(I often do have more contact than that (depending on what the music is like, who the woman is, and my mood), though I’m not sure whether anyone has shot any decent videos of that. OTOH, I’m pretty sure I’m a lot clumsier than the people in your videos.)
Thanks for the feedback (people usually say that I am doing great, but probably they just say that in order not to discourage me—or maybe in a few cases because they can’t tell the levels above theirs apart¹) and for the pointers, anyway.
Try improvising something on the E♭ minor pentatonic scale (aka “the black keys of the piano”) in a room full of non-musicians, look at their faces, and you’ll know what I mean.
Thanks for the feedback (when I ask people (and sometimes even when I don’t), they usually say I am doing great, but probably they just say that in order not to discourage me) and for the pointers, anyway.
It always depends on what your comparision is. If you manage to let go, move to the beat and visbily have fun while doing it you might be better than 50% of the people who do improvised dancing at a nightclub.
If you manage to let go, move to the beat and visbily have fun while doing it you might be better than 50% of the people who do improvised dancing at a nightclub.
Sometime between when you read my comment and when I read your reply, I edited my comment to make it less harsh, e.g. replacing “tsuyoku naritai” with a smile; maybe I should edit it back? :-)
And if you manage to implement FizzBuzz in a couple minutes you might be better than 50% of the people who have a comp sci degree
The point is that whether you are good depends on the people to which you compare yourself.
I danced Salsa/Bachata for the last 4 years 2-3 nights per week. That means that I will see different things in your dancing than the average person that you meet.
I do improvise within my dancing and deviate from dance school pattern. I’m still not the person who regularly tries to dance in nightclubs to pop music or the kind of music that exists at the place of your video.
That means that I will see different things in your dancing than the average person that you meet.
How does that mesh with “people don’t feel emotions because of the knowledge that they have”? :-)
(FWIW, one of the people who sees me dancing much of the time (the girlfriend of one of the karaoke jockeys in that video) and sometimes compliments me, and has also danced with me in nightclubs a few times, is a belly dancing instructor, but that may be too different from anything else to be relevant; her sister is a Bollywood dance instructor, and also usually compliments me dancing, but that’s generally in the context of thanking me for being the only male in thisthing she’d organized and/or of trying to convince me to take classes with her again, so she might be gilding the pill on purpose.)
I must have misunderstood something, because you appeared to be claiming or hinting that:
the reason why people are reluctant to pursue long-term relationships with me is that I’m bad at some particular skill;
that skill is an integral part of certain styles of dance, so by taking dance classes I would get better at that skill; there aren’t many more efficient ways of practising that skill short of stuff like wearing a “free hugs” sign and hug a stranger for 15 minutes straight;
when someone bad at that skill is dancing (any style of dance), that is obvious to people’s elephants/System 1s and comes across as unsexy; on the other hand, their riders/System 2s won’t notice there’s anything wrong unless they are experts at one of those particular styles of dancing specifically;
more than 50% of people in my demographic are even worse than me at that skill, but this doesn’t mean they’ll never get a relationship, because they can compensate by e.g. being insanely rich.
ISTM that many fewer than 50% of people my age in my geographic area are single (though I’m not sure my sample is unbiased), and hardly any of them makes money by the truckload or anything similar;
[ETA: I haven’t seen any people wearing “free hugs” signs in years, and the last few times I did it was in somewhat unusual situations (e.g. carnival parties);]
people usually do have some idea as to whether something is sexy, even though it might not always be clear to them why;
why would it be long-term relationships that this emotions thing would hinder me with? That sounds almost exactly backwards—I mean, if Alice doesn’t get horny when around Bob because he comes across as tense, I wouldn’t expect her to lose interest after a couple dates or so: I would expect her to never ask him out in the first place. The type of ‘elephant’ responses you seem to be talking about generally act on the timescales of minutes, not months.
(Probably I’m just reading too much in what you said, though.)
In this epistemic state, taking expensive, time-consuming, and possibly status-lowering Salsa classes on the off chance that it improves my chances to get a LTR would feel a little bit like giving money to Pascal’s mugger. [ETA: (More specifically, I suspect that the low-hanging fruits could be picked by watching videos on YouTube or something and practising during my spare time with people I already know, and any further improvements that the high-hanging fruits would yield would be way too small to be worth the bother.)]
more than 50% of people in my demographic are even worse than me at that skill, but this doesn’t mean they’ll never get a relationship, because they can compensate by e.g. being insanely rich.
I’m not arguing that feeling no anxiety to physical contact and having the self confidence to lead woman in general is sufficient to be good at partner dancing.
I’m rather arguing that being good at partner dancing usually leads to feeling no anxiety to physical contact and having the self confidence to lead woman.
I mean, if Alice doesn’t get horny when around Bob because he comes across as tense, I wouldn’t expect her to lose interest after a couple dates or so: I would expect her to never ask him out in the first place.
In PUA literature there the idea that making a girl horny while at a club, asking her for her phone number and then calling a day later to make a date is not the way to go. Having the girl in a state of being attracted, comfortable and connected is supposed to be more conductive to getting a date than the girl feeling horny.
I think the problem is that you model being attracted and being horny as the same thing when the two are different categories for myself. You don’t have a mental model in this domain with a lot of categories and therefore it’s hard to follow the points I’m making.
