So they would actually end up at a disadvantage relative to a person with natural confidence and no PUA training.
The problem is that then you’re not cleanly comparing methods any more. Remember: much of PUA is the result of modeling the beliefs and behaviors of “naturally confident” and socially-skillful people. The PUA claim is that these beliefs and behaviors can be taught and learned, not that they have invented something which is different from what people are already capable of doing.
So, if you take “a person with natural confidence”, how do you know they won’t be doing exactly what the PUA will?
By the way, please remember that the test I proposed was befriending and social climbing, not seducing women. The PUA trainer’s relevant experience is strategic manipulation of social groups—something that an individual PUA need not necessarily master in order to get laid. It is the field of strategic social manipulation that has the most relevance to applications outside dating and mating, anyway.
The problem is that then you’re not cleanly comparing methods any more.
I’m not sure I understand why you think so.
So, if you take “a person with natural confidence”, how do you know they won’t be doing exactly what the PUA will?
They might—that’s what I want to test. I’m proposing to take two randomly selected groups, with randomly varying amounts of natural confidence and “game”, and train one group with PUA techniques, the other with equally confidence-building yet counter-theoretical non-PUA techniques (which have been validated, perhaps via a pilot study, to have no effect one way or the other), and see which group improves faster. The test could be either picking up women, or any other non-pickup social game that PUA claims to help with. If it’s true that PUA is an accurate model of how people with natural game operate, then people in each group on the high end of the natural game spectrum should be relatively unchanged, but the geekier subjects should improve more in the PUA group than the control group.
Now of course this is all just hypothetical, since we don’t have the resources to actually run such a rigorous study. So my motivation in trying to negotiate a test protocol like this is really just that here on LW, we should all be in agreement that beliefs require evidence, and we should be able to agree on what that evidence should look like. Until we reach such an agreement, we’re not really having a rational debate.
So, do you think the above protocol would generate valid, update-worthy evidence? If not, why not?
I don’t understand this question. The two experimental groups get different training, and the ones in each group who actually follow the training are doing different things.
Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t understand why you think the two groups would be doing the same thing, even given your assumption that PUA is an accurate model. If PUA is accurate, then the people in the PUA trained group would end up behaving more like naturally socially successful people, and the control group would go on being geeky (or average, or whatever you select the groups to initially be), and hence the two groups’ results would diverge.
Maybe you need to re-read the experimental protocol I suggested.
I’m confused—I thought you wanted to match the PUAs against naturally confident people, which AFAICT wouldn’t be comparing anything.
What I was concerned about is the possibility that the group that was given neutral instruction might disregard the instruction and simply fall back to whatever they already do, which might be something successful.
(Thinking about it a bit more, I have a sneaking suspicion that giving people almost any instruction (whether good, bad, or neutral) may induce a temporary increase in self-consciousness, and a corresponding decrease in performance. But that’s another study altogether!)
I thought you wanted to match the PUAs against naturally confident people
No—initially I said to use geeky, socially unsuccessful subjects, but I later realized that a random sample, including all kinds of people, would work just as well.
What I was concerned about is the possibility that the group that was given neutral instruction might disregard the instruction and simply fall back to whatever they already do
Which wouldn’t be a problem, since they’re supposed to be the control group. Unless of course they lost their confidence boost in the process as well. But as long as they are at least initially convinced their training will be effective (see below), then it wouldn’t invalidate the experiment, since the same effect would apply to the PUA group as well, if PUA turns out to be ineffective.
I have a sneaking suspicion that giving people almost any instruction (whether good, bad, or neutral) may induce a temporary increase in self-consciousness, and a corresponding decrease in performance
Yes, that is a possibility I’d considered, which is why I said you may need to go so far as to fake some tests, undergrad psych experiment style, using actors, to actually convince everyone their newly acquired skills are working.
Because if the two groups are doing the same things, what is it that you’re testing?
