So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked.
This is probably the single funniest bit in your backstory.
It reads like a scene from The Big Bang Theory, and it is difficult to imagine that anyone would ever actually do that—till I remember doing similarly bad+stupid things.
People who get dumped want to know their partners’ reasons for breaking up, not the biological etiology of those reasons. They are very likely to take lengthy discourses into the latter as insensitive, obfuscatory deflections (and probably correctly so).
They are very likely to take lengthy discourses into the latter as insensitive, obfuscatory deflections (and probably correctly so).
I would call the ‘real reasons’ typically given to be obfuscatory deflections. People seldom know the actual reasons for why they want to break up. More often they are explicitly aware of one of the downstream effects of the actual reason.
Which is not to say that descriptions of the biological eitology are not also obfuscatory deflections. Most answers to this question will be! In fact, answers to this question will usually be obfuscatory deflections because not to do so will necessarily be ‘insensitive’.
Another reason for not giving the real reasons is that sorting that kind of thing out is work and telling the truth about oneself is an offer of intimacy. If you’re breaking up with someone, you may not want to do either one.
I would call the ‘real reasons’ typically given to be obfuscatory deflections. People seldom know the actual reasons for why they want to break up. More often they are explicitly aware of one of the downstream effects of the actual reason.
I’m sure that’s the case. But my point was that if the real reason for the break-up was “I want to be with someone who possesses quality X that you lack,” then tacking on ”...because evolution made me that way” does not render the reason more real or add an additional, separate reason; it just renders the one reason better explained in a mostly irrelevant way.
It makes the reason much more of an attack—it’s not just “I find [feature] unattractive”, it’s “people in general are likely to find [feature] unattractive, and this is to the advantage of the human race”.
In spite of this, piling up the karma on this comment makes me feel better about LW. When no one else had made this point on the original post, and then the points were slow to show up on this comment, I was beginning to wonder about the cluefulness level.
I haven’t felt this way about any of my other comments.
I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t) is a book about women and shame, with a little about men. I’d been wondering why such a high proportion of insults (to both men and women) are about sexual attractiveness, but the book points out that the most stinging insults are about failure to fulfill gender expectations. At the time, I hadn’t thought about men being accused of homosexuality, but that fits the pattern from the book.
If I were to get evolutionary about this, cutting down one’s rivals’ mating potential would make sense as a fundamental attack.
On the other hand, I don’t think the author was collecting cross cultural material, so I don’t know what insults/shame looks like in cultures where religious prejudice is a larger factor.
None of this is intended as an attack on lukeprog (2007)-- it’s clear he had no idea what he was doing. My guess is that he was trying to be less insulting by making the breakup less personal.
On the other hand, I don’t think the author was collecting cross cultural material, so I don’t know what insults/shame looks like in cultures where religious prejudice is a larger factor.
I’m not an expert on this by any means, but insult content varies quite a bit across cultures. Dutch profanity is largely medical, for example; kankerlijer (“cancer-sufferer”) is very strong. I’ve heard speculation that this is due to the largely urban landscape that Dutch evolved in, where being a vector of infection (never mind that most causes of cancer aren’t infectious) meant being a clear danger to the community.
So religious insults seem plausible in any culture that takes religion especially seriously. Spanish profanity has retained a lot of religious content; I don’t know much about its evolution, but it could plausibly be related to Spanish-speaking culture’s historically strong Catholicism.
My suggestion of random factors means that there’s no detailed explanation possible, except for history which is almost certainly based in spoken words and emotional reactions and therefore not available.
I believe that it’s the tone which makes an insult. Insult is about lowering status, and is basically a group effect—a good insult implies not just likelihood of ongoing attack from that person, but that the attacks will deservedly continue from other people.
It seems to me that cultures are probably constrained to ranges by various issues (number of people, technology, resources), but those ranges are huge compared to the particular things cultures do, and there’s little point in predicting.
American slang will probably generate new words for very good and very bad, but this doesn’t mean that which words are used for very good and very bad has an interesting or predictable pattern. The words will probably be short, but I doubt you can get much farther than that.
I wonder whether insults could be used to track patterns of obligatory kindness—if some feature is not used as grounds for insult, could it mean that it’s a area which is culturally inhibited from attack. In other words, I’m still shocked at using having cancer as a generic insult.
It’s worth noting that not every piece of social interaction has a non-trivial influence from evolutionary psychology. Sometimes an insult is just an insult...
It’s worth noting that not every piece of social interaction has a non-trivial influence from evolutionary psychology. Sometimes an insult is just an insult...
Of all the forms of communication over which to trivialize evolutionary psychology you chose insults? Knowing how, when and who to insult is one of the most critical instincts evolutionary psychology provided us!
And the exact specific insults chosen is pretty darn culture-bound. “Stupid melon” is only a serious insult in Chinese.
(To clarify: I am talking about the semantics of the words chosen as insults, not the behavior of socially insulting another for whatever reason. I do not think the specific words common in current English parlance as insults by a specific social group can be meaningfully applied to humanity as a whole)
I’m more dubious about ev psych than most here, I think. It wouldn’t surprise me if there is random history affecting which insults are salient in various societies, rather than some sort of optimization.
The fact that people can insult each other so easily may well have some evolutionary history.
Any theories about why people are so apt to remember insults for years?
It wouldn’t surprise me if there is random history affecting which insults are salient in various societies, rather
than some sort of optimization.
I’m a bit of a polyglot who’s sampled broadly from some very, very different language families and that rings true.
You can be insulting in Chinook Wawa or Ojibwe (speaking disrespectfully or very bluntly), but cognates for most familiar English swears are either lacking altogether or of very recent coinage. The closest you’d get to everyday, non-personal swearing in Chinook Wawa sort of means “eeeewww”; the word “bad” could be a matter-of-fact descriptor, a vaguely-literal or nonliteral grammatical particle, or just a very blunt statement more impolite than anything.
Chinese has quite a varied vocabulary for profanity and insults, but the literal translations would almost sound cutesy to foreigners (傻瓜, “sha3gua1” in Mandarin, means “stupid melon” but has about as much social bite as “idiot!” or “dumbass!”).
Japanese has a lot of profane words, except that it’s much easier to be insulting without actually using any of them and some of the ones whose literal translation would be profane or impolite in English are used with much less weight. This is true of some dialects of Chinese too (there’s a phrase that probably best translates as “holy fuck” in both Chinese and Japanese but isn’t nearly as impolite as its English equivalent, although it’s not exactly good manners either.)
Before long, Alice was always pushing me to spend more time with her, and I was always pushing to spend more time studying psychology. By then I knew I couldn’t give her what she wanted: marriage.
So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked. I thought she would appreciate this because she had previously expressed admiration for detailed honesty..…
...his stated reason doesn’t appear to match the paragraph that preceded it all (I realize that we are probably gettting a very condensed version of the conversation, but hopefully it didn’t elide something this important).
Were I in the lady’s position, I’d wonder why I only became physically unsuitable after I started seeking a legally recognized commitment. Unless the feature Lukeprog found unattractive was “wants committed pair-bonding,” the explanation does not appear to fit the circumstances at all. This doesn’t seem like a case of someone unable to deal with “radical honesty;” it seems like a case of someone being pissed off at what comes across as dishonesty.
The real harm, in my eyes, is because she will likely generalize that because evolution made you that way it made all men that way, which is likely not true. Actually it’s patently untrue for any example I can think of.
I don’t see any evidence that suggests that she would draw any conclusion about evolution from a breakup like that. Is that in the text or your own conclusion?
(and I must add that though I didn’t write a 20 page document for my first breakup, I arguably did no better.)
Well it’s almost definitional. If evolutionary selection pressures were extreme enough to actually make lukeprog that way, then all men are that way. If evolution did it to him, then it did it to everyone. Evolution doesn’t discriminate. What’s more likely is that evolution didn’t actually make him that way, but societal pressures did.
But that’s setting aside the fact that most people tend to wildly anthropomorphize evolution...
Well it’s almost definitional. If evolutionary selection pressures were extreme enough to actually make lukeprog that way, then all men are that way.
This does not follow. There are many species where different members have evolved different mating strategies. For a really neat example see this lizard. Males have evolved three different strategies that are in a rock-paper-scissors relationship to each other.
It seems clear though, that your example is the exception and not the rule. There is no reason that evolution would have made lukeprog different from other males, given that he was human.
