it. It’s like extra-systemized folk psychology. It has certain elements of a scientific community, yet it is vulnerable to ideologies developing out of:
(a) bastardized versions of evolutionary psychology being thrown around like the proven truth, often leading to cynical and overgeneralized views of female behavior and preferences and/or overly narrow views of what works,
(b) financial biases,
(c) lack of rigor, because controlled experiments are not yet possible in this field (though I would never suggest that people wait until science catches up and gives us rigorous empirical knowledge before trying to improve their dating lives… who knows how long we will have to wait).
Yet there is promise for the community, because it’s beholden to real world results. Its descriptions and prescriptions seems to have been improving, and it has gone through a couple paradigm shirts since the mid 80′s.
I’ve also learned some useful things from my more limited familiarity with the community. I’d tend to agree with your criticisms but I think the emphasis on rigorous ‘field testing’ and on ‘doing what works’ in much of the community shows some common ground with general efforts at rationality. As you say, this is an area (like many areas of day to day life) that is not easily amenable to controlled scientific experiment for a number of reasons but one of the lessons of Bayesian thinking/‘x-rationality’ that I’ve found useful is the emphasis on being comfortable with uncertainty, fuzzy evidence and making the best decisions given limited information.
It’s treacherous terrain for anyone seeking truth since, like investment or financial advice or healthcare, there is a lot of noise along with the signal. It’s certainly an interesting area with many cross-currents to those interested in applying rationality though.
Do you think it would benefit from knowing some of the OB/LW rationality techniques?
Or from the general OB/LW picture, where inference is a thing that happens in material systems, and that yields true conclusions, when it does, for non-mysterious reasons that we can investigate and can troubleshoot?
One problem with interfacing formal/mathematical rationality with any “art that works”, whether it’s self-help or dating, is that when people are involved, there are feed-forward and feed-back effects, similar to Newcomb’s problem, in a sense. What you predict will happen makes a difference to the outcome.
One of the recent paradigm shifts that’s been happening in the last few years in the “seduction community” is the realization that using routines and patterns leads to state-dependence: that is, to a guy’s self-esteem depending on the reactions of the women he’s talked to on a given night. This has led to the rise of the “natural” movement: copying the beliefs and mindsets of guys who are naturally good with women, rather than the external behaviors of guys who are good with women.
Now, I’m not actually involved in the community; I’m quite happily married. However, I pay attention to developments in that field because it has huge overlap with the self-help field, and I’ve gotten many insights about how status perception can influence your behavior—even when there’s nobody else in the room but yourself.
I wandered off point a little there, so let me try and bring it back. The OB/LW approach to rationality—at least as I’ve seen it—is extremely “outside view”-oriented when it comes to people. There’s lots of writing about how people do this or that, rather than looking at what happens with one individual person, on the inside.
Whereas the “arts that work” are extremely focused on an inside view, and actually learning them requires a dedication to action over theory, and taking that action whether you “believe” in the theory or not. In an art that works, the true function of a theory is to provide a convincing REASON for you to take the action that has been shown to work. The “truth” of that theory is irrelevant, so long as it provides motivation and a usable model for the purposes of that art.
When I read self-help books in the past, I used to ignore things if I didn’t agree with their theories or saw holes in them. Now, I simply TRY what they say to do, and stick with it until I get a result. Only then do I evaluate. Anything else is idiotic, if your goal is to learn… and win.
Is that compatible with the OB/LW picture? The top-down culture here appears to be one of using science and math—not real-world performance or self-experimentation.
Experimenting, implementing, tracking results, etc. is totally compatible with the OB/LW picture. We haven’t build cultural supports for this all that much, as a community, but we really should, and, since it resonates pretty well with a rationalist culture and there’re obvious reasons to expect it to work, we probably will.
