OK, my intended reply to this and to vladamir’s sibling comment got sidetracked by my accidental “report” clickage, so let me try to rememeber what I was going to say....
Basically you both just seem to be defending the idea that PUA isn’t just about getting laid, but is also applicable to establishing more meaningful romantic relationships. OK, but I still don’t see how you get from there to it being applicable to anything outside the field of male/female mating interactions.
FYI, cousin_it’s comments are a good example of what I would consider to be meaningfully engaging the substance of my argument.
OK, but I still don’t see how you get from there to it being applicable to anything outside the field of male/female mating interactions.
Well, I am a newbie here, but the site is called “Less Wrong,” and it’s a spin-off, and a self-described “sister site,” of another one named “Overcoming Bias.” I would say that the comments in this thread, both mine and by others, have amply demonstrated that a great many people—including many people here—are wrong about many aspects of this topic, and prone to some very severe and identifiable biases when thinking and talking about it.
Therefore, elucidating this situation seems to me a worthy intellectual pursuit by itself, since, if properly undertaken, it should result in people being less wrong about a topic that is, at the very least, highly relevant in real life, and it should make them identify (and hopefully overcome) certain biases they hold. Furthermore, the identification of these biases could be expected to lead to a more accurate assessment of other issues too, because, considering the undeniably significant role of sexual selection and status signaling in human evolution, biases shaped by them are unlikely to be confined to a small and isolated subset of human thinking and behavior. All this should, I think, fall squarely under the mission statement of improving human rationality.
I hope you’ll find that a satisfactory statement of motivation.
OK, but I still don’t see how you get from there to it being applicable to anything outside the field of male/female mating interactions.
You appear not to have read the part of my comment where I explained that Mystery Method is heavily about quickly befriending groups of strangers and getting them on your side. Sounds like a generally useful skill to me. ;-)
What may not have been clear from my comment is that these groups of strangers are not exclusively female; Mystery’s “targets” might have been the lone female in a group of six men, or part of a mixed group of three men and four women, or some other oddball combination.
His methods also include such things as how to do “forward and backward merging” and “pawning”—i.e., using one group of strangers you’ve just met, to gain access to a different set of strangers, while implicitly convincing both groups you’re a sociable guy who knows everyone and is therefore worth knowing. How to use this to join and split groups to leave you with the person(s) you want to talk with. On and on and on this stuff goes… and that’s only the stuff I know about because I watched his TV show; I haven’t actually studied any of it myself.
If you genuinely don’t think that any of that kind of knowledge would be useful for non-romantic purposes, I don’t really know what else to say.
You appear not to have read the part of my comment where I explained that Mystery Method is heavily about quickly befriending groups of strangers and getting them on your side.
Ok, yes, that does sound like a generally useful skill, and I was not aware that some of the things you cite were part of PUA material.
But none of that is what was originally cited by the OP. What was cited was the drink-buying thing, something which just sounds positively wacky to anyone not committed to the PUA ethos.
If he’d cited an example of something like what you’re talking about here, I don’t think anyone would have had a problem with it.
If you genuinely don’t think that any of that kind of knowledge would be useful for non-romantic purposes, I don’t really know what else to say.
I’m not kodos96, but I imagine that people who host parties would like that kind of skill, and good hosts probably have it. No romance involved (for the host).
OK, my intended reply to this and to vladamir’s sibling comment got sidetracked by my accidental “report” clickage, so let me try to rememeber what I was going to say....
Basically you both just seem to be defending the idea that PUA isn’t just about getting laid, but is also applicable to establishing more meaningful romantic relationships. OK, but I still don’t see how you get from there to it being applicable to anything outside the field of male/female mating interactions.
FYI, cousin_it’s comments are a good example of what I would consider to be meaningfully engaging the substance of my argument.
kodos96:
Well, I am a newbie here, but the site is called “Less Wrong,” and it’s a spin-off, and a self-described “sister site,” of another one named “Overcoming Bias.” I would say that the comments in this thread, both mine and by others, have amply demonstrated that a great many people—including many people here—are wrong about many aspects of this topic, and prone to some very severe and identifiable biases when thinking and talking about it.
Therefore, elucidating this situation seems to me a worthy intellectual pursuit by itself, since, if properly undertaken, it should result in people being less wrong about a topic that is, at the very least, highly relevant in real life, and it should make them identify (and hopefully overcome) certain biases they hold. Furthermore, the identification of these biases could be expected to lead to a more accurate assessment of other issues too, because, considering the undeniably significant role of sexual selection and status signaling in human evolution, biases shaped by them are unlikely to be confined to a small and isolated subset of human thinking and behavior. All this should, I think, fall squarely under the mission statement of improving human rationality.
I hope you’ll find that a satisfactory statement of motivation.
Dunno about him, but I found your statement most satisfactory in explaining a good chunk of my motivation as well. Bravo.
As they say on Reddit, have an upvote and an orangered. (Referring to the reply indicator envelope color.)
You appear not to have read the part of my comment where I explained that Mystery Method is heavily about quickly befriending groups of strangers and getting them on your side. Sounds like a generally useful skill to me. ;-)
What may not have been clear from my comment is that these groups of strangers are not exclusively female; Mystery’s “targets” might have been the lone female in a group of six men, or part of a mixed group of three men and four women, or some other oddball combination.
His methods also include such things as how to do “forward and backward merging” and “pawning”—i.e., using one group of strangers you’ve just met, to gain access to a different set of strangers, while implicitly convincing both groups you’re a sociable guy who knows everyone and is therefore worth knowing. How to use this to join and split groups to leave you with the person(s) you want to talk with. On and on and on this stuff goes… and that’s only the stuff I know about because I watched his TV show; I haven’t actually studied any of it myself.
If you genuinely don’t think that any of that kind of knowledge would be useful for non-romantic purposes, I don’t really know what else to say.
Ok, yes, that does sound like a generally useful skill, and I was not aware that some of the things you cite were part of PUA material.
But none of that is what was originally cited by the OP. What was cited was the drink-buying thing, something which just sounds positively wacky to anyone not committed to the PUA ethos.
If he’d cited an example of something like what you’re talking about here, I don’t think anyone would have had a problem with it.
I’m not kodos96, but I imagine that people who host parties would like that kind of skill, and good hosts probably have it. No romance involved (for the host).