Actually, variable mating strategies are darn common for animals. Sometimes they represent stable lifepaths with whole species populations grouped not just by sex, but by which members of a given sex use which strategy (cleaner wrasses come to mind); other species vary thejr strategies based on things like food availability, or in different parts of their geographical range, or in different sub-populations.
I can give lots of other species that have stable equilibria with multiple mating strategies. There’s also a fair number of game theory scenarios where the Nash equilibria involve similar mixed strategies. These aren’t that uncommon in nature. The lizard example is just one of the weirder examples. This is clearly way too common for it to be labeled as “almost definitional”.
Can you clarify what the harm is, in her thinking ‘just like a man’
Or what her thinking would actually be, if that is not what you’re suggesting?
And for the record, I killed that first relationship by telling my BF that I wasn’t sure I loved him anymore, but that I didn’t actually want to break up. Which was totally true, and had predictable results. I turned a normal healthy and cute math-classics major/computer science nerd into a clingy and demanding person, because I didn’t understand why I wasn’t happier with myself. He had no recourse to any pat generalizations, like ‘just like a woman’.
I would think that her thinking would be that if evolution made lukeprog not like me because of xyz, then it would make all men not like me because of that. I must not be a likeable person.
Well, I’m no expert on how women think, but there is no thought control.
This breakup story is so unusual in the amount of rational preparation for it, I’m sure that I would be able to see that most other men are not much like lukeprog, on that point if no other.
I am not sure there is any way to convince someone you do not want to date (at all / any longer) that they are likeable, except by proving it over time.
Most men are not like lukeprog on that point, certainly.
However, lukeprog was not asserting that most men were like him on that point. He was asserting that evolution had contributed for his not liking her for reasons X, Y, and Z. All people are closely enough related that if that were true, then there would be a good chance that evolution had done similarly for other men. So, to the degree that she believed him, the conclusion that it likely applied to other men would follow more strongly than without his assertion.
You make a good point, but I doubt she believed his assertion for long, if at all. Though it probably offended her.
I am trying to suggest that lukeprog’s assertions about why he didn’t feel like he liked her the right amount any more are totally irrelevant to her reaction. Their accuracy is, in fact, arguable.
Evolution, as it applies to men, suggests that just often enough, some of them will try to impregnate someone. Cross-cultural standards of physical beauty in women suggest who most men are most likely to try to approach. This is statistical. “Who wants to date ME” is personal, and there is no proof other than experience.
The fact that he didn’t feel like he liked her the right amount to date her anymore is the unarguable point, and there is no way of getting around that.
She sounds like a normal girl and probably had a normal amount of disappointment over the breakup, and maybe an above-average amount of resentment at the suggestion that she might not be as evolutionarily attractive as the next girl.
Luke will never be able to break up with any future girlfriends because it would require too many preliminaries before he could even start the sequence which would explain why they should break up.
And the more time he spends with more and more girlfriends the more he will learn about relationships and the harder it will be for him to break up with them. It’s pretty much an Unfriendly and Artificial Breakup Conversation FOOM.
Humans have emotions and don’t think rationally by default. Most people do not like to feel inadequate, though how they respond to that feeling varies a great deal. Most people in a relationship also don’t like to feel they were rejected sexually over some perceived inadequacy.
So when a mate gives them a 20-page lecture on their failures to hold their attraction and concludes by rejecting them as a sex partner, it’s probably not vanishingly far from the null hypothesis that the person is going to get upset...
I’m sure that’s the case. But my point was that if the real reason for the break-up was “I want to be with someone who possesses quality X that you lack,” then tacking on ”...because evolution made me that way” does not render the reason more real or add an additional, separate reason; it just renders the one reason better explained in a mostly irrelevant way.
It is rather irrelevant. Even crockers rules doesn’t take you as far as giving evolutionary psychology explanations. So saying “because you have small breasts” is grossly insensitive and saying “because you have small breasts and I am biologically … signalling … etc” is grossly insensitive and also irrelevant, nerdy and kind of awkward.
If your true and actual reason for breaking up with someone is that her breasts are too small, consider that (a) saying “It was because you were too clingy” may cause them to try and mess with an aspect of their personality that doesn’t even need fixing, and (b) total silence, which you may fondly imagine to be mercy, may result in her frantically imagining dozens of possible flaws all of which she tries desperately to correct, just on the off-chance it was that one. As opposed to, say, looking for a guy who’s into smaller breasts next time.
Maybe I’m just being inordinately naive, but telling someone honestly, softly, and believably, your true reason for rejecting them, seems like it really should have certain advantages for them, if not for you. I mean, compared to either silence or lying. Calling it “grossly insensitive” is too quick a rejection of the possibility of telling a truth.
If you’re honest and say, “Your breasts are too small,” the person in question might seek a guy who likes smaller breasts next time. Or she might fall into a deep self-loathing in which she believes that her body is imperfect and nobody could be attracted to her, thus sabotaging her own future potential relationships. Or she could run out and get breast implants, even though she doesn’t really want them, in hopes that you / other future guys will find her more attractive—which is much more expensive and possibly less rewarding than simply finding people who like small breasts.
In my view it’s better to keep it vague. Guessing over dozens of possible flaws is likely to be less harmful than obsessing over one particular flaw, since it’s difficult to figure out / change whatever possible flaw you think may exist.
(Disclosure: I have been dumped once and did the dumping once. The dumper kept it vague; I kept it specific but lied. I can’t judge how keeping it specific while lying worked, since the person in question was bipolar and therefore not at all a normal test subject. I can judge how keeping it vague went: I obsessed over dozens of flaws for a while, until I found other people who were interested, at which point I decided it was probably just a bad match and nothing really to do with absolute flaws at all. I do not know how a completely honest dumping pans out.)
If you’re honest and say, “Your breasts are too small,” the person in question might seek a guy who likes smaller breasts next time. Or she might fall into a deep self-loathing in which she believes that her body is imperfect and nobody could be attracted to her, thus sabotaging her own future potential relationships.
In which case the honest answer would clearly have in fact been “you are too psychologically unstable, needy and difficult to communicate with honestly”.
That answer isn’t feasible—it’s based on behaviors after the breakup, so they can’t be the cause of the breakup, even if they were present (perhaps in less extreme form) before the breakup.
Also, it’s at least possible that the man would have tolerated the same difficult behavior from a woman with larger breasts—he may have been accurate about his preferences.
What about being accurate about difficult behaviors which are at least theoretically easier to change than basic body features?
I know a woman whose husband had been taking her office supplies, leaving her to think that her memory was seriously erratic. When she found her office supplies in her desk and confronted him about it, he told her off for violating his privacy.
I don’t know whether she mentioned this during the breakup, but would it have been a good idea to do so?
That answer isn’t feasible—it’s based on behaviors after the breakup, so they can’t be the cause of the breakup, even if they were present (perhaps in less extreme form) before the breakup.
Disagree, it is most certainly feasible—and something I would consider a rather wise reason to break up with someone. Being in a position where you can do enormous amounts of permanent psychological damage to someone by telling them they have small breasts is not a good place to be.
Psychological vulnerability insecurity and a tendency toward self loathing are traits of a person (in the medium term) and are not impossible to predict. When you are breaking up with someone for this reason you are not obliged to wait until they actually spiral into self loathing so you can justify your decision.
The very decision to refrain from telling someone that you are breaking up with them because they have small breasts is based off their predicted response. So it is clearly just as possible to make the same prediction and have it influence your decision to break up with them because of their psychological fragility.
What about being accurate about difficult behaviors which are at least theoretically easier to change than basic body features?
That sounds like a very good idea all else being equal. Focusing on what you can change is usually the best strategy and providing others with information about what they can change is probably going to be more useful.
I know a woman whose husband had been taking her office supplies, leaving her to think that her memory was seriously erratic. When she found her office supplies in her desk and confronted him about it, he told her off for violating his privacy.
Wow, that guy is a dick!
I don’t know whether she mentioned this during the breakup, but would it have been a good idea to do so?
I don’t see anything in it for her and nor do I see why she should feel any need to do things for his benefit. Do kind things for people who aren’t dicks.
My response in that situation would be to make no particularly extravagant reaction at the time of the incident, calmly make all the relevant preparations such as hiring a divorce lawyer and finding another place to live then break up via having someone else serve him a divorce notice. But I think most other people may be a little less extravagant in their responses (and less practical). My strategy when breaking up with a spouse for reasons like their diminished attractiveness or excessive more justifiable conflict would be entirely different and much more social.
