What has been said on LW about seduction is the aggregate state of the evidence. The discussions about seduction on OB and LW are the most unbiased summary on the topic I know. Take an intersection of Robin’s signaling theory, Eliezer’s essays on gender, and the skeptical-empirical knowledge of pickup artists. That is the truth insofar approximable.
For one thing, no blog is large enough to contain the aggregate state of the evidence about anything. For another, don’t you suppose some women might know something about this topic that you and your sources have missed? It may help to meditate on “Reversed Stupidity is Not Intelligence”—even if some critics irrationally discount the domain knowledge of PUAs, this is no excuse for irrationally discounting the critics’ domain knowledge.
Now AFAICT you refuse to accept OB and LW as ‘extraordinary institutions’.
Argument screens off authority. I agree that this is a wonderful blog, but it doesn’t mean that you should expect people to just accept the majority opinion here simply on the grounds that it’s such a wonderful blog. Especially on a mind-killing topic like gender, about which I fear no one’s rationality can simply be trusted. The authority of biologists derives from massive amounts of empirical evidence and many years of intense study, and even then, I do not think you should automatically trust everything a biologist says about anything to do with biology; you may have domain knowledge of your own that bears on some particular question. A comment thread full of smart people who profess truthseeking has still less authority.
You can afford to do this because inaccurate beliefs may cost you little in this area.
Isn’t this a fully general counterargument? It might similarly be said that you can afford to hold the opinions you do because inaccurate beliefs may cost you little in this area. And it gets us nowhere, either way.
For one thing, no blog is large enough to contain the aggregate state of the evidence about anything. For another, don’t you suppose some women might know something about this topic that you and your sources have missed? It may help to meditate on “Reversed Stupidity is Not Intelligence”—even if some critics irrationally discount the domain knowledge of PUAs, this is no excuse for irrationally discounting the critics’ domain knowledge.
Argument screens off authority. I agree that this is a wonderful blog, but it doesn’t mean that you should expect people to just accept the majority opinion here simply on the grounds that it’s such a wonderful blog. Especially on a mind-killing topic like gender, about which I fear no one’s rationality can simply be trusted. The authority of biologists derives from massive amounts of empirical evidence and many years of intense study, and even then, I do not think you should automatically trust everything a biologist says about anything to do with biology; you may have domain knowledge of your own that bears on some particular question. A comment thread full of smart people who profess truthseeking has still less authority.
Isn’t this a fully general counterargument? It might similarly be said that you can afford to hold the opinions you do because inaccurate beliefs may cost you little in this area. And it gets us nowhere, either way.
Not nearly as much as the reply was!
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