(Just for the record, I don’t think having a mental model with a lot of categories is necessary to have success with woman)
Also, you appeared to suspect that I might have Asperger’s (something which FWIW none of my meatspace friends, who include several psychology graduates and a neurology resident, appears to have noticed lately) based on my reluctance to wear a “free-hugs” sign.
I don’t think you have full Aspergers.
I think you are ‘in your head’, but that’s not a label that I would expect to be well understood on LessWrong. When on LessWrong I rather try to use categories that are popular on LessWrong.
You are probably the kind of person who thinks that they have a body instead of who thinks that they are their body. You probably think that you are your brain and the rest is just there to serve your brain.
On the other hand I do think that your reluctance to wear a free-hug sign is purely based on a irrational fear of physical contact.
Wearing the sign is the rational thing to do.
FYI diagnosing people with mental disorders based on so little information is likely to make actual mental health specialists take you very unseriously
I choose the kind of language I use depending on my audience. I would use different lanague when discussing with a mental health specialist. A mental health specialist probably also wouldn’t take you seriously when you talk about giving money to Pascal’s mugger.
I’ve just noticed that you yourself in a different thread recommend a course of action for a couple finding themselves in the guy-is-too-nervous scenario which is IME vastly cheaper, quicker, and more effective than for the male to have practised partnered dance¹ while fully clothed and not kissing or anything else sexual, or hugged random people he’s not necessarily sexually attracted to. (Granted, I haven’t practised partnered dance by paying an instructor or hugged random people by wearing free-hugs signs, but I can’t see why that would make much of a difference.)
Am I missing something?
That can actually backfire in the very short run (a couple hours) if (say) the guy is sleep-deprived, as he’ll be more tired, which IME doesn’t exactly help.
So by “confidence” you didn’t mean ‘lack of nervousness’, but the epistemic sense instead? Makes sense, but I can’t imagine how being sure about how to dance Salsa would help people in the bedroom. ISTM that only a tiny part of the procedural knowledge needed for the former would transfer to the latter.
No, I’m not hung up on the difference between “confidence” and ‘lack of nervousness’.
In focusing on the difference in what the man can do versus what the woman can do to fix the situation.
Makes sense, but I can’t imagine how being sure about how to dance Salsa would help people in the bedroom.
In most cases there’s physical interaction before being in the bedroom.
Holding hands would be one example. It’s not something that platonic friends usually do.
If a guy tries to transition from not holding hands to holding hands he could be nervous about it.
The kind of body contact that happens during dancing would condition the person to be less nervous about holding hands.
Holding hands is an example. I’m not saying that it happens in every interaction, but usually their physical contact between a guy and girl that exceeds the normal contact of a platonic friendship before the two go to the bedroom.
In focusing on the difference in what the man can do versus what the woman can do to fix the situation.
Er… Why? You realize that the man and the woman can communicate with each other, and thence ‘trade’ (in a LWesque general abstract sense)? If it would take months for me to achieve something but minutes for her to achieve the same, it’d be most daft for us to do the former. (And it feels off to call what you mentioned in the other thread ‘something the woman can do’—it’s not like the man isn’t playing any role; it sounds as weird to me as calling walking ‘something my legs can do’ rather than ‘something I can do’.)
Holding hands would be one example. It’s not something that platonic friends usually do.
It depends on gender and culture. For example, physical contact tends to be closer among females or between females and males than among males, closer in warm countries than in cold countries, and closer among left-wingers than among right-wingers. (I grew up mostly hanging around with left-leaning Italian females, and as a result I occasionally would come across as touchy when interacting with right-wingers, males, or northern Europeans.)
If a guy tries to transition from not holding hands to holding hands he could be nervous about it. The kind of body contact that happens during dancing would condition the person to be less nervous about holding hands.
Yes it would, but if someone gets nervous at the thought of even just holding hands with someone else (other than due to epistemic uncertainty about whether the latter would like it etc.), then I guess that what the former mainly needs isn’t a Salsa instructor, it’s a psychologist.
I’m not saying that it happens in every interaction, but usually their physical contact between a guy and girl that exceeds the normal contact of a platonic friendship before the two go to the bedroom.
Sure it does, but AFAIK it’s not like dancing classes teach how to make out, either.
I grew up mostly hanging around with left-leaning Italian females, and as a result I occasionally would come across as touchy when interacting with right-wingers, males, or northern Europeans.
In that case you might not that profit much from become more touchy.
You might still profit from improving your dancing abilites as you dance frequently. Salsa might not be optimal here. Salsa has the issue that there a pause on 4 and 8, which isn’t easy to lead. Merengue and Bachata moves are easier to throw into the kind of dancing you do in the video you showed.
Er… Why? You realize that the man and the woman can communicate with each other, and thence ‘trade’ (in a LWesque general abstract sense)?
Framing a romantic interaction as a trade, cheapens the romantic interaction for a lot of people.
If you try to handle your relationship with a woman on an abstract level instead of handling it on a emotional level that significantly decreases your pool of potential mates.
Making a trade on an abstract level doesn’t make anyone feel horny.
A woman cares about how the interaction with you makes her feel. If all your interaction is on an abstract level she likely won’t feel the kind of emotions that she thinks are a requisite to starting a relationship with you.