I don’t see anything in it for her and nor do I see why she should feel any need to do things for his benefit. Do kind things for people who aren’t dicks.
If he’s capable of eventually acquiring a clue, this is also kindness to the people he’ll be dealing with later on. I don’t know whether the cost to her is worth the possible benefit.
In which case the honest answer would clearly have in fact been “you are too psychologically unstable, needy and difficult to communicate with honestly”.
That’s a very big one for me. Someone who can’t handle the truth is not someone for me.
This usually makes little sense, particularly for someone one was attracted to for a while.
It’s almost never true that for someone whose breasts one once found sufficient, her breasts would be a deal breaker, and no woman would be attractive with similar breasts regardless of her personality, face, legs, etc.
The problem is that the character sheet was filled out with mostly low die rolls, not that stat X is too low.
ETA: asking what the “true reason” for a breakup was is like asking what the “true reason” for a war, such as the Iraq War, was. Was it possible WMD? Past links to Al-Qaida? Possible future links to Al-Qaida? Past human rights abuses such as mass torture and murder? Aquiring influence over oil? Creating a pro-western regime? Creating a democratic regime? Perceived divine guidance during Bush’s praying?
The first test to figure out if someone is more rationalist than emotional about the Iraq war to ask them what the “true reason” for the invasion was and see if they right that wrong question. It’s just as much the wrong question in this context as that one.
Calling it “grossly insensitive” is too quick a rejection of the possibility of telling a truth.
It’s almost never true that for someone whose breasts one once found sufficient, her breasts would be a deal breaker
It is more or less true of people who gain a significant amount of status without a commensurate improvement in the status of their partner. Standards change.
Sure, it isn’t going to be the only reason but it can certainly be significant enough to single out.
In an episode of Seinfeld, Elaine was dating a man because she wanted to be dating a doctor. She then finds out that he never managed to pass his licensing exams and therefore couldn’t yet practice medicine. After she helps him pass, he dumps her, saying this:
Ben: I’m sorry, Elaine. I always knew that after I became a doctor, I would dump whoever I was with and find someone better. That’s the dream of becoming a doctor.
The principle of no aspect being the cause of too low value still applies.
How many guys are out of Morena Baccarin’s league because her breasts are small? She has everything else going for her so her weakest attribute is compensated for.
To call the weakest attribute of someone you reject the “true reason” makes sense only if it is a lone sufficient condition, which it probably won’t be even for someone who you no longer want to be with because you think you can do better.
A complementary position is that just because something is ‘grossly insensitive’ doesn’t mean it isn’t both a kindness and exactly the right thing to do. Humans learn from unpleasant things. Especially targeted unpleasant things. So ‘got to be cruel to be kind’ often applies.
If your true and actual reason for breaking up with someone is that her breasts are too small, consider that (a) saying “It was because you were too clingy” may cause them to try and mess with an aspect of their personality that doesn’t even need fixing, and (b) total silence, which you may fondly imagine to be mercy, may result in her frantically imagining dozens of possible flaws all of which she tries desperately to correct, just on the off-chance it was that one. As opposed to, say, looking for a guy who’s into smaller breasts next time.
Tangent: The tricky thing is that often “because you were too clingy” will technically be the real reason, just not the most useful part of the causal chain to select. If she had bigger breasts that will change both how ‘clingy’ any given behavior seems and how much attraction to her you exhibit which in turn influences how clingy she is likely to be. So sometimes even ‘real’ reasons can be a cop-out!
Maybe I’m just being inordinately naive, but telling someone honestly, softly, and believably, your true reason for rejecting them, seems like it really should have certain advantages for them, if not for you.
That certainly seems likely for most cases.
Even bigger tangent: I can’t think of many better ways to be broken up with than this! Seriously. It’s (counter-intuitively) one of the least personally insulting break ups I’ve seen. Because pussy-footying around being ‘sensitive’ is in its own way just another kind of insult.
It would depend on the broader social context—in particular, will you still share a social context—but if you do it seems likely you could get your name dragged through the mud in that example,and she still might not believe you and so suffer b) anyway.
WOW! I’d call this the most credible surprising argument for truthfulness I have seen in a long time. Figures it’s from Eliezer. Score in our years long argument over the strength of the prior for truthfulness. Note though, that to be a good idea this would have to be done very sensitively. Also, the girl would have to be awfully rationalistic. I’d default to the position that any girl who isn’t already poly is fairly unlikely to be a good candidate for this sort of argument, accompanied by a firm assertion that rationalist guys should not restrict themselves to poly girls.
I’m not convinced there’s a significant correlation between being poly and being rational. In general, polyamory seems to be a mostly unchosen state of preference, and I’ve neither noticed nor would I particularly anticipate polyamorous people having a pronounced tendency to be more rational.
I don’t think that it’s particularly rational to be poly, but I do think that most people who are trying to be rational try to be poly, because being poly is a natural consequence of assumptions which sound reasonable and which few people in our society who identify with reason challenge.
Also, let me note that I see polyamory through a lens much closer to that held by many lesbians, which sees sexual orientation as primarily political, rather than the lens favored by most male homosexuals, which sees sexual orientation as primarily biological but which would seem to contradict what we know of the history of cultures such as Classical Greece.
You really ought to get yourself an anonymous alter-identity so you aren’t tempted to discuss things like this under your real name. I believe that you in particular should avoid this topic when writing on public forums.
I’m curious as to why me in particular, but I’m happy to hear from you privately. In general, I go with radical transparency. I think that the truth is that so long as you don’t show shame, guilt or malice you win. Summers screwed up by accepting that his thoughts were shameful and then asserting that they were forced by reason and that others were so forced as well. This is both low-status and aggressive, a bad combination and a classic nerdy failure mode.
I find it doubtful that most aspiring rationalists try to be poly; there are probably more making the attempt since the polyhacking post, but I would be pretty surprised if they constitute a majority.
Personally, I’m already polyamorous in that I’m open to relationships of more than two people, provided all the people are in a relationship with each other (TheOtherDave referred to relationships of this kind as closed polyads, but I haven’t heard the term elsewhere and get no results by googling it.) I have no desire at all to engage in open relationship polyamory like Luke, Eliezer or Alicorn and MBlume, nor do I wish to self modify so that I would be happy with such a relationship. I don’t suppose my own romantic inclinations are representative of the broader rationalist community, but I don’t believe polyamory is as significant attractor as you seem to.
On a side note, I have tried to hack myself bisexual, to no avail. As far as I’m concerned, men are about as sexually attractive as plants and there seems to be nothing I can do about it.
I think it’s a matter of how far people go in these aspirations, and certainly asexuality is another plausible attractor. People can’t be very aspiring towards rationality if something like the the polyhacking post influenced them much. Personally, I don’t recommend polyamory, I just think that it’s common among the extreme enough outliers.
This might depend on what one means by poly. I’ve been in poly and mono relationships before and don’t try actively for either, it is a function of whether my primary is someone who is poly or mono. (This did lead to an interesting issue recently in that my current girlfriend is monoamorous and so I had to downgrade a certain highly poly friend back into the just friend category when my current girlfriend and I got serious.)
I’d call that poly, just like being open to strait or bi relationships makes you bi. It just means that you have self-determination regarding your actions and take responsibility for positive actions, which is pretty much our group’s core defining trait.
Mostly agreed, but with a caveat… my expectations would depend somewhat on context.
If someone lives in a predominantly X environment and has the option of identifying as X but instead identifies as Y, I consider that noteworthy (though far from definitive) evidence that they’re constructing their models of themselves based on observation rather than adopting the cultural default model unreflectively. Identifying as poly in some communities qualifies, to my mind.
Constructing models based on observed data is an important rationality skill, as is setting aside cultural assumptions when evaluating data.
Of course, that isn’t at all the same thing as a correlation between being poly and being rational, but there’s enough of a connection that the caveat seemed worth making.
I had considered the possibility that self identifying as poly would take both self knowledge and willingness to defy cultural norms, but I don’t think this would be likely to impose more than a fairly minimal lower limit on the rationality of people self identifying as poly. I wouldn’t expect it to take much more than the minimum rationality necessary to recognize oneself as homosexual. Anyone looking for partners above a low baseline of rationality is probably imposing a stronger filter for rationality already than they would by looking for polyamorous partners.
