Scott Alexander and Scott Aaronson have described their experiences as shy nerdy heterosexual guys growing up. Both of them felt a crippling paralysis and fear at the thought of asking a girl out.
Since LessWrong fits this demographic pretty well, I’d like to know: how well do their experiences match yours? Only answer if you are a nerdy heterosexual male*. [pollid:806]
Feel free to elaborate.
*For this purpose I would roughly define nerdy as having two of the following characteristics: poor social skills ; a high IQ or ; intense non-mainstream interests (eg. e-sports, comic books, rock collecting). Regarding that last criteria, basically anything you would feel weird talking to your barber about.
I answered “not at all”, even though I was for some years very shy, anxious and fearful about asking girls out, because I never felt anything like the specific fears both Scotts wrote about, of being labelled a creep, sexist, gross, objectifier, etc. It was just “ordinary” shyness and social awkwardness, not related at all to the tangled issues about feminism and gender relations that the current discussion centers on. I interepreted the question as being interested specifically in the intersection of shyness with these issues, otherwise I might have answered “sort of”.
Yup. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who knew about or cared about feminism during the awkward middle/high school years. Most kids just aren’t that ideologically involved. Maybe I just grew up in a medium-IQ bubble (certainly lower than the Scotts), but in my experience the only place feminists really manage to hurt people is via the internet and internet-fueled outrages.
However, even if it’s restricted to the ’net it’s still important and worth addressing, seeing as that’s a main hub of communication now. Besides, nerdy heterosexual males are highly at risk for any damages that may occur via internet exposure.
Typically, it’s polite to add a “I just want to see the results” option, so that people who don’t fit into the class of desired voters can still see the votes without corrupting them.
Being a non-frequent commenter, I didn’t know that you had to vote to see the results. I’m not in target demographic so I voted not at all. 10, 25, 13 are the correct poll results after tossing out my response.
Well I’m very surprised and grateful to the people who voted. I thought both Scotts were probably significant outliers. But the poll results seem to show that their experiences are not that uncommon.
Could you be more specific as to who should respond? If nerdy means high IQ + low social skills, I’m not sure I should respond, because I don’t have low social skills, but I am an otherwise… Geeky hetero male.
Nerdy hetero female. That is rather irrelevant, but perhaps more relevant is that I have a twin sister, also a hetero nerd, also in a PhD program in a closle related field...and she prefers pining after guys to asking them out. Partly because a female zoologist is seen as weird, but married female zoologist is seen as weirder.
ISTM that the whole model where we think of “asking a stranger out” as the way to start a romantic relationship (or not a literal stranger, perhaps, but an acquaintance at best) is part of the disease. It seems to be a US-centric phenomenon, and one that many relationship experts seem to object to. Many of these experts put forth a very different model, where your initial goal is not to ask a person out on a “date”, but to make the best case for yourself as an intriguing and engaging person. If the other person is interested, you can think about setting up a follow-on meeting. And even then, you’re not “dating”, you’re just hanging out, and may or may not be starting a romantic/sexual relationship. The words “date” and “dating” are superfluous: they do not carve this reality at its joints.
The words “date” and “dating” are superfluous: they do not carve this reality at its joints.
For the subset of the population that has no friendly acquaintances that they might be interested in and therefore goes and meets people of the opposite gender specifically for romantic/sexual purposes, with neither party having plausible deniability that this is what they are doing, I think those words do carve reality at its joints. I agree that belonging to said subset is not an optimal situation, but I don’t think people necessarily enter that subset by choice.
^Keeping in mind that these words were constructed in a time and place when men and women did not generally socialize as friends.
My point is that a sensible process of “meet[ing] people of the opposite gender specifically for romantic/sexual purposes” involves two substeps: (1) getting socially acquainted with said opposite-gender person, and (2) starting and cultivating an actual sexual/romantic relationship with them. Making a distinction between these substeps strikes me as being critically important, regardless of whether that person was a friendly acquaintance in the first place. The notion of “dating” fails to do that.