I’m not against open communication but you should always understand what you are communicating. Communicating your desires in a way that isn’t needy is not something that easy.
Actually these days I usually only dance once or twice a week, and sometimes even less than that.
If you try to handle your relationship with a woman on an abstract level instead of handling it on a emotional level
That’s not what I meant. I meant ‘trade’ as in, the partners jointly trying to fulfil each other’s wishes, rather than each one only thinking about themself. That doesn’t require suppressing emotions.
that significantly decreases your pool of potential mates.
So what? We’re talking about long-term relationships, not hooking up with as many distinct people as possible. See the “Mean and Variance” section of this.
A woman cares about how the interaction with you makes her feel.
You don’t say?
If all your interaction is on an abstract level she likely won’t feel the kind of emotions that she thinks are a requisite to starting a relationship with you.
If something makes us both happy, why should we give a damn how likely anyone else would be to like it? It’s not like there are sex auditors watching us or anything.
I’m not against open communication but you should always understand what you are communicating. Communicating your desires in a way that isn’t needy is not something that easy.
It also depends on who the listener is. My new girlfriend and I don’t seem to be having much trouble with that so far.
Came across this discussion accidentally, but it fascinates me because I’m “in my head”, have some Asperger’s-like characteristics, have a lot of anxiety around physical contact, particularly dislike dancing and have in fact made my date leave a dancing event early because I couldn’t make myself do it any longer, etc...but I’m a girl. And I can get dates pretty easily. (They usually aren’t very fun for me, though).
This discussion made me realize that if I were male, but otherwise unchanged, I might not be able to get dates easily. This confuses me. I’m curious as to what you think the difference is in the male-female dynamic.
This discussion made me realize that if I were male, but otherwise unchanged, I might not be able to get dates easily.
What do you mean “otherwise unchanged”, same level of attractiveness broadly construed (to the extent that this makes sense), or same percentile of attractiveness broadly construed within your gender and age group?
Yeah, being the other biological sex is complicated, but a roughly equivalent statement might be “If she could (convincingly) present herself as male and attempted to get dates with women, she expect to find it much harder than she does getting dates with men while presenting as female.”
ISTM that the n-th percentile man is less attractive to women than the n-th percentile woman is to men (at least for n not very close to 100), and as a result has less ‘bargaining power’, if you will.
I think “getting dates” isn’t the goal for most people. The question is whether you get into relationships with guys that fulfill your criteria of being good mates.
(They usually aren’t very fun for me, though).
I would guess that they would be more fun for you if you overcome your anxieties around physical contact.
I think that you do can overcome some of it by taking dancing classes.
I’m curious as to what you think the difference is in the male-female dynamic.
If you are a pretty girl than many man are willing to chase you and wait some time till you are ready.
At the same time a guy that’s empathic is less likely to ask you for another date if you don’t enjoy the first date.
I think “getting dates” isn’t the goal for most people. The question is whether you get into relationships with guys that fulfill your criteria of being good mates.
You’re right, this is a different problem. Which is still unsolved for me.
If you are a pretty girl than many man are willing to chase you and wait some time till you are ready.
I have had a guy go to fairly epic lengths to do this. We had what I think most people would call an awesome relationship afterwards, and lived together for some time...but a year and a half later, when we broke up, I basically wasn’t upset at all and actually got a happiness boost from having my own space and better sleep again. If I was upset, it was because “what, I put all those months of effort in, and I don’t even get a partner to have kids with?”
I think you would probably profit from going to a Salsa course. While doing it keep in mind that you want to enjoy physical contact but don’t get so close that it makes you uncomfortable.
At the beginning it would probably be good to just ask a male friend that you know and with whom you are comfortable to take a Salsa class with you.
A mental health specialist probably also wouldn’t take you seriously when you talk about giving money to Pascal’s mugger.
Unlike Asperger’s syndrome, Pascal’s mugging isn’t something that’s got to do with mental health, so your comparison is invalid. On the other hand, decision theorists wouldn’t take me seriously either, so your point stands.
In PUA literature there the idea that making a girl horny while at a club, asking her for her phone number and then calling a day later to make a date is not the way to go.
You don’t say? :nicholascage:
Having the girl in a state of being attracted, comfortable and connected is supposed to be more conductive to getting a date than the girl feeling horny.
Ah. If that’s what you mean by “being attracted” (myself, I’d usually call that “liking”), then I think that there are tons of things that have a waaaay larger effect than anything one could learn easily learn by formal dance classes but not otherwise, though it depends on the person (for example, certain people seem to be attracted to intelligence, others repelled).
I think you are ‘in your head’,
That much I do usually agree, though it varies on whether I’m sleep-deprived, whether I’ve been drinking, how much and what I’ve been reading lately, and other factors. (In particular, I think I’m much less “in my head” when I’m with people I’m at ease with, which is a proper superset of the people I’m willing to date long-term.)
You are probably the kind of person who thinks that they have a body instead of who thinks that they are their body. You probably think that you are your brain and the rest is just there to serve your brain.
FWIW, I’m the kind of person who thinks that what “I” means depends on the context, so whether I am my body or my brain isn’t even a well-defined question (both literally and metaphorically).
On the other hand I do think that your reluctance to wear a free-hug sign is purely based on a irrational fear of physical contact. Wearing the sign is the rational thing to do.