Agreed that identifying as homosexual in an environment that strongly encourages heterosexuality takes some of the same skills. Identifying as bisexual is an even closer analog. That is, it’s a lot easier for me to notice that I’m not attracted to women and thus different from my heterosexual peers, than it is for me to notice that in addition to being attracted to women I’m also attracted to men; noticing that in addition to wanting a relationship with one person I also want a relationship with a second person is similarly more difficult. (More generally: if X is easier for As to notice than Y is, A1 noticing X says less about A1 (relative to As) than A1 noticing Y does.)
Agreed that this basically raises the floor by some marginal amount.
Agreed that if you can only filter based on one attribute at a time, this isn’t the best one to choose if you want to maximize partner rationality. That said, if you can filter based on multiple attributes at once, it might turn out that a filter that takes this attribute into account performs better than one that doesn’t, all else being equal.
I’m not convinced there’s a significant correlation between being poly and being rational.
If there is a correlation, I doubt it’s much more than the general poly correlations of being white, educated, Open, and some groups into SciFi—but then, there’s also said to be a pagan current of poly-ers, which would drag down any correlation by quite a bit, pagan-types not being famous for rationality.
Based on the above considerations it’s still probably better to claim unnatural attraction to large breasts then saying something is wrong with her. It’s easier on the girl, plus possibly better to have reputation of a perv than a shmuck. Not sure what the score is now.
If your point is that going on about evolutionary psychology adds to the obfuscation but not to the insensitivity, I disagree. There are often ways of more or less sensitively coming clean about (what one takes to be) one’s true reasons for breaking up. Maybe you wouldn’t go so specific as “you’re too fat,” but you could talk about lack of physical chemistry or whatever without uttering a falsehood or being too misunderstood. But there is no way of sensitively taking your devastated ex aside and handing him/her a Tooby and Cosmides paper to read for homework.
If your point is that going on about evolutionary psychology adds to the obfuscation but not to the insensitivity, I disagree.
It could go either way. Digression into a bunch of theory and science impersonalizes things as well as focussing on ‘me’ instead of ‘you’ The main problem with getting into a big speel on science is that it increases the total time spent dwelling on the painfully negative topic. The fact that it is talking about the science isn’t the insulting part.
There are often ways of more or less sensitively coming clean about (what one takes to be) one’s true reasons for breaking up. Maybe you wouldn’t go so specific as “you’re too fat,” but you could talk about lack of physical chemistry or whatever without uttering a falsehood or being too misunderstood.
Talking about ‘lack of physical chemistry’ is less insulting by virtue of being a vague pre-packaged euphemism rather than brutally personal criticism of highly status-sensitive personal features. It seems to be an entirely different kind of difference to whether you mention evolutionary psychology or not.
Digression into a bunch of theory and science impersonalizes things as well as focussing on ‘me’ instead of ‘you’
Not really. Any evolutionary explanation of why I am repulsed by your physical appearance is going to spend a lot of time dwelling on your physical appearance. And I think the impersonalization bit is the key—it is a ridiculously impersonal digression at a moment of extreme emotional vulnerability on the other person’s part. Most people will interpret impersonal explanations of this sort of emotionally impactful decision as an extremely cold-hearted way of excusing oneself. “I’m sorry I’ve just hurt your feelings. But allow me to explain how this is all just the work of the forces of sexual selection in our ancestral environment...”
If your point is that going on about evolutionary psychology adds to the obfuscation but not to the insensitivity, I disagree. There are often ways of more or less sensitively coming clean about (what one takes to be) one’s true reasons for breaking up. Maybe you wouldn’t go so specific as “you’re too fat,” but you could talk about lack of physical chemistry or whatever without uttering a falsehood or being too misunderstood. But there is no way of sensitively taking your devastated ex aside and handing him/her a Tooby and Cosmides paper to read for homework.
I find it a bit amusing that for all the theorizing about why this was taken so badly, nobody seems to have mentioned the most obvious one. That is, while most people do want to know why you’re breaking up with them, very few will appreciate somebody rambling on for 20 pages worth about all the things that are wrong with you. This would be true even if there had been no ev-psych content at all. (“Here are all the things about you that annoy me. First, you have small breasts. Second, you pick your nose. Third, you prefer Star Trek: Deep Space Nine above Star Trek: The Next Generation...)
I’m willing to bet a small amount that it wasn’t an hour’s worth of listing different reasons for why lukeprog was breaking up with her.
It was one or a small number of reasons for the breakup, and the rest was explaining about evolutionary psychology and possibly some time spent on footnotes.
Explaining her flaws in such a scientific, matter-of-fact way shows how emotionally distant he was. She probably felt like the guy she loved just dropped off an eviction notice.
Crocker’s Rules: A significantly interesting formalisation that I had not come across before! Thank you!
On the one hand, even if someone doesn’t accept responsibility for the operation of their own mind it seems that they nevertheless retain responsibility for the operation of their own mind. On the other hand, from a results-based (utilitarian?) perspective I see the problems that can result from treating an irresponsible entity as though they were responsible.
Unless judged it as having significant probability that one would shortly be stabbed, have one’s reputation tarnished, or otherwise suffer an unacceptable consequence, there seem to be significant ethical arguments against {acting to preserve a softening barrier/buffer between a fragile ego and the rest of the world} and for {providing information either for possible refutation or for helpful greater total understanding}. | Then again, this is the same line of thought which used to get me mired in long religion-related debates which I eventually noticed were having no effect, so—especially given the option of decreasing possible reprisals’ probabilities to nearly zero—treating others softly as lessers to be manipulated and worked around instead of interacting with on an equal basis has numerous merits. | --Though that then triggers a mental reminder that there’s a sequence (?) somewhere with something to say about {not becoming arrogant and pitying others} that may have a way to {likewise treat people as irresponsible and manipulate them accordingly, but without looking down on them} if I reread it.
Crocker’s Rules didn’t give you the right to say anything offensive, but other people could say potentially offensive things to you, and it was your responsibility not to be offended. This was surprisingly hard to explain to people; many people would read the careful explanation and hear, “Crocker’s Rules mean you can say offensive things to other people.”
In contrast to radical honesty, Crocker’s rules encourage being tactful with anyone who hasn’t specifically accepted them. This follows the general principle of being “liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send”.
If you read books on communication such as How to Win Friends and Influence People, the authors go on about how just “saying what you think” is pretty much the worst strategy you can use. Not just for your own sake but for the purpose of actually convincing the other party of what you’re trying to tell them. Unless they’re explicitly running by Crocker’s Rules and ready to squash their natural reaction to your words, it probably won’t work.
No, it was in a car, and I had written it up in a 20-page document I printed off, but then I recited it from memory anyway. I’m kinda glad I don’t have that document anymore.
This is the exact reverse, in every way, of Erin collaborating with a friend of hers to write up an elaborate argument tree for the job of persuading me that she ought to be my girlfriend, which she ended up not actually needing to use.
She also doesn’t have that document any more. I so wanted to see it...
grin that was fun, and incidentally how I first found out about you (Eliezer). I don’t remember actually formally writing said document though, so much as just reasoning out the pro/cons of various approaches.
How the hell do people lose these things? I keep all these documents so I can publicly distribute them after say a one year time period, to the general amusement and enlightenment of all. Ask her to write it again.
I don’t know, you’ve made a lot of people laugh with this and you’ll be able to use this story for several more decades. You might make tens of thousands of people laugh which could be net positive utilons.
I find this incident hard to square with the general impression I get of you as possessing average-high social skills and awareness. Could you say how you had expected her to react? Did you have a coherent mental model of how the conversation would go?
(to everyone inquiring about the details of that sad incident in such a… straightforward manner; whether you’re neurotypical or not, take heed that such behavior is often considered very tactless, despite the offhanded and ironic manner of Luke’s line. I can easily imagine myself being hurt by associated bad memories if questioned about something like that.)
(I downvoted everyone here whose comments I would’ve been needlessly hurt by in Luke’s situation)
I can see how they would be tactless in other settings and contexts. For instance, if Luke wasn’t so clearly disassociating his current self from the person who did this embarrassing thing. If he hadn’t brought it up. If it wasn’t the kind of thing a lot of people here would totally do. If he didn’t work under Crocker’s. If this wasn’t the internet. If he wasn’t very high status in this group, etc…
ETA: I think you’re actually missing a number of the relevant subcultural norms and situational features that make this kind of joking okay.
Indeed, yet the sheer social horror of this action (showing his ex that document), to me, greatly outweighs all the reasons you listed. Me, once I’d have come to my senses way after committing a blunder of such intensity, I’d likely need a therapist to resolve it, or else would have buried the experience as deep as possible.