Claiming that a particular general model of the mind is true, just because you expect that claim to yield good results (and not because you have the kind of evidence that would warrant claiming it as “true in general”), is maybe not so compatible. As a culture, we LW-ers are pretty darn careful about what general claims we let into our minds with the label “true” attached. But is it really so important that your models be labeled “true”? Maybe you could share your models as thinking gimmicks: “I tend to think of the mind in such-and-such a way, and it gives me useful results, and this same model seems to give my clients useful results”, and share the evidence about how a given visualization or self-model produces internal or external observables? I expect LW will be more receptive to your ideas if you: (a) stick really carefully to what you’ve actually seen, and share data (introspective data counts); (b) label your “believe this and it’ll work” models as candidate “believe this and it’ll work” models, without claiming the model as the real, fully demonstrated as true, nuts and bolts of the mind/brain.
In other words: (1) hug the data, and share the data with us (we love data); and (2) be alert to a particular sort of cultural collision, where we’ll tend to take any claims made without explicit “this is meant as a pragmatically useful working self-model” tags as meant to be actually true rather than as meant to be pragmatically useful visualizations/self-models. If you actually tag your models with their intended use (“I’m not saying these are the ultimate atoms the mind is made of, but I have reasonably compelling evidence that thinking in these terms can be helpful”), there’ll be less miscommunication, I think.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that, which is why my comment history contains so many posts pointing out that I’m an instrumental rationalist, rather than an epistemic one. ;-)
I’m not sure it’s about being an epistemic vs. an instrumental rationalist, vs. about tagging your words so we follow what you mean.
Both people interested in deep truths, and people interested in immediate practical mileage, can make use of both “true models” and “models that are pragmatically useful but that probably aren’t fully true”.
You know how a map of north America gives you good guidance for inferences about where cities are, and yet you shouldn’t interpret its color scheme as implying that the land mass of Canada is uniformly purple? Different kinds of models/maps are built to allow different kinds of conclusions to be drawn. Models come with implicit or explicit use-guidelines. And the use-guidelines of “scientific generalizations that have been established for all humans” are different than the use-guidelines of “pragmatically useful self-models, whose theoretical components haven’t been carefully and separately tested”. Mistake the latter for the former, and you’ll end up concluding that Canada is purple.
When you try to share techniques with LW, and LW balks… part of the problem is that most of us LW-ers aren’t as practiced in contact-with-the-world trouble-shooting, and so “is meant as a working model” isn’t at the top of our list of plausible interpretations. We misunderstand, and falsely think you’re calling Canada purple. But another part of the problem is it isn’t clear that you’re successfully distinguishing between the two sorts of models, and that you have separated out the parts of your model that you really do know and really can form useful inferences from (the distances between cities) from the parts of your model that are there to hold the rest in place, or to provide useful metaphorical traction, but that probably aren’t literally true. (Okay, I’m simplifying with the “two kinds of models” thing. There’s really a huge space of kinds of models and and of use-guidelines matched to different kinds of models, and maybe none of them should just be called “true”, without qualification as to the kinds of use-cases in which the models will and won’t yield true conclusions. But you get the idea.)
Trying to interpret this charitably, I’ll suggest a restatement: what you call a “theory” is actually an algorithm that describes the actions that are known to achieve the required results. In the normal use of the words, theory is an epistemic tool, leading you to come to know the truth, and a reason for doing something is explanation of why this something achieves the goals. Terminologically mixing opaque heuristic with reason and knowledge is a bad idea, in the quotation above the word “reason”, for example, connotes more with rationalization than with anything else.
No, I’m using the term “theory” in the sense of “explanation” and “as opposed to practice”. The theory of a self-help school is the explanation(s) it provides that motivate people to carry out whatever procedures that school uses, by providing a model that helps them make sense of what their problems are, and what the appropriate methods for fixing them would be.
I don’t see any incompatibility between those concepts; per DeBono (Six Thinking Hats, lateral thinking, etc.) a theory is a “proto-truth” rather than an “absolute truth”. Something that we treat as if it were true, until something better is found.
Ideally, a school of self-help should update its theories as evidence changes. Generally, when I adopt a technique, I provisionally adopt whatever theory was given by the person who created the technique, unless I already have evidence that the theory is false, or have a simpler explanation based on my existing knowledge.