Even taking in account status signalling? (A way to make that moot would be to wear such a sign somewhere I don’t expect anyone I know, or anyone who knows anyone I know and is likely to talk about that, to see me.)
I don’t know the company that you keep. Most people I personally care about impressing wouldn’t see it as low status.
If someone tells me: “I read about this free hug thing and then I tried it out”, what does that tell me about the person? He’s signalling that his adventurous and willing to do things that are a bit outside of the social norm that produce good feelings for other people.
Doing creepy pickup approaches can be a low status signal if people you know get wind of it. I don’t see that problem with running around with a free hug sign.
How about you ask one of your female friends whether they would think less or more of someone who did the “free hug” thing you read about on the internet? Does she thinks it’s cool?
I mean what do you do for signaling high-status? Playing golf?
If someone tells me: “I read about this free hug thing and then I tried it out”, what does that tell me about the person? He’s signalling that his adventurous and willing to do things that are a bit outside of the social norm that produce good feelings for other people.
I seem to have a vague recollection of someone in one of my social groups watching a video (or something) of some guy doing the free hugs thing, and commenting something to the effect that (loosely paraphrasing) he must be a loser pathetically looking for pretexts to convince girls to hug him who otherwise wouldn’t; and indeed, very few people seemed eager to hug him. (I can’t remember more details about that.) Looking back at all the times I remember people wearing such signs, they were almost always males, usually not terribly attractive, and often in religious or political associations; none of these sounds high-status to me, if by “status” we mean social power rather than structural power. And the only times they seemed to be received well was during New Year’s/carnival/similar celebrations, where ISTM it’s also socially acceptable to ask random people for hugs who are not wearing free-hug signs.
Doing creepy pickup approaches can be a low status signal if people you know get wind of it.
I dunno; extrapolating from the closest things to that that did happen to me, they would either applaud my boldness or excuse me because creeping each other out is something people (especially when drunk) sometimes do by accident and it doesn’t mean they are evil. Unless you have in mind values of “creepy” sufficient for the bouncers to kick me out of the club, but even then IME people I already know will react with sympathy, not disgust.
How about you ask one of your female friends whether they would think less or more of someone who did the “free hug” thing you read about on the internet? Does she thinks it’s cool?
The last time I mentioned to a female friend something about me sometimes getting anxious when around people and trying to overcome that, she was like ‘what the hell are you talking about, you’re one of the most laid-back people I know’ (incidentally, the same person said something similar when I said I wasn’t that good at dancing and was trying to get better at it). You know, people usually are reluctant to criticize their friends, and while I try to indicate that I operate under Crocker’s rules that often only goes so far. (I know that’s not exactly what you suggested me to ask, but I’m under the impression that in such contexts “someone” would be so obvious an euphemism that it would defeat the point.)
I mean what do you do for signaling high-status?
Mostly, stuff like singing, dancing (but not paying people money to do that, except occasionally for night club cover charges), drinking a lot but still functioning enough for stuff like this, dressing extravagantly (but not particularly expensively), telling people about my travels abroad, or posting witticisms and photos on Facebook. Why?
Playing golf?
Hell no. That sounds expensive, posh, and not terribly fun. And not the kind of thing I’d likely be good at. :-)
I seem to have a vague recollection of someone in one of my social groups watching a video (or something) of some guy doing the free hugs thing, and commenting something to the effect that (loosely paraphrasing) he must be a loser pathetically looking for pretexts to convince girls to hug him who otherwise wouldn’t; and indeed, very few people seemed eager to hug him. (I can’t remember more details about that.) Looking back at all the times I remember people wearing such signs, they were almost always males, usually not terribly attractive, and often in religious or political associations; none of these sounds high-status to me, if by “status” we mean social power rather than structural power. And the only times they seemed to be received well was during New Year’s/carnival/similar celebrations, where ISTM it’s also socially acceptable to ask random people for hugs who are not wearing free-hug signs.
“Free hugs” signs are also a fairly common feature at anime conventions. Many of the people I’ve seen with them have been cute girls.
“Free hugs” signs are also a fairly common feature at anime conventions.
Never been to one of those, but I guess that I would feel much less out-of-place wearing such a sign at an anime convention (conditional on me not feeling out-of-place at the convention without the sign) than in a street downtown. (Though now that I try to think of it more in near mode, even the latter would depend on the time of the day and my blood alcohol content. Hmmm.)
I seem to have a vague recollection of someone in one of my social groups watching a video (or something) of some guy doing the free hugs thing, and commenting something to the effect that (loosely paraphrasing) he must be a loser pathetically looking for pretexts to convince girls to hug him who otherwise wouldn’t; and indeed, very few people seemed eager to hug him.
“He” is the operating word. The fox and the sour grapes.
I dunno; extrapolating from the closest things to that that did happen to me, they would either applaud my boldness or excuse me because creeping each other out is something people (especially when drunk) sometimes do by accident and it doesn’t mean they are evil.
I’m not saying that everyone who does PUA is creepy but there are people who persue it in a way that alinates friends. I can understand why someone might not want to be seen by people he knows when he’s doing random cold approaches on the street.
Mostly, stuff like singing, dancing (but not paying people money to do that, except occasionally for night club cover charges)
I think that in both domains that you will get more status over the long term if you invest in professional training which costs money to build your skills.