There are quite a few playful (to them) or inconsiderate (to me—and quite possibly to Luke himself, though he would understandably not admit it publicly for fear of pushing them away) comments from different people above.
This is probably the single funniest bit in your backstory.
No.
It reads like a scene from The Big Bang Theory, and it is difficult to imagine that anyone would ever actually do that—till I remember doing similarly bad+stupid things.
Yeah, that was really, really bad. I’d like to take that one back, for sure.
Why? Did subsequent evo-psych research disprove the selection for those features?
People who get dumped want to know their partners’ reasons for breaking up, not the biological etiology of those reasons. They are very likely to take lengthy discourses into the latter as insensitive, obfuscatory deflections (and probably correctly so).
I would call the ‘real reasons’ typically given to be obfuscatory deflections. People seldom know the actual reasons for why they want to break up. More often they are explicitly aware of one of the downstream effects of the actual reason.
Which is not to say that descriptions of the biological eitology are not also obfuscatory deflections. Most answers to this question will be! In fact, answers to this question will usually be obfuscatory deflections because not to do so will necessarily be ‘insensitive’.
Another reason for not giving the real reasons is that sorting that kind of thing out is work and telling the truth about oneself is an offer of intimacy. If you’re breaking up with someone, you may not want to do either one.
I’m sure that’s the case. But my point was that if the real reason for the break-up was “I want to be with someone who possesses quality X that you lack,” then tacking on ”...because evolution made me that way” does not render the reason more real or add an additional, separate reason; it just renders the one reason better explained in a mostly irrelevant way.
It makes the reason much more of an attack—it’s not just “I find [feature] unattractive”, it’s “people in general are likely to find [feature] unattractive, and this is to the advantage of the human race”.
In spite of this, piling up the karma on this comment makes me feel better about LW. When no one else had made this point on the original post, and then the points were slow to show up on this comment, I was beginning to wonder about the cluefulness level.
I haven’t felt this way about any of my other comments.
I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t) is a book about women and shame, with a little about men. I’d been wondering why such a high proportion of insults (to both men and women) are about sexual attractiveness, but the book points out that the most stinging insults are about failure to fulfill gender expectations. At the time, I hadn’t thought about men being accused of homosexuality, but that fits the pattern from the book.
If I were to get evolutionary about this, cutting down one’s rivals’ mating potential would make sense as a fundamental attack.
On the other hand, I don’t think the author was collecting cross cultural material, so I don’t know what insults/shame looks like in cultures where religious prejudice is a larger factor.
None of this is intended as an attack on lukeprog (2007)-- it’s clear he had no idea what he was doing. My guess is that he was trying to be less insulting by making the breakup less personal.
I’m not an expert on this by any means, but insult content varies quite a bit across cultures. Dutch profanity is largely medical, for example; kankerlijer (“cancer-sufferer”) is very strong. I’ve heard speculation that this is due to the largely urban landscape that Dutch evolved in, where being a vector of infection (never mind that most causes of cancer aren’t infectious) meant being a clear danger to the community.
So religious insults seem plausible in any culture that takes religion especially seriously. Spanish profanity has retained a lot of religious content; I don’t know much about its evolution, but it could plausibly be related to Spanish-speaking culture’s historically strong Catholicism.
Thanks—the Dutch sickness insults are amazing by American standards.
If it was just about fear of infection, then all urban cultures would have that sort of insult.
Yeah, it does have the ring of a Just-So story, doesn’t it? I haven’t heard any other explanations yet, though.
My suggestion of random factors means that there’s no detailed explanation possible, except for history which is almost certainly based in spoken words and emotional reactions and therefore not available.
I believe that it’s the tone which makes an insult. Insult is about lowering status, and is basically a group effect—a good insult implies not just likelihood of ongoing attack from that person, but that the attacks will deservedly continue from other people.
It seems to me that cultures are probably constrained to ranges by various issues (number of people, technology, resources), but those ranges are huge compared to the particular things cultures do, and there’s little point in predicting.
American slang will probably generate new words for very good and very bad, but this doesn’t mean that which words are used for very good and very bad has an interesting or predictable pattern. The words will probably be short, but I doubt you can get much farther than that.
I wonder whether insults could be used to track patterns of obligatory kindness—if some feature is not used as grounds for insult, could it mean that it’s a area which is culturally inhibited from attack. In other words, I’m still shocked at using having cancer as a generic insult.
It’s worth noting that not every piece of social interaction has a non-trivial influence from evolutionary psychology. Sometimes an insult is just an insult...
Of all the forms of communication over which to trivialize evolutionary psychology you chose insults? Knowing how, when and who to insult is one of the most critical instincts evolutionary psychology provided us!
And the exact specific insults chosen is pretty darn culture-bound. “Stupid melon” is only a serious insult in Chinese.
(To clarify: I am talking about the semantics of the words chosen as insults, not the behavior of socially insulting another for whatever reason. I do not think the specific words common in current English parlance as insults by a specific social group can be meaningfully applied to humanity as a whole)
I’m more dubious about ev psych than most here, I think. It wouldn’t surprise me if there is random history affecting which insults are salient in various societies, rather than some sort of optimization.
The fact that people can insult each other so easily may well have some evolutionary history.
Any theories about why people are so apt to remember insults for years?
I’m a bit of a polyglot who’s sampled broadly from some very, very different language families and that rings true.
You can be insulting in Chinook Wawa or Ojibwe (speaking disrespectfully or very bluntly), but cognates for most familiar English swears are either lacking altogether or of very recent coinage. The closest you’d get to everyday, non-personal swearing in Chinook Wawa sort of means “eeeewww”; the word “bad” could be a matter-of-fact descriptor, a vaguely-literal or nonliteral grammatical particle, or just a very blunt statement more impolite than anything.
Chinese has quite a varied vocabulary for profanity and insults, but the literal translations would almost sound cutesy to foreigners (傻瓜, “sha3gua1” in Mandarin, means “stupid melon” but has about as much social bite as “idiot!” or “dumbass!”).
Japanese has a lot of profane words, except that it’s much easier to be insulting without actually using any of them and some of the ones whose literal translation would be profane or impolite in English are used with much less weight. This is true of some dialects of Chinese too (there’s a phrase that probably best translates as “holy fuck” in both Chinese and Japanese but isn’t nearly as impolite as its English equivalent, although it’s not exactly good manners either.)
Examining what Lukeprog wrote...
...his stated reason doesn’t appear to match the paragraph that preceded it all (I realize that we are probably gettting a very condensed version of the conversation, but hopefully it didn’t elide something this important).
Were I in the lady’s position, I’d wonder why I only became physically unsuitable after I started seeking a legally recognized commitment. Unless the feature Lukeprog found unattractive was “wants committed pair-bonding,” the explanation does not appear to fit the circumstances at all. This doesn’t seem like a case of someone unable to deal with “radical honesty;” it seems like a case of someone being pissed off at what comes across as dishonesty.
The real harm, in my eyes, is because she will likely generalize that because evolution made you that way it made all men that way, which is likely not true. Actually it’s patently untrue for any example I can think of.
I don’t see any evidence that suggests that she would draw any conclusion about evolution from a breakup like that. Is that in the text or your own conclusion?
(and I must add that though I didn’t write a 20 page document for my first breakup, I arguably did no better.)
Well it’s almost definitional. If evolutionary selection pressures were extreme enough to actually make lukeprog that way, then all men are that way. If evolution did it to him, then it did it to everyone. Evolution doesn’t discriminate. What’s more likely is that evolution didn’t actually make him that way, but societal pressures did.
But that’s setting aside the fact that most people tend to wildly anthropomorphize evolution...
I wouldn’t expect lukeprog to bring up evolution in that context unless he believed that most men were like him.
This does not follow. There are many species where different members have evolved different mating strategies. For a really neat example see this lizard. Males have evolved three different strategies that are in a rock-paper-scissors relationship to each other.
It seems clear though, that your example is the exception and not the rule. There is no reason that evolution would have made lukeprog different from other males, given that he was human.
Actually, variable mating strategies are darn common for animals. Sometimes they represent stable lifepaths with whole species populations grouped not just by sex, but by which members of a given sex use which strategy (cleaner wrasses come to mind); other species vary thejr strategies based on things like food availability, or in different parts of their geographical range, or in different sub-populations.
I can give lots of other species that have stable equilibria with multiple mating strategies. There’s also a fair number of game theory scenarios where the Nash equilibria involve similar mixed strategies. These aren’t that uncommon in nature. The lizard example is just one of the weirder examples. This is clearly way too common for it to be labeled as “almost definitional”.