THAT’S what we’re testing: whether the two groups are doing the same thing! Your assumption that they are is based on the belief that PUA trains people to do the same things that socially successful people do naturally, which is based on the assumption that PUA theory is an accurate model of human social interactions.… which is the hypothesis that we’re trying to test with this experiment.
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...)
The problem is that then you’re not cleanly comparing methods any more. Remember: much of PUA is the result of modeling the beliefs and behaviors of “naturally confident” and socially-skillful people. The PUA claim is that these beliefs and behaviors can be taught and learned, not that they have invented something which is different from what people are already capable of doing.
So, if you take “a person with natural confidence”, how do you know they won’t be doing exactly what the PUA will?
By the way, please remember that the test I proposed was befriending and social climbing, not seducing women. The PUA trainer’s relevant experience is strategic manipulation of social groups—something that an individual PUA need not necessarily master in order to get laid. It is the field of strategic social manipulation that has the most relevance to applications outside dating and mating, anyway.
I’m not sure I understand why you think so.
They might—that’s what I want to test. I’m proposing to take two randomly selected groups, with randomly varying amounts of natural confidence and “game”, and train one group with PUA techniques, the other with equally confidence-building yet counter-theoretical non-PUA techniques (which have been validated, perhaps via a pilot study, to have no effect one way or the other), and see which group improves faster. The test could be either picking up women, or any other non-pickup social game that PUA claims to help with. If it’s true that PUA is an accurate model of how people with natural game operate, then people in each group on the high end of the natural game spectrum should be relatively unchanged, but the geekier subjects should improve more in the PUA group than the control group.
Now of course this is all just hypothetical, since we don’t have the resources to actually run such a rigorous study. So my motivation in trying to negotiate a test protocol like this is really just that here on LW, we should all be in agreement that beliefs require evidence, and we should be able to agree on what that evidence should look like. Until we reach such an agreement, we’re not really having a rational debate.
So, do you think the above protocol would generate valid, update-worthy evidence? If not, why not?
Because if the two groups are doing the same things, what is it that you’re testing?
I don’t understand this question. The two experimental groups get different training, and the ones in each group who actually follow the training are doing different things.
Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t understand why you think the two groups would be doing the same thing, even given your assumption that PUA is an accurate model. If PUA is accurate, then the people in the PUA trained group would end up behaving more like naturally socially successful people, and the control group would go on being geeky (or average, or whatever you select the groups to initially be), and hence the two groups’ results would diverge.
Maybe you need to re-read the experimental protocol I suggested.
I’m confused—I thought you wanted to match the PUAs against naturally confident people, which AFAICT wouldn’t be comparing anything.
What I was concerned about is the possibility that the group that was given neutral instruction might disregard the instruction and simply fall back to whatever they already do, which might be something successful.
(Thinking about it a bit more, I have a sneaking suspicion that giving people almost any instruction (whether good, bad, or neutral) may induce a temporary increase in self-consciousness, and a corresponding decrease in performance. But that’s another study altogether!)
No—initially I said to use geeky, socially unsuccessful subjects, but I later realized that a random sample, including all kinds of people, would work just as well.
Which wouldn’t be a problem, since they’re supposed to be the control group. Unless of course they lost their confidence boost in the process as well. But as long as they are at least initially convinced their training will be effective (see below), then it wouldn’t invalidate the experiment, since the same effect would apply to the PUA group as well, if PUA turns out to be ineffective.
Yes, that is a possibility I’d considered, which is why I said you may need to go so far as to fake some tests, undergrad psych experiment style, using actors, to actually convince everyone their newly acquired skills are working.
THAT’S what we’re testing: whether the two groups are doing the same thing! Your assumption that they are is based on the belief that PUA trains people to do the same things that socially successful people do naturally, which is based on the assumption that PUA theory is an accurate model of human social interactions.… which is the hypothesis that we’re trying to test with this experiment.
“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...)