(This will be my first post on the current flamewar, which I’ve been hesitant to post on, for obvious reasons.)
Does Alicorn feel the same way every time she sees mentions of PUA? If so, I can finally understand where she’s coming from!
If that’s where she’s coming from, it’s a horribly wrong reason to exclude discussion of it. Whether or not PUA techniques repulse you, whether or not you’d be receptive to them, whether or not you intend to use them...
You do need to understand why such counterintuitive methods work, to the extent that they do in fact work. Otherwise, you have a huge hole in your understanding of social psychology, and are setting yourself up to Lose, whether your are a man or a woman.
For what it’s worth, I also get a negative physical reaction from PUA discussion, though for very different reasons. I would describe it as a combination of hopelessness at my own ignorance, and refusal to accept that it could be true. In fact, the first time I’d heard about PUAs, someone referenced a related Feyman anecdote, and I rushed to look it up, and after I read it, I felt really, really, unexplainably miserable, almost giving up all hope. By itself, that almost made me fly into a rage.
But rather than ask to be shielded from this mental pain, I save the threads devoted to them, so I can process them at a later time, once I’ve built up the courage.
To avoid discussion of the topic on the grounds that it makes some people, even most people, feel icky, is to go against everything this site stands for.
You do need to understand why such counterintuitive methods work, to the extent that they do in fact work.
Agreed, but there’s a world of difference between a post that discusses PUA techniques under the assumption that the readership is actively interested in applying them, and a post that discusses PUA techniques under the assumption that the readership is interested in learning more about “the enemy”.
In much the same way, there would be a world of difference between a post that gave advice on how best to convert people to Christianity, or to market the latest designer piece of crap, and a post that documented commonly used conversion or marketing techniques for the purposes of understanding how people can come to believe silly things or buy stupid products.
I accept that, in the interest of good communication, people can do a better job with their tone and emphasis when they make PUA posts.
The danger, however, is buying into this idea that you have to adhere to some vague feminist concern that can only result in good-intentioned male posters walking on eggshells to avoid saying the wrong secret phrases. While there are valid feminist concerns about objectification, this kafkaesque hypervigilance simply serves to enforce a very self-limiting mindset in posters.
It wussifies them, in other words. I believe that has been my experience, having resolved at an early age to be supersensitive to offending women. I’ve certainly avoided it, but it’s not very conducive to leaving copies of me in the next generation.
Feminist concerns are vague and the only possible result of thinking about them is “good-intentioned male posters walking on eggshells to avoid saying the wrong secret phrases”?
I guess I can see how, if you don’t understand the relevant feminist concerns, then they will seem vague, and that the effect of not really knowing what it is you’re supposed to avoid could be quite frustrating. But I tend to think that vagueness, like probability, is in the mind, rather than being a property of the concerns themselves. If you do understand and appreciate such concerns, then it’s usually not very difficult to avoid offending people—and even if you do end up accidentally offending someone, it’s easy enough to just apologise after the fact, without it opening yet another front in the gender wars.
Maybe this means that the feminists among us need to do a better job of communicating the concerns, but it would also be nice if attempts to do so didn’t result in (IMHO pretty ridiculous) accusations of “kafkaesque hypervigilance”.
P.S. If trying to understand others’ perspectives and attempting not to unnecessarily offend them means that I’m a wuss, then I’ll wear the badge proudly. I can’t speak for anyone else, but certainly hasn’t affected my ability to leave copies of me in the next generation.
But the thing is, we’re interested in the truth. What you or anyone else will use it for is their own business. Our goal is not to filter out topics which could potentially enable marketers to sell more crap or something.
But the thing is, we’re interested in the truth. What you or anyone else will use it for is their own business.
Interesting, I don’t agree with this at all. Perhaps it comes down to a difference between those of us who are most interested in truth, and those of us who are most interested in winning.
Insofar as anyone’s utility function has a term for people-not-being-converted-to-Christianity, people-not-buying-loads-of-crap-they-don’t-need, or people-not-treating-members-of-whatever-gender-they-happen-to-be-attracted-to-as-sexual-trophies, what others do with knowledge is their business. Which is not to say that they should somehow censor people who advocate such things; but I wouldn’t expect them to sit idly by and pretend that they think these goals are all fine and dandy either.
I agree, but on the other hand, how important is the topic? We can rationally decide to lose the topic here on this ground: not everyone posting or reading has achieved perfect equanimity, but we can help them develop that quality more effectively by tricking them into thinking that we already have it (the illusion would be shattered in the type of failures elicited by each discussion of the sensitive topic).
