the assumption that PUA theory is an accurate model of human social interactions
“PUA theory” is not a single thing. The PUA field contains numerous models of human social interactions, with varying scopes of applicability. For example, high-level theories would include Mystery’s M3 model of the phases of human courtship, and Mehow’s “microloop theory” of value/compliance transactions.
And then, there are straightforward minor models like, “people will be less defensive about engaging with you if they don’t think they’ll be stuck with you”—a rather uncontroversial principle that leads “indirect game” PUAs to “body rock” and give FTCs (“false time constraint”—creating the impression that you will need to leave soon) when approaching groups of people.
This particular idea is applicable to more situations than just that, of course—a couple decades ago when I was in a software company’s booth at some trade shows, we strategically arranged both our booth furniture and our positions within the booth to convey the impression that a person walking in would have equal ease in walking back out, without being pounced on by a lurking sales person and backed into a corner. And Joel Spolsky (of Joel On Software fame) has pointed out that people don’t like to put their data into places where they’re afraid they won’t be able to get it back out of.
Anyway… “PUA Theory” is way too broad, which is why I proposed narrowing the proposed area of testing to “rapidly manipulating social groups to form alliances and accomplish objectively observable goals”. Still pretty broad, and limited to testing the social models of indirect-game schools, but easiest to accomplish in a relatively ethical manner.
OTOH, if you wanted to test certain “inner game” theories (like the “AMP holarchy”), you could probably create a much simpler experiment, having guys just go up and introduce themselves to a wide variety of women, and then have the women complete questionnaires about the men they met, rating them on various perceived qualities such as trustworthiness, masculinity, overall attractiveness, how much of a connection they felt, etc..
(The AMP model effectively claims that they can substantially improve a man’s ratings on qualities like these. And since they do this by using actual women to give the ratings, this seems at least somewhat plausible. The main question being asked by such a test would be, how universal are those ratings? Which actually would be an interesting question in its own right...)
“PUA theory” is not a single thing. The PUA field contains numerous models of human social interactions, with varying scopes of applicability. For example, high-level theories would include Mystery’s M3 model of the phases of human courtship, and Mehow’s “microloop theory” of value/compliance transactions.
And then, there are straightforward minor models like, “people will be less defensive about engaging with you if they don’t think they’ll be stuck with you”—a rather uncontroversial principle that leads “indirect game” PUAs to “body rock” and give FTCs (“false time constraint”—creating the impression that you will need to leave soon) when approaching groups of people.
This particular idea is applicable to more situations than just that, of course—a couple decades ago when I was in a software company’s booth at some trade shows, we strategically arranged both our booth furniture and our positions within the booth to convey the impression that a person walking in would have equal ease in walking back out, without being pounced on by a lurking sales person and backed into a corner. And Joel Spolsky (of Joel On Software fame) has pointed out that people don’t like to put their data into places where they’re afraid they won’t be able to get it back out of.
Anyway… “PUA Theory” is way too broad, which is why I proposed narrowing the proposed area of testing to “rapidly manipulating social groups to form alliances and accomplish objectively observable goals”. Still pretty broad, and limited to testing the social models of indirect-game schools, but easiest to accomplish in a relatively ethical manner.
OTOH, if you wanted to test certain “inner game” theories (like the “AMP holarchy”), you could probably create a much simpler experiment, having guys just go up and introduce themselves to a wide variety of women, and then have the women complete questionnaires about the men they met, rating them on various perceived qualities such as trustworthiness, masculinity, overall attractiveness, how much of a connection they felt, etc..
(The AMP model effectively claims that they can substantially improve a man’s ratings on qualities like these. And since they do this by using actual women to give the ratings, this seems at least somewhat plausible. The main question being asked by such a test would be, how universal are those ratings? Which actually would be an interesting question in its own right...)