I’m not sure about that… It’s actually a mathematical question, but the proper formalization escapes me at the moment. (Maybe someone could help?) At first glance, any value of hit rate can be equally well-explained by hidden characteristics or by simple randomness. Right now I believe you have to notice some visible characteristic that determines the success of your method before you can conclude that it’s not just randomness. But I can’t prove that with numbers yet.
I should be a little clearer about the priors on which my claims are based.
What I am saying is that the observed level of PUA success is very likely on the hypothesis that the PUA description of the “typical woman” reflects only a small subset within a very heterogeneous population. If I furthermore take into account my prior that women are a heterogeneous population, the observed PUA success is not sufficient evidence that their description is accurate of the “typical woman”.
To be a little more precise:
Let
H = “Traits vary among women with a certain kind of distribution such that the population of women is heterogeneous. Moreover, insofar as there is a typical woman, the PUA description of her is not accurate.”
T = “The PUA description of the typical woman is accurate. That is, PUA methods can be expected to ‘work’ on the typical woman.”
S = “PUAs have the success that we have observed them to have.”
X = Prior knowledge
I grant that p(S | T & X) > p(S | H & X). That is, PUAs would be more likely to have their observed success if their model of the typical woman were accurate.
However, I think that p(S | H & X) is still fairly large. Furthermore, I think that p(H | X) is sufficiently larger than p(T | X) to imply that
p(H | S & X)
= [ p(H | X) / p(S | X) ] p(S | H & X*)
> [ p(T | X) / p(S | X) ] p(S | T & X*)
= p(T | S & X).
[ETA: I’m not sure why that “>” sign is not escaping properly.]
That is, the PUA model of the typical woman is probably inaccurate.
No, it’s localizing the source of disagreement :P.
You brought the evidence of pickup artist success to the table. I’m telling you something about the priors that were already on the table. (Here, the table’s contents are my beliefs about the world.) In particular, I’m saying something about why your new evidence isn’t enough to change what I think is probably true.
It’s too difficult to give you exact values for all of the relevant probabilities. But this is a start. For example, now you know that I already grant that p(S | T & X) > p(S | H & X), so you could try to increase my estimation of their difference. Or you could try to show me that p(H | X) doesn’t exceed p(T | X) by as much as I thought. That is, you could try to show me that, even without the evidence of PUA success, I shouldn’t have thought that women are so likely to be heterogeneous.
I don’t expect you to consider all of this work to be worth your time. But at least maybe you have a better sense of what it would take than you had before.
Damn, so this is how Aumann agreement works in the real world. You update! No, you update!
Even without knowing S, the hypothesis T comes with a nifty biological explanation—all those alphas and betas. Does H have anything like that? Why would it be genetically useful for different women to prefer highly different traits in men?
That link argues that each individual interbreeding population does have psychological unity, but there are differences between populations. So PUA techniques should work or fail depending on ethnicity. (Yeah! I win the Non-PC Award!) Is that what you believe?
That link argues that each individual interbreeding population does have psychological unity, but there are differences between populations.
I see an argument that different populations could have different means for certain quantifiable traits. I don’t see an argument that a single population will be homogeneous.
Moreover, the link claims that populations have diverged on these metrics in fairly short amounts of time. I think that that is evidence for a fair amount of diversity within populations to serve as the raw material for that divergence.
So PUA techniques should work or fail depending on ethnicity. (Yeah! I win the Non-PC Award!) Is that what you believe?
I should clarify that I’m not convinced by the link’s claim that populations differ on those metrics for genetic reasons. But I certainly allow that it’s possible. It’s not ruled out by what we know about biology. I presented the link only as evidence that the case for psychological unity is not a slam-dunk.
That is, you could try to show me that, even without the evidence of PUA success, I shouldn’t have thought that women are so likely to be heterogeneous.
For characteristics that we share with other primates, what would be your evidence that we would not be so heterogeneous in our inner workings?
Yes, people are pretty varied in their cultural trappings and acquired values (i.e. choices of signal expression), but we’re ridiculously common in the mental/emotional machinery by which we obtain that acculturation.
For characteristics that we share with other primates, what would be your evidence that we would not be so heterogeneous in our inner workings?