Can you clarify what the harm is, in her thinking ‘just like a man’
Or what her thinking would actually be, if that is not what you’re suggesting?
And for the record, I killed that first relationship by telling my BF that I wasn’t sure I loved him anymore, but that I didn’t actually want to break up. Which was totally true, and had predictable results. I turned a normal healthy and cute math-classics major/computer science nerd into a clingy and demanding person, because I didn’t understand why I wasn’t happier with myself. He had no recourse to any pat generalizations, like ‘just like a woman’.
I would think that her thinking would be that if evolution made lukeprog not like me because of xyz, then it would make all men not like me because of that. I must not be a likeable person.
That would be bad.
Well, I’m no expert on how women think, but there is no thought control.
This breakup story is so unusual in the amount of rational preparation for it, I’m sure that I would be able to see that most other men are not much like lukeprog, on that point if no other.
I am not sure there is any way to convince someone you do not want to date (at all / any longer) that they are likeable, except by proving it over time.
Most men are not like lukeprog on that point, certainly.
However, lukeprog was not asserting that most men were like him on that point. He was asserting that evolution had contributed for his not liking her for reasons X, Y, and Z. All people are closely enough related that if that were true, then there would be a good chance that evolution had done similarly for other men. So, to the degree that she believed him, the conclusion that it likely applied to other men would follow more strongly than without his assertion.
You make a good point, but I doubt she believed his assertion for long, if at all. Though it probably offended her.
I am trying to suggest that lukeprog’s assertions about why he didn’t feel like he liked her the right amount any more are totally irrelevant to her reaction. Their accuracy is, in fact, arguable.
Evolution, as it applies to men, suggests that just often enough, some of them will try to impregnate someone. Cross-cultural standards of physical beauty in women suggest who most men are most likely to try to approach. This is statistical. “Who wants to date ME” is personal, and there is no proof other than experience.
The fact that he didn’t feel like he liked her the right amount to date her anymore is the unarguable point, and there is no way of getting around that.
She sounds like a normal girl and probably had a normal amount of disappointment over the breakup, and maybe an above-average amount of resentment at the suggestion that she might not be as evolutionarily attractive as the next girl.
He should have started with the mind projection fallacy.
Luke will never be able to break up with any future girlfriends because it would require too many preliminaries before he could even start the sequence which would explain why they should break up.
...says the only person who required more buildup to discuss metaethics than I did.
I have not tired of these jokes, but: actually, ‘breaking up’ rationalist-to-rationalist is pretty easy and painless in my (limited) experience.
And the more time he spends with more and more girlfriends the more he will learn about relationships and the harder it will be for him to break up with them. It’s pretty much an Unfriendly and Artificial Breakup Conversation FOOM.
Expecting short inferential distances then.
Humans have emotions and don’t think rationally by default. Most people do not like to feel inadequate, though how they respond to that feeling varies a great deal. Most people in a relationship also don’t like to feel they were rejected sexually over some perceived inadequacy.
So when a mate gives them a 20-page lecture on their failures to hold their attraction and concludes by rejecting them as a sex partner, it’s probably not vanishingly far from the null hypothesis that the person is going to get upset...
It is rather irrelevant. Even crockers rules doesn’t take you as far as giving evolutionary psychology explanations. So saying “because you have small breasts” is grossly insensitive and saying “because you have small breasts and I am biologically … signalling … etc” is grossly insensitive and also irrelevant, nerdy and kind of awkward.
Agreed that the ev-psych was bad. But...
If your true and actual reason for breaking up with someone is that her breasts are too small, consider that (a) saying “It was because you were too clingy” may cause them to try and mess with an aspect of their personality that doesn’t even need fixing, and (b) total silence, which you may fondly imagine to be mercy, may result in her frantically imagining dozens of possible flaws all of which she tries desperately to correct, just on the off-chance it was that one. As opposed to, say, looking for a guy who’s into smaller breasts next time.
Maybe I’m just being inordinately naive, but telling someone honestly, softly, and believably, your true reason for rejecting them, seems like it really should have certain advantages for them, if not for you. I mean, compared to either silence or lying. Calling it “grossly insensitive” is too quick a rejection of the possibility of telling a truth.
I think you’re assuming too rational a partner.
If you’re honest and say, “Your breasts are too small,” the person in question might seek a guy who likes smaller breasts next time. Or she might fall into a deep self-loathing in which she believes that her body is imperfect and nobody could be attracted to her, thus sabotaging her own future potential relationships. Or she could run out and get breast implants, even though she doesn’t really want them, in hopes that you / other future guys will find her more attractive—which is much more expensive and possibly less rewarding than simply finding people who like small breasts.
In my view it’s better to keep it vague. Guessing over dozens of possible flaws is likely to be less harmful than obsessing over one particular flaw, since it’s difficult to figure out / change whatever possible flaw you think may exist.
(Disclosure: I have been dumped once and did the dumping once. The dumper kept it vague; I kept it specific but lied. I can’t judge how keeping it specific while lying worked, since the person in question was bipolar and therefore not at all a normal test subject. I can judge how keeping it vague went: I obsessed over dozens of flaws for a while, until I found other people who were interested, at which point I decided it was probably just a bad match and nothing really to do with absolute flaws at all. I do not know how a completely honest dumping pans out.)
In which case the honest answer would clearly have in fact been “you are too psychologically unstable, needy and difficult to communicate with honestly”.
That answer isn’t feasible—it’s based on behaviors after the breakup, so they can’t be the cause of the breakup, even if they were present (perhaps in less extreme form) before the breakup.
Also, it’s at least possible that the man would have tolerated the same difficult behavior from a woman with larger breasts—he may have been accurate about his preferences.
What about being accurate about difficult behaviors which are at least theoretically easier to change than basic body features?
I know a woman whose husband had been taking her office supplies, leaving her to think that her memory was seriously erratic. When she found her office supplies in her desk and confronted him about it, he told her off for violating his privacy.
I don’t know whether she mentioned this during the breakup, but would it have been a good idea to do so?
That’s called gaslighting.
I haven’t seen a wikipedia article look more like it belongs on tvtropes!
TVTropes has its own page on the subject.
Disagree, it is most certainly feasible—and something I would consider a rather wise reason to break up with someone. Being in a position where you can do enormous amounts of permanent psychological damage to someone by telling them they have small breasts is not a good place to be.
Psychological vulnerability insecurity and a tendency toward self loathing are traits of a person (in the medium term) and are not impossible to predict. When you are breaking up with someone for this reason you are not obliged to wait until they actually spiral into self loathing so you can justify your decision.
The very decision to refrain from telling someone that you are breaking up with them because they have small breasts is based off their predicted response. So it is clearly just as possible to make the same prediction and have it influence your decision to break up with them because of their psychological fragility.
That sounds like a very good idea all else being equal. Focusing on what you can change is usually the best strategy and providing others with information about what they can change is probably going to be more useful.
Wow, that guy is a dick!
I don’t see anything in it for her and nor do I see why she should feel any need to do things for his benefit. Do kind things for people who aren’t dicks.
My response in that situation would be to make no particularly extravagant reaction at the time of the incident, calmly make all the relevant preparations such as hiring a divorce lawyer and finding another place to live then break up via having someone else serve him a divorce notice. But I think most other people may be a little less extravagant in their responses (and less practical). My strategy when breaking up with a spouse for reasons like their diminished attractiveness or excessive more justifiable conflict would be entirely different and much more social.
If he’s capable of eventually acquiring a clue, this is also kindness to the people he’ll be dealing with later on. I don’t know whether the cost to her is worth the possible benefit.
That’s a very big one for me. Someone who can’t handle the truth is not someone for me.
This usually makes little sense, particularly for someone one was attracted to for a while.
It’s almost never true that for someone whose breasts one once found sufficient, her breasts would be a deal breaker, and no woman would be attractive with similar breasts regardless of her personality, face, legs, etc.
The problem is that the character sheet was filled out with mostly low die rolls, not that stat X is too low.
ETA: asking what the “true reason” for a breakup was is like asking what the “true reason” for a war, such as the Iraq War, was. Was it possible WMD? Past links to Al-Qaida? Possible future links to Al-Qaida? Past human rights abuses such as mass torture and murder? Aquiring influence over oil? Creating a pro-western regime? Creating a democratic regime? Perceived divine guidance during Bush’s praying?
