I’m glad to see someone bringing up the topic of seduction, and how it relates to rationality, and how attitudes inside and towards the seduction community relate to rationality and biases.
I’m going to give a big warning to everyone on this topic. The seduction community is an expansive and heterogenous phenomenon. Unless someone has some experience of the community (say 30+ hours of reading of multiple gurus with different philosophies, and they have gone out and tried the approaches the community advocates or seen real pickup artists in action), then it is virtually impossible to understand what it involves and describe it in a way that isn’t skewed.
Yvain, you are right to take the mass perceptions of people of each sex as evidence (though evidence of what is unclear, so far). Let me unpack a few things:
There are a lot of not-particularly-complimentary things about women that many men tend to believe. Some guys say that women will never have romantic relationships with their actually-decent-people male friends because they prefer alpha-male jerks who treat them poorly. Other guys say women want to be lied to and tricked.
There are guys who think like this, but not all pickup artists do, and probably most of the men who think like this aren’t pickup artists. Here’s my quick availability-heuristicky impression of what pickup artists think on these subjects, and whether or not these beliefs are complimentary, based on more than half a decade of involvement with the community:
Female attraction to male friends: Pickup artists typically believe that if a woman sees a man as “just a friend,” then it is unlikely that this perception will change, and that his efforts are best allocated elsewhere.
Alpha males: Pickup artists typically believe that women are attracted to “alpha males.” What “alpha male” means is subject to intense debate.
Lying and trickery: Pickup artists typically don’t believe that women want to be lied to or tricked. Pickup artists do present themselves selectively and strategically. Yet the modal point of view in my experience is that lying and trickery are looked down on, and seen as antithetical to seduction. If a pickup artist isn’t looking for a relationship, then he will try to make that obvious, or even state it explicitly.
Well, I’m afraid I kind of trust the seduction people.
It’s good to see someone caring what pickup artists think, but I would take their views with a bit more caution for several reasons:
The availability heuristic. The seduction community has a pretty good model of young female extraverts with average IQ, because these are the women they encounter most often. As you look at women who differ more and more from the average extravert, the prototype of the seduction community becomes less and less correct. This is a point where I agree with Alicorn. This doesn’t mean that the community’s advice completely ceases to work, but it requires modification. Women who are nerdy, systemizing, bisexual, feminist, or in alternative subcultures are wired differently. (And to tie in to your post, women with those traits are going to be bad judges of the preferences of typical women due the Typical Psyche Fallacy, which I think is a special case of the availability heuristic.)
Naive realism. Pickup artists often assume that because a theory produces results, then it is true. This isn’t necessarily the case. Pjeby has correctly described how correct-enough theories will often be useful without being true. Having a model of women that lets you predict the behavior of say, 30% of women better than chance is actually really good for a guy who is completely in the dark about women and their preferences and behaviors.
(I wonder whether more complex models would necessarily be more useful; I think this varies. When you are a beginner, it may be best to understand typical women, and then later try to figure out how all the outlier types of women work by seeing their similarities and differences from typical women. Ultimately, the model that is most important to have is the model of the type of women you are compatible with.)
When you put these two together, you get pickup artists running around with oversimplified-but-nevertheless-useful models of women, who start to get some better results, confirming their over oversimplified-but-nevertheless-useful models of women in their minds.
I figured this out because I view the empirical approach as the core of the seduction community’s teachings, so I often try out stuff that my gut tells me and break the rules of what is “supposed” to work or not work.
As for how much the view of women in the seduction community is complimentary or true, those are topics I’ll have to save for another time.
Well—your comments certainly fit with the idea of ‘generalising from one example’.
In this case, your own somewhat distorted perceptions.
For example: are the ‘typical women’ the roving seducer should try to understand based on someone you know? Or was there some data involved?
I think you are going to have to give some examples of perceptions I’ve presented that you consider distorted.
There is a lot of data on average female preferences that I discuss here. On average, women are attracted to various masculine traits, including extraversion and dominance. Dominance by men is attractive to women, at least when displayed towards other people, though dominance-based status may be inferior to prestige-based status. There is some evidence showing that Agreeableness is attractive to women, yet strangely men with higher Agreeableness don’t show higher success with women. Women often tend to associate sex with submission and have submissive sexual fantasies.
Any man, roving seducer or not, should know these things and take them into account when interacting with women. I also presented the hypothesis that some women in alternative subcultures are often wired differently.