Did you mean, what would be my evidence that we would be so heterogeneous?
Assuming that you did, it’s not clear to me that we share the relevant characteristics with the other primates at the relevant level of abstraction. It’s not known to me that a female chimpanzee would react well to a male she’d never met before putting his arm around her waist.
My understanding is that mating practices vary pretty widely among the primates. They have greater and lesser sexual dimorphism. They are more or less inclined to have harem-type arrangements.
Did you mean, what would be my evidence that we would be so heterogeneous?
Oops, I temporarily confused homogeneous and heterogeneous, actually. ;-)
Assuming that you did, it’s not clear to me that we share the relevant characteristics with the other primates at the relevant level of abstraction.
Based on your examples, I’d say that where we disagree is on what the correct level of abstraction is. I would expect “arm around the waist” to vary in attractiveness by culture, but the attractiveness of “comfortable initiating touch” to vary a good bit less.
Based on your examples, I’d say that where we disagree is on what the correct level of abstraction is.
Yes, I think that’s right. I too would expect most women to like men who evince confidence, and who act as though they’re used to being liked rather than disliked.
But it’s less clear to me that initiating touch conveys that attitude without giving 49 out of 50 women the impression that you have other undesirable qualities.
For example, perhaps, by rushing to touch, you give the impression that you are in a hurry to be physically intimate as quickly as possible. She might infer that you lack the confidence or security to pursue courtship at a leisurely pace. Perhaps you are some zero-status interloper who’s trying to get in and out as fast as you can before the local alpha male catches you. And, given the level of inter-tribe violence in the EEA, she might be leery of interlopers. Maybe they present too high a threat of violence or rape to her personally, especially if they seem eager to get intimate quickly.
You’re not imagining the same thing as pjeby when you think of “comfortable initiating touch”. If you appear to be rushing/eager, you’re not appearing comfortable and, as you’ve predicted, will appear less attractive.
I’m considering the possibility that initiating touch a few minutes after meeting a woman for the first time, in and of itself, could convey that you are in a hurry.
If there is such a thing as a “local alpha male”, he certainly wouldn’t “pursue courtship at a leisurely pace”.
I’m not convinced of that. The local alpha male might have so many irons in the fire that no one woman should expect to see him in a particular rush to court her.
But it doesn’t really matter what the local alpha male would be expected to do. The local alpha male in the EEA ought to be well known, not a stranger. It doesn’t seem plausible to me that you could fool someone into thinking that you’re him just by initiating some touch. As I understand it, strangers in the EEA were so dangerous that a woman would be very leery about admitting a stranger into her personal space.
Here’s another point: As you know, there’s a whole line of theory in PUA circles about feigning disinterest, so that the woman thinks that you must have higher market value than her. Part of my argument is appealing to that line of thinking. Touching shortly after meeting may imply that you are too eager to be intimate with her.
Let me make a few meta remarks about what I’m arguing and how I’ve argued it.
The above account may not be what is going in with women who profess that they don’t like to be touched by strangers. What I’m trying to do is to make it plausible that the PUA-constructed “typical woman” is not typical by (1) showing that PUA success does not prove that their models of women are generally accurate, and (2) showing that even PUA theory itself has room for women who don’t like to be touched, for the above reasons. Argument (2) is just to open up a “line of retreat” by making the existence of such women seem plausible to a PUA proponent. I’m making the additional claim that such women may in fact be much more common than what the PUA view as I understand it would allow.
The upshot is that PUAs mistakenly think that their success implies that the woman with whom they succeed are typical.
You haven’t really given me any reason to update towards your point of view.
I grant that. Aside from the Aumann-type evidence that I hold my point of view, I’ve given you little else.
However, my position is closer to the null hypothesis, the extreme version of which would posit that women correlate no more with each other than is implied by the definition of “woman”. Unless I misunderstand you, you are asserting that they tend to conform to a certain model of the typical woman espoused by PUAs. Since my view is closer to the null hypothesis, you should be the one presenting evidence for your position. My obligation is just to say what I can about what evidence would convince me.
