You don’t touch too much on the ways by which you form relationships, but if the approaches described in the “Use Science” section are indicative of what you always do, I’m appalled.
It surprises me that your “rational” approach to getting women involves being largely dishonest about who you are to them. Why avoid talking about politics, math, programming, and religion if that’s what you enjoy talking about? If she doesn’t, then maybe you shouldn’t be together. If forming a satisfying relationship is truly your goal I don’t think this is the best way. It seems to me that your “rational approach” is more about tricking both of you into thinking you like each other so that you can enjoy each other’s company for a night.
And for that matter, for someone who is a prominent member of a blog devoted to improving the art of human rationality, you seem perfectly willing to discard rationality and abuse women’s inherent biases when it serves your sexual interests.
Edit: I no longer endorse a number of the things I have said in this thread. Particularly bad comments have been retracted.
It surprises me that your “rational” approach to getting women involves being largely dishonest about who you are to them. Why avoid talking about politics, math, programming, and religion if that’s what you enjoy talking about?
He’s optimising one of the steps in his funnel. If there are three steps you need to get through to form a relationship; flirting, dating/intellectual compatibility, relationship compatibility, and success in each is 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, it takes a thousand tries to get a success. If by improving your flirting skills you move to 0.3, 0.1, 0.1, you only need 333 tries.
And as I read it he wasn’t dishonest, he just optimised step 1, flirting. Flirting is fun, but with the majority of people it isn’t compatible with serious intellectual conversation. He didn’t hide his intellectual interests, he just didn’t present them at a time when it would be sub-optimal given his goals.
If there are three steps you need to get through to form a relationship
I don’t think there are. I would never say I’ve “flirted” with someone, yet I am in a committed, long term relationship. I don’t go to bars, I’ve never asked a girl for her number, or anything like that. I just get to know people I’m around. If I find that I’m compatible with someone, I express interest.
I could have phrased that much more clearly. The important point is that improvements at each stage of the funnel are multiplicative. I do not believe that there’s a well-ordered sequence of steps that you have to go through in order either but I do believe that given any complicated goal there’s a sequence that works best on average. If this is true, an improvement at any stage is beneficial. If the intermediate steps as well as the end goal are of value to you (fun, provide utility, make you happy) then it makes sense to improve the steps in the funnel in sequence from the beginning.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts/experiences on relationship formation. I find it difficult to believe you’ve never flirted with someone if you’re in a relationship but that’s likely because we are using “flirting” to mean different things. You have not deliberately gone out with the goal of meeting potential mates but when you have met them socially you’ve expressed interest. Assuming this lead to dating there was flirting on the date (by my definition).
You do things as a couple, have conversations without other people, attempt to provoke “chemistry”, (usually unconsciously) ramp up touching, build rapport by having intimate conversation that’s (usually) meaningful to both parties. All of this escalates until it leads to either relationship formation, sex, or both.
That’s what flirting means to me. What do you think of when you think of flirting?
I don’t necessarily define flirting differently in terms of actions, but to me it has the connotation of being between two people who don’t know each other very well. I’ve only been in a few relationships, and they’ve all gone in the same manner—we’re brought together by circumstance, school, activities, work, etc. We find we get along well, and become friends. We become better and better friends, until it morphs into a relationship. I recognize that I’m not at all typical or normal, but it’s worked for me.
It surprises me that your “rational” approach to getting women involves being largely dishonest about who you are to them.
I disagree. There are times with my friends and family when I don’t talk about politics or religion, either, because those subjects don’t work for particular situations. I was never dishonest about my views or values, and they inevitably came out after I spent more time with someone.
Perhaps I should rephrase my point. The entire “using science” section seems as though you have constructed a methodology by which you must act in order to have successful relationships. Insomuch as this methodology is not how you would normally act, you’re being dishonest. If you smile when you would not ordinarily smile, you’re projecting a false persona onto yourself. And if you change the subject by saying “it’s exactly like” something you know it is nothing alike, you’re openly, intentionally, and unequivocally lying.
I am more attentive to my personal appearance, the cleanliness of my surroundings, etc etc when I’m courting somebody. I am sure they were aware of this. The way much [all?] of society works, extra efforts to impress somebody are viewed as signalling the effort they’re worth. It’s not deceitful, because the other party understands the signal being sent. To show up on a date looking or acting slobby would be read as a signal that you weren’t very motivated.
I think camouflaged changes of conversation topic are likewise not misleading. They’re a routine social artifice that most people use and that anybody can notice if they care. The people who don’t notice the topic shift are the people who weren’t firmly attached to that topic and have no reason to object.
I don’t disagree with regard to dress. But I do with regard to behaviour. If you’re not a confident person, you shouldn’t project false confidence just to impress people. Perhaps you can work on becoming more confident, if that’s what you would like, but you shouldn’t project something you are not.
If you’re not a confident person, you shouldn’t project false confidence just to impress people.
The phrase “false confidence” implies that “true confidence” exists. How do you calculate the “true” level of confidence of yourself or someone else? It’s seems easy to assess a lie about career, wealth, or age… but how do we test the truth value of a display of confidence?
Your view of the social world and ethics seems different from mine. We’ve had discussions on the topic of “fake it ’til you make it” on LW before, and you might be interested in these comments:
I disagree. I’m not attributing behaviour to people at all. If anything, the attribution of qualities associated with cleanliness and confidence to people who act that way are examples. Which is why exactly why I don’t think you should project things you’re not—it contributes to their Correspondence Bias.
I have no problem with attempting to become more confident—I have a problem with not truly being confident and act so. If you’re not confident, the solution is not to simply act confident—it’s to engage in some introspection and consider what qualities about yourself you’re uncomfortable with, so you can change them. And what does true confidence look like anyway? Changing yourself and projecting a false persona, or accepting who you are, why you are that way, and being comfortable with yourself?
I think you can’t disapprove of “acting confident when you’re not” without approving of “acting confident when you are”; and believing that someone is acting confident because they are a confident person is an example of the Fundamental Attribution Error.
I want to cast doubt on the soundness of the idea that people have qualities which their behavior can either reflect or not reflect. In reality, personality and behavior are intertwined in such a way that changing one’s behavior and endorsing that change is the same as changing one’s personality.
I think you can’t disapprove of “acting confident when you’re not” without approving of “acting confident when you are”; and believing that someone is acting confident because they are a confident person is an example of the Fundamental Attribution Error.
How did you shift from approval to believing? There’s no grounds to make a jump from me abstractly approving of confident people acting confident to me seeing a confident person and assuming ey is confident. That’s completely non-sequitur.
It occurred to me that it would be more constructive to say what things do exist instead of an essential quality of confidence:
A person can have a tendency to feel confident in certain contexts.
A person can have a tendency to feel confident in unfamiliar contexts.
A person can feel unconfident, but consciously decide to in a confident manner, thus mitigating their feelings to a degree.
A person can have incipient feelings of unconfidence, but have a habit of acting in a confident manner, thus quelling the feelings of unconfidence before they have a chance to flourish.
A person can have underlying insecurities that only awaken in response to specific triggers, which they can avoid, either consciously or by habit.
A person can have underlying insecurities that need to be recognized by the person before they can heal, and they can avoid acknowledging these insecurities, with the result that they think they have no insecurities but in fact parts of themselves are feeling isolated.
I would consider “acting confident” to be a variation of lying, as I’ve said many times, and as a rule utilitarian, I think lying is almost always bad. It may not be tremendously disutilitious, but I think the overall effect is so.
Whenever I feel unconfident or uncomfortable, I attempt to analyze the source of my discomfort. Why am I uncomfortable? Suppose I am apprehensive about giving a presentation that I haven’t adequately prepared for. It would be most beneficial to me and my audience if, instead of faking confidence, I had the modesty to admit my error (or even explain the situation, perhaps I have an excuse) and address what is the best course of action given the situation I’m in.
In Luke’s situation, I would proceed as follows: Why am I apprehensive about speaking to that girl? Is it because I fear rejection? Why should I fear her rejection? This doesn’t make much sense, as, assuming she rejects me, I will likely never speak to her again. And if she doesn’t reject me, the point is moot. If my emotions are based in reason, then it must not be because I fear her rejection. What other reasons could there be? Do I fear bothering her, or creeping her out, or in someway bringing her disutility? Perhaps. But as long as I am polite and respectful in my approach, she has no reason to feel disutility at all. Perhaps I am uncomfortable with the social conventions that require men to approach women and wish not to perpetuate such a system. Perhaps I’m gay. Have I considered trying men?
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. By analyzing why you feel a certain way, you (or at least I) gain the confidence that I would be otherwise faking. Introspection allows you to dismiss irrational feelings as irrational—as you should.
Edit: To quote Rand, “An emotion that clashes with your reason, an emotion that you cannot explain or control, is only the carcass of that stale thinking which you forbade your mind to revise.”
In the case of the presentation, say you are confident in the truth-value of your material, but you aren’t sure that you’ve prepared adequately to explain it. The consequences you fear are that you will fail to impress upon your audience the importance of the ideas you’re presenting.
What specific things would you say or behaviors would you execute to your audience due to the lack of confidence you feel?
Is it lying to stand up straight, keep your feet properly planted, and avoid adjusting your glasses or engaging it other nervous behaviors?
Is it lying to not begin your presentation with “I didn’t adequately prepare for this?”
I’m not sure what else you’re talking about, but if honest people didn’t do either of those things, they would be so grossly outpeformed by dishonest people that any good they had to offer the world would become practically worthless.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t introspect, and if it was enough for you, power to you, but I don’t think relying entirely on it is good advice for most people.
Well once you’re standing in front of them, you’ve committed to giving the presentation, and should, of course, try your best to convey what information you can. At that point, you’ve committed the hour to that.
I was more envisioning a scenario where, the morning of said presentation, you mention to your boss that for whatever reason you didn’t have the time to prepare, and ask if you could postpone the presentation until the next day. I think in that scenario, everyone benefits.
I’m not sure what else you’re talking about, but if honest people didn’t do either of those things, they would be so grossly outpeformed by dishonest people that any good they had to offer the world would become practically worthless.
I think it applies just as much outside the business world. If you ARE the boss (or rather, the head of a nonprofit organization dedicated to X good thing) and must continuously tell people that you need to postpone things because you need more time to better prepare… you are going to have a hard time maintaining people’s interest, people are going to be less willing to invest in your cause.