I’m glad to see someone bringing up the topic of seduction, and how it relates to rationality, and how attitudes inside and towards the seduction community relate to rationality and biases.
I’m going to give a big warning to everyone on this topic. The seduction community is an expansive and heterogenous phenomenon. Unless someone has some experience of the community (say 30+ hours of reading of multiple gurus with different philosophies, and they have gone out and tried the approaches the community advocates or seen real pickup artists in action), then it is virtually impossible to understand what it involves and describe it in a way that isn’t skewed.
Elana Clift’s honors thesis is a good place to start.
Yvain, you are right to take the mass perceptions of people of each sex as evidence (though evidence of what is unclear, so far). Let me unpack a few things:
There are guys who think like this, but not all pickup artists do, and probably most of the men who think like this aren’t pickup artists. Here’s my quick availability-heuristicky impression of what pickup artists think on these subjects, and whether or not these beliefs are complimentary, based on more than half a decade of involvement with the community:
Female attraction to male friends: Pickup artists typically believe that if a woman sees a man as “just a friend,” then it is unlikely that this perception will change, and that his efforts are best allocated elsewhere.
Alpha males: Pickup artists typically believe that women are attracted to “alpha males.” What “alpha male” means is subject to intense debate.
Lying and trickery: Pickup artists typically don’t believe that women want to be lied to or tricked. Pickup artists do present themselves selectively and strategically. Yet the modal point of view in my experience is that lying and trickery are looked down on, and seen as antithetical to seduction. If a pickup artist isn’t looking for a relationship, then he will try to make that obvious, or even state it explicitly.
It’s good to see someone caring what pickup artists think, but I would take their views with a bit more caution for several reasons:
The availability heuristic. The seduction community has a pretty good model of young female extraverts with average IQ, because these are the women they encounter most often. As you look at women who differ more and more from the average extravert, the prototype of the seduction community becomes less and less correct. This is a point where I agree with Alicorn. This doesn’t mean that the community’s advice completely ceases to work, but it requires modification. Women who are nerdy, systemizing, bisexual, feminist, or in alternative subcultures are wired differently. (And to tie in to your post, women with those traits are going to be bad judges of the preferences of typical women due the Typical Psyche Fallacy, which I think is a special case of the availability heuristic.)
Naive realism. Pickup artists often assume that because a theory produces results, then it is true. This isn’t necessarily the case. Pjeby has correctly described how correct-enough theories will often be useful without being true. Having a model of women that lets you predict the behavior of say, 30% of women better than chance is actually really good for a guy who is completely in the dark about women and their preferences and behaviors.
(I wonder whether more complex models would necessarily be more useful; I think this varies. When you are a beginner, it may be best to understand typical women, and then later try to figure out how all the outlier types of women work by seeing their similarities and differences from typical women. Ultimately, the model that is most important to have is the model of the type of women you are compatible with.)
When you put these two together, you get pickup artists running around with oversimplified-but-nevertheless-useful models of women, who start to get some better results, confirming their over oversimplified-but-nevertheless-useful models of women in their minds.
I figured this out because I view the empirical approach as the core of the seduction community’s teachings, so I often try out stuff that my gut tells me and break the rules of what is “supposed” to work or not work.
As for how much the view of women in the seduction community is complimentary or true, those are topics I’ll have to save for another time.
Upvoted for spelling “extravert” correctly :)
Wow, I’m highly amused and somewhat surprised at the vitriolic reaction to this innocent little comment.
Me too, but I think we should use extrovert now that it’s in common use.
Going back to ~1920, “extrovert” has been pretty consistently more popular.
Awesome comment—lots of good info here. Thanks.
Well—your comments certainly fit with the idea of ‘generalising from one example’. In this case, your own somewhat distorted perceptions. For example: are the ‘typical women’ the roving seducer should try to understand based on someone you know? Or was there some data involved?
I think you are going to have to give some examples of perceptions I’ve presented that you consider distorted.
There is a lot of data on average female preferences that I discuss here. On average, women are attracted to various masculine traits, including extraversion and dominance. Dominance by men is attractive to women, at least when displayed towards other people, though dominance-based status may be inferior to prestige-based status. There is some evidence showing that Agreeableness is attractive to women, yet strangely men with higher Agreeableness don’t show higher success with women. Women often tend to associate sex with submission and have submissive sexual fantasies.
Any man, roving seducer or not, should know these things and take them into account when interacting with women. I also presented the hypothesis that some women in alternative subcultures are often wired differently.