I think that the picture detracts from the article. It’s a deviation from most other LW pages, heteronormatizes the content, and in addition since the in-picture and out-of-picture background is white, the people look like cutouts in this really awkward way.
Some of those pages get obscene numbers of page views. Even heavily discounting the “conversion rate” here I think its possible for a net gain, if one objective is to provide novel rational insights to people.
...true. But as I say here, I’d like to think that Luke intends the material to be more possible to generalize than merely about how men should deal with women, though the concrete examples his personal experience and pursued knowledge provide are relevant to the experience of a man in pursuit of women. In other words, these are “Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance”, not “How to Become Vir Sapientior and Get the Girl of Your Dreams”.
You aren’t the target audience for the stock photo, it’s a random person seeing Less Wrong for the first time. People like pictures.
As for the picture heteronormatizing the content… it’s an explicitly hetero story, because it’s my story. Don’t you think it’d be weird to have a homosexual couple in the lead photo for my story?
I presume that tenshiko isn’t suggesting a photo of a gay couple. Tenshiko is suggesting no picture. Kevin’s point does still seem relevant in that context however.
You predict my opinion correctly—as I’ve said elsewhere I have other aesthetic concerns due to the picture itself. At the very least I think it’d look much better with a colored background, because of the cutout effect I mention.
Lukeprog said people like pictures. The feedback has been primarily negative because pictures are not the status quo and people, including LW readers, have a mild preference for cultural norms to be preserved, not challenged.
Crowds typically react negatively to change no matter what postive effects it brings. Wizards of the Coast has a track record of making decisions that were necessary and beneficial to the long term health of their games, each of which brought in new players and which old players eventually adapted to, and every single one of them produced an uproar.
Yes, but in addition to it being change, it’s also genuinely a change I don’t like. I’ve visited enough website to know what I do and don’t like. A small topic indicator icon like you see on Slashdot would be fine.
I like pictures, though not necessarily these particular pictures. Still, I like seeing at a glance a picture that has some connection to the topic of the article.
it’s an explicitly hetero story, because it’s my story
No. It’s an explicitly hetero story because you wrote it that way.
You also entirely ignore the options of not having a picture. If you can’t find any inspiration for a picture which isn’t tied to sexual orientation, maybe that would be the best option?
It’s an explicitly hetero story because you wrote it that way
Are you requesting that he omit the genders of the participants in his life, including his romantic life?
If so, are you prepared to support with evidence an argument that hetero romance and the hetero dating scene is completely identical in all aspects to gay romance and the gay dating scene, and therefore knowing the genders and the sexual orientation of the participants isn’t at all necessary to be communicated?
If so, are you prepared to support with evidence an argument that hetero romance and the hetero dating scene is completely identical in all aspects to gay romance and the gay dating scene,
In context I agree with your general point, but this seems like a strong demand for particular proof. To establish the point handoflixue would not need to establish that they are ‘completely identical in all aspects’ but rather that they have enough similarities for the genders and orientations to not be relevant in this context.
(Incidentally, I’m a het male who agrees that there’s been a serious problem of focusing on advice for het males here. The most obvious solution is for the people who aren’t in this set to write more general pieces. Or volunteer to work with someone like luke to coauthor a piece that is more broad. There’s not some magic rule that luke and a few other people have to write all the posts on this subject.)
If so, are you prepared to support with evidence an argument that hetero romance and the hetero dating scene is completely identical in all aspects to gay romance and the gay dating scene, and therefore knowing the genders and the sexual orientation of the participants isn’t at all necessary to be communicated?
Um, if the “heterosexual male romance” angle is essential to this story, then it’s heterosexual dating advice, and LessWrong is not a dating advice site. So lukeprog should stop posting about it. Rationality (y’know, core focus of this site?) does not, to my knowledge, care whether I am a heterosexual male.
I will also point out that Alicorn managed a relatively gender-free story, by focusing on the rationality and internal aspects, rather than on dating advice and “how to get a girl”.
Um. if the “heterosexual male romance” angle is essential to this story, then it’s heterosexual dating advice, and LessWrong is not a dating advice site. So lukeprog should stop posting about it.
How does this follow? Why is it okay for lukeprog to post dating advice which are independent of gender-orientation-independent, but it’s not okay to post advice which are dependent on gender-orientation? You may argue that the former interests more people, but that’s just a difference in the number of people that may be interested, not a qualitative difference.
I doubt you believe that all rationalists must be by necessity bisexuals.
Rationality (y’know, core focus of this site?) does not, to my knowledge, care whether I am a heterosexual male
First of all, is this sentence supposed to actually mean something? What would it mean for “Rationality” to “care” about your orientation, as opposed to “rationality” not caring about it?
Secondly, if anything, rationality means that you care about the elements that are relevant, and you don’t care about the elements that aren’t relevant. You’ve still not argued that sexual-orientation wasn’t actually relevant to Lukeprog’s story. Don’t you think it would affect, for starters, whether he would seriously break up with someone and argue it’s because they lacked evolution-promoted fitness markers?
I will also point out that Alicorn managed a relatively gender-free story, by focusing on the rationality and internal aspects, rather than on dating advice and “how to get a girl”.