Counterpoint: whether it’s due to hidden variables, or simple randomness, in either case, what general principle are you able to extract from the example which can be usefully applied to topics other than male/female mating interactions?
I’m not sure about that… It’s actually a mathematical question, but the proper formalization escapes me at the moment. (Maybe someone could help?) At first glance, any value of hit rate can be equally well-explained by hidden characteristics or by simple randomness. Right now I believe you have to notice some visible characteristic that determines the success of your method before you can conclude that it’s not just randomness. But I can’t prove that with numbers yet.
I should be a little clearer about the priors on which my claims are based.
What I am saying is that the observed level of PUA success is very likely on the hypothesis that the PUA description of the “typical woman” reflects only a small subset within a very heterogeneous population. If I furthermore take into account my prior that women are a heterogeneous population, the observed PUA success is not sufficient evidence that their description is accurate of the “typical woman”.
To be a little more precise:
Let
H = “Traits vary among women with a certain kind of distribution such that the population of women is heterogeneous. Moreover, insofar as there is a typical woman, the PUA description of her is not accurate.”
T = “The PUA description of the typical woman is accurate. That is, PUA methods can be expected to ‘work’ on the typical woman.”
S = “PUAs have the success that we have observed them to have.”
X = Prior knowledge
I grant that p(S | T & X) > p(S | H & X). That is, PUAs would be more likely to have their observed success if their model of the typical woman were accurate.
However, I think that p(S | H & X) is still fairly large. Furthermore, I think that p(H | X) is sufficiently larger than p(T | X) to imply that
p(H | S & X)
= [ p(H | X) / p(S | X) ] p(S | H & X*)
> [ p(T | X) / p(S | X) ] p(S | T & X*)
= p(T | S & X).
[ETA: I’m not sure why that “>” sign is not escaping properly.]
That is, the PUA model of the typical woman is probably inaccurate.
Isn’t this begging the question? You haven’t really given me any reason to update towards your point of view.
No, it’s localizing the source of disagreement :P.
You brought the evidence of pickup artist success to the table. I’m telling you something about the priors that were already on the table. (Here, the table’s contents are my beliefs about the world.) In particular, I’m saying something about why your new evidence isn’t enough to change what I think is probably true.
It’s too difficult to give you exact values for all of the relevant probabilities. But this is a start. For example, now you know that I already grant that p(S | T & X) > p(S | H & X), so you could try to increase my estimation of their difference. Or you could try to show me that p(H | X) doesn’t exceed p(T | X) by as much as I thought. That is, you could try to show me that, even without the evidence of PUA success, I shouldn’t have thought that women are so likely to be heterogeneous.
I don’t expect you to consider all of this work to be worth your time. But at least maybe you have a better sense of what it would take than you had before.
Damn, so this is how Aumann agreement works in the real world. You update! No, you update!
Even without knowing S, the hypothesis T comes with a nifty biological explanation—all those alphas and betas. Does H have anything like that? Why would it be genetically useful for different women to prefer highly different traits in men?
I don’t think that the biology predicts that much psychological unity among humans.
That link argues that each individual interbreeding population does have psychological unity, but there are differences between populations. So PUA techniques should work or fail depending on ethnicity. (Yeah! I win the Non-PC Award!) Is that what you believe?
I see an argument that different populations could have different means for certain quantifiable traits. I don’t see an argument that a single population will be homogeneous.
Moreover, the link claims that populations have diverged on these metrics in fairly short amounts of time. I think that that is evidence for a fair amount of diversity within populations to serve as the raw material for that divergence.
I should clarify that I’m not convinced by the link’s claim that populations differ on those metrics for genetic reasons. But I certainly allow that it’s possible. It’s not ruled out by what we know about biology. I presented the link only as evidence that the case for psychological unity is not a slam-dunk.
cousin_it, I hereby award you the un-PC silver medal for offending both feminists and politically correct race-difference deniers in one sentence.
Different mating practices in different cultures is a piece of data consistent with your hypothesis.
For characteristics that we share with other primates, what would be your evidence that we would not be so heterogeneous in our inner workings?
Yes, people are pretty varied in their cultural trappings and acquired values (i.e. choices of signal expression), but we’re ridiculously common in the mental/emotional machinery by which we obtain that acculturation.
