I suspect that efficiency is not necessarily the reason that many dislike PUA techniques. Personally, I don’t particularly doubt that there are patterns for how women react to men (and vice versa), and that these can be used to have more sex. On the other hand, spiking people’s drinks or getting them drunk can also be used for the same purpose, and that’s commonly known as rape.
Sure, there are ways to hack into people’s minds to get them to do what you want. The fact that they exist doesn’t make them ethically acceptable.
Now, I don’t know whether PUA methods are or aren’t—but the fact that “the attitude that your partner should be respected” is seen as a negative thing seems to be pointing pretty clearly towards the no direction.
Sure, there are ways to hack into people’s minds to get them to do what you want. The fact that they exist doesn’t make them ethically acceptable.
Right. But now we have an ontological problem: “hack into someone’s mind” and “not hack into someone’s mind” are not natural kinds.
In any social, romantic interaction, there is some degree of mind-hacking going on. When a person spends all their time and energy chasing a member of the opposite gender who is not interested, what has happened is mindhacking. The pain of unrequited love is a result of asymmetric mindhacking.
Love itself is symmetric mindhacking: you have hacked her mind, and s/he has hacked yours, and both of your implicit utility functions have been shifted to highly value the other person.
What the Seduction community seeks is to allow men to create an asymmetric situation to cause a woman to have sex with them (and this is a place where some members of the community really do behave like assholes and not let the woman down gently afterwards, a practise know as “expectation management”, though the community has built up a tradition of karma: we ostracise men who break the rule of always managing expectations and leaving the woman in a happier state than when we met her).
The other major goal of the community is to allow the man to create a symmetric situation—which is usually achieved by first creating an asymmetric situation (male strong), and then gradually evening it out by allowing yourself to fall in love with the woman.
Women who have been “screwed and left” by pickup artists feel good about themselves more often than one would naively expect—and this surprised me until I realized that if the PUA has demonstrated enough alpha quality, the woman’s emotional mind has classified him as “good to have sex with even without commitment” because alpha-male sperm is so evolutionarily advantageous—if you are impregnated by an alpha male then your male descendants will have whatever alpha qualities he has—and will impregnate other women, spreading your genes.
I’ll also say that insofar as women think that PUA “mind-hacking” techniques are black-hat subversions of female rationality, the most obvious solution I see is disseminating more information about them. Knowledge of these techniques would allow women to at least attempt to “patch” themselves, assuming they are open to the idea that they actually work.
For example, say I learn about negs. I can either think, “Oh good, it’s fun to be attracted to guys, so I hope guys neg me effectively,” or “I think it is immoral to neg girls, the world would be a better place if guys didn’t do it, and individual guys who neg are probably not worth my time, therefore I will avoid them even if their techniques work and I find myself attracted to them.”
Either way, I think I’m better off knowing about negs and how they work. (Apologies for a not very nuanced view of the neg, but it’s not that relevant to my main point.)
I realized after I wrote this comment that I think learning about PUA is an excellent exercise in rationality for women in general and me specifically, since it exposes areas where I have in the past not always been aware of the reasons for my decisions.
I could see how women who believe themselves to be immune to PUA (perhaps because the are in fact immune), would not find the topic as interesting.
but the fact that “the attitude that your partner should be respected” is seen as a negative thing seems to be pointing pretty clearly towards the no direction.
No! NO! NO!
Your long-term partner should be your soulmate, with a high degree of mutual trust and respect. But a woman who you have not yet had sex with is simply not going to respond well to you “respecting” her.
But a woman who you have not yet had sex with is simply not going to respond well to you “respecting” her.
Actually, people in general will be creeped out or think you’re of lower status if you’re too easily impressed, i.e. offer too much “respect” before they feel they’ve earned it. It’s got nothing to do with gender, except insofar as low status-ness is unattractive.
I think that some people will easily misread your comment as implying that men should not respect women early in the interaction.
My guess is that you are actually trying to say something different, based on your use of “respect” in quotes: You are saying that women may not respond well to attempts by men to signal respect.