Then, as I get more experience with a technique, I usually find evidence that makes me update my theory for why/how that technique works. (For example, I found that I could discard the “parts” metaphor of Core Transformation and still get it to work, ergo falsifying a portion of its original theoretical model.)
Also, I sometimes read about a study that shows a mechanism of mind that could plausibly explain some aspect of a technique, for example. Recently, for example, I read some papers about “affective asynchrony”, and saw that it not only experimentally validated some of what I’ve been doing, but that it provided a clearer theoretical model for certain parts of it. (Clearer in the sense of providing a more motivating rationale, and not just because I can point to the papers and say, “see, science!”)
Similar thing for “reconsolidation”—it provides a clear explanation for something that I knew was required for certain techniques to work (experiential access to a relevant concrete memory), but had no “theoretical” justification for. (I just taught this requirement without any explanation except “that’s how these techniques work”.)
There seems to be a background attitude on LW though, that this sort of gradual approximation is somehow wrong, because I didn’t wait for a “true” theory in a peer-reviewed article before doing anything.
In practice, however, if I waited for the theory to be true instead of useful, I would never have been able to gather enough experience to make good theories in the first place.
One common theme is recognizing when your theories aren’t working and updating in light of new evidence. Many people are so sure that their beliefs about what ‘should’ work when it comes to dating are correct that they will keep trying and failing without ever considering that maybe their underlying theory is wrong. A common exercise used in the community to break out of these incorrect beliefs is to force yourself to go out and try things that ‘can’t possibly work’ 10 times in a day, and then every day for a week or a month, until the false belief is banished.
I actually think the LW crowd could learn something from this approach—sometimes all the argument in the world is not as convincing as repeated confrontations with real world results. When it comes to changing behaviour (a key aspect of allowing rationality to improve results in our lives), rational argument is not usually the most effective technique. Rational argument may establish the need for change and the pattern for new behaviour but the most effective way to change behavioural habits is to just start consciously doing the new behaviour until it becomes a habit.
In any rational art of dating in which I would be interested, “winning” would be defined to include, indeed to require, respect for the happiness, well-being, and autonomy of the pursued. I don’t know enough about these sub-communities to say whether they share that concern—what is the impression you’ve gotten?
Many but by no means all in the community share that concern. I’m finding it interesting to note my own reluctance to link to some of the material since even among those who do share that concern there is discussion of some techniques that might be considered objectionable. One of the cornerstones of much of the material is that people are so conditioned by conventional beliefs about what ‘should’ work that they are liable to find what actually does work highly counter-intuitive at first. Reactions to the challenging of strongly held beliefs can be equally strong and I’ve often observed this in comment threads on the material.
The most mainstream introduction to the community is probably “The Game” by Neil Strauss. I’m not sure it’s the best starting point from the point of view of connections to rationality but it’s an entertaining read if nothing else.
I certainly believe it’s possible to benefit from some of the ideas while maintaining your definition of ‘winning’ but equally there are some parts of the community which are less appealing.
I have extensive knowledge in that matter and I would say that the techniques are value neutral. To make an analogy, think of Cialdini’s science of influence and persuasion(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini).
What Evolutionary Psychology, Cialdini and others showed is that we humans can be quite primitive and react in certain predetermined ways to certain stimuli. The dating community has investigated the right stimuli for women and figured out the way to “get” her. You have to push the right buttons in the right order and we males are not different(although the type of buttons is different).
In other words, what you learn in the dating community will teach you how to win the hearts of women. It’s up to you how to use this skillset(yes, it’s a skillset) IF you manage to acquire it, which btw. is not easy at all. It’s just a technique, you can use it for good or bad, although admittedly it lends itself more for selfish purposes IMHO.
Btw, women are also very selfish creatures, so don’t make the mistake to hold yourself to a too high moral standard.
I also think that you might be misguided in that you start with the wrong assumption of what dating is all about. Evolutionarily speaking, dating alias mating is not to make the other people better off. On the contrary, having kids is mostly a disadvantage for the parents, but most people do it anyways because we have this desire to have kids. Rationally speaking we all would probably be better off without them. Of course if you factor in emotions it becomes more complicated.