Am I understanding correctly that you do consider it dishonest to stand up straight, keep feet properly planted and avoid nervous behaviors?
If that’s the only thing you needed to be able to improve at doing, why does it matter whether you practiced for hours until you had drilled out the possibility of ever doing it wrong, or just went and DID it?
[Edit: I agree that the Business world will have ADDITIONAL things that you’d have to compromise on and good for you to avoid something that’d make you unhappy. There are many places where I probably share your idealism. But I think you are setting a standard for yourself that would actively make the world a worse place if it were widely adopted]
Well the key phrase is “continuously”. I’m not saying you make a habit of repeatedly requesting extensions. But if you need one, I think you should ask for it, and I think it’s better for everyone if you do. But if you need an extension on every project you have, you should be fired.
Am I understanding correctly that you do consider it dishonest to stand up straight, keep feet properly planted and avoid nervous behaviors?
Dishonest would be a stretch. But you are not presenting your true mental state. Which could be the right thing to do—if presenting in such a manner helped your audience’s ability to understand, then you should. But I would say that the better thing to do is to recognize the situation you’re in and analyze where is best to go from there. That may be presenting to the best of your ability. But it might also be humbly asking to present the next day and apologize for not preparing enough. I think most people would understand if it were an isolated incident.
If I think someone’s idea is stupid, I don’t think I’m making the world a better place by representing my true mental state. Every day at work, there’s a colleague who grates on me slightly. Accurately representing my mental state to him every time would be disastrous. There are dozens of instances every day where accurately representing myself would make the world a worse place for myself and the people around me.
I only think this is a problem if “accurately presenting your mental state” is something relevant to whatever it is you’re doing. Which mostly amounts to friendships and relationships—establishing close emotional bonds with people.
The people didn’t come to the presentation to form a close bond with you or get an accurate map of your personality—they came to see a presentation.
When you are first meeting a girl, you’re not immediately establishing a deep, personal connection (not usually anyway). The initial few minutes are about establishing that you two are both interesting people and it’s worth the two of your time to get to know each other. Trust and personal connection comes later (possibly soon afterwards, but it’s not part of the first few minutes).
Don’t put a false version of yourself forward. But do put the best version of yourself forward.
I didn’t downvote but am tempted to now given that the quote of Rand is nonsense and you are doing the ‘Hivemind’ defense of it. I still haven’t. I must be in a good mood normally; normally I’d go all downvote Roman on you.
Looking at your post now:
I would consider “acting confident” to be a variation of lying, as I’ve said many times, and as a rule utilitarian, I think lying is almost always bad.
NO! BAD! SILLY THINKING! NAIVE! GROW UP! DON’T ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO USE MODELS OF THE WORLD WHICH ARE SELF SABOTAGING. (These are examples of reasons why I would downvote the grandparent. I can’t speak for the reasoning of the actual downvoters.)
Would you care to support any of those assertions? Why is that quote nonsense? Why is that model self sabotaging?
I disagree on both counts. Although I don’t find myself in line with Rand on much, I do find her views on emotion being a product of rational thought, and not an opposing force to be quite agreeable.
As for that being a self sabotaging strategy, I think it is far more damaging to pretend that we don’t feel a certain way than to analyze why we feel that way, so that we can correct our emotions. (You have also failed to define what you mean by self sabotaging—there are ways that, depending on your utility functions for things like “intrinsic truth” that would change.)
Would you care to support any of those assertions? Why is that quote nonsense? Why is that model self sabotaging?
No. You (feigned that you were) interested in why you were downvoted and I gave some guesses based on why I would have downvoted were it the case that I was such a downvoter. “Convince RobertLumley that the downvoters are justified” is a different task, which I haven’t taken up.
With respect to the philosophy behind “acting” confident I have a similar postition to that of HughRistik who discusses the topic from time to time. (Searching ‘HughRistik acting confident social’ would probably find it.)
That’s quite a leap to assume I was feigning interest. And frankly, it seems quite rude for you to do so when I’m following common LessWrong practice.
However, it can feel really irritating to get downvoted, especially if one doesn’t know why. It happens to all of us sometimes, and it’s perfectly acceptable to ask for an explanation. (Sometimes it’s the unwritten LW etiquette; we have different norms than other forums.)
I was, am, and will continue to be (since no one has responded) very interested in why people thought that post was of poor quality. In fact, in my request, I considered leaving out the part about Rand, but did not, because it was what I was thinking—it would be quite hypocritical for me not to be honest about it, given the context.
Insomuch as this methodology is not how you would normally act, you’re being dishonest. If you smile when you would not ordinarily smile, you’re projecting a false persona onto yourself.
Yes, I think we have very different ideas about how the social world works and should work. You may have deontological attitudes about social norms, for example. It would probably take more time to work through those differences than I have at the moment.
I’m not at all a Kantian—I’m quite decidedly a rule utilitarian, and in that vein, I think you would have more fulfilling relationships if you would just be yourself. And that’s just counting the utility function from your side, not hers. She would undoubtedly have a higher utility function if you were (more) honest.
That being said, my entire perception of your character is based solely on your one paragraph, which set off a large number of negative stereotypes I have about the male gender. I sincerely hope I have a misconception of how you act.
Hard to sum up my character quickly. I certainly feel like an open, honest, genuine person. I’m also quite happily ‘myself’. Trying to make relationships work any other way would be weird. Indeed, my communication with the ‘awesome poly girl’ is probably far more open and direct than is the communication in most relationships. And people in meat-space generally seem to like me.
I certainly feel like an open, honest, genuine person. I’m also quite happily ‘myself’.
Well, as I said, I’m not exactly an expert on your character. But what you described in that section sounds more to me like a pick up artist, more along the lines of Barney Stinson. How would you interpret it if you read what you wrote from the perspective of an outsider and that was all you knew about their character?
my communication with the ‘awesome poly girl’ is probably far more open and direct than is the communication in most relationships
Well I wouldn’t necessarily call that a high standard. ;-) But as I indicated, I am massively cynical about the male gender (OK, fine, I’m cynical about everyone, not just men...).
Which part gives you the Barney Stinson vibe? Drinking liquid courage before talking to girls? Telling them directly I think they’re cute and would like to grab a coffee with them sometime? Not talking about politics?
I’ll try to take you though my feelings as I read the article: (But Barney Stinson was, of course, an exercise in hyperbole—I just love HIMYM)
I started out thinking I would really, really like the article and relate to your experiences. It’s always made me sad when exes can’t maintain some form of relationship, and I’ve always managed to in the past, and try to encourage others to as well.
“Aha! It’s not that women prefer jerks to nice guys, but they prefer confident, ambitious men to pushovers.”
I think that was the first line that bothered me, largely because it was a stereotype, and that I know many, many women for whom it is not true. Secondarily, it bothered me because it seemed to imply that you should act confident even if you are not in order to attract women, which I disagree with on ethical principle.
The “act this way to get laid” vibe continued for me in the “Use Science” section. This is what I was thinking as I read it.
Politics, religion, math, and programming are basically never the right subject matter when flirting.
No! If you like talking about these things, power to you, and if the person to whom you’re talking is put off by this, then it’s better to learn that now, as opposed to later.
Keep up the emotional momentum. Don’t stay in the same stage of the conversation (rapport, storytelling, self-disclosure, etc.) for very long.
Same as above—if you really enjoy telling stories and she enjoys listening to them, what’s the harm? Let conversion flow naturally, don’t force it places because of certain prescribed rules.
Almost every gesture or line is improved by adding a big smile.
This didn’t really bother me. I’m from the south—smiling is polite, and I try to smile at people—it makes me happy, it makes them happy, and as a rule utilitarian, I can’t be opposed to that. But I am opposed to smiling at a girl to make her feel comfortable for the sole purpose of sleeping with her, which is what it came across as, to me, even if you didn’t mean it.
’Hi. I’ve gotta run, but I think you’re cute so we should grab a coffee sometime” totally works when the girl is already attracted because my body language, fashion, and other signals have been optimized.
This is fine by me. Well, saying it is. If you think a girl’s cute, tell her. As I’ve said, I think honesty is always the best policy. But worrying about whether or not your other signals are “optimized” makes it come across as just another gimmick to me.
People rarely notice an abrupt change of subject if you say “Yeah, it’s just like when...” and then say something completely unrelated.
This is what made me the most angry, because it’s actively and intentionally lying about something. You know that it’s not just like something, yet you’re seemingly encouraging saying this just so people will have comfortable conversations with you. If you can’t have a comfortable conversation without lying to create transitions, you’re probably not compatible enough for a relationship, and you should stop wasting your time.
Ultimately, I think there is one rule to relationships: Be yourself. If you’re not compatible with someone, you’ll both find that out earlier rather than later. Except under highly contrived situations, I don’t think you can ever convince me that complete and total honesty is not the best policy, and I see most of what you suggest as good social strategies to simply be masks you put on yourself.
At first i had the same feelings about the article you did.
But then i remembered what my life-coach taught me: “All behaviours start out as “gimmicks”, after some time of training they go from gimmick to part of your natural behaviour and lose their gimmickness”
This was the best lesson i ever learned as refusing to use gimmicks has put me at a serious disadvantage to those people whole naturally learned about the gimmick when they where little children.
Like luke, using gimmicks has been the best thing to happen for my work and private life. (also people who know that im gimmicking appreciate the effort i put into bettering our relationships and actively help me)
All behaviours start out as “gimmicks”, after some time of training they go from gimmick to part of your natural behaviour and lose their gimmickness
One can easily construct examples of behaviour for which this is not true. The easiest (and most absurd) examples would be instinctive—breathing, eating, etc. So it is clear that not all behaviours start out at gimmicks.
But is it, as a rule, generally true? I still think not. Did your pursuit of rationality start out as a gimmick? Mine certainly did not. I don’t know anything about you beyond that (at least, presumably I know that, since you’re on this site) so it’s hard to come up with further examples. But I’ll go ahead and make some safe generalizations. Did you learn mathematics or physics by gimmicks? What about the most recent project at work? Did you complete that project by use of gimmicks?