I think you will get more status over the long-term by building your skills as effectively as possible than by self handicapping.
“He” is the operating word. The fox and the sour grapes.
I think that the person who commented about him was female, though I don’t remember for sure.
I can understand why someone might not want to be seen by people he knows when he’s doing random cold approaches on the street.
Why not? IME wingmen provide social proof. (Though there are cultural differences from place to place—for example, I would do that in the town where I study now but not where I grew up, as most of the population of the latter respond to random cold approaches on the street by frowning at you then looking away.)
I think that in both domains that you will get more status over the long term if you invest in professional training which costs money to build your skills.
Yes, but 1) I’m already 26, so I dunno how much sense it still makes to invest in “the long term” in this kind of things, and 2) the difference would be only noticed by people who are themselves sufficiently high-status in those domains (I’ve already had several people who asked me where I took singing classes and seemed surprised where I told them that I didn’t), so I’m not sure the game is worth the candle given that I’m not looking for a professional career in singing. (I might try to take singing and/or dancing classes next year if I’m not as strapped for time as now, but it’s not a priority.)
That means that I will see different things in your dancing than the average person that you meet.
How does that mesh together with “people don’t feel emotions because of the knowledge that they have”? (not an entirely rhetorical question)
(I’m trying to recall whether that one guy I know who dances salsa regularly has ever seen me dancing—I’m not sure, and anyway, I don’t trust his judgements about me to be unbiased, given that I know that there’s such a thing as the halo effect and I’ve repeatedly heard, from several different people, that he’s always telling people at parties how I was the best student in the mathematical physics class where he was a TA in the past freakin’ decade.)
(One person who sees me dance much of the time (she’s the girlfriend of one of the karaoke guys in the bar in the video I linked), and has also danced with me in a nightclub a few times—she’s a belly dancing instructor, which may be too different from anything else. Her sister is a Bollywood dancing instructor (from whom I once took a few classes), and she’s also always complimenting me; anyway, in case this is relevant to anything, she incorrectly thought that I had spent lots of time rehearsing for this (I’m the male one) while I had actually spent maybe 10 minutes—so I guess that’s the halo effect and/or gilding the pill to avoid discouraging me.)
(I often do have more contact than that (depending on what the music is like, who the woman is, and my mood), though I’m not sure whether anyone has shot any decent videos of that. OTOH, I’m pretty sure I’m a lot clumsier than the people in your videos.)
Thanks for the feedback (people usually say that I am doing great, but probably they just say that in order not to discourage me—or maybe in a few cases because they can’t tell the levels above theirs apart¹) and for the pointers, anyway.
Try improvising something on the E♭ minor pentatonic scale (aka “the black keys of the piano”) in a room full of non-musicians, look at their faces, and you’ll know what I mean.
It always depends on what your comparision is. If you manage to let go, move to the beat and visbily have fun while doing it you might be better than 50% of the people who do improvised dancing at a nightclub.
And if you manage to implement FizzBuzz in a couple minutes you might be better than 50% of the people who have a comp sci degree.
The standard threshold of non-crappiness is the 90th percentile, not the 50th… :-)
To get to the 90th, presumably you have to pass through the 50th.
Nevertheless I’m adding that to my fortune file so that I will be regularly reminded, because it really is important.
Wouldn’t that depend on where you started from?
Sometime between when you read my comment and when I read your reply, I edited my comment to make it less harsh, e.g. replacing “tsuyoku naritai” with a smile; maybe I should edit it back? :-)
The point is that whether you are good depends on the people to which you compare yourself.
I danced Salsa/Bachata for the last 4 years 2-3 nights per week. That means that I will see different things in your dancing than the average person that you meet.
I do improvise within my dancing and deviate from dance school pattern. I’m still not the person who regularly tries to dance in nightclubs to pop music or the kind of music that exists at the place of your video.
How does that mesh with “people don’t feel emotions because of the knowledge that they have”? :-)
(FWIW, one of the people who sees me dancing much of the time (the girlfriend of one of the karaoke jockeys in that video) and sometimes compliments me, and has also danced with me in nightclubs a few times, is a belly dancing instructor, but that may be too different from anything else to be relevant; her sister is a Bollywood dance instructor, and also usually compliments me dancing, but that’s generally in the context of thanking me for being the only male in this thing she’d organized and/or of trying to convince me to take classes with her again, so she might be gilding the pill on purpose.)
As far as I understand belly dancing isn’t something where the guy has to lead the girl. There, the criteria of what good dancing equals is different.
I must have misunderstood something, because you appeared to be claiming or hinting that:
the reason why people are reluctant to pursue long-term relationships with me is that I’m bad at some particular skill;
that skill is an integral part of certain styles of dance, so by taking dance classes I would get better at that skill; there aren’t many more efficient ways of practising that skill short of stuff like wearing a “free hugs” sign and hug a stranger for 15 minutes straight;
when someone bad at that skill is dancing (any style of dance), that is obvious to people’s elephants/System 1s and comes across as unsexy; on the other hand, their riders/System 2s won’t notice there’s anything wrong unless they are experts at one of those particular styles of dancing specifically;
more than 50% of people in my demographic are even worse than me at that skill, but this doesn’t mean they’ll never get a relationship, because they can compensate by e.g. being insanely rich.
