One aspect that seems to be relevant is the level of harm / benefit to the people involved, and the degree to which the influenced person is willing to go along with it.
As for PUA—I might think that people are looking at signals of [fitness / how fun you might be to have sex with / whatever], and deliberately manipulating these (instead of the underlying traits) degrades the reliability of the signal, effectively “lying” about the quality under consideration.
On the other hand, if you think you’re actually more fun to have sex with than you seem, then you might be more accurately representing yourself by changing how you seem.
If good mathematicians are believed to wear the yellowest shirts, and you think you are the best mathematician in your class, and at the moment your shirt is only pale yellow, then you would not be deceiving anyone by changing into a very yellow shirt. You might be wrong in your appraisal of your mathematical skill, and as a result you might signal a falsehood; but this would not be deception.
As for PUA—I might think that people are looking at signals of [fitness / how fun you might be to have sex with / whatever], and deliberately manipulating these (instead of the underlying traits) degrades the reliability of the signal, effectively “lying” about the quality under consideration.
Do you also consider wearing make-up, push-up bras, high heels and similar to be “lying”?
If I get your point, I think I usually could tell whether someone’s wearing make-up, if I looked close enough. And at a first glance certain shoes look less high than they actually are. Dunno about push-up bras—I’d have to test myself by looking at women wearing them and women not wearing them without knowing which are which and trying to tell them apart, but where on Earth could I get a chance to perform the experiment? ;-)
One aspect that seems to be relevant is the level of harm / benefit to the people involved, and the degree to which the influenced person is willing to go along with it.
As for PUA—I might think that people are looking at signals of [fitness / how fun you might be to have sex with / whatever], and deliberately manipulating these (instead of the underlying traits) degrades the reliability of the signal, effectively “lying” about the quality under consideration.
On the other hand, if you think you’re actually more fun to have sex with than you seem, then you might be more accurately representing yourself by changing how you seem.
If good mathematicians are believed to wear the yellowest shirts, and you think you are the best mathematician in your class, and at the moment your shirt is only pale yellow, then you would not be deceiving anyone by changing into a very yellow shirt. You might be wrong in your appraisal of your mathematical skill, and as a result you might signal a falsehood; but this would not be deception.
Absolutely true. Nerds do have certain advantages in bed!
Do you also consider wearing make-up, push-up bras, high heels and similar to be “lying”?
The user you are asking the question of made the grandparent in 2011 and hasn’t posted recently.
Indeed they haven’t. Weird, their username did ring a bell. Whatever—it’s not the first time my memory fails me like that. shrug
Nice.
One of these is not like the others ;)
If I get your point, I think I usually could tell whether someone’s wearing make-up, if I looked close enough. And at a first glance certain shoes look less high than they actually are. Dunno about push-up bras—I’d have to test myself by looking at women wearing them and women not wearing them without knowing which are which and trying to tell them apart, but where on Earth could I get a chance to perform the experiment? ;-)
The most obvious solution is to form your own harem.
=P