The point is that both men and women are immersed in guess culture from day 1 when it comes to romance, and so asking rather than guessing really is rude to average people, even though guessing carries very real costs.
My usual way out of this is to introduce other levels of indirection. E.g., “I often wonder whether it’s OK to ask people X in situations like these. It’s tricky, because sometimes not having asked is taken as demonstrating a lack of interest in X, which is of course a problem when I genuinely am interested, but on the other hand sometimes asking is taken as expressing too much interest in X, which is of course a problem when it makes people uncomfortable. Oh, look, pie… would you like some?”
Of course, this is within the context of my goal being to communicate my state meaningfully enough that other people can make meaningful decisions, which I understand is only one of many possible goals.
I… uhh… don’t really understand what you mean. Except that I wish I had some pie right now.
Of course it’s often moot since I operate similar to Yvain does (i.e. though opera-worth crushes that have to be toned down to a ludicrous degree to avoid scaring off even totally interested people).
Wow. That was jarring. I like Yvain’s writing a lot, so the level of cluelessness on dating is a bit of a revelation about how compartmentalised social intuition can be from general reasoning.
Those posts are interesting and relevant, and I’ve had discussions about similar topics with people from different cultures.
With that framing, what I’m saying is that you want to be guessing very well, and you’re violating norms in a way that costs the other party utilons if you’re too “asky”—which is what the PUA advice amounts to.
But I’d also say there’s a continuum, depending on how you make the move.
Yeah, we should respect the guess culture. Imagine a limit of askiness, where you regularly force people to be explicit about not being attracted to you, while also communicating that you very much want them to be. I think that even with different cultural norms, that communication’s going to be painful for them, so it’s quite right that it’s considered rude to put them through it.
Imagine a limit of askiness, where you regularly force people to be explicit about not being attracted to you, while also communicating that you very much want them to be. I think that even with different cultural norms, that communication’s going to be painful for them, so it’s quite right that it’s considered rude to put them through it.
Here’s a hypothetical for you: a man looks at a woman from across the room, and proceeds to walk in her direction, gazing directly into her eyes in a way that indicates attraction/romantic interest. He’s walking from something of a distance, and actually only begins walking just after she happens to notice that he’s looking. He maintains his gaze.
Within a second or two, she’s going to display a reaction of some kind—a reaction that will be pretty darn indicative of whether the approach is welcome or not. And if it’s not, the man’s gaze shifts slightly, so that he’s looking past her, as though to someone further along the path, and his route diverges slightly, so that he passes without intruding on her personal space.
Is this “ask” or “guess”? Is the woman forced to be “explicit about not being attracted”, while the man is “communicating that you very much want them to be”? Is it a painful communication, and rude to put them through it?
I assume that the man and the woman are in a culture where they don’t take for granted a level of explicit awareness of social cues that eliminates significant ambiguity or plausible deniability about what messages are being sent and received in a hypothetical case like that, because I’ve never encountered a culture that behaved otherwise.
Given that assumption, this seems pretty clearly a guess-culture (which I prefer to refer to as “hint culture”; “guess culture” is a very ask-culture way of referring to hint-culture) interaction. So, no, the woman is not being explicit, is not being forced to be explicit, and the man is not being explicit either. That’s precisely what hint-culture is for.
The dichotomy breaks down a bit here, but the important property is that both parties maintain plausible deniability. An argument I’ve heard Steven Pinker make (but might not be originally his) is that you can avert awkwardness by avoiding the creation of shared knowledge, and that’s the reason the plausible deniability is important.
The dichotomy breaks down a bit here, but the important property is that both parties maintain plausible deniability.
Right. I mentioned this example partly because it’s a PUA technique in the category of “forced IOIs”, which is an awkward name for maintaining plausible deniability about whether a request has been made and whether it has been rejected, to avoid awkwardness and social status loss.
Yeah, I notice that PUA stuff suggests being very asky before rapport is established, while feminist consent-culture stuff suggests being very asky after rapport is established.
Not sure that ‘asky’ is the right word here, since PUA is all about adapting to a hint culture. What PUA is very clear about is that it’s important to make one’s attraction known (put the cards on the table, as it were) well before the rapport/comfort stage is reached, in order to avoid creating a friendzone/Nice-Guy problem.
Feminists also suggest that when talking about the Nice Guy issue, although they also tend to claim that the friendzone doesn’t really have a hard boundary between it and the lover-zone. Possilby an inferential distance thing, possibly PUAs too cynical and failing at naive stuff when they actually get the chance.
I have no idea how to do that, and if I (personally) tried, i would probably shunt into Opera-Worthy Crush Mode.
the friendzone doesn’t really have a hard boundary between it and the lover-zone.
The boundary is not that hard, but it’s definitely there. IIRC, trying to cross that boundary is called “remixing” in PUA-speak, and it’s considered to be quite difficult. Part of the problem is that you most likely ended up in the friend-zone for a reason, so a “remix” often involves radically changing your outward identity in order to appeal to your ‘target’ in a lover-like, not friend-like sense.
Asides from that, PUA does tend to cultivate a healthy skepticism about “remixing”, because trying to remix is taken to be a sign of attachment which one should be clearly aware of, and either accept or discard. Basically, you might as well start out afresh with someone who is not going to have that unwanted association of you as a mere “friend”.
Here, read this post about ask culture and guess culture. Or get it closer to the source.
