The fact that people (e.g. pjeby) have returned to this subject without invoking offense, despite discussing similar content, suggests that the offensive characteristic is not a necessary component of the subject.
FWIW, it has been previously argued that I don’t really talk about PUA, but only a bastardized female-friendly version thereof.
I, OTOH, maintain that this is merely a function of using non-misogynistic language and metaphor to describe the same acts, and the fact I don’t signal loyalty to men protesting that they’re being oppressed by an unjust conspiracy of women and traitorous men .
My personal take: shit yea it’s unjust. But I don’t see those guys doing anything to fix the injustices on women’s side of things (or even really trying to understand them in the first place), instead just proclaiming their own side’s values to be superior.
But that’s just stupid. If you want to relate to women, you need to… well, relate. I think that both women in general and “dog people” in particular have a few peculiar or irrational values by my “cat-man” lights… but they’re still their values.
And if I want to interact with those people, that means honoring their values, not insisting that they behave by mine. So, let’s replace the Golden Rule (“do unto others as you’d have them do unto you”) with the Platinum Rule: do unto others as they would have you do.
Or, better yet for LessWrong, let’s coin the “Dilithium Rule”: do unto others that which you can empirically expect will produce the response(s) you wish to receive. ;-)
(And by this rule, protesting men’s oppression is silly, unless your goal is to ally with other true believers. It can be empirically observed to have little effect on anyone else.)
In fairness, I’m sorta stealing it from NLP’s wishy-washier pseudo-deep version, “the meaning of a communication is the response you get.”
But, I’d guess from the discussion around this point for the article, that it’s actually an important rule for people with atypical social responses to learn. “As you would have them do unto you” only works with people who match your preferences, and a too-literal interpretation of “as they would have you do” might make you do what people say they want, while completely missing the things that are actually important to them, but difficult or impossible to verbalize.
Both of these errors are also prevalent in negative reactions to discussions of social dynamics, marketing, and PUA.
Ideally, all of these disciplines are about maximizing personal outcomes by actually giving people what they really want, but in the unfortunate worst cases can be degenerated into pretending to give people what they want. (Which then stigmatizes the entire field of knowledge on a guilt-by-association basis.)
(I suppose you could say that “co-operator” marketers, charismatics, and PUAs are those who genuinely want to give others what they want, and their study is a means to that end. “Defectors”, on the other hand, only want to know how to get what they want, and don’t care whether the other people are getting what they want.
Personally, while I’m aware that what I say I want differs from what makes me happy, I’d rather get the former. I don’t know how widespread this is, but I suspect it’s wide enough that such suspicious is not generally an error.
FWIW, it has been previously argued that I don’t really talk about PUA, but only a bastardized female-friendly version thereof.
I, OTOH, maintain that this is merely a function of using non-misogynistic language and metaphor to describe the same acts, and the fact I don’t signal loyalty to men protesting that they’re being oppressed by an unjust conspiracy of women and traitorous men .
My personal take: shit yea it’s unjust. But I don’t see those guys doing anything to fix the injustices on women’s side of things (or even really trying to understand them in the first place), instead just proclaiming their own side’s values to be superior.
But that’s just stupid. If you want to relate to women, you need to… well, relate. I think that both women in general and “dog people” in particular have a few peculiar or irrational values by my “cat-man” lights… but they’re still their values.
And if I want to interact with those people, that means honoring their values, not insisting that they behave by mine. So, let’s replace the Golden Rule (“do unto others as you’d have them do unto you”) with the Platinum Rule: do unto others as they would have you do.
Or, better yet for LessWrong, let’s coin the “Dilithium Rule”: do unto others that which you can empirically expect will produce the response(s) you wish to receive. ;-)
(And by this rule, protesting men’s oppression is silly, unless your goal is to ally with other true believers. It can be empirically observed to have little effect on anyone else.)
I’m definitely stealing that.
In fairness, I’m sorta stealing it from NLP’s wishy-washier pseudo-deep version, “the meaning of a communication is the response you get.”
But, I’d guess from the discussion around this point for the article, that it’s actually an important rule for people with atypical social responses to learn. “As you would have them do unto you” only works with people who match your preferences, and a too-literal interpretation of “as they would have you do” might make you do what people say they want, while completely missing the things that are actually important to them, but difficult or impossible to verbalize.
Both of these errors are also prevalent in negative reactions to discussions of social dynamics, marketing, and PUA.
Ideally, all of these disciplines are about maximizing personal outcomes by actually giving people what they really want, but in the unfortunate worst cases can be degenerated into pretending to give people what they want. (Which then stigmatizes the entire field of knowledge on a guilt-by-association basis.)
(I suppose you could say that “co-operator” marketers, charismatics, and PUAs are those who genuinely want to give others what they want, and their study is a means to that end. “Defectors”, on the other hand, only want to know how to get what they want, and don’t care whether the other people are getting what they want.
Personally, while I’m aware that what I say I want differs from what makes me happy, I’d rather get the former. I don’t know how widespread this is, but I suspect it’s wide enough that such suspicious is not generally an error.