Not sure how successful this might be, but would something like “Well, we’ve had a few interactions and I think we have a few things in common so I thought we should just hang out a bit and dget to know each other a bit better”
Obviously you can change the wording a bit. Saying that you feel instead of think could have some implications but I’m not a lingustics-brain interpretation expert so I can’t say I have much evidence to support it but that’s just how I feel :)
Anyway that hing is just a general guide-line and you could definitely change it a bit depending on the infinity plus one variations you have.
Also what is a relationship expert? Women? Guys that had lots of girlfriends? Lesswrongers analyzing things up the the 0.000%th? I have a general dislike for expertise in certain fields such as this because I often instinctually either agree on stuff I haven’t thought about or basically say “oh I know this already” when certain “experts” speak. Not going to discount their effort but I think it’s less about the experts and more about people doing stupid stuff.
Also the whole dating thing is broken because it’s too structured. I say that a proper date should be like having a map that even if it’s accurate you only know the terrain but you still don’t know what you’ll encounter on your way so it all depends on how well you click with each other. If you feel it’s going nowhere just call it quits. Also helps with the silent types if you can read nonverbal actions well enough.
“Well, we’ve had a few interactions and I think we have a few things in common so I thought we should just hang out a bit and dget to know each other a bit better”
Blech. You don’t need to apologize for yourself! Just leave it implied that if you’re exchanging contact info, it’s with the goal of meeting again. At most, you could say something like, “I think you’re a really interesting person/I’m impressed by about you, maybe we should hang out again”—if she’s not into you, you’re not going to change her mind by persuading her. Just deal with that, it’s part of the game.
I answered “sort of”, but I’ve thought about it more and now think “not at all” may have been a better answer.
I think the two Scotts are talking about a real problem but
the main commonalities between my experience and theirs are:
not particularly successful with women (I was single for
most of high school and have been single for long
stretches of my adult life)
afraid to let people know I was interested in them
depressed about lack of romantic success
and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial that those
are common straight male nerd experiences (or common
experiences for other demographics, especially the second
and third things on the list). The controversial thing is
whether these problems were caused or worsened by feminist
ideas, which in my case was not true at all.
Possibly relevant:
I am about ten years older than both Scotts.
I did not “go to college” in the sense of earning a
degree. (I took a bunch of music classes at a community
college—i.e., a college without dorms. I never attended
anything like the sexual-assault prevention workshops
Scott Aaronson mentions.)
I had zero experience with women in high school, but found I was well ahead of the curve after college. My experience is most single people under 30 have relationship issues to some degree or another. I find just generally being more socialable is the best cure. Trying to specifically get good at relationships without learning the rest of it is setting yourself up for failure.
Perhaps a distinction should be made between the different reasons for asking someone out, because there’s a gender imbalance in them. Namely, one could desire someone mainly for sex (because the target is one of several attractive people around) or mainly because they want a relationship with that specific person (and none other), i.e. a crush. At least what I get from SSC’s account of Aaronson’s experience was that the latter was more motivated by sex.
If lonely male nerds are motivated by the first and lonely female nerds (or girls in general) are motivated by the second, and both parties know this, then obviously the guy is going to be rejected. Both the guy and the girl need to have significantly more sexual experience than the typical high schooler in order for the idea of casual sex / friends with benefits to appeal to the girl. (Otherwise, the sex is probably going to suck for her in every way possible, from the burden of contraception to failure of the inexperienced boy to please her sexually.) If both guy and girl were to be looking for a mainly romantic partner (in a relationship that would obviously include sex, if at a later date), then the guy’s chances for approaching her would go up.
(That is not to say that they would go up by much above 0 in the given context. Expressing (“that kind of”) interest in someone you’re not on a chatting basis with, which apparently is how many nerdy guys approach the situation, with is a horrible social move that only the most charming and attractive can pull off. Flirting precedes confessions, people.)