This hypothesis is already so complicated that it’d take lots of evidence to come up with in the first place, and what evidence I have seems to point against it; there isn’t much of it I can communicate short of divulging anecdotes about potentially identifiable individuals, so suffice it to say that:
ISTM that many fewer than 50% of people my age in my geographic area are single (though I’m not sure my sample is unbiased), and hardly any of them makes money by the truckload or anything similar;
[ETA: I haven’t seen any people wearing “free hugs” signs in years, and the last few times I did it was in somewhat unusual situations (e.g. carnival parties);]
people usually do have some idea as to whether something is sexy, even though it might not always be clear to them why;
why would it be long-term relationships that this emotions thing would hinder me with? That sounds almost exactly backwards—I mean, if Alice doesn’t get horny when around Bob because he comes across as tense, I wouldn’t expect her to lose interest after a couple dates or so: I would expect her to never ask him out in the first place. The type of ‘elephant’ responses you seem to be talking about generally act on the timescales of minutes, not months.
(Probably I’m just reading too much in what you said, though.)
In this epistemic state, taking expensive, time-consuming, and possibly status-lowering Salsa classes on the off chance that it improves my chances to get a LTR would feel a little bit like giving money to Pascal’s mugger. [ETA: (More specifically, I suspect that the low-hanging fruits could be picked by watching videos on YouTube or something and practising during my spare time with people I already know, and any further improvements that the high-hanging fruits would yield would be way too small to be worth the bother.)]
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I’m not arguing that feeling no anxiety to physical contact and having the self confidence to lead woman in general is sufficient to be good at partner dancing.
I’m rather arguing that being good at partner dancing usually leads to feeling no anxiety to physical contact and having the self confidence to lead woman.
In PUA literature there the idea that making a girl horny while at a club, asking her for her phone number and then calling a day later to make a date is not the way to go. Having the girl in a state of being attracted, comfortable and connected is supposed to be more conductive to getting a date than the girl feeling horny.
I think the problem is that you model being attracted and being horny as the same thing when the two are different categories for myself. You don’t have a mental model in this domain with a lot of categories and therefore it’s hard to follow the points I’m making. (Just for the record, I don’t think having a mental model with a lot of categories is necessary to have success with woman)
I don’t think you have full Aspergers. I think you are ‘in your head’, but that’s not a label that I would expect to be well understood on LessWrong. When on LessWrong I rather try to use categories that are popular on LessWrong.
You are probably the kind of person who thinks that they have a body instead of who thinks that they are their body. You probably think that you are your brain and the rest is just there to serve your brain.
On the other hand I do think that your reluctance to wear a free-hug sign is purely based on a irrational fear of physical contact. Wearing the sign is the rational thing to do.
I choose the kind of language I use depending on my audience. I would use different lanague when discussing with a mental health specialist. A mental health specialist probably also wouldn’t take you seriously when you talk about giving money to Pascal’s mugger.
I’ve just noticed that you yourself in a different thread recommend a course of action for a couple finding themselves in the guy-is-too-nervous scenario which is IME vastly cheaper, quicker, and more effective than for the male to have practised partnered dance¹ while fully clothed and not kissing or anything else sexual, or hugged random people he’s not necessarily sexually attracted to. (Granted, I haven’t practised partnered dance by paying an instructor or hugged random people by wearing free-hugs signs, but I can’t see why that would make much of a difference.)
Am I missing something?
That can actually backfire in the very short run (a couple hours) if (say) the guy is sleep-deprived, as he’ll be more tired, which IME doesn’t exactly help.
There are two different problems:
1) How can a girl effectively interact with a guy who’s nervous?
2) How can a guy get confident?
So by “confidence” you didn’t mean ‘lack of nervousness’, but the epistemic sense instead? Makes sense, but I can’t imagine how being sure about how to dance Salsa would help people in the bedroom. ISTM that only a tiny part of the procedural knowledge needed for the former would transfer to the latter.
No, I’m not hung up on the difference between “confidence” and ‘lack of nervousness’.
In focusing on the difference in what the man can do versus what the woman can do to fix the situation.
In most cases there’s physical interaction before being in the bedroom.
Holding hands would be one example. It’s not something that platonic friends usually do. If a guy tries to transition from not holding hands to holding hands he could be nervous about it.
The kind of body contact that happens during dancing would condition the person to be less nervous about holding hands.
Holding hands is an example. I’m not saying that it happens in every interaction, but usually their physical contact between a guy and girl that exceeds the normal contact of a platonic friendship before the two go to the bedroom.
Er… Why? You realize that the man and the woman can communicate with each other, and thence ‘trade’ (in a LWesque general abstract sense)? If it would take months for me to achieve something but minutes for her to achieve the same, it’d be most daft for us to do the former. (And it feels off to call what you mentioned in the other thread ‘something the woman can do’—it’s not like the man isn’t playing any role; it sounds as weird to me as calling walking ‘something my legs can do’ rather than ‘something I can do’.)
It depends on gender and culture. For example, physical contact tends to be closer among females or between females and males than among males, closer in warm countries than in cold countries, and closer among left-wingers than among right-wingers. (I grew up mostly hanging around with left-leaning Italian females, and as a result I occasionally would come across as touchy when interacting with right-wingers, males, or northern Europeans.)Yes it would, but if someone gets nervous at the thought of even just holding hands with someone else (other than due to epistemic uncertainty about whether the latter would like it etc.), then I guess that what the former mainly needs isn’t a Salsa instructor, it’s a psychologist.