Perhaps I am an idealist. Well, not perhaps. I am an idealist. But my reaction, upon noticing that the world (and especially the business world) operates by gimmickry is not to participate in it, and perpetuate the continuation of the system, but to oppose it in whatever manner I can.
there are some instinctive functions, but those are mostly limited to basic survival. The examples of breathing and eating are 2 things that most adults are doing incorrectly. To learn proper breathing you will have to apply a gimmick until your body and minds learns how to breath properly and you dont give it anymore consious thought. When a baby is born the doctor will use a gimmick to make the baby breath for the first time.
And yes, i learned all the things you mentioned by using gimmicks, in fact the first thing i learned in school is guessing the teachers password.
Maybe we should taboo the word gimmick.
My definiton of gimmick: “A conscious change in behavior”
Something stops being a gimmick when: “The behavior occurs unconsciously”
At first you suck at math and have to study hard, then after some practice calculation results come naturally.
Ah yes. Well we mean very different things when we use the word gimmick. My definition would be more along the lines of “a concealed, usually devious aspect or feature of something, as a plan or deal”, which is one of Dictionary.com’s definitions.
So intention is probably the main problem.
If your ethics do not condone the intention behind the “trick” you consider it a “gimmick” and hence a bad thing.
I think lukeprog has not been clear enough on his intentions which causes newer users to read it as an evil gimmick promoting article.
Well, not the intention. I’m a utilitarian. But I think the consequences are worse for my definition—especially when you consider the utility function of the person being lied to.
To which “Well, that color/style/fit/whatever doesn’t particularly flatter you. Shall we look for something else?” is an acceptable response in any relationship I’m willing to care much about preserving, all else being equal.
But, sure, one can easily imagine situations in which all else is not equal. (Which is to say, I don’t share the OP’s view.)
Tangentially: someone asked me roughly that question once, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I replied, roughly, “Hypothetically speaking, given a choice, would you rather have evidence that a friend of yours was willing to answer questions honestly even when the honest answer incurred a potentially high social cost, or would you rather have evidence that your friend was willing to conceal an unpleasant truth so as to spare your feelings?” They thought about it for a bit and somewhat hesitantly chose the former, and I told them they looked lovely (which they did). That left them puzzled for quite a while.
Your comment qualifies as a proof that I disrespect most people, including some of my loved ones. You could view it as a reductio ad absurdum of my opinion, or of your opinion; whichever you like better.
You’re presuming that the person in question wants to hear the truth. If they don’t, then the truly respectful response is not the same as the honest one.
And you’re presuming that if you respect someone you should just give them what they want...
I’m astonished that so many people advocating the spread rationality don’t strongly object to allowing people you presumably care about to continue their delusions.
And you’re presuming that if you respect someone you should just give them what they want...
Okay, let me correct my previous line: If they don’t, then the truly respectful response is not necessarily the same as the honest one. Of course there are situations where you should tell the truth, even if the other person doesn’t want to hear it right then. But there are also many situations where people are genuinely better off with their delusions, and breaking them would only do harm.
Advocating the spread of rationality does not give you a license to impose your own preferences on others regardless of how they feel about it. That includes the case where your preference is “people should only believe in true things”.
Advocating the spread of rationality does not give you a license to impose your own preferences on others regardless of how they feel about it. That includes the case where your preference is “people should only believe in true things”.
No it does not. But their asking me the question gives me a license to answer it honestly.
If you smile when you would not ordinarily smile, you’re projecting a false persona
Aye, but if you learn to smile as an ordinary action, you’re just changing your true persona.
Thanks to the way humans are wired, a habit of regularly faking smiles will generally lead to a person who genuinely smiles a lot. The exceptions seem to generally be those who have an investment in the smiles staying fake.
I will readily concede I am tact-filtering here. I leave it to him to say if it’s accurate, but it’s what I’ve done in similar situations, so I’ll give him the benefit of the tact-filter :)
Insomuch as this methodology is not how you would normally act, you’re being dishonest.
It’s not clear to me any behavioral methods for self-improvement are possible with this view of ethics. For instance, a therapist for a shy person might tell them to avoid fidgeting. But fidgeting is the way they usually act. Is suppressing fidgeting dishonest?
Since the above comment makes no mention of ethics, I’m confused as to why you’ve replied here. You (all) seem to be assuming I have a deontological ethical theory, which, as I have said over and over and over, I do not. The argument has not been made yet that acting as Luke says he acts brings higher utility to him and the people with whom he interacts. If you wish to discuss ethics with me, do it on those grounds.
I took “dishonest” and “false persona” as moral judgments, though perhaps you didn’t intend them that way.
Anyway, I am quite happy to talk about rule utilitarianism. I think a rule that allows people to experiment in order to improve their social and romantic abilities is good for everyone, as long as their experiments are non-harmful to others. Likewise, I think a rule that allows people to expand their personality is good for everyone.
Let’s say that through his research process, lukeprog managed to improve his social and romantic experiences. Meanwhile, his net effect on other people he interacted with was neutral or positive. If that was the case, then a rule allowing this sort of social experimentation seems like it passes rule utilitarian muster.
I realize that lukeprog didn’t phrase his post in this way, because he doesn’t talk much about the benefits of his behavior towards others (except for his mistake of invoking evolutionary psychology while breaking up with a girlfriend). Yet if lukeprog feels that his behavior had a positive or neutral result for the people he was interacting with, then he might not have found it necessary to say so, because he might not have realized that people in these threads might believe that his behavior had some of nefarious impact merely because he brought a hypotheco-deductive framework along for the ride. lukeprog could have spent more time discussing positive female reactions to him, but then it could have looked like he was boasting.
On the subject of learning to be more confident, I realize that you would consider behavioral methods to be a form of lying:
I would consider “acting confident” to be a variation of lying, as I’ve said many times, and as a rule utilitarian, I think lying is almost always bad.
I have a couple objections:
It’s difficult to determine whether a display of a personality trait is a “lie” or not, because it’s hard to say what the “truth” is, due to the situation and due to the fact that people can change their self-narrative.
Not all forms of lying are bad. A rule utilitarian should subscribe to different sub-rules that apply to different sorts of deception, to take into account the results of the lie and the right of the deceived person to know the information.
I feel that prohibiting the sort of self-improvement lukeprog describes would be a horrible idea from a rule utilitarian perspective. For instance, he advocates smiling more. The potential negative consequences of the “deception” of smiling seem rather small. How do you harm people by being more smiley than you actually feel? Since smiling when not feeling positive emotions can be a good way to induce positive emotions in yourself, I can’t imagine why a rule utilitarian would want to prohibit this practice.
It would be a bad rule to require everyone to display their exact emotions all the time. Prohibiting “fake it ’til you make it” as a method of self-improvement would also be a bad rule, because it my view, that strategy is very beneficial to people who are struggling socially, while having a neutral or even beneficial net effect on others.
As for confidence, displaying more than you actually feel can be a great method of feeling more confident, as Kaj_Sotala points out. Unless we have a reason to believe that such a practice is harmful to others, then why would we want to prohibit it?
It’s a good thing for you if people in the group you want to date can engage in effective self-improvement. For instance, in my case, I want women to be attractive to me, to be relationally adept, and to know what they want. If romantic experimentation helps women develop those things without being costly to myself or other men, then more power to them! Likewise, if lukeprog and other men learn to be attractive and confident, that outcome seems beneficial towards women, who will have a larger pool of eligible men to date.
Personally, I’ve engaged in similar exploration as lukeprog, and I certainly feel that this process has helped me fulfill other people’s criteria, and have lots of mutually good times. Perhaps if someone has not witnessed the results of the process first hand, they might have skepticism about whether the sort of process lukeprog describes can be beneficial to others. I think that it can be, when implemented by someone with a basic sense of empathy and ethics, so I think it is consistent with rule utilitarianism… at least, given the payoff matrices for both parties that I believe exist (your view of the payoff matrices might be different).
Let’s say that through his research process, lukeprog managed to improve his social and romantic experiences. Meanwhile, his net effect on other people he interacted with was neutral or positive. If that was the case, then a rule allowing this sort of social experimentation seems like it passes rule utilitarian muster.
I absolutely agree. But I don’t think it was necessarily good for him or for the people he encountered...
It’s difficult to determine whether a display of a personality trait is a “lie” or not, because it’s hard to say what the “truth” is, due to the situation and due to the fact that people can change their self-narrative.
I’ll concede this. But from my perspective, Luke essentially admitted he was lying with the bit about “it’s exactly like”. Taken in that context, I think the rest of that section reads very differently.
I can’t say what the effects of his behaviour were, are, or will be. But I can say that I would be very insulted if he had tried such tactics on me—it’s a belittling of my intelligence to expect me to not notice such blatantly obvious ploys. And in the context of relationships, it comes across as, in my opinion, being womanizing and disrespectful towards women. And as I’ve pointed out elsewhere it seems inconsistent for him to not care about their rationality. And maybe he is not disrespectful towards him, but it is definitely how the post read to me, and I still strongly object to it on those grounds.
Not all forms of lying are bad. A rule utilitarian should subscribe to different sub-rules that apply to different sorts of deception, to take into account the results of the lie and the right of the deceived person to know the information.
Again, I agree. I did say almost always. And I’ve even distinguished between things lukeprog described that I thought were worse than other things.
I feel that prohibiting the sort of self-improvement lukeprog describes would be a horrible idea from a rule utilitarian perspective. For instance, he advocates smiling more. The potential negative consequences of the “deception” of smiling seem rather small. How do you harm people by being more smiley than you actually feel? Since smiling when not feeling positive emotions can be a good way to induce positive emotions in yourself, I can’t imagine why a rule utilitarian would want to prohibit this practice.
Personally, I’ve engaged in similar exploration as lukeprog, and I certainly feel that this process has helped me fulfill other people’s criteria, and have lots of mutually good times.
And I think that’s the large difference. I have done similar things as well, and, for me they were incredibly destructive, and set me back several years in development of my social skills. And it wasn’t until I started analyzing the sources of my emotions that I became confident in myself and who I was. I discarded emotions that weren’t based in rational thought, and I accepted and embraced those that were.