Did you mean, what would be my evidence that we would be so heterogeneous?
Assuming that you did, it’s not clear to me that we share the relevant characteristics with the other primates at the relevant level of abstraction. It’s not known to me that a female chimpanzee would react well to a male she’d never met before putting his arm around her waist.
My understanding is that mating practices vary pretty widely among the primates. They have greater and lesser sexual dimorphism. They are more or less inclined to have harem-type arrangements.
Oops, I temporarily confused homogeneous and heterogeneous, actually. ;-)
Based on your examples, I’d say that where we disagree is on what the correct level of abstraction is. I would expect “arm around the waist” to vary in attractiveness by culture, but the attractiveness of “comfortable initiating touch” to vary a good bit less.
Yes, I think that’s right. I too would expect most women to like men who evince confidence, and who act as though they’re used to being liked rather than disliked.
But it’s less clear to me that initiating touch conveys that attitude without giving 49 out of 50 women the impression that you have other undesirable qualities.
For example, perhaps, by rushing to touch, you give the impression that you are in a hurry to be physically intimate as quickly as possible. She might infer that you lack the confidence or security to pursue courtship at a leisurely pace. Perhaps you are some zero-status interloper who’s trying to get in and out as fast as you can before the local alpha male catches you. And, given the level of inter-tribe violence in the EEA, she might be leery of interlopers. Maybe they present too high a threat of violence or rape to her personally, especially if they seem eager to get intimate quickly.
You’re not imagining the same thing as pjeby when you think of “comfortable initiating touch”. If you appear to be rushing/eager, you’re not appearing comfortable and, as you’ve predicted, will appear less attractive.
I’m considering the possibility that initiating touch a few minutes after meeting a woman for the first time, in and of itself, could convey that you are in a hurry.
That’s the best time to initiate touch. Any later and it will seem out of character or contrived.
I understand that that’s the theory.
What you’re saying sounds weird to me. If there is such a thing as a “local alpha male”, he certainly wouldn’t “pursue courtship at a leisurely pace”.
I’m not convinced of that. The local alpha male might have so many irons in the fire that no one woman should expect to see him in a particular rush to court her.
But it doesn’t really matter what the local alpha male would be expected to do. The local alpha male in the EEA ought to be well known, not a stranger. It doesn’t seem plausible to me that you could fool someone into thinking that you’re him just by initiating some touch. As I understand it, strangers in the EEA were so dangerous that a woman would be very leery about admitting a stranger into her personal space.
Here’s another point: As you know, there’s a whole line of theory in PUA circles about feigning disinterest, so that the woman thinks that you must have higher market value than her. Part of my argument is appealing to that line of thinking. Touching shortly after meeting may imply that you are too eager to be intimate with her.
Let me make a few meta remarks about what I’m arguing and how I’ve argued it.
The above account may not be what is going in with women who profess that they don’t like to be touched by strangers. What I’m trying to do is to make it plausible that the PUA-constructed “typical woman” is not typical by (1) showing that PUA success does not prove that their models of women are generally accurate, and (2) showing that even PUA theory itself has room for women who don’t like to be touched, for the above reasons. Argument (2) is just to open up a “line of retreat” by making the existence of such women seem plausible to a PUA proponent. I’m making the additional claim that such women may in fact be much more common than what the PUA view as I understand it would allow.
The upshot is that PUAs mistakenly think that their success implies that the woman with whom they succeed are typical.
I grant that. Aside from the Aumann-type evidence that I hold my point of view, I’ve given you little else.
However, my position is closer to the null hypothesis, the extreme version of which would posit that women correlate no more with each other than is implied by the definition of “woman”. Unless I misunderstand you, you are asserting that they tend to conform to a certain model of the typical woman espoused by PUAs. Since my view is closer to the null hypothesis, you should be the one presenting evidence for your position. My obligation is just to say what I can about what evidence would convince me.
OK, now we’re getting somewhere.
Counterpoint: whether it’s due to hidden variables, or simple randomness, in either case, what general principle are you able to extract from the example which can be usefully applied to topics other than male/female mating interactions?