An absolute prohibition would be ridiculous, though.
(This will be my first post on the current flamewar, which I’ve been hesitant to post on, for obvious reasons.)
If that’s where she’s coming from, it’s a horribly wrong reason to exclude discussion of it. Whether or not PUA techniques repulse you, whether or not you’d be receptive to them, whether or not you intend to use them...
You do need to understand why such counterintuitive methods work, to the extent that they do in fact work. Otherwise, you have a huge hole in your understanding of social psychology, and are setting yourself up to Lose, whether your are a man or a woman.
For what it’s worth, I also get a negative physical reaction from PUA discussion, though for very different reasons. I would describe it as a combination of hopelessness at my own ignorance, and refusal to accept that it could be true. In fact, the first time I’d heard about PUAs, someone referenced a related Feyman anecdote, and I rushed to look it up, and after I read it, I felt really, really, unexplainably miserable, almost giving up all hope. By itself, that almost made me fly into a rage.
But rather than ask to be shielded from this mental pain, I save the threads devoted to them, so I can process them at a later time, once I’ve built up the courage.
To avoid discussion of the topic on the grounds that it makes some people, even most people, feel icky, is to go against everything this site stands for.
Agreed, but there’s a world of difference between a post that discusses PUA techniques under the assumption that the readership is actively interested in applying them, and a post that discusses PUA techniques under the assumption that the readership is interested in learning more about “the enemy”.
In much the same way, there would be a world of difference between a post that gave advice on how best to convert people to Christianity, or to market the latest designer piece of crap, and a post that documented commonly used conversion or marketing techniques for the purposes of understanding how people can come to believe silly things or buy stupid products.
I accept that, in the interest of good communication, people can do a better job with their tone and emphasis when they make PUA posts.
The danger, however, is buying into this idea that you have to adhere to some vague feminist concern that can only result in good-intentioned male posters walking on eggshells to avoid saying the wrong secret phrases. While there are valid feminist concerns about objectification, this kafkaesque hypervigilance simply serves to enforce a very self-limiting mindset in posters.
It wussifies them, in other words. I believe that has been my experience, having resolved at an early age to be supersensitive to offending women. I’ve certainly avoided it, but it’s not very conducive to leaving copies of me in the next generation.
Feminist concerns are vague and the only possible result of thinking about them is “good-intentioned male posters walking on eggshells to avoid saying the wrong secret phrases”?
I guess I can see how, if you don’t understand the relevant feminist concerns, then they will seem vague, and that the effect of not really knowing what it is you’re supposed to avoid could be quite frustrating. But I tend to think that vagueness, like probability, is in the mind, rather than being a property of the concerns themselves. If you do understand and appreciate such concerns, then it’s usually not very difficult to avoid offending people—and even if you do end up accidentally offending someone, it’s easy enough to just apologise after the fact, without it opening yet another front in the gender wars.
Maybe this means that the feminists among us need to do a better job of communicating the concerns, but it would also be nice if attempts to do so didn’t result in (IMHO pretty ridiculous) accusations of “kafkaesque hypervigilance”.
P.S. If trying to understand others’ perspectives and attempting not to unnecessarily offend them means that I’m a wuss, then I’ll wear the badge proudly. I can’t speak for anyone else, but certainly hasn’t affected my ability to leave copies of me in the next generation.
But the thing is, we’re interested in the truth. What you or anyone else will use it for is their own business. Our goal is not to filter out topics which could potentially enable marketers to sell more crap or something.
Interesting, I don’t agree with this at all. Perhaps it comes down to a difference between those of us who are most interested in truth, and those of us who are most interested in winning.
Insofar as anyone’s utility function has a term for people-not-being-converted-to-Christianity, people-not-buying-loads-of-crap-they-don’t-need, or people-not-treating-members-of-whatever-gender-they-happen-to-be-attracted-to-as-sexual-trophies, what others do with knowledge is their business. Which is not to say that they should somehow censor people who advocate such things; but I wouldn’t expect them to sit idly by and pretend that they think these goals are all fine and dandy either.
I find this excessively repugnant.
This “we know what’s best for you”/”for you own good TM” attitude is very disturbing.
“what others do with knowledge is their business.”
Rather, they think it is, but they’re wrong.
I agree, but on the other hand, how important is the topic? We can rationally decide to lose the topic here on this ground: not everyone posting or reading has achieved perfect equanimity, but we can help them develop that quality more effectively by tricking them into thinking that we already have it (the illusion would be shattered in the type of failures elicited by each discussion of the sensitive topic).
An absolute prohibition would be ridiculous, though.