The first test to figure out if someone is more rationalist than emotional about the Iraq war to ask them what the “true reason” for the invasion was and see if they right that wrong question. It’s just as much the wrong question in this context as that one.
I agree.
It is more or less true of people who gain a significant amount of status without a commensurate improvement in the status of their partner. Standards change.
Sure, it isn’t going to be the only reason but it can certainly be significant enough to single out.
In an episode of Seinfeld, Elaine was dating a man because she wanted to be dating a doctor. She then finds out that he never managed to pass his licensing exams and therefore couldn’t yet practice medicine. After she helps him pass, he dumps her, saying this:
Which illustrates the point rather nicely.
The principle of no aspect being the cause of too low value still applies.
How many guys are out of Morena Baccarin’s league because her breasts are small? She has everything else going for her so her weakest attribute is compensated for.
To call the weakest attribute of someone you reject the “true reason” makes sense only if it is a lone sufficient condition, which it probably won’t be even for someone who you no longer want to be with because you think you can do better.
A complementary position is that just because something is ‘grossly insensitive’ doesn’t mean it isn’t both a kindness and exactly the right thing to do. Humans learn from unpleasant things. Especially targeted unpleasant things. So ‘got to be cruel to be kind’ often applies.
Tangent: The tricky thing is that often “because you were too clingy” will technically be the real reason, just not the most useful part of the causal chain to select. If she had bigger breasts that will change both how ‘clingy’ any given behavior seems and how much attraction to her you exhibit which in turn influences how clingy she is likely to be. So sometimes even ‘real’ reasons can be a cop-out!
That certainly seems likely for most cases.
Even bigger tangent: I can’t think of many better ways to be broken up with than this! Seriously. It’s (counter-intuitively) one of the least personally insulting break ups I’ve seen. Because pussy-footying around being ‘sensitive’ is in its own way just another kind of insult.
Is there a better solution which preserves both values? Real reasons in rot13, maybe?
It would depend on the broader social context—in particular, will you still share a social context—but if you do it seems likely you could get your name dragged through the mud in that example,and she still might not believe you and so suffer b) anyway.
WOW! I’d call this the most credible surprising argument for truthfulness I have seen in a long time. Figures it’s from Eliezer. Score in our years long argument over the strength of the prior for truthfulness.
Note though, that to be a good idea this would have to be done very sensitively. Also, the girl would have to be awfully rationalistic. I’d default to the position that any girl who isn’t already poly is fairly unlikely to be a good candidate for this sort of argument, accompanied by a firm assertion that rationalist guys should not restrict themselves to poly girls.
I’m not convinced there’s a significant correlation between being poly and being rational. In general, polyamory seems to be a mostly unchosen state of preference, and I’ve neither noticed nor would I particularly anticipate polyamorous people having a pronounced tendency to be more rational.
I don’t think that it’s particularly rational to be poly, but I do think that most people who are trying to be rational try to be poly, because being poly is a natural consequence of assumptions which sound reasonable and which few people in our society who identify with reason challenge.
Also, let me note that I see polyamory through a lens much closer to that held by many lesbians, which sees sexual orientation as primarily political, rather than the lens favored by most male homosexuals, which sees sexual orientation as primarily biological but which would seem to contradict what we know of the history of cultures such as Classical Greece.
You really ought to get yourself an anonymous alter-identity so you aren’t tempted to discuss things like this under your real name. I believe that you in particular should avoid this topic when writing on public forums.
I’m curious as to why me in particular, but I’m happy to hear from you privately. In general, I go with radical transparency. I think that the truth is that so long as you don’t show shame, guilt or malice you win. Summers screwed up by accepting that his thoughts were shameful and then asserting that they were forced by reason and that others were so forced as well. This is both low-status and aggressive, a bad combination and a classic nerdy failure mode.
I find it doubtful that most aspiring rationalists try to be poly; there are probably more making the attempt since the polyhacking post, but I would be pretty surprised if they constitute a majority.
Personally, I’m already polyamorous in that I’m open to relationships of more than two people, provided all the people are in a relationship with each other (TheOtherDave referred to relationships of this kind as closed polyads, but I haven’t heard the term elsewhere and get no results by googling it.) I have no desire at all to engage in open relationship polyamory like Luke, Eliezer or Alicorn and MBlume, nor do I wish to self modify so that I would be happy with such a relationship. I don’t suppose my own romantic inclinations are representative of the broader rationalist community, but I don’t believe polyamory is as significant attractor as you seem to.
On a side note, I have tried to hack myself bisexual, to no avail. As far as I’m concerned, men are about as sexually attractive as plants and there seems to be nothing I can do about it.
I think it’s a matter of how far people go in these aspirations, and certainly asexuality is another plausible attractor. People can’t be very aspiring towards rationality if something like the the polyhacking post influenced them much. Personally, I don’t recommend polyamory, I just think that it’s common among the extreme enough outliers.
This might depend on what one means by poly. I’ve been in poly and mono relationships before and don’t try actively for either, it is a function of whether my primary is someone who is poly or mono. (This did lead to an interesting issue recently in that my current girlfriend is monoamorous and so I had to downgrade a certain highly poly friend back into the just friend category when my current girlfriend and I got serious.)
I’d call that poly, just like being open to strait or bi relationships makes you bi. It just means that you have self-determination regarding your actions and take responsibility for positive actions, which is pretty much our group’s core defining trait.
How are you defining poly then? Can you be more explicit?
Mostly agreed, but with a caveat… my expectations would depend somewhat on context.
If someone lives in a predominantly X environment and has the option of identifying as X but instead identifies as Y, I consider that noteworthy (though far from definitive) evidence that they’re constructing their models of themselves based on observation rather than adopting the cultural default model unreflectively. Identifying as poly in some communities qualifies, to my mind.
Constructing models based on observed data is an important rationality skill, as is setting aside cultural assumptions when evaluating data.
Of course, that isn’t at all the same thing as a correlation between being poly and being rational, but there’s enough of a connection that the caveat seemed worth making.
I had considered the possibility that self identifying as poly would take both self knowledge and willingness to defy cultural norms, but I don’t think this would be likely to impose more than a fairly minimal lower limit on the rationality of people self identifying as poly. I wouldn’t expect it to take much more than the minimum rationality necessary to recognize oneself as homosexual. Anyone looking for partners above a low baseline of rationality is probably imposing a stronger filter for rationality already than they would by looking for polyamorous partners.
Agreed that identifying as homosexual in an environment that strongly encourages heterosexuality takes some of the same skills. Identifying as bisexual is an even closer analog. That is, it’s a lot easier for me to notice that I’m not attracted to women and thus different from my heterosexual peers, than it is for me to notice that in addition to being attracted to women I’m also attracted to men; noticing that in addition to wanting a relationship with one person I also want a relationship with a second person is similarly more difficult. (More generally: if X is easier for As to notice than Y is, A1 noticing X says less about A1 (relative to As) than A1 noticing Y does.)
Agreed that this basically raises the floor by some marginal amount.
Agreed that if you can only filter based on one attribute at a time, this isn’t the best one to choose if you want to maximize partner rationality. That said, if you can filter based on multiple attributes at once, it might turn out that a filter that takes this attribute into account performs better than one that doesn’t, all else being equal.
Yes, I thought that assumption was pretty odd. Also, “already poly” has weird implications.
If there is a correlation, I doubt it’s much more than the general poly correlations of being white, educated, Open, and some groups into SciFi—but then, there’s also said to be a pagan current of poly-ers, which would drag down any correlation by quite a bit, pagan-types not being famous for rationality.
Based on the above considerations it’s still probably better to claim unnatural attraction to large breasts then saying something is wrong with her. It’s easier on the girl, plus possibly better to have reputation of a perv than a shmuck. Not sure what the score is now.
If your point is that going on about evolutionary psychology adds to the obfuscation but not to the insensitivity, I disagree. There are often ways of more or less sensitively coming clean about (what one takes to be) one’s true reasons for breaking up. Maybe you wouldn’t go so specific as “you’re too fat,” but you could talk about lack of physical chemistry or whatever without uttering a falsehood or being too misunderstood. But there is no way of sensitively taking your devastated ex aside and handing him/her a Tooby and Cosmides paper to read for homework.
It could go either way. Digression into a bunch of theory and science impersonalizes things as well as focussing on ‘me’ instead of ‘you’ The main problem with getting into a big speel on science is that it increases the total time spent dwelling on the painfully negative topic. The fact that it is talking about the science isn’t the insulting part.
