I wasn’t actually telling other people to adopt my rule, in fact it isn’t even a rule. Other people might call it a part of the social contract. I’d consider it to be an overwhelmingly useful heuristic for getting along in society. One example of a pathalogical case does not overbalance the majority of cases where it holds true.
If you are only interested in the consequences for you and haven’t figured out why it’s sometimes good for you to behave according to the social contract, then that’s your choice. But my choice is not to trust you or anybody like you… which is kind of the whole point of this argument.
The consequence for you is that other people watch your actions (or even just your words in this case) and no longer trust or respect you.
That has it’s own further consequences down the line. If those further consequences later impinge upon your utility (eg help that you need but is not extended to you), then it would be worth considering adopting “my” rule.
That doesn’t seem to be true either. To take an extreme example, being a compulsive liar who enjoys telling falsehoods for fun is one of the “dark triad” of male qualities that are exceptionally attractive for females. The reputational knock-on effects aren’t enough to balance things out.
The reputational knock-on effects aren’t enough to balance things out.
How can you be sure? You may well be noticing the successful compulsive liars (at least, the less subtle ones) and not noticing the guys who told one lie too many to the wrong people in their lives.
It is normally difficult enough to avoid selection bias, but there’s the additional difficulty here that a disproportionate number of the unsuccessful ones are located in prison.
So this brings up one of the questions I wonder if PUAs can answer: do you have any kind of metric capable of telling whether something is attractive for “females” or for “the kind of females PUAs find easy targets”? It was obvious when I did my psychiatry rotation that the Cluster B personality disorder patients found themselves drawn to one another. Is the Dark Triad good for picking up women who aren’t Cluster B, or primarily for picking up women who are? Or at least, are there tools available to actually answer that question?
Edit: this comment is in reply to wording that cousin_it has now removed from his comment. You can get the gist from the brief excerpt that I have quoted.
You are assuming that I’m trying to give you advice that benefits you?
Thats interesting—especially when you’ve made it clear that you don’t bother to consider whether your actions benefit other people (in fact you choose to actively work against the benefit of other people). I think I made it pretty clear that, due to this behaviour, I neither respect you nor have any particular reason to help you. I was replying to your stated lack of understanding: “I don’t understand why it should be adopted.” in case you happened to have anything interesting to say about it.
I never thought that on balance you would choose to adopt the rule. :)
I gave you the reasons why people do adopt this rule and let you choose for yourself if that applies to your circumstances.
If you want to give advice that benefits me, try to give advice that’s actually been proven to benefit me, not advice that oh-so-conveniently happens to benefit you.
I’m sure we can each find oh-so-convenient examples that match what we choose to believe. I also expect that one person being a defector will probably clean up pretty nicely in a society full of people that choose not to defect (on average).
On average, it looks like it works for people that I’ve met (male and female)… that’s about all I can say. Why do you expect that for my advice to be good advice that it has to be 100% true for you as well as me?
You are assuming that I’m trying to give you advice that benefits you?
Please reread the following paragraph from your own comment:
That has it’s own further consequences down the line. If those further consequences later impinge upon your utility (eg help that you need but is not extended to you), then it would be worth considering adopting “my” rule.
Cousin_it’s reply made sense. Yours does not. The context makes it incoherent.
Weird… my comment above was a reply to a completely different comment of cousin_its
I can easily see why it looks incoherent.
I’m now going to go looking for the comment that I was actually replying to.
Edit: nope, looks like cousin_it has re-edited his original comment and removed that which I was actually replying to, so that my reply appears to be no longer relevant.
I am leaving my comment in place anyhow.
Oh—and I was giving advice that may or may not benefit people in general—not specifically for cousin_it’s benefit. Thus why my reply is not entirely incoherent :)
I was mainly responding to his statement that “I don’t understand why it should be adopted.” by explaining why it’s worth considering as an option—ie why other people adopt it.
I wasn’t actually telling other people to adopt my rule, in fact it isn’t even a rule. Other people might call it a part of the social contract. I’d consider it to be an overwhelmingly useful heuristic for getting along in society. One example of a pathalogical case does not overbalance the majority of cases where it holds true.
If you are only interested in the consequences for you and haven’t figured out why it’s sometimes good for you to behave according to the social contract, then that’s your choice. But my choice is not to trust you or anybody like you… which is kind of the whole point of this argument.
The consequence for you is that other people watch your actions (or even just your words in this case) and no longer trust or respect you.
That has it’s own further consequences down the line. If those further consequences later impinge upon your utility (eg help that you need but is not extended to you), then it would be worth considering adopting “my” rule.
That doesn’t seem to be true either. To take an extreme example, being a compulsive liar who enjoys telling falsehoods for fun is one of the “dark triad” of male qualities that are exceptionally attractive for females. The reputational knock-on effects aren’t enough to balance things out.
How can you be sure? You may well be noticing the successful compulsive liars (at least, the less subtle ones) and not noticing the guys who told one lie too many to the wrong people in their lives.
It is normally difficult enough to avoid selection bias, but there’s the additional difficulty here that a disproportionate number of the unsuccessful ones are located in prison.
So this brings up one of the questions I wonder if PUAs can answer: do you have any kind of metric capable of telling whether something is attractive for “females” or for “the kind of females PUAs find easy targets”? It was obvious when I did my psychiatry rotation that the Cluster B personality disorder patients found themselves drawn to one another. Is the Dark Triad good for picking up women who aren’t Cluster B, or primarily for picking up women who are? Or at least, are there tools available to actually answer that question?
Edit: this comment is in reply to wording that cousin_it has now removed from his comment. You can get the gist from the brief excerpt that I have quoted.
You are assuming that I’m trying to give you advice that benefits you?
Thats interesting—especially when you’ve made it clear that you don’t bother to consider whether your actions benefit other people (in fact you choose to actively work against the benefit of other people). I think I made it pretty clear that, due to this behaviour, I neither respect you nor have any particular reason to help you. I was replying to your stated lack of understanding: “I don’t understand why it should be adopted.” in case you happened to have anything interesting to say about it.
I never thought that on balance you would choose to adopt the rule. :) I gave you the reasons why people do adopt this rule and let you choose for yourself if that applies to your circumstances.
I’m sure we can each find oh-so-convenient examples that match what we choose to believe. I also expect that one person being a defector will probably clean up pretty nicely in a society full of people that choose not to defect (on average).
On average, it looks like it works for people that I’ve met (male and female)… that’s about all I can say. Why do you expect that for my advice to be good advice that it has to be 100% true for you as well as me?
Please reread the following paragraph from your own comment:
Cousin_it’s reply made sense. Yours does not. The context makes it incoherent.
Weird… my comment above was a reply to a completely different comment of cousin_its
I can easily see why it looks incoherent.
I’m now going to go looking for the comment that I was actually replying to.
Edit: nope, looks like cousin_it has re-edited his original comment and removed that which I was actually replying to, so that my reply appears to be no longer relevant.
I am leaving my comment in place anyhow.
Oh—and I was giving advice that may or may not benefit people in general—not specifically for cousin_it’s benefit. Thus why my reply is not entirely incoherent :)
I was mainly responding to his statement that “I don’t understand why it should be adopted.” by explaining why it’s worth considering as an option—ie why other people adopt it.