Scott Alexander and Scott Aaronson have described their experiences as shy nerdy heterosexual guys growing up. Both of them felt a crippling paralysis and fear at the thought of asking a girl out.
Since LessWrong fits this demographic pretty well, I’d like to know: how well do their experiences match yours? Only answer if you are a nerdy heterosexual male*. [pollid:806]
Feel free to elaborate.
*For this purpose I would roughly define nerdy as having two of the following characteristics: poor social skills ; a high IQ or ; intense non-mainstream interests (eg. e-sports, comic books, rock collecting). Regarding that last criteria, basically anything you would feel weird talking to your barber about.
I answered “not at all”, even though I was for some years very shy, anxious and fearful about asking girls out, because I never felt anything like the specific fears both Scotts wrote about, of being labelled a creep, sexist, gross, objectifier, etc. It was just “ordinary” shyness and social awkwardness, not related at all to the tangled issues about feminism and gender relations that the current discussion centers on. I interepreted the question as being interested specifically in the intersection of shyness with these issues, otherwise I might have answered “sort of”.
Yup. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who knew about or cared about feminism during the awkward middle/high school years. Most kids just aren’t that ideologically involved. Maybe I just grew up in a medium-IQ bubble (certainly lower than the Scotts), but in my experience the only place feminists really manage to hurt people is via the internet and internet-fueled outrages.
However, even if it’s restricted to the ’net it’s still important and worth addressing, seeing as that’s a main hub of communication now. Besides, nerdy heterosexual males are highly at risk for any damages that may occur via internet exposure.
Typically, it’s polite to add a “I just want to see the results” option, so that people who don’t fit into the class of desired voters can still see the votes without corrupting them.
I’ve never made a poll before—noted.
The results so far are 10, 25, 13.
Being a non-frequent commenter, I didn’t know that you had to vote to see the results. I’m not in target demographic so I voted not at all. 10, 25, 13 are the correct poll results after tossing out my response.
Well I’m very surprised and grateful to the people who voted. I thought both Scotts were probably significant outliers. But the poll results seem to show that their experiences are not that uncommon.
Could you be more specific as to who should respond? If nerdy means high IQ + low social skills, I’m not sure I should respond, because I don’t have low social skills, but I am an otherwise… Geeky hetero male.
Nerdy hetero female. That is rather irrelevant, but perhaps more relevant is that I have a twin sister, also a hetero nerd, also in a PhD program in a closle related field...and she prefers pining after guys to asking them out. Partly because a female zoologist is seen as weird, but married female zoologist is seen as weirder.
ISTM that the whole model where we think of “asking a stranger out” as the way to start a romantic relationship (or not a literal stranger, perhaps, but an acquaintance at best) is part of the disease. It seems to be a US-centric phenomenon, and one that many relationship experts seem to object to. Many of these experts put forth a very different model, where your initial goal is not to ask a person out on a “date”, but to make the best case for yourself as an intriguing and engaging person. If the other person is interested, you can think about setting up a follow-on meeting. And even then, you’re not “dating”, you’re just hanging out, and may or may not be starting a romantic/sexual relationship. The words “date” and “dating” are superfluous: they do not carve this reality at its joints.
For the subset of the population that has no friendly acquaintances that they might be interested in and therefore goes and meets people of the opposite gender specifically for romantic/sexual purposes, with neither party having plausible deniability that this is what they are doing, I think those words do carve reality at its joints. I agree that belonging to said subset is not an optimal situation, but I don’t think people necessarily enter that subset by choice.
^Keeping in mind that these words were constructed in a time and place when men and women did not generally socialize as friends.
My point is that a sensible process of “meet[ing] people of the opposite gender specifically for romantic/sexual purposes” involves two substeps: (1) getting socially acquainted with said opposite-gender person, and (2) starting and cultivating an actual sexual/romantic relationship with them. Making a distinction between these substeps strikes me as being critically important, regardless of whether that person was a friendly acquaintance in the first place. The notion of “dating” fails to do that.