Talking about ‘lack of physical chemistry’ is less insulting by virtue of being a vague pre-packaged euphemism rather than brutally personal criticism of highly status-sensitive personal features. It seems to be an entirely different kind of difference to whether you mention evolutionary psychology or not.
Not really. Any evolutionary explanation of why I am repulsed by your physical appearance is going to spend a lot of time dwelling on your physical appearance. And I think the impersonalization bit is the key—it is a ridiculously impersonal digression at a moment of extreme emotional vulnerability on the other person’s part. Most people will interpret impersonal explanations of this sort of emotionally impactful decision as an extremely cold-hearted way of excusing oneself. “I’m sorry I’ve just hurt your feelings. But allow me to explain how this is all just the work of the forces of sexual selection in our ancestral environment...”
I’m completely and utterly aghast at how some LW members can’t see it this way.
We have a straightforward disagreement with respect to both the conclusion and most of the details.
If your point is that going on about evolutionary psychology adds to the obfuscation but not to the insensitivity, I disagree. There are often ways of more or less sensitively coming clean about (what one takes to be) one’s true reasons for breaking up. Maybe you wouldn’t go so specific as “you’re too fat,” but you could talk about lack of physical chemistry or whatever without uttering a falsehood or being too misunderstood. But there is no way of sensitively taking your devastated ex aside and handing him/her a Tooby and Cosmides paper to read for homework.
I find it a bit amusing that for all the theorizing about why this was taken so badly, nobody seems to have mentioned the most obvious one. That is, while most people do want to know why you’re breaking up with them, very few will appreciate somebody rambling on for 20 pages worth about all the things that are wrong with you. This would be true even if there had been no ev-psych content at all. (“Here are all the things about you that annoy me. First, you have small breasts. Second, you pick your nose. Third, you prefer Star Trek: Deep Space Nine above Star Trek: The Next Generation...)
I’m willing to bet a small amount that it wasn’t an hour’s worth of listing different reasons for why lukeprog was breaking up with her.
It was one or a small number of reasons for the breakup, and the rest was explaining about evolutionary psychology and possibly some time spent on footnotes.
Explaining her flaws in such a scientific, matter-of-fact way shows how emotionally distant he was. She probably felt like the guy she loved just dropped off an eviction notice.
And this too.
Good point.
Bwahahahaha
It would be waaaaay too hard to make that sound smart. People having emotions is irrational and irrelevant to a discussion of rationality and romance!
THIS.
This, a million freaking times.
Just… goddamnit!
No, because “Alice” was not operating by Crocker’s Rules.
No-one ever really is. Well, no-one I’ve met.
Crocker’s Rules: A significantly interesting formalisation that I had not come across before! Thank you!
On the one hand, even if someone doesn’t accept responsibility for the operation of their own mind it seems that they nevertheless retain responsibility for the operation of their own mind. On the other hand, from a results-based (utilitarian?) perspective I see the problems that can result from treating an irresponsible entity as though they were responsible.
Unless judged it as having significant probability that one would shortly be stabbed, have one’s reputation tarnished, or otherwise suffer an unacceptable consequence, there seem to be significant ethical arguments against {acting to preserve a softening barrier/buffer between a fragile ego and the rest of the world} and for {providing information either for possible refutation or for helpful greater total understanding}.
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Then again, this is the same line of thought which used to get me mired in long religion-related debates which I eventually noticed were having no effect, so—especially given the option of decreasing possible reprisals’ probabilities to nearly zero—treating others softly as lessers to be manipulated and worked around instead of interacting with on an equal basis has numerous merits.
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--Though that then triggers a mental reminder that there’s a sequence (?) somewhere with something to say about {not becoming arrogant and pitying others} that may have a way to {likewise treat people as irresponsible and manipulate them accordingly, but without looking down on them} if I reread it.
Beware! Crocker’s Rules is about being able to receive information as fast as possible, not to transmit it!
From Radical Honesty:
From wiki.lw:
If you read books on communication such as How to Win Friends and Influence People, the authors go on about how just “saying what you think” is pretty much the worst strategy you can use. Not just for your own sake but for the purpose of actually convincing the other party of what you’re trying to tell them. Unless they’re explicitly running by Crocker’s Rules and ready to squash their natural reaction to your words, it probably won’t work.
Because the rest of the world operates without Crocker’s Rules, treating someone as if they are is deemed to itself be a part of the message.
Because instead of making the argument, “it’s not you, it’s me,” he made the argument, “it’s you, because I’m just like every other guy on Earth.”
.
No, it was in a car, and I had written it up in a 20-page document I printed off, but then I recited it from memory anyway. I’m kinda glad I don’t have that document anymore.
This is the exact reverse, in every way, of Erin collaborating with a friend of hers to write up an elaborate argument tree for the job of persuading me that she ought to be my girlfriend, which she ended up not actually needing to use.
She also doesn’t have that document any more. I so wanted to see it...
grin that was fun, and incidentally how I first found out about you (Eliezer). I don’t remember actually formally writing said document though, so much as just reasoning out the pro/cons of various approaches.
I’m glad it worked out though! :)
How the hell do people lose these things? I keep all these documents so I can publicly distribute them after say a one year time period, to the general amusement and enlightenment of all. Ask her to write it again.
Wow! A 20 page essay on “why I’m breaking up with you”? That’s just… brutal!
I’m picturing it with an impressive array of references at the end, and side remarks on The Neglected Virtue of Scholarsip.
And obviously the title should have been:
“In Which I Explain How Natural Selection Has Built Me To Be Attracted To Certain Features That You Lack”
:D
I take no responsibility for anything Luke-2007 did. Different guy. :)
Out of curiosity, do you expect Luke-2015 to take responsibility for anything Luke-2011 does?
Only the good stuff! :)
I wonder if this principle works in the case of a murder which rapidly changes the murderer. (Later that day, they may bear no responsibility.)
I am surprised that she didn’t cut you off way before you got to the one-hour mark...
My guess is that it would have been like forcing herself to look away from a train wreck.
Did you destroy all of the copies?
I don’t know, you’ve made a lot of people laugh with this and you’ll be able to use this story for several more decades. You might make tens of thousands of people laugh which could be net positive utilons.
If only lukeprog had thought to tell Alice that at the time!
“Sure I’m being a jerk, but telling people about this in the future will be hysterical, so it’s overall a good thing for me to do!”
Yeah, I bet that would have gone down well. :)
I find this incident hard to square with the general impression I get of you as possessing average-high social skills and awareness. Could you say how you had expected her to react? Did you have a coherent mental model of how the conversation would go?
I did not have average-high social skills and awareness at the time. I’ll say no more.
Have you since tried to apologize to her?
Yes.
Do you not care to elaborate? I’d be interested to know how she took it. But if you’d rather not share, that’s of course within your rights.
I’m pretty sure she would prefer I not elaborate.
Fair enough.
I would really like to know a girl that would be ok with that.
I’d expect that people who are okay with breakups are fairly rare, regardless of the method...
(to everyone inquiring about the details of that sad incident in such a… straightforward manner; whether you’re neurotypical or not, take heed that such behavior is often considered very tactless, despite the offhanded and ironic manner of Luke’s line. I can easily imagine myself being hurt by associated bad memories if questioned about something like that.)
(I downvoted everyone here whose comments I would’ve been needlessly hurt by in Luke’s situation)
I’m pretty neurotypical by Less Wrong standards and I don’t see any tactless comments here.
How about joking off-handedly over an highly embarrassing, ill-judged thing that a stranger disclosed about their past?
I can see how they would be tactless in other settings and contexts. For instance, if Luke wasn’t so clearly disassociating his current self from the person who did this embarrassing thing. If he hadn’t brought it up. If it wasn’t the kind of thing a lot of people here would totally do. If he didn’t work under Crocker’s. If this wasn’t the internet. If he wasn’t very high status in this group, etc…
ETA: I think you’re actually missing a number of the relevant subcultural norms and situational features that make this kind of joking okay.
Indeed, yet the sheer social horror of this action (showing his ex that document), to me, greatly outweighs all the reasons you listed. Me, once I’d have come to my senses way after committing a blunder of such intensity, I’d likely need a therapist to resolve it, or else would have buried the experience as deep as possible.
Kevin and Luke aren’t strangers.
There are quite a few playful (to them) or inconsiderate (to me—and quite possibly to Luke himself, though he would understandably not admit it publicly for fear of pushing them away) comments from different people above.