Also there is a fundamental difference between males and females. Males don’t get pregnant, they want to have as much sex(pleasure) with as many partners as possible. Women get pregnant(at least before birth control was invented) and so their emotional circuitry is designed to be extremely selective towards which males they will have sex with. Also they want their males to stick around as long as possible(to help them take care of the offspring). So you have to be aware that there is a fundamental difference in the objectives of the two which will make it extremely difficult or impossible to make BOTH happy at the same time. In practice usually one will suffer and/or have to concede some ground and it’s usually the “weaker” one. Weak in this context means the one with less options in dating. Usually women are stronger in this respect so the dating community is essentially a way to empower males.
This is getting long, I could write more, if you guys are interested I could start a post on this topic.
In general, I would agree that the teachings are value-neutral. Yet some of these tools are more conducive towards negative uses, while others are more conducive towards positive uses.
It’s true that people are not adapted to necessarily make each other optimally happy. Yet in spite of this, our skills give us the capability to find solutions that make both people at least somewhat happy.
So in my case, winning is “defined to include, indeed to require, respect for the happiness, well-being, and autonomy of the pursued,” as MBlume puts it.
Yes, but the description in your post is contaminated by the oversimplified presumptions about evolutionary psychology in the community. I think you would get a lot out of reading more of real evolutionary psychologists, not just reading popularizations, or what the community says evolutionary psychologists are saying. I can find some cites when I’m at home.
Typically, males are more oriented towards seeking multiple partners than women, yet that doesn’t mean that they want “as many partners as possible.” Some males are wired for short-term mating strategies, and other males are more wired for long-term mating strategies.
Yes, and this is well-demonstrated experimentally. I don’t have the citations on hand because I’m not at home, but a guy named Fisman has done some interesting work in this area.
Yet this is again oversimplified, because some present day females follow short-term mating strategies and do not necessarily want males to stick around.
True, though pretty good compromises exist. In a lot of cases, dating is like a Prisoner’s Dilemma (though many other payoff matrices are possible). Personally, what I like the most about the community is that it gives me the tools to play C while simultaneously raising the chance that the other person will play C.
Even when happiness for both people can’t be achieved, it’s at least possible for both people to treat each other with respect, even if someone can’t give the other person what they would want.
Sure, I would find it interesting.
I’m not really sure how you can claim “techniques are value-neutral” without assuming what values are. For example, if my values contain a term for someone else’s self-esteem, a technique that lowers their self-esteem is not value-neutral. If my values contain a term for “respecting someone else’s requests”, techniques for overcoming LMR are not value-neutral. Since I’ve only limited knowledge of the seduction techniques advanced by the community, I did not offer more—after seeing some of the techniques, I decided that they are decidedly not value neutral, and therefore chose to not engage in them.
A top-level post would be very welcome, I don’t want to take this one too far off track. I’ve slept (and continue to sleep) with a lot of people, and my experience very much contradicts what you say here.
roland:
ciphergoth:
That’s because it’s a great example of theory being used to persuade people to take a certain set of “actions that work”. There are other theories that contradict those theories, that are used to get other people to take action… even though the specific actions taken may be quite similar!
People self-select their schools of dating and self-help based on what theories appeal to them, not on the actual actions those schools recommend taking. ;-)
In this case, the theory roland is talking about isn’t theory at all: it’s a sales pitch, that attracts people who feel that dating is an unfair situation. They like what they hear, and they want to hear more. So they read more and maybe buy a product. The writer or speaker then gradually moves from this ev-psych “hook” to other theories that guide the reader to take the actions the author recommends.
That people confuse these sales pitches with actual theory is a well-understood concept within the Marketing Conspiracy. ;-) Of course, the gurus don’t always know themselves what parts of their theories are hook vs. “real”… I just found out recently that a bunch of stuff I thought was “real” was actually “hook”, and had to go through some soul-searching before deciding to leave it in the book I’m writing.