Not sure how successful this might be, but would something like “Well, we’ve had a few interactions and I think we have a few things in common so I thought we should just hang out a bit and dget to know each other a bit better” Obviously you can change the wording a bit. Saying that you feel instead of think could have some implications but I’m not a lingustics-brain interpretation expert so I can’t say I have much evidence to support it but that’s just how I feel :) Anyway that hing is just a general guide-line and you could definitely change it a bit depending on the infinity plus one variations you have.
Also what is a relationship expert? Women? Guys that had lots of girlfriends? Lesswrongers analyzing things up the the 0.000%th? I have a general dislike for expertise in certain fields such as this because I often instinctually either agree on stuff I haven’t thought about or basically say “oh I know this already” when certain “experts” speak. Not going to discount their effort but I think it’s less about the experts and more about people doing stupid stuff.
Also the whole dating thing is broken because it’s too structured. I say that a proper date should be like having a map that even if it’s accurate you only know the terrain but you still don’t know what you’ll encounter on your way so it all depends on how well you click with each other. If you feel it’s going nowhere just call it quits. Also helps with the silent types if you can read nonverbal actions well enough.
Blech. You don’t need to apologize for yourself! Just leave it implied that if you’re exchanging contact info, it’s with the goal of meeting again. At most, you could say something like, “I think you’re a really interesting person/I’m impressed by about you, maybe we should hang out again”—if she’s not into you, you’re not going to change her mind by persuading her. Just deal with that, it’s part of the game.
Fucking hell man that’s what I wanted to say to the girl. FUCK THAT BUS.
Also if you’re exchanging contact info it’s damn well cause I wanna meet again. You get her number but you know you want her, not the damn number.
Also that’s exactly what I meant by changing that a bit. A decent guideline. Just change it to how you prefer.
I answered “sort of”, but I’ve thought about it more and now think “not at all” may have been a better answer. I think the two Scotts are talking about a real problem but the main commonalities between my experience and theirs are:
not particularly successful with women (I was single for most of high school and have been single for long stretches of my adult life)
afraid to let people know I was interested in them
depressed about lack of romantic success
and I don’t think it’s particularly controversial that those are common straight male nerd experiences (or common experiences for other demographics, especially the second and third things on the list). The controversial thing is whether these problems were caused or worsened by feminist ideas, which in my case was not true at all.
Possibly relevant:
I am about ten years older than both Scotts.
I did not “go to college” in the sense of earning a degree. (I took a bunch of music classes at a community college—i.e., a college without dorms. I never attended anything like the sexual-assault prevention workshops Scott Aaronson mentions.)
I had zero experience with women in high school, but found I was well ahead of the curve after college. My experience is most single people under 30 have relationship issues to some degree or another. I find just generally being more socialable is the best cure. Trying to specifically get good at relationships without learning the rest of it is setting yourself up for failure.
Perhaps a distinction should be made between the different reasons for asking someone out, because there’s a gender imbalance in them. Namely, one could desire someone mainly for sex (because the target is one of several attractive people around) or mainly because they want a relationship with that specific person (and none other), i.e. a crush. At least what I get from SSC’s account of Aaronson’s experience was that the latter was more motivated by sex.
If lonely male nerds are motivated by the first and lonely female nerds (or girls in general) are motivated by the second, and both parties know this, then obviously the guy is going to be rejected. Both the guy and the girl need to have significantly more sexual experience than the typical high schooler in order for the idea of casual sex / friends with benefits to appeal to the girl. (Otherwise, the sex is probably going to suck for her in every way possible, from the burden of contraception to failure of the inexperienced boy to please her sexually.) If both guy and girl were to be looking for a mainly romantic partner (in a relationship that would obviously include sex, if at a later date), then the guy’s chances for approaching her would go up.
(That is not to say that they would go up by much above 0 in the given context. Expressing (“that kind of”) interest in someone you’re not on a chatting basis with, which apparently is how many nerdy guys approach the situation, with is a horrible social move that only the most charming and attractive can pull off. Flirting precedes confessions, people.)