Perhaps the best lesson to take from this is not to prescribe a single formula to a plethora of people. I will openly admit that I have done that. Before reading the (at times harsh) reactions to my comments, I was honestly astonished that the methods lukeprog (and you, and others) tried would actually work for someone. I spent many years faking confidence and tiptoeing around social protocol, and I was miserable and horribly insecure. I still can’t imagine that ever being a positive experience, but I will accept the numerous people who have testified to it at their word that it was. But at the same time, lukeprog should be wary of projecting the “if you do this right, you can be just like me” attitude.
It seems like we do have some areas of agreement, and I’m going to focus on the areas where our perspectives are different.
I absolutely agree. But I don’t think it was necessarily good for him or for the people he encountered...
He seems to think his exploration had positive consequences for himself and for others, given that he has written this post. His perceptions may not be correct, but they are all we have to go on.
I can’t say what the effects of his behaviour were, are, or will be. But I can say that I would be very insulted if he had tried such tactics on me—it’s a belittling of my intelligence to expect me to not notice such blatantly obvious ploys. And in the context of relationships, it comes across as, in my opinion, being womanizing and disrespectful towards women. And as I’ve pointed out elsewhere it seems inconsistent for him to not care about their rationality.
Which tactics would you find insulting? Not talking about politics or programming? Maintaining emotional momentum? Displaying confident behavior? Changing topics in conversation by free-associating? Asking for a number while in a rush?
lukeprog observes the preferences of (a subset of) women, and attempts to self-modify in order to fulfill their (perceived) criteria. I’m having trouble seeing what the problem is, and how such a practice would disrespect women’s rationality.
And I think that’s the large difference. I have done similar things as well, and, for me they were incredibly destructive, and set me back several years in development of my social skills. And it wasn’t until I started analyzing the sources of my emotions that I became confident in myself and who I was. I discarded emotions that weren’t based in rational thought, and I accepted and embraced those that were.
I seems like a more cognitive approach was most helpful for you. For other people, a highly behavioral approach might be useful. For me, both have been useful.
I spent many years faking confidence and tiptoeing around social protocol, and I was miserable and horribly insecure. I still can’t imagine that ever being a positive experience, but I will accept the numerous people who have testified to it at their word that it was.
It’s complicated. Not all of my efforts to expand my personality have succeeded. I eventually do hit a limit of extraversion, for example, beyond which I feel fake and drained. So I do relate to what you are saying. Luckily, some of my attempts at changing my behavior have stuck, and also succeeded in changing my attitudes and sense of self. It was only by pushing my personality to its limits that I gained a sense of what it could do.
Perhaps it’s useful to note that all of lukeprog’s “tactics” look to me like normal socialization or extensions thereof?
Politics, religion, math, and programming are basically never the right subject matter when flirting.
Tailoring one’s subject matter to one’s audience is very normal. Avoiding esoteric or controversial topics with people one doesn’t know well is a simple logical extension of this. The “when flirting” qualifier is relevant in that it implies a new acquaintance; different heuristics apply when dealing with people one knows more about.
Keep up the emotional momentum. Don’t stay in the same stage of the conversation (rapport, storytelling, self-disclosure, etc.) for very long.
This is a fairly basic social skill. (By which I mean that it’s applicable everywhere, not that it’s trivial to learn. Possibly also noteworthy: The definition of ‘correct emotional momentum’ can vary from group to group and situation to situation.)
Almost every gesture or line is improved by adding a big smile.
Body language is important. Signaling that one is in a socially-interactive mode when that’s true is good practice.
’Hi. I’ve gotta run, but I think you’re cute so we should grab a coffee sometime” totally works when the girl is already attracted because my body language, fashion, and other signals have been optimized.
Nonverbal communication conveys a lot of information. Treating that communication as real is generally wise.
People rarely notice an abrupt change of subject if you say “Yeah, it’s just like when...” and then say something completely unrelated.
I’d question the assertion that people don’t notice these changes of topic, but this kind of behavior is quite normal in most real-time conversation contexts and will generally not be questioned unless it appears to be malicious.
Also, to make it perfectly clear: I’m not talking about flirting, dating, or any other romantic or pickup context with any of the above—I don’t have (or want; I’m asexual and a-romantic) enough experience to do so. I’m talking about normal, peer-to-peer socialization.
First and foremost, the shifting of conversational topics, I would find very insulting. If you can’t talk to me normally without desperately reaching for conversational topics, maybe we just shouldn’t be talking.
Secondly, I would probably list intentionally avoiding conversational topics like politics. If you’re not a blue or a green, I’d love to talk about politics with you. (And if you are a blue or a green, I don’t really want to talk to you at all...) And if you don’t like talking about politics, maybe we shouldn’t be together, if I do.
Third, is probably this business about “emotional momentum”. I had no idea what that even meant when I read it. I’m still not sure I do. I have never considered what “stage of conversation” I’m in. If I think of something that’s relevant, I say it. It generally works pretty well for me.
’Hi. I’ve gotta run, but I think you’re cute so we should grab a coffee sometime” totally works when the girl is already attracted because my body language, fashion, and other signals have been optimized.
I had no objection to the quote, but to the rest of it. The rest of it makes it seem like lukeprog’s only goal is sex, particularly the words “totally works” and “optimized”.
Ultimately conversation should flow, regardless of who you’re talking to. If it flows, you don’t need to worry about stilted rules like this, which is the primary source of my objection. I wouldn’t want to talk to someone constantly worrying about what to say next—it would seem very forced, I’m sure.
As a sidenote, and perhaps I’m alone in this and perhaps I’m not, it’s hard to tell—I am massively introverted. I don’t know if that is a source of difference or not (I would imagine most other LWers are as well) but I thought I’d throw it out there.
First and foremost, the shifting of conversational topics, I would find very insulting. If you can’t talk to me normally without desperately reaching for conversational topics, maybe we just shouldn’t be talking.
The technique described is generally used when one or both parties have run out of interesting things to say on the topic at hand—it’s a transitional technique. The interesting point is that it’s possible to transition to arbitrary topics rather than there having to be some logical connection between the two. I don’t see why you’d consider that ‘desperate reaching’, but suspect it has to do with the specific topics you’re imagining someone switching to. Does it seem less objectionable if you specifically imagine someone transitioning to an arbitrary but interesting and engaging topic?
Secondly, I would probably list intentionally avoiding conversational topics like politics. If you’re not a blue or a green, I’d love to talk about politics with you. (And if you are a blue or a green, I don’t really want to talk to you at all...) And if you don’t like talking about politics, maybe we shouldn’t be together, if I do.
This seems… odd, to me, as an objection. Do you really expect every one of your friends to share every one of your interests, and you to share every one of theirs? Or is it just “topics like politics” that you’re applying that expectation to? What do you mean by “topics like politics”, and why is that category special?
Third, is probably this business about “emotional momentum”. I had no idea what that even meant when I read it. I’m still not sure I do. I have never considered what “stage of conversation” I’m in. If I think of something that’s relevant, I say it. It generally works pretty well for me.
If I’m understanding lukeprog correctly, this refers to monitoring your conversational partner and switching topics or modes if they seem to be losing interest, though that’s a simplified description of the skill. I think this is also what you’re describing by ‘flow’, and—importantly—it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. To people to whom such skills don’t come naturally, or people trying to communicate about the skills, breaking them down into explicitly-described sub-skills as lukeprog did is often quite useful.
Does it seem less objectionable if you specifically imagine someone transitioning to an arbitrary but interesting and engaging topic?
No, not at all. I wouldn’t at all enjoy a conversation that went along the lines of “Yeah, the weather’s great outside, but I hear it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.” “Yeah, you know what that’s exactly like? Aumann’s Agreement Theorem”. That’s just absurd. Admittedly, that’s a contrived example, but I suspect that any examples that were “completely unrelated” as lukeprog said, would be equally absurd.
This seems… odd, to me, as an objection. Do you really expect every one of your friends to share every one of your interests, and you to share every one of theirs?
No, I don’t. And if the person I’m talking to doesn’t want to talk about politics, that’s fine. But I’m not going to intentionally avoid talking about politics just because they might not want to—that’s leaping to a conclusion based on no evidence. And I mean any topic really, just politics and religion are the two quintessential examples of “impolite” topics.
Admittedly, that’s a contrived example, but I suspect that any examples that were “completely unrelated” as lukeprog said, would be equally absurd.
The problem with that example, as far as I can see, is that the transition is trying to force a level of engagement that hasn’t been established yet, which would fail even if the topic being transitioned to did have some logical connection to the weather. A better example: Transitioning from a funny, engaging story about someone’s cousin’s roommates’ sister’s wedding and the greased pig that got loose at the reception to a similarly engaging point of interest about Aumann’s Agreement Theorem and how it applied to a recent decision to donate to a particular charity.
But I’m not going to intentionally avoid talking about politics just because they might not want to—that’s leaping to a conclusion based on no evidence.
Given that the topic being considered “impolite” implies that most people won’t like most possible conversations on the topic, no, it’s not based on no evidence—it’s just based on evidence about people-in-general or people-in-a-given-culture rather than a specific person in particular, which is a reasonable starting point in figuring out how to approach them. (Yes, this pattern-matches with the pronouns debate that comes up here from time to time. The significant difference is that female LWers are likely to object to being called by male pronouns, whereas politics-liking conversationalists are unlikely to object to their conversational partners bringing up non-politics topics of conversation. The parallel of having to actually gather information about people to interact optimally with them is accurate, though.)
Transitioning from a funny, engaging story about someone’s cousin’s roommates’ sister’s wedding and the greased pig that got loose at the reception to a similarly engaging point of interest about Aumann’s Agreement Theorem and how it applied to a recent decision to donate to a particular charity.
But if you used the phrase “That’s exactly like”, I think it would sound equally forced. Or at least it would to me.
Given that the topic being considered “impolite” implies that most people won’t like most possible conversations on the topic,
I don’t think it does. People generally love it if you agree with them—it’s impolite because you don’t always agree. Many people are happy to drone on for hours about their political beliefs, which is what makes it impolite. If you can be respectful about politics, I see no reason not to bring it up (if you want to). And if the other person can’t be respectful, then that gives you (in my book, what would be) a significant reason to not pursue a relationship with that person.
But if you used the phrase “That’s exactly like”, I think it would sound equally forced.
At this point I think it’s a matter of empirical testing—meaning, in this case, observing people, since the question is about what people do in the course of normal conversations.