Why? Because if I change the hook, I won’t be able to reach people who have the same wrong beliefs that I did. Better to hook people with wrong things they already believe, and then get them to take the actions that will get them to the place where they can throw off those beliefs. (And of course, believing those things didn’t stop me from making progress.) But I’ve restricted it to being only in chapter 1, and the revelation of the deeper model will happen by chapter 5.
Anyway. Actually helping people change their actions and beliefs—as opposed to merely telling them what they should do or think—is the very Darkest of the Dark arts.
Perhaps we should call it “The Coaching Conspiracy”. ;-)
What exactly would you like to know? The subject is very broad, it would be easier if you made me a list of questions that are relevant to LW. There are already TONS of sites about this topic so please don’t ask me to write another post about seduction in general.
I think a post tailored to the particular interests and language of LW/OB readers would be fairly different from the ones already out there, but if you have a pointer that you think would be particularly appealing to us lot I’m interested.
I would personally love to see more cross-fertilization between that sub-community and LW, “dark arts” or no. (At least, I think I would; I don’t know the community well and might be mistaken.) We need to make contact between abstract techniques for thinking through difficult issues, and on the ground practical strategicness. Importing people who’ve developed skilled strategicness in any domain that involves actual actions and observable success/failure, including dating (or sales, or start-ups, or … ?), would be a good way to do this. If you could link to specific articles, or could create discussion threads that both communities might want to participate in, mattnewport, that would be good.
I second that. Here in the LW/OB/sci-fi/atheism/cryonics/AI… community, many of us fit quite a few stereotypes. I’ll summarize them in one word that everybody understands: we’re all nerds*. This means our lives and personalities introduce many biases into our way of thinking, and these often preclude discussions about acting rationally in interpersonal situations such as sales, dating etc. because we don’t have much experience in these fields. Anything that bridges this gap would be extremely useful.
*this is not a value judgment. And not everybody conforms to this stereotype. I know, I know, but this is not the point. I’m talking averages here.
I would say that it is largely the ostensible basis of the seduction community.
As you can see if you read this subthread, they’ve got a mythology going on that renders most of their claims unfalsifiable. If their theories are unsupported it doesn’t matter, because they can disclaim the theories as just being a psychological trick to get you to take “correct” actions. However they’ve got no rigorous evidence that their “correct” actions actually lead to any more mating success than spending an equivalent amount of time on personal grooming and talking to women without using any seduction-community rituals. They also have such a wide variety of conflicting doctrines and gurus that they can dismiss almost any critique as being based on ignorance, because they can always point to something written somewhere which will contradict any attempt to characterise the seduction community—not that this ever stops them making claims about the community themselves.
They’ll claim that they develop such evidence by going out and picking up women, but since they don’t do any controlled tests this cannot even in theory produce evidence that the techniques they advocate change their success rate, and even if they did conduct controlled studies their sample sizes are tiny given the claimed success rates. I believe one “guru” claims to obtain sex in one out of thirty-three approaches. I do not believe that anyone’s intuitive grasp of statistics is so refined that they can spot variations in such an infrequent outcome and determine whether a given technique increases or decreases that success rate. To do science on such a phenomenon would take a very big sample size. Ergo anyone claiming to have scientific evidence without having done a study with a very big sample size is a fool or a knave.
The mythology of the seduction community is highly splintered and constantly changes over time, which increases the subjective likelihood that we are looking at folklore and scams rather than any kind of semi-scientific process homing in on the truth.
It’s also easy to see how it could be very appealing to lonely nerds to think that they could download a walkthrough for getting women into bed the way they can download a walkthrough for Mass Effect or Skyrim. It’s an empowering fantasy, to be sure.
If that’s what it takes to get them to groom themselves and go talk to women it might even work in an indirect, placebo-like way. So if you prioritise getting laid over knowing the scientific truth about the universe it might be rational to be selectively irrational about seduction folklore. However if you want to know the truth about the universe there’s not much to be gained from the seduction community. If they are doing better than chance it’s because a stopped clock is right twice a day.
My own view is that the entire project is utterly misguided. Instead of hunting for probably-imaginary increases in their per-random-stranger success at getting sex they should focus on effectively searching the space of potential mates for those who are compatible with them and would be interested in them.
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.