The point is that both men and women are immersed in guess culture from day 1 when it comes to romance, and so asking rather than guessing really is rude to average people, even though guessing carries very real costs.
I tend to get bogged down in infinite regress of ‘Should I ask if it’s okay to guess? Should I guess if it’s okay to ask if its okay to guess?’.
My usual way out of this is to introduce other levels of indirection. E.g., “I often wonder whether it’s OK to ask people X in situations like these. It’s tricky, because sometimes not having asked is taken as demonstrating a lack of interest in X, which is of course a problem when I genuinely am interested, but on the other hand sometimes asking is taken as expressing too much interest in X, which is of course a problem when it makes people uncomfortable. Oh, look, pie… would you like some?”
Of course, this is within the context of my goal being to communicate my state meaningfully enough that other people can make meaningful decisions, which I understand is only one of many possible goals.
I… uhh… don’t really understand what you mean. Except that I wish I had some pie right now.
Of course it’s often moot since I operate similar to Yvain does (i.e. though opera-worth crushes that have to be toned down to a ludicrous degree to avoid scaring off even totally interested people).
To be fair, I often get that reaction.
I’m reminded of Yvain’s Fourth Meditation On Creepiness, though I hadn’t heard of the ask- and guess- terminology before now.
Wow. That was jarring. I like Yvain’s writing a lot, so the level of cluelessness on dating is a bit of a revelation about how compartmentalised social intuition can be from general reasoning.
Those posts are interesting and relevant, and I’ve had discussions about similar topics with people from different cultures.
With that framing, what I’m saying is that you want to be guessing very well, and you’re violating norms in a way that costs the other party utilons if you’re too “asky”—which is what the PUA advice amounts to.
But I’d also say there’s a continuum, depending on how you make the move.
So you’re saying we should respect the guess culture of other people? Or do you want to switch over to ask culture?
Yeah, we should respect the guess culture. Imagine a limit of askiness, where you regularly force people to be explicit about not being attracted to you, while also communicating that you very much want them to be. I think that even with different cultural norms, that communication’s going to be painful for them, so it’s quite right that it’s considered rude to put them through it.
Here’s a hypothetical for you: a man looks at a woman from across the room, and proceeds to walk in her direction, gazing directly into her eyes in a way that indicates attraction/romantic interest. He’s walking from something of a distance, and actually only begins walking just after she happens to notice that he’s looking. He maintains his gaze.
Within a second or two, she’s going to display a reaction of some kind—a reaction that will be pretty darn indicative of whether the approach is welcome or not. And if it’s not, the man’s gaze shifts slightly, so that he’s looking past her, as though to someone further along the path, and his route diverges slightly, so that he passes without intruding on her personal space.
Is this “ask” or “guess”? Is the woman forced to be “explicit about not being attracted”, while the man is “communicating that you very much want them to be”? Is it a painful communication, and rude to put them through it?
I assume that the man and the woman are in a culture where they don’t take for granted a level of explicit awareness of social cues that eliminates significant ambiguity or plausible deniability about what messages are being sent and received in a hypothetical case like that, because I’ve never encountered a culture that behaved otherwise.
Given that assumption, this seems pretty clearly a guess-culture (which I prefer to refer to as “hint culture”; “guess culture” is a very ask-culture way of referring to hint-culture) interaction. So, no, the woman is not being explicit, is not being forced to be explicit, and the man is not being explicit either. That’s precisely what hint-culture is for.
The dichotomy breaks down a bit here, but the important property is that both parties maintain plausible deniability. An argument I’ve heard Steven Pinker make (but might not be originally his) is that you can avert awkwardness by avoiding the creation of shared knowledge, and that’s the reason the plausible deniability is important.
Right. I mentioned this example partly because it’s a PUA technique in the category of “forced IOIs”, which is an awkward name for maintaining plausible deniability about whether a request has been made and whether it has been rejected, to avoid awkwardness and social status loss.
Yeah, I notice that PUA stuff suggests being very asky before rapport is established, while feminist consent-culture stuff suggests being very asky after rapport is established.
Not sure that ‘asky’ is the right word here, since PUA is all about adapting to a hint culture. What PUA is very clear about is that it’s important to make one’s attraction known (put the cards on the table, as it were) well before the rapport/comfort stage is reached, in order to avoid creating a friendzone/Nice-Guy problem.
Feminists also suggest that when talking about the Nice Guy issue, although they also tend to claim that the friendzone doesn’t really have a hard boundary between it and the lover-zone. Possilby an inferential distance thing, possibly PUAs too cynical and failing at naive stuff when they actually get the chance.
I have no idea how to do that, and if I (personally) tried, i would probably shunt into Opera-Worthy Crush Mode.
The boundary is not that hard, but it’s definitely there. IIRC, trying to cross that boundary is called “remixing” in PUA-speak, and it’s considered to be quite difficult. Part of the problem is that you most likely ended up in the friend-zone for a reason, so a “remix” often involves radically changing your outward identity in order to appeal to your ‘target’ in a lover-like, not friend-like sense.
Asides from that, PUA does tend to cultivate a healthy skepticism about “remixing”, because trying to remix is taken to be a sign of attachment which one should be clearly aware of, and either accept or discard. Basically, you might as well start out afresh with someone who is not going to have that unwanted association of you as a mere “friend”.