People generally love it if you agree with them—it’s impolite because you don’t always agree.
This is a significant part of why I said “most possible conversations”. I would guess that it’s possible to have a political conversation with most people that they’ll enjoy—but reliably doing so takes more information than you’ll generally have about someone you just met or are in the process of meeting.
While I would personally want to date someone else who is fairly rational, it is not clear that every rationalist should have this preference. In particular, it seems likely that most people don’t know what they actually want out of a relationship until they’ve been in several. This seems likely to be the case even for people who think that they do know what they want out of a relationship.
(Possibly interesting anecdote: I am in the awkward situation of simultaneously believing the above paragraph and believing that I know what I want out of a relationship without having been in several.)
But that being said, my point was about the inconsistency of his behaviour. Luke wrote a piece posted on a blog dedicated to improving human rationality. He could have kept his revelations to himself, but he didn’t, presumably because he wants other people to learn too. And he should. I think that’s great. That’s why I’m here. But then proceeded to show complete disregard for other people’s rationality. His behaviour in his relationships seems to me to be inconsistent with his participation in this community.
The wildly manipulative nature of your methods is, indeed, “appall[ing.]”
It’s notable that the impetus for this exercise was a perceived suboptimal situation based on little more evidence than a perceived “spark of intimacy” on the part of your partner, hardly anything falsifiable (and even further, you make no mention of consulting said partner about the seeming negative value judgment inherent in your dismissal of monogamy, which is by no means a given—that’s just bad practice). The discussion that builds the guiding premise for this hoopla is reduced to a fait accompli and not given adequate bearing in a balanced “rational” decision. It seems deceptive not only to your partner, then, but also to your audience to cloak your “rational” endeavors under the guise of maximizing mutual utility when the real compelling interest here is your own, and, I would argue, not the quality of any future relationship(s), but the ease and quantity, rather than quality, of acquaintanceship and sex.
There are also significant issues of rhetoric, particularly with the uses of “own,” “data,” and “quality,” but they hardly seem to carry bearing without significant explanation; this essay contains yawing gaps of information.
This is a great post, as evinced by the upvotes, and especially good for a first post! I have one nit to pick however, which is that you use the second person (“you”) to refer to the author of the original post, in a subcomment. I might in general phrase that first sentence as, say, “The wildly manipulative nature of the original poster’s methods,...”
Anyway as jsalvatier says below, welcome to LessWrong!
You don’t touch too much on the ways by which you form relationships, but if the approaches described in the “Use Science” section are indicative of what you always do, I’m appalled.
It surprises me that your “rational” approach to getting women involves being largely dishonest about who you are to them. Why avoid talking about politics, math, programming, and religion if that’s what you enjoy talking about? If she doesn’t, then maybe you shouldn’t be together. If forming a satisfying relationship is truly your goal I don’t think this is the best way. It seems to me that your “rational approach” is more about tricking both of you into thinking you like each other so that you can enjoy each other’s company for a night.
And for that matter, for someone who is a prominent member of a blog devoted to improving the art of human rationality, you seem perfectly willing to discard rationality and abuse women’s inherent biases when it serves your sexual interests.
Edit: I no longer endorse a number of the things I have said in this thread. Particularly bad comments have been retracted.
He’s optimising one of the steps in his funnel. If there are three steps you need to get through to form a relationship; flirting, dating/intellectual compatibility, relationship compatibility, and success in each is 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, it takes a thousand tries to get a success. If by improving your flirting skills you move to 0.3, 0.1, 0.1, you only need 333 tries.
And as I read it he wasn’t dishonest, he just optimised step 1, flirting. Flirting is fun, but with the majority of people it isn’t compatible with serious intellectual conversation. He didn’t hide his intellectual interests, he just didn’t present them at a time when it would be sub-optimal given his goals.
I don’t think there are. I would never say I’ve “flirted” with someone, yet I am in a committed, long term relationship. I don’t go to bars, I’ve never asked a girl for her number, or anything like that. I just get to know people I’m around. If I find that I’m compatible with someone, I express interest.
I could have phrased that much more clearly. The important point is that improvements at each stage of the funnel are multiplicative. I do not believe that there’s a well-ordered sequence of steps that you have to go through in order either but I do believe that given any complicated goal there’s a sequence that works best on average. If this is true, an improvement at any stage is beneficial. If the intermediate steps as well as the end goal are of value to you (fun, provide utility, make you happy) then it makes sense to improve the steps in the funnel in sequence from the beginning.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts/experiences on relationship formation. I find it difficult to believe you’ve never flirted with someone if you’re in a relationship but that’s likely because we are using “flirting” to mean different things. You have not deliberately gone out with the goal of meeting potential mates but when you have met them socially you’ve expressed interest. Assuming this lead to dating there was flirting on the date (by my definition).
You do things as a couple, have conversations without other people, attempt to provoke “chemistry”, (usually unconsciously) ramp up touching, build rapport by having intimate conversation that’s (usually) meaningful to both parties. All of this escalates until it leads to either relationship formation, sex, or both.
That’s what flirting means to me. What do you think of when you think of flirting?
I don’t necessarily define flirting differently in terms of actions, but to me it has the connotation of being between two people who don’t know each other very well. I’ve only been in a few relationships, and they’ve all gone in the same manner—we’re brought together by circumstance, school, activities, work, etc. We find we get along well, and become friends. We become better and better friends, until it morphs into a relationship. I recognize that I’m not at all typical or normal, but it’s worked for me.
I disagree. There are times with my friends and family when I don’t talk about politics or religion, either, because those subjects don’t work for particular situations. I was never dishonest about my views or values, and they inevitably came out after I spent more time with someone.
Perhaps I should rephrase my point. The entire “using science” section seems as though you have constructed a methodology by which you must act in order to have successful relationships. Insomuch as this methodology is not how you would normally act, you’re being dishonest. If you smile when you would not ordinarily smile, you’re projecting a false persona onto yourself. And if you change the subject by saying “it’s exactly like” something you know it is nothing alike, you’re openly, intentionally, and unequivocally lying.
I don’t think this is dishonest.
I am more attentive to my personal appearance, the cleanliness of my surroundings, etc etc when I’m courting somebody. I am sure they were aware of this. The way much [all?] of society works, extra efforts to impress somebody are viewed as signalling the effort they’re worth. It’s not deceitful, because the other party understands the signal being sent. To show up on a date looking or acting slobby would be read as a signal that you weren’t very motivated.
I think camouflaged changes of conversation topic are likewise not misleading. They’re a routine social artifice that most people use and that anybody can notice if they care. The people who don’t notice the topic shift are the people who weren’t firmly attached to that topic and have no reason to object.
I don’t disagree with regard to dress. But I do with regard to behaviour. If you’re not a confident person, you shouldn’t project false confidence just to impress people. Perhaps you can work on becoming more confident, if that’s what you would like, but you shouldn’t project something you are not.
I believe “projecting false confidence” is one of the best ways to actually “work on becoming more confident”. They are not mutually exclusive.
The phrase “false confidence” implies that “true confidence” exists. How do you calculate the “true” level of confidence of yourself or someone else? It’s seems easy to assess a lie about career, wealth, or age… but how do we test the truth value of a display of confidence?
Your view of the social world and ethics seems different from mine. We’ve had discussions on the topic of “fake it ’til you make it” on LW before, and you might be interested in these comments:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/13j/of_exclusionary_speech_and_gender_politics/1vay?c=1 http://lesswrong.com/lw/2tw/love_and_rationality_less_wrongers_on_okcupid/2sox http://lesswrong.com/lw/2tw/love_and_rationality_less_wrongers_on_okcupid/2snu
Sounds like a version of the Fundamental Attribution Error!
I disagree. I’m not attributing behaviour to people at all. If anything, the attribution of qualities associated with cleanliness and confidence to people who act that way are examples. Which is why exactly why I don’t think you should project things you’re not—it contributes to their Correspondence Bias.
I have no problem with attempting to become more confident—I have a problem with not truly being confident and act so. If you’re not confident, the solution is not to simply act confident—it’s to engage in some introspection and consider what qualities about yourself you’re uncomfortable with, so you can change them. And what does true confidence look like anyway? Changing yourself and projecting a false persona, or accepting who you are, why you are that way, and being comfortable with yourself?
I think you can’t disapprove of “acting confident when you’re not” without approving of “acting confident when you are”; and believing that someone is acting confident because they are a confident person is an example of the Fundamental Attribution Error.
I want to cast doubt on the soundness of the idea that people have qualities which their behavior can either reflect or not reflect. In reality, personality and behavior are intertwined in such a way that changing one’s behavior and endorsing that change is the same as changing one’s personality.
How did you shift from approval to believing? There’s no grounds to make a jump from me abstractly approving of confident people acting confident to me seeing a confident person and assuming ey is confident. That’s completely non-sequitur.
I didn’t express myself clearly. I’m saying that confidence does not exist as a property of a person independent of their behavior.
It occurred to me that it would be more constructive to say what things do exist instead of an essential quality of confidence:
A person can have a tendency to feel confident in certain contexts.
A person can have a tendency to feel confident in unfamiliar contexts.
A person can feel unconfident, but consciously decide to in a confident manner, thus mitigating their feelings to a degree.
A person can have incipient feelings of unconfidence, but have a habit of acting in a confident manner, thus quelling the feelings of unconfidence before they have a chance to flourish.
A person can have underlying insecurities that only awaken in response to specific triggers, which they can avoid, either consciously or by habit.
A person can have underlying insecurities that need to be recognized by the person before they can heal, and they can avoid acknowledging these insecurities, with the result that they think they have no insecurities but in fact parts of themselves are feeling isolated.
In my experience, if you’re not confident, you’re already engaging in way too much introspection and doing even more of it won’t help at all.
This is exactly the sort of unhelpful advice I was given for years, which eventually I ignored.
And it’s exactly the sort of helpful advice I gave myself, which eventually I accepted.
In the end, we can both spout anecdotal evidence, but it has no bearing on the ethics of the situation.
I don’t consider “acting confident” to be remotely unethical.
That said, I am curious how exactly you implemented the “learn to be confident” technique that you advocate.
If you aren’t confident, how exactly should you act?