If you are saying the second thing, then I agree: it is important to hold respect for the other person at all points in the interaction, yet certain ways that society encourages men to signal respect are counterproductive and unattractive.
I suspect that efficiency is not necessarily the reason that many dislike PUA techniques. Personally, I don’t particularly doubt that there are patterns for how women react to men (and vice versa), and that these can be used to have more sex. On the other hand, spiking people’s drinks or getting them drunk can also be used for the same purpose, and that’s commonly known as rape.
Sure, there are ways to hack into people’s minds to get them to do what you want. The fact that they exist doesn’t make them ethically acceptable.
Now, I don’t know whether PUA methods are or aren’t—but the fact that “the attitude that your partner should be respected” is seen as a negative thing seems to be pointing pretty clearly towards the no direction.
Right. But now we have an ontological problem: “hack into someone’s mind” and “not hack into someone’s mind” are not natural kinds.
In any social, romantic interaction, there is some degree of mind-hacking going on. When a person spends all their time and energy chasing a member of the opposite gender who is not interested, what has happened is mindhacking. The pain of unrequited love is a result of asymmetric mindhacking.
Love itself is symmetric mindhacking: you have hacked her mind, and s/he has hacked yours, and both of your implicit utility functions have been shifted to highly value the other person.
What the Seduction community seeks is to allow men to create an asymmetric situation to cause a woman to have sex with them (and this is a place where some members of the community really do behave like assholes and not let the woman down gently afterwards, a practise know as “expectation management”, though the community has built up a tradition of karma: we ostracise men who break the rule of always managing expectations and leaving the woman in a happier state than when we met her).
The other major goal of the community is to allow the man to create a symmetric situation—which is usually achieved by first creating an asymmetric situation (male strong), and then gradually evening it out by allowing yourself to fall in love with the woman.
Women who have been “screwed and left” by pickup artists feel good about themselves more often than one would naively expect—and this surprised me until I realized that if the PUA has demonstrated enough alpha quality, the woman’s emotional mind has classified him as “good to have sex with even without commitment” because alpha-male sperm is so evolutionarily advantageous—if you are impregnated by an alpha male then your male descendants will have whatever alpha qualities he has—and will impregnate other women, spreading your genes.
I’ll also say that insofar as women think that PUA “mind-hacking” techniques are black-hat subversions of female rationality, the most obvious solution I see is disseminating more information about them. Knowledge of these techniques would allow women to at least attempt to “patch” themselves, assuming they are open to the idea that they actually work.
For example, say I learn about negs. I can either think, “Oh good, it’s fun to be attracted to guys, so I hope guys neg me effectively,” or “I think it is immoral to neg girls, the world would be a better place if guys didn’t do it, and individual guys who neg are probably not worth my time, therefore I will avoid them even if their techniques work and I find myself attracted to them.”
Either way, I think I’m better off knowing about negs and how they work. (Apologies for a not very nuanced view of the neg, but it’s not that relevant to my main point.)
I realized after I wrote this comment that I think learning about PUA is an excellent exercise in rationality for women in general and me specifically, since it exposes areas where I have in the past not always been aware of the reasons for my decisions.
I could see how women who believe themselves to be immune to PUA (perhaps because the are in fact immune), would not find the topic as interesting.
No! NO! NO!
Your long-term partner should be your soulmate, with a high degree of mutual trust and respect. But a woman who you have not yet had sex with is simply not going to respond well to you “respecting” her.
Actually, people in general will be creeped out or think you’re of lower status if you’re too easily impressed, i.e. offer too much “respect” before they feel they’ve earned it. It’s got nothing to do with gender, except insofar as low status-ness is unattractive.
I think that some people will easily misread your comment as implying that men should not respect women early in the interaction.
My guess is that you are actually trying to say something different, based on your use of “respect” in quotes: You are saying that women may not respond well to attempts by men to signal respect.
If you are saying the second thing, then I agree: it is important to hold respect for the other person at all points in the interaction, yet certain ways that society encourages men to signal respect are counterproductive and unattractive.