Sure it does, but AFAIK it’s not like dancing classes teach how to make out, either.
In that case you might not that profit much from become more touchy.
You might still profit from improving your dancing abilites as you dance frequently. Salsa might not be optimal here. Salsa has the issue that there a pause on 4 and 8, which isn’t easy to lead. Merengue and Bachata moves are easier to throw into the kind of dancing you do in the video you showed.
Framing a romantic interaction as a trade, cheapens the romantic interaction for a lot of people. If you try to handle your relationship with a woman on an abstract level instead of handling it on a emotional level that significantly decreases your pool of potential mates.
Making a trade on an abstract level doesn’t make anyone feel horny.
A woman cares about how the interaction with you makes her feel. If all your interaction is on an abstract level she likely won’t feel the kind of emotions that she thinks are a requisite to starting a relationship with you.
I’m not against open communication but you should always understand what you are communicating. Communicating your desires in a way that isn’t needy is not something that easy.
Actually these days I usually only dance once or twice a week, and sometimes even less than that.
That’s not what I meant. I meant ‘trade’ as in, the partners jointly trying to fulfil each other’s wishes, rather than each one only thinking about themself. That doesn’t require suppressing emotions.
So what? We’re talking about long-term relationships, not hooking up with as many distinct people as possible. See the “Mean and Variance” section of this.
You don’t say?
If something makes us both happy, why should we give a damn how likely anyone else would be to like it? It’s not like there are sex auditors watching us or anything.
It also depends on who the listener is. My new girlfriend and I don’t seem to be having much trouble with that so far.
So by “confident” you don’t mean ‘not nervous’?
Came across this discussion accidentally, but it fascinates me because I’m “in my head”, have some Asperger’s-like characteristics, have a lot of anxiety around physical contact, particularly dislike dancing and have in fact made my date leave a dancing event early because I couldn’t make myself do it any longer, etc...but I’m a girl. And I can get dates pretty easily. (They usually aren’t very fun for me, though).
This discussion made me realize that if I were male, but otherwise unchanged, I might not be able to get dates easily. This confuses me. I’m curious as to what you think the difference is in the male-female dynamic.
And that’s why I think “repository” threads belong in Main. That would have been much less likely to happen if this thread had been in Discussion.
Have you tried small amounts of alcohol, and/or mindfulness meditation?
What do you mean “otherwise unchanged”, same level of attractiveness broadly construed (to the extent that this makes sense), or same percentile of attractiveness broadly construed within your gender and age group?
Yeah, being the other biological sex is complicated, but a roughly equivalent statement might be “If she could (convincingly) present herself as male and attempted to get dates with women, she expect to find it much harder than she does getting dates with men while presenting as female.”
Same percentile, I guess?
ISTM that the n-th percentile man is less attractive to women than the n-th percentile woman is to men (at least for n not very close to 100), and as a result has less ‘bargaining power’, if you will.
I think “getting dates” isn’t the goal for most people. The question is whether you get into relationships with guys that fulfill your criteria of being good mates.
I would guess that they would be more fun for you if you overcome your anxieties around physical contact.
I think that you do can overcome some of it by taking dancing classes.
If you are a pretty girl than many man are willing to chase you and wait some time till you are ready. At the same time a guy that’s empathic is less likely to ask you for another date if you don’t enjoy the first date.
You’re right, this is a different problem. Which is still unsolved for me.
I have had a guy go to fairly epic lengths to do this. We had what I think most people would call an awesome relationship afterwards, and lived together for some time...but a year and a half later, when we broke up, I basically wasn’t upset at all and actually got a happiness boost from having my own space and better sleep again. If I was upset, it was because “what, I put all those months of effort in, and I don’t even get a partner to have kids with?”
So yeah, unsolved.
I think you would probably profit from going to a Salsa course. While doing it keep in mind that you want to enjoy physical contact but don’t get so close that it makes you uncomfortable.
At the beginning it would probably be good to just ask a male friend that you know and with whom you are comfortable to take a Salsa class with you.
Unlike Asperger’s syndrome, Pascal’s mugging isn’t something that’s got to do with mental health, so your comparison is invalid. On the other hand, decision theorists wouldn’t take me seriously either, so your point stands.
You don’t say? :nicholascage:
Ah. If that’s what you mean by “being attracted” (myself, I’d usually call that “liking”), then I think that there are tons of things that have a waaaay larger effect than anything one could learn easily learn by formal dance classes but not otherwise, though it depends on the person (for example, certain people seem to be attracted to intelligence, others repelled).
That much I do usually agree, though it varies on whether I’m sleep-deprived, whether I’ve been drinking, how much and what I’ve been reading lately, and other factors. (In particular, I think I’m much less “in my head” when I’m with people I’m at ease with, which is a proper superset of the people I’m willing to date long-term.)
FWIW, I’m the kind of person who thinks that what “I” means depends on the context, so whether I am my body or my brain isn’t even a well-defined question (both literally and metaphorically).