I would consider “acting confident” to be a variation of lying, as I’ve said many times, and as a rule utilitarian, I think lying is almost always bad. It may not be tremendously disutilitious, but I think the overall effect is so.
Whenever I feel unconfident or uncomfortable, I attempt to analyze the source of my discomfort. Why am I uncomfortable? Suppose I am apprehensive about giving a presentation that I haven’t adequately prepared for. It would be most beneficial to me and my audience if, instead of faking confidence, I had the modesty to admit my error (or even explain the situation, perhaps I have an excuse) and address what is the best course of action given the situation I’m in.
In Luke’s situation, I would proceed as follows: Why am I apprehensive about speaking to that girl? Is it because I fear rejection? Why should I fear her rejection? This doesn’t make much sense, as, assuming she rejects me, I will likely never speak to her again. And if she doesn’t reject me, the point is moot. If my emotions are based in reason, then it must not be because I fear her rejection. What other reasons could there be? Do I fear bothering her, or creeping her out, or in someway bringing her disutility? Perhaps. But as long as I am polite and respectful in my approach, she has no reason to feel disutility at all. Perhaps I am uncomfortable with the social conventions that require men to approach women and wish not to perpetuate such a system. Perhaps I’m gay. Have I considered trying men?
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. By analyzing why you feel a certain way, you (or at least I) gain the confidence that I would be otherwise faking. Introspection allows you to dismiss irrational feelings as irrational—as you should.
Edit: To quote Rand, “An emotion that clashes with your reason, an emotion that you cannot explain or control, is only the carcass of that stale thinking which you forbade your mind to revise.”
In the case of the presentation, say you are confident in the truth-value of your material, but you aren’t sure that you’ve prepared adequately to explain it. The consequences you fear are that you will fail to impress upon your audience the importance of the ideas you’re presenting.
What specific things would you say or behaviors would you execute to your audience due to the lack of confidence you feel?
Is it lying to stand up straight, keep your feet properly planted, and avoid adjusting your glasses or engaging it other nervous behaviors?
Is it lying to not begin your presentation with “I didn’t adequately prepare for this?”
I’m not sure what else you’re talking about, but if honest people didn’t do either of those things, they would be so grossly outpeformed by dishonest people that any good they had to offer the world would become practically worthless.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t introspect, and if it was enough for you, power to you, but I don’t think relying entirely on it is good advice for most people.
Well once you’re standing in front of them, you’ve committed to giving the presentation, and should, of course, try your best to convey what information you can. At that point, you’ve committed the hour to that.
I was more envisioning a scenario where, the morning of said presentation, you mention to your boss that for whatever reason you didn’t have the time to prepare, and ask if you could postpone the presentation until the next day. I think in that scenario, everyone benefits.
I think it applies just as much outside the business world. If you ARE the boss (or rather, the head of a nonprofit organization dedicated to X good thing) and must continuously tell people that you need to postpone things because you need more time to better prepare… you are going to have a hard time maintaining people’s interest, people are going to be less willing to invest in your cause.
Am I understanding correctly that you do consider it dishonest to stand up straight, keep feet properly planted and avoid nervous behaviors?
If that’s the only thing you needed to be able to improve at doing, why does it matter whether you practiced for hours until you had drilled out the possibility of ever doing it wrong, or just went and DID it?
[Edit: I agree that the Business world will have ADDITIONAL things that you’d have to compromise on and good for you to avoid something that’d make you unhappy. There are many places where I probably share your idealism. But I think you are setting a standard for yourself that would actively make the world a worse place if it were widely adopted]
Well the key phrase is “continuously”. I’m not saying you make a habit of repeatedly requesting extensions. But if you need one, I think you should ask for it, and I think it’s better for everyone if you do. But if you need an extension on every project you have, you should be fired.
Dishonest would be a stretch. But you are not presenting your true mental state. Which could be the right thing to do—if presenting in such a manner helped your audience’s ability to understand, then you should. But I would say that the better thing to do is to recognize the situation you’re in and analyze where is best to go from there. That may be presenting to the best of your ability. But it might also be humbly asking to present the next day and apologize for not preparing enough. I think most people would understand if it were an isolated incident.
If I think someone’s idea is stupid, I don’t think I’m making the world a better place by representing my true mental state. Every day at work, there’s a colleague who grates on me slightly. Accurately representing my mental state to him every time would be disastrous. There are dozens of instances every day where accurately representing myself would make the world a worse place for myself and the people around me.
I only think this is a problem if “accurately presenting your mental state” is something relevant to whatever it is you’re doing. Which mostly amounts to friendships and relationships—establishing close emotional bonds with people.
The people didn’t come to the presentation to form a close bond with you or get an accurate map of your personality—they came to see a presentation.
When you are first meeting a girl, you’re not immediately establishing a deep, personal connection (not usually anyway). The initial few minutes are about establishing that you two are both interesting people and it’s worth the two of your time to get to know each other. Trust and personal connection comes later (possibly soon afterwards, but it’s not part of the first few minutes).
Don’t put a false version of yourself forward. But do put the best version of yourself forward.
Any chance people could explain their downvotes? I felt, and still do, this was one of my better posts.
I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t a reaction of the hive mind against Rand...
I didn’t downvote but am tempted to now given that the quote of Rand is nonsense and you are doing the ‘Hivemind’ defense of it. I still haven’t. I must be in a good mood normally; normally I’d go all downvote Roman on you.
Looking at your post now:
NO! BAD! SILLY THINKING! NAIVE! GROW UP! DON’T ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO USE MODELS OF THE WORLD WHICH ARE SELF SABOTAGING. (These are examples of reasons why I would downvote the grandparent. I can’t speak for the reasoning of the actual downvoters.)
Would you care to support any of those assertions? Why is that quote nonsense? Why is that model self sabotaging?
I disagree on both counts. Although I don’t find myself in line with Rand on much, I do find her views on emotion being a product of rational thought, and not an opposing force to be quite agreeable.
As for that being a self sabotaging strategy, I think it is far more damaging to pretend that we don’t feel a certain way than to analyze why we feel that way, so that we can correct our emotions. (You have also failed to define what you mean by self sabotaging—there are ways that, depending on your utility functions for things like “intrinsic truth” that would change.)
No. You (feigned that you were) interested in why you were downvoted and I gave some guesses based on why I would have downvoted were it the case that I was such a downvoter. “Convince RobertLumley that the downvoters are justified” is a different task, which I haven’t taken up.
With respect to the philosophy behind “acting” confident I have a similar postition to that of HughRistik who discusses the topic from time to time. (Searching ‘HughRistik acting confident social’ would probably find it.)
That’s quite a leap to assume I was feigning interest. And frankly, it seems quite rude for you to do so when I’m following common LessWrong practice.
I was, am, and will continue to be (since no one has responded) very interested in why people thought that post was of poor quality. In fact, in my request, I considered leaving out the part about Rand, but did not, because it was what I was thinking—it would be quite hypocritical for me not to be honest about it, given the context.
Yes, I think we have very different ideas about how the social world works and should work. You may have deontological attitudes about social norms, for example. It would probably take more time to work through those differences than I have at the moment.
Welcome to Less Wrong, by the way!
I’m not at all a Kantian—I’m quite decidedly a rule utilitarian, and in that vein, I think you would have more fulfilling relationships if you would just be yourself. And that’s just counting the utility function from your side, not hers. She would undoubtedly have a higher utility function if you were (more) honest.
That being said, my entire perception of your character is based solely on your one paragraph, which set off a large number of negative stereotypes I have about the male gender. I sincerely hope I have a misconception of how you act.
Hard to sum up my character quickly. I certainly feel like an open, honest, genuine person. I’m also quite happily ‘myself’. Trying to make relationships work any other way would be weird. Indeed, my communication with the ‘awesome poly girl’ is probably far more open and direct than is the communication in most relationships. And people in meat-space generally seem to like me.
Well, as I said, I’m not exactly an expert on your character. But what you described in that section sounds more to me like a pick up artist, more along the lines of Barney Stinson. How would you interpret it if you read what you wrote from the perspective of an outsider and that was all you knew about their character?
Well I wouldn’t necessarily call that a high standard. ;-) But as I indicated, I am massively cynical about the male gender (OK, fine, I’m cynical about everyone, not just men...).
Which part gives you the Barney Stinson vibe? Drinking liquid courage before talking to girls? Telling them directly I think they’re cute and would like to grab a coffee with them sometime? Not talking about politics?
I’ll try to take you though my feelings as I read the article: (But Barney Stinson was, of course, an exercise in hyperbole—I just love HIMYM)
I started out thinking I would really, really like the article and relate to your experiences. It’s always made me sad when exes can’t maintain some form of relationship, and I’ve always managed to in the past, and try to encourage others to as well.
I think that was the first line that bothered me, largely because it was a stereotype, and that I know many, many women for whom it is not true. Secondarily, it bothered me because it seemed to imply that you should act confident even if you are not in order to attract women, which I disagree with on ethical principle.
The “act this way to get laid” vibe continued for me in the “Use Science” section. This is what I was thinking as I read it.
No! If you like talking about these things, power to you, and if the person to whom you’re talking is put off by this, then it’s better to learn that now, as opposed to later.
Same as above—if you really enjoy telling stories and she enjoys listening to them, what’s the harm? Let conversion flow naturally, don’t force it places because of certain prescribed rules.
This didn’t really bother me. I’m from the south—smiling is polite, and I try to smile at people—it makes me happy, it makes them happy, and as a rule utilitarian, I can’t be opposed to that. But I am opposed to smiling at a girl to make her feel comfortable for the sole purpose of sleeping with her, which is what it came across as, to me, even if you didn’t mean it.
This is fine by me. Well, saying it is. If you think a girl’s cute, tell her. As I’ve said, I think honesty is always the best policy. But worrying about whether or not your other signals are “optimized” makes it come across as just another gimmick to me.
This is what made me the most angry, because it’s actively and intentionally lying about something. You know that it’s not just like something, yet you’re seemingly encouraging saying this just so people will have comfortable conversations with you. If you can’t have a comfortable conversation without lying to create transitions, you’re probably not compatible enough for a relationship, and you should stop wasting your time.
Ultimately, I think there is one rule to relationships: Be yourself. If you’re not compatible with someone, you’ll both find that out earlier rather than later. Except under highly contrived situations, I don’t think you can ever convince me that complete and total honesty is not the best policy, and I see most of what you suggest as good social strategies to simply be masks you put on yourself.
At first i had the same feelings about the article you did.
But then i remembered what my life-coach taught me: “All behaviours start out as “gimmicks”, after some time of training they go from gimmick to part of your natural behaviour and lose their gimmickness”
This was the best lesson i ever learned as refusing to use gimmicks has put me at a serious disadvantage to those people whole naturally learned about the gimmick when they where little children.
Like luke, using gimmicks has been the best thing to happen for my work and private life. (also people who know that im gimmicking appreciate the effort i put into bettering our relationships and actively help me)
One can easily construct examples of behaviour for which this is not true. The easiest (and most absurd) examples would be instinctive—breathing, eating, etc. So it is clear that not all behaviours start out at gimmicks.
But is it, as a rule, generally true? I still think not. Did your pursuit of rationality start out as a gimmick? Mine certainly did not. I don’t know anything about you beyond that (at least, presumably I know that, since you’re on this site) so it’s hard to come up with further examples. But I’ll go ahead and make some safe generalizations. Did you learn mathematics or physics by gimmicks? What about the most recent project at work? Did you complete that project by use of gimmicks?
Perhaps I am an idealist. Well, not perhaps. I am an idealist. But my reaction, upon noticing that the world (and especially the business world) operates by gimmickry is not to participate in it, and perpetuate the continuation of the system, but to oppose it in whatever manner I can.
there are some instinctive functions, but those are mostly limited to basic survival. The examples of breathing and eating are 2 things that most adults are doing incorrectly. To learn proper breathing you will have to apply a gimmick until your body and minds learns how to breath properly and you dont give it anymore consious thought. When a baby is born the doctor will use a gimmick to make the baby breath for the first time.
And yes, i learned all the things you mentioned by using gimmicks, in fact the first thing i learned in school is guessing the teachers password.
Maybe we should taboo the word gimmick. My definiton of gimmick: “A conscious change in behavior” Something stops being a gimmick when: “The behavior occurs unconsciously”
At first you suck at math and have to study hard, then after some practice calculation results come naturally.
Ah yes. Well we mean very different things when we use the word gimmick. My definition would be more along the lines of “a concealed, usually devious aspect or feature of something, as a plan or deal”, which is one of Dictionary.com’s definitions.
So intention is probably the main problem. If your ethics do not condone the intention behind the “trick” you consider it a “gimmick” and hence a bad thing.
I think lukeprog has not been clear enough on his intentions which causes newer users to read it as an evil gimmick promoting article.
Well, not the intention. I’m a utilitarian. But I think the consequences are worse for my definition—especially when you consider the utility function of the person being lied to.
I think the standard refutation is supposed to be “Does this dress make me look fat?”...
To which “Well, that color/style/fit/whatever doesn’t particularly flatter you. Shall we look for something else?” is an acceptable response in any relationship I’m willing to care much about preserving, all else being equal.
But, sure, one can easily imagine situations in which all else is not equal. (Which is to say, I don’t share the OP’s view.)
Tangentially: someone asked me roughly that question once, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I replied, roughly, “Hypothetically speaking, given a choice, would you rather have evidence that a friend of yours was willing to answer questions honestly even when the honest answer incurred a potentially high social cost, or would you rather have evidence that your friend was willing to conceal an unpleasant truth so as to spare your feelings?” They thought about it for a bit and somewhat hesitantly chose the former, and I told them they looked lovely (which they did). That left them puzzled for quite a while.
The best answer I’ve heard to such questions is ‘I can’t tell; you’ll have to take it off so I can get a better look’.
If you truly respect the person asking you that, the only answer you can give is an honest one.
Your comment qualifies as a proof that I disrespect most people, including some of my loved ones. You could view it as a reductio ad absurdum of my opinion, or of your opinion; whichever you like better.
You’re presuming that the person in question wants to hear the truth. If they don’t, then the truly respectful response is not the same as the honest one.
And you’re presuming that if you respect someone you should just give them what they want...
I’m astonished that so many people advocating the spread rationality don’t strongly object to allowing people you presumably care about to continue their delusions.
Okay, let me correct my previous line: If they don’t, then the truly respectful response is not necessarily the same as the honest one. Of course there are situations where you should tell the truth, even if the other person doesn’t want to hear it right then. But there are also many situations where people are genuinely better off with their delusions, and breaking them would only do harm.
Advocating the spread of rationality does not give you a license to impose your own preferences on others regardless of how they feel about it. That includes the case where your preference is “people should only believe in true things”.
No it does not. But their asking me the question gives me a license to answer it honestly.
Thanks! This was indeed quite helpful.
Sure thing.
Aye, but if you learn to smile as an ordinary action, you’re just changing your true persona.
Thanks to the way humans are wired, a habit of regularly faking smiles will generally lead to a person who genuinely smiles a lot. The exceptions seem to generally be those who have an investment in the smiles staying fake.
Yes, but that wasn’t the way it was presented. Or at least not how I read it.
I will readily concede I am tact-filtering here. I leave it to him to say if it’s accurate, but it’s what I’ve done in similar situations, so I’ll give him the benefit of the tact-filter :)
RobertLumley said:
It’s not clear to me any behavioral methods for self-improvement are possible with this view of ethics. For instance, a therapist for a shy person might tell them to avoid fidgeting. But fidgeting is the way they usually act. Is suppressing fidgeting dishonest?
Since the above comment makes no mention of ethics, I’m confused as to why you’ve replied here. You (all) seem to be assuming I have a deontological ethical theory, which, as I have said over and over and over, I do not. The argument has not been made yet that acting as Luke says he acts brings higher utility to him and the people with whom he interacts. If you wish to discuss ethics with me, do it on those grounds.
I took “dishonest” and “false persona” as moral judgments, though perhaps you didn’t intend them that way.
Anyway, I am quite happy to talk about rule utilitarianism. I think a rule that allows people to experiment in order to improve their social and romantic abilities is good for everyone, as long as their experiments are non-harmful to others. Likewise, I think a rule that allows people to expand their personality is good for everyone.
Let’s say that through his research process, lukeprog managed to improve his social and romantic experiences. Meanwhile, his net effect on other people he interacted with was neutral or positive. If that was the case, then a rule allowing this sort of social experimentation seems like it passes rule utilitarian muster.
I realize that lukeprog didn’t phrase his post in this way, because he doesn’t talk much about the benefits of his behavior towards others (except for his mistake of invoking evolutionary psychology while breaking up with a girlfriend). Yet if lukeprog feels that his behavior had a positive or neutral result for the people he was interacting with, then he might not have found it necessary to say so, because he might not have realized that people in these threads might believe that his behavior had some of nefarious impact merely because he brought a hypotheco-deductive framework along for the ride. lukeprog could have spent more time discussing positive female reactions to him, but then it could have looked like he was boasting.
On the subject of learning to be more confident, I realize that you would consider behavioral methods to be a form of lying:
I have a couple objections:
It’s difficult to determine whether a display of a personality trait is a “lie” or not, because it’s hard to say what the “truth” is, due to the situation and due to the fact that people can change their self-narrative.
Not all forms of lying are bad. A rule utilitarian should subscribe to different sub-rules that apply to different sorts of deception, to take into account the results of the lie and the right of the deceived person to know the information.
I feel that prohibiting the sort of self-improvement lukeprog describes would be a horrible idea from a rule utilitarian perspective. For instance, he advocates smiling more. The potential negative consequences of the “deception” of smiling seem rather small. How do you harm people by being more smiley than you actually feel? Since smiling when not feeling positive emotions can be a good way to induce positive emotions in yourself, I can’t imagine why a rule utilitarian would want to prohibit this practice.
It would be a bad rule to require everyone to display their exact emotions all the time. Prohibiting “fake it ’til you make it” as a method of self-improvement would also be a bad rule, because it my view, that strategy is very beneficial to people who are struggling socially, while having a neutral or even beneficial net effect on others.
As for confidence, displaying more than you actually feel can be a great method of feeling more confident, as Kaj_Sotala points out. Unless we have a reason to believe that such a practice is harmful to others, then why would we want to prohibit it?
It’s a good thing for you if people in the group you want to date can engage in effective self-improvement. For instance, in my case, I want women to be attractive to me, to be relationally adept, and to know what they want. If romantic experimentation helps women develop those things without being costly to myself or other men, then more power to them! Likewise, if lukeprog and other men learn to be attractive and confident, that outcome seems beneficial towards women, who will have a larger pool of eligible men to date.
Personally, I’ve engaged in similar exploration as lukeprog, and I certainly feel that this process has helped me fulfill other people’s criteria, and have lots of mutually good times. Perhaps if someone has not witnessed the results of the process first hand, they might have skepticism about whether the sort of process lukeprog describes can be beneficial to others. I think that it can be, when implemented by someone with a basic sense of empathy and ethics, so I think it is consistent with rule utilitarianism… at least, given the payoff matrices for both parties that I believe exist (your view of the payoff matrices might be different).
I absolutely agree. But I don’t think it was necessarily good for him or for the people he encountered...
I’ll concede this. But from my perspective, Luke essentially admitted he was lying with the bit about “it’s exactly like”. Taken in that context, I think the rest of that section reads very differently.
I can’t say what the effects of his behaviour were, are, or will be. But I can say that I would be very insulted if he had tried such tactics on me—it’s a belittling of my intelligence to expect me to not notice such blatantly obvious ploys. And in the context of relationships, it comes across as, in my opinion, being womanizing and disrespectful towards women. And as I’ve pointed out elsewhere it seems inconsistent for him to not care about their rationality. And maybe he is not disrespectful towards him, but it is definitely how the post read to me, and I still strongly object to it on those grounds.
Again, I agree. I did say almost always. And I’ve even distinguished between things lukeprog described that I thought were worse than other things.
I have said almost the exact same thing.
And I think that’s the large difference. I have done similar things as well, and, for me they were incredibly destructive, and set me back several years in development of my social skills. And it wasn’t until I started analyzing the sources of my emotions that I became confident in myself and who I was. I discarded emotions that weren’t based in rational thought, and I accepted and embraced those that were.