Even taking in account status signalling? (A way to make that moot would be to wear such a sign somewhere I don’t expect anyone I know, or anyone who knows anyone I know and is likely to talk about that, to see me.)
I don’t know the company that you keep. Most people I personally care about impressing wouldn’t see it as low status.
If someone tells me: “I read about this free hug thing and then I tried it out”, what does that tell me about the person? He’s signalling that his adventurous and willing to do things that are a bit outside of the social norm that produce good feelings for other people.
Doing creepy pickup approaches can be a low status signal if people you know get wind of it. I don’t see that problem with running around with a free hug sign.
How about you ask one of your female friends whether they would think less or more of someone who did the “free hug” thing you read about on the internet? Does she thinks it’s cool?
I mean what do you do for signaling high-status? Playing golf?
I seem to have a vague recollection of someone in one of my social groups watching a video (or something) of some guy doing the free hugs thing, and commenting something to the effect that (loosely paraphrasing) he must be a loser pathetically looking for pretexts to convince girls to hug him who otherwise wouldn’t; and indeed, very few people seemed eager to hug him. (I can’t remember more details about that.) Looking back at all the times I remember people wearing such signs, they were almost always males, usually not terribly attractive, and often in religious or political associations; none of these sounds high-status to me, if by “status” we mean social power rather than structural power. And the only times they seemed to be received well was during New Year’s/carnival/similar celebrations, where ISTM it’s also socially acceptable to ask random people for hugs who are not wearing free-hug signs.
I dunno; extrapolating from the closest things to that that did happen to me, they would either applaud my boldness or excuse me because creeping each other out is something people (especially when drunk) sometimes do by accident and it doesn’t mean they are evil. Unless you have in mind values of “creepy” sufficient for the bouncers to kick me out of the club, but even then IME people I already know will react with sympathy, not disgust.
The last time I mentioned to a female friend something about me sometimes getting anxious when around people and trying to overcome that, she was like ‘what the hell are you talking about, you’re one of the most laid-back people I know’ (incidentally, the same person said something similar when I said I wasn’t that good at dancing and was trying to get better at it). You know, people usually are reluctant to criticize their friends, and while I try to indicate that I operate under Crocker’s rules that often only goes so far. (I know that’s not exactly what you suggested me to ask, but I’m under the impression that in such contexts “someone” would be so obvious an euphemism that it would defeat the point.)
Mostly, stuff like singing, dancing (but not paying people money to do that, except occasionally for night club cover charges), drinking a lot but still functioning enough for stuff like this, dressing extravagantly (but not particularly expensively), telling people about my travels abroad, or posting witticisms and photos on Facebook. Why?
Hell no. That sounds expensive, posh, and not terribly fun. And not the kind of thing I’d likely be good at. :-)
“Free hugs” signs are also a fairly common feature at anime conventions. Many of the people I’ve seen with them have been cute girls.
Never been to one of those, but I guess that I would feel much less out-of-place wearing such a sign at an anime convention (conditional on me not feeling out-of-place at the convention without the sign) than in a street downtown. (Though now that I try to think of it more in near mode, even the latter would depend on the time of the day and my blood alcohol content. Hmmm.)
“He” is the operating word. The fox and the sour grapes.
I’m not saying that everyone who does PUA is creepy but there are people who persue it in a way that alinates friends. I can understand why someone might not want to be seen by people he knows when he’s doing random cold approaches on the street.
I think that in both domains that you will get more status over the long term if you invest in professional training which costs money to build your skills.
I think you will get more status over the long-term by building your skills as effectively as possible than by self handicapping.
I think that the person who commented about him was female, though I don’t remember for sure.
Why not? IME wingmen provide social proof. (Though there are cultural differences from place to place—for example, I would do that in the town where I study now but not where I grew up, as most of the population of the latter respond to random cold approaches on the street by frowning at you then looking away.)
Yes, but 1) I’m already 26, so I dunno how much sense it still makes to invest in “the long term” in this kind of things, and 2) the difference would be only noticed by people who are themselves sufficiently high-status in those domains (I’ve already had several people who asked me where I took singing classes and seemed surprised where I told them that I didn’t), so I’m not sure the game is worth the candle given that I’m not looking for a professional career in singing. (I might try to take singing and/or dancing classes next year if I’m not as strapped for time as now, but it’s not a priority.)
How does that mesh together with “people don’t feel emotions because of the knowledge that they have”? (not an entirely rhetorical question)
(I’m trying to recall whether that one guy I know who dances salsa regularly has ever seen me dancing—I’m not sure, and anyway, I don’t trust his judgements about me to be unbiased, given that I know that there’s such a thing as the halo effect and I’ve repeatedly heard, from several different people, that he’s always telling people at parties how I was the best student in the mathematical physics class where he was a TA in the past freakin’ decade.)
(One person who sees me dance much of the time (she’s the girlfriend of one of the karaoke guys in the bar in the video I linked), and has also danced with me in a nightclub a few times—she’s a belly dancing instructor, which may be too different from anything else. Her sister is a Bollywood dancing instructor (from whom I once took a few classes), and she’s also always complimenting me; anyway, in case this is relevant to anything, she incorrectly thought that I had spent lots of time rehearsing for this (I’m the male one) while I had actually spent maybe 10 minutes—so I guess that’s the halo effect and/or gilding the pill to avoid discouraging me.)