Perhaps the best lesson to take from this is not to prescribe a single formula to a plethora of people. I will openly admit that I have done that. Before reading the (at times harsh) reactions to my comments, I was honestly astonished that the methods lukeprog (and you, and others) tried would actually work for someone. I spent many years faking confidence and tiptoeing around social protocol, and I was miserable and horribly insecure. I still can’t imagine that ever being a positive experience, but I will accept the numerous people who have testified to it at their word that it was. But at the same time, lukeprog should be wary of projecting the “if you do this right, you can be just like me” attitude.
It seems like we do have some areas of agreement, and I’m going to focus on the areas where our perspectives are different.
He seems to think his exploration had positive consequences for himself and for others, given that he has written this post. His perceptions may not be correct, but they are all we have to go on.
Which tactics would you find insulting? Not talking about politics or programming? Maintaining emotional momentum? Displaying confident behavior? Changing topics in conversation by free-associating? Asking for a number while in a rush?
lukeprog observes the preferences of (a subset of) women, and attempts to self-modify in order to fulfill their (perceived) criteria. I’m having trouble seeing what the problem is, and how such a practice would disrespect women’s rationality.
I seems like a more cognitive approach was most helpful for you. For other people, a highly behavioral approach might be useful. For me, both have been useful.
It’s complicated. Not all of my efforts to expand my personality have succeeded. I eventually do hit a limit of extraversion, for example, beyond which I feel fake and drained. So I do relate to what you are saying. Luckily, some of my attempts at changing my behavior have stuck, and also succeeded in changing my attitudes and sense of self. It was only by pushing my personality to its limits that I gained a sense of what it could do.
Perhaps it’s useful to note that all of lukeprog’s “tactics” look to me like normal socialization or extensions thereof?
Tailoring one’s subject matter to one’s audience is very normal. Avoiding esoteric or controversial topics with people one doesn’t know well is a simple logical extension of this. The “when flirting” qualifier is relevant in that it implies a new acquaintance; different heuristics apply when dealing with people one knows more about.
This is a fairly basic social skill. (By which I mean that it’s applicable everywhere, not that it’s trivial to learn. Possibly also noteworthy: The definition of ‘correct emotional momentum’ can vary from group to group and situation to situation.)
Body language is important. Signaling that one is in a socially-interactive mode when that’s true is good practice.
Nonverbal communication conveys a lot of information. Treating that communication as real is generally wise.
I’d question the assertion that people don’t notice these changes of topic, but this kind of behavior is quite normal in most real-time conversation contexts and will generally not be questioned unless it appears to be malicious.
Also, to make it perfectly clear: I’m not talking about flirting, dating, or any other romantic or pickup context with any of the above—I don’t have (or want; I’m asexual and a-romantic) enough experience to do so. I’m talking about normal, peer-to-peer socialization.
I think that’s exactly what we’re discussing—whether or not they are “normal socialization or extensions thereof”.
First and foremost, the shifting of conversational topics, I would find very insulting. If you can’t talk to me normally without desperately reaching for conversational topics, maybe we just shouldn’t be talking.
Secondly, I would probably list intentionally avoiding conversational topics like politics. If you’re not a blue or a green, I’d love to talk about politics with you. (And if you are a blue or a green, I don’t really want to talk to you at all...) And if you don’t like talking about politics, maybe we shouldn’t be together, if I do.
Third, is probably this business about “emotional momentum”. I had no idea what that even meant when I read it. I’m still not sure I do. I have never considered what “stage of conversation” I’m in. If I think of something that’s relevant, I say it. It generally works pretty well for me.
I had no objection to the quote, but to the rest of it. The rest of it makes it seem like lukeprog’s only goal is sex, particularly the words “totally works” and “optimized”.
Ultimately conversation should flow, regardless of who you’re talking to. If it flows, you don’t need to worry about stilted rules like this, which is the primary source of my objection. I wouldn’t want to talk to someone constantly worrying about what to say next—it would seem very forced, I’m sure.
As a sidenote, and perhaps I’m alone in this and perhaps I’m not, it’s hard to tell—I am massively introverted. I don’t know if that is a source of difference or not (I would imagine most other LWers are as well) but I thought I’d throw it out there.
The technique described is generally used when one or both parties have run out of interesting things to say on the topic at hand—it’s a transitional technique. The interesting point is that it’s possible to transition to arbitrary topics rather than there having to be some logical connection between the two. I don’t see why you’d consider that ‘desperate reaching’, but suspect it has to do with the specific topics you’re imagining someone switching to. Does it seem less objectionable if you specifically imagine someone transitioning to an arbitrary but interesting and engaging topic?
This seems… odd, to me, as an objection. Do you really expect every one of your friends to share every one of your interests, and you to share every one of theirs? Or is it just “topics like politics” that you’re applying that expectation to? What do you mean by “topics like politics”, and why is that category special?
If I’m understanding lukeprog correctly, this refers to monitoring your conversational partner and switching topics or modes if they seem to be losing interest, though that’s a simplified description of the skill. I think this is also what you’re describing by ‘flow’, and—importantly—it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. To people to whom such skills don’t come naturally, or people trying to communicate about the skills, breaking them down into explicitly-described sub-skills as lukeprog did is often quite useful.
No, not at all. I wouldn’t at all enjoy a conversation that went along the lines of “Yeah, the weather’s great outside, but I hear it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.” “Yeah, you know what that’s exactly like? Aumann’s Agreement Theorem”. That’s just absurd. Admittedly, that’s a contrived example, but I suspect that any examples that were “completely unrelated” as lukeprog said, would be equally absurd.
No, I don’t. And if the person I’m talking to doesn’t want to talk about politics, that’s fine. But I’m not going to intentionally avoid talking about politics just because they might not want to—that’s leaping to a conclusion based on no evidence. And I mean any topic really, just politics and religion are the two quintessential examples of “impolite” topics.
The problem with that example, as far as I can see, is that the transition is trying to force a level of engagement that hasn’t been established yet, which would fail even if the topic being transitioned to did have some logical connection to the weather. A better example: Transitioning from a funny, engaging story about someone’s cousin’s roommates’ sister’s wedding and the greased pig that got loose at the reception to a similarly engaging point of interest about Aumann’s Agreement Theorem and how it applied to a recent decision to donate to a particular charity.
Given that the topic being considered “impolite” implies that most people won’t like most possible conversations on the topic, no, it’s not based on no evidence—it’s just based on evidence about people-in-general or people-in-a-given-culture rather than a specific person in particular, which is a reasonable starting point in figuring out how to approach them. (Yes, this pattern-matches with the pronouns debate that comes up here from time to time. The significant difference is that female LWers are likely to object to being called by male pronouns, whereas politics-liking conversationalists are unlikely to object to their conversational partners bringing up non-politics topics of conversation. The parallel of having to actually gather information about people to interact optimally with them is accurate, though.)
But if you used the phrase “That’s exactly like”, I think it would sound equally forced. Or at least it would to me.
I don’t think it does. People generally love it if you agree with them—it’s impolite because you don’t always agree. Many people are happy to drone on for hours about their political beliefs, which is what makes it impolite. If you can be respectful about politics, I see no reason not to bring it up (if you want to). And if the other person can’t be respectful, then that gives you (in my book, what would be) a significant reason to not pursue a relationship with that person.
At this point I think it’s a matter of empirical testing—meaning, in this case, observing people, since the question is about what people do in the course of normal conversations.
This is a significant part of why I said “most possible conversations”. I would guess that it’s possible to have a political conversation with most people that they’ll enjoy—but reliably doing so takes more information than you’ll generally have about someone you just met or are in the process of meeting.
Well, he clearly states that it isn’t:
I didn’t mean someone in the specific. In fact, the phrase “with someone” is entirely unnecessary and confusing, in context. I’ll delete it, thanks.
Oh, I did indeed misunderstand you. Whoops.
At what point, in your mind, does he discard rationality?
What I wrote wasn’t very clear. I feel as though he is dismissing and discarding his interest in the rationality of the woman whom he is pursuing.
Okay, thanks for the clarification.
While I would personally want to date someone else who is fairly rational, it is not clear that every rationalist should have this preference. In particular, it seems likely that most people don’t know what they actually want out of a relationship until they’ve been in several. This seems likely to be the case even for people who think that they do know what they want out of a relationship.
(Possibly interesting anecdote: I am in the awkward situation of simultaneously believing the above paragraph and believing that I know what I want out of a relationship without having been in several.)
I disagree. Your rationality is my business. Aumann’s Agreement Theorem is also interesting to consider in this context.
But that being said, my point was about the inconsistency of his behaviour. Luke wrote a piece posted on a blog dedicated to improving human rationality. He could have kept his revelations to himself, but he didn’t, presumably because he wants other people to learn too. And he should. I think that’s great. That’s why I’m here. But then proceeded to show complete disregard for other people’s rationality. His behaviour in his relationships seems to me to be inconsistent with his participation in this community.
The wildly manipulative nature of your methods is, indeed, “appall[ing.]”
It’s notable that the impetus for this exercise was a perceived suboptimal situation based on little more evidence than a perceived “spark of intimacy” on the part of your partner, hardly anything falsifiable (and even further, you make no mention of consulting said partner about the seeming negative value judgment inherent in your dismissal of monogamy, which is by no means a given—that’s just bad practice). The discussion that builds the guiding premise for this hoopla is reduced to a fait accompli and not given adequate bearing in a balanced “rational” decision. It seems deceptive not only to your partner, then, but also to your audience to cloak your “rational” endeavors under the guise of maximizing mutual utility when the real compelling interest here is your own, and, I would argue, not the quality of any future relationship(s), but the ease and quantity, rather than quality, of acquaintanceship and sex.
There are also significant issues of rhetoric, particularly with the uses of “own,” “data,” and “quality,” but they hardly seem to carry bearing without significant explanation; this essay contains yawing gaps of information.
Downvote.
This is a great post, as evinced by the upvotes, and especially good for a first post! I have one nit to pick however, which is that you use the second person (“you”) to refer to the author of the original post, in a subcomment. I might in general phrase that first sentence as, say, “The wildly manipulative nature of the original poster’s methods,...”
Anyway as jsalvatier says below, welcome to LessWrong!
Welcome to LessWrong! You may have fun introducing yourself on the welcome thread.