And I will point out that Alicorn is bisexual, so gender would be less relevant to her criteria than to lukeprog’s. But hopefully not everyone needs be bisexual, for their existence and experiences to matter.
Um,
[...]
y’know, core focus of this site?)
I can recognize verbal signals of implicit condescension, so do be a bit careful over those.
“X doesn’t care about Y” is often used idiomatically to mean “Y does not change X”. This is clearly a true statement when it comes to rationality and gender/orientation; there are not separate versions of Bayes’ theorem for various preferences.
I will try to clarify points when I see them missed. This should not be interpreted as me siding with you in the debate, necessarily.
This was not one of my favorite posts on the site, but I did find it interesting—and, more particularly, I think there is space nearby for more interesting things. I think where I most strongly disagree with you is your classification (mentioned a few places) of this as dating advice at all. I see it as more of a case study in the exercise of rationality.
That rationality itself doesn’t care about sexuality, therefor, cuts both ways. If we are going to examine Luke’s rationality, we look at the evidence he has acquired and how he has turned that into conclusions. The conclusions are therefor material, but are not themselves the point of the post. In this case, it is a feature of that evidence that it was drawn from a skewed sample; it would not necessarily be better for Luke to generalize to cases excluded from sampling. While there are certainly other ways in which the sampling was nonuniform, this was a big, clear, intentional one and it makes sense to note it.
Why is it okay for lukeprog to post dating advice which are independent of gender-orientation-independent, but it’s not okay to post advice which are dependent on gender-orientation?
Sorry, I thought the logic was clear, but I can see how that wouldn’t have been clear:
ASSUME rationality is not changed by sexual orientation (see dlthomas if this is unclear)
IF (the advice is heterosexual oriented) THEN (the advice must be discussing something which is not rationality) OTHERWISE (the advice might be about rationality, but also still might be about something else)
I can recognize verbal signals of implicit condescension, so do be a bit careful over those.
Condescension there is intentional, but meant generally, not targeted at you specifically. Given that dating advice got posted, it’s clear that at least one person on this site is confused as to the focus of the site, and feels that their dating advice is appropriate to post.
Exactly! Instead of this being a generic discussion of how maybe you can get the romantic utilons you want from more than one person, suddenly it’s about the conflict between the educated man’s logical evolutionarily dictated interest being directed towards multiple concubines, and the irrational woman’s investment in marriage, imposed upon her by society. The shot’s composition itself supports this, with the man clearly on top by virtue of more than just being naturally taller.
Is all this Luke’s intent? Well, I’d like to think not, especially given his comments about trying to reduce the perception of misogynistic tones in the piece. But as he is a heterosexual man (yes? as far as I’ve been able to tell Luke’s not bisexual or at least didn’t present that way during the time period of these stories, please correct me if I’m wrong) Luke’s story doesn’t deviate from these norms, and the picture is definitely reinforcement.
Would an actual photo of Luke and Alice be better?
Now I’m imagining a picture of Luke with a redacted silhouette of a woman entitled “woman I am not attracted to any more”. There are arrows pointing to various lacking physical attributes lacking from an evolutionary psychology perspective, complete with sketches of what they should look like… Perhaps with a supplemental craziness vs hotness chart or two.
Okay, this would actually be really epic and I would support it assuming it didn’t have the whole fracking white background creating cutouts thing going on.
I think this could easily lead to an outside observer interpreting this very negatively. I believe the relevant vague catch-all term is “objectifying”. The entire approach of a silhouette for the female and an actual picture for the male could easily send very negative signals to a lot of people.
I think that the picture detracts from the article. It’s a deviation from most other LW pages, heteronormatizes the content, and in addition since the in-picture and out-of-picture background is white, the people look like cutouts in this really awkward way.
Yes. The image also makes the post look like some random “science finds: X!” journalism, and that’s not a good thing.
Some of those pages get obscene numbers of page views. Even heavily discounting the “conversion rate” here I think its possible for a net gain, if one objective is to provide novel rational insights to people.
Seems to reflect the content reasonably well actually, since it’s a man reflecting on his experience with women...
...true. But as I say here, I’d like to think that Luke intends the material to be more possible to generalize than merely about how men should deal with women, though the concrete examples his personal experience and pursued knowledge provide are relevant to the experience of a man in pursuit of women. In other words, these are “Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance”, not “How to Become Vir Sapientior and Get the Girl of Your Dreams”.
As Kevin said,
As for the picture heteronormatizing the content… it’s an explicitly hetero story, because it’s my story. Don’t you think it’d be weird to have a homosexual couple in the lead photo for my story?
People indeed like pictures- but stock photos on articles about romance and relationships pattern match to really awful websites.
I presume that tenshiko isn’t suggesting a photo of a gay couple. Tenshiko is suggesting no picture. Kevin’s point does still seem relevant in that context however.
You predict my opinion correctly—as I’ve said elsewhere I have other aesthetic concerns due to the picture itself. At the very least I think it’d look much better with a colored background, because of the cutout effect I mention.
I like the photo, but the deviation point is a good one, which you did not address. Was that purposeful?
Yes. I deviate because people like pictures, and LW is not adequately taking advantage of this fact.
Do LW readers like pictures? It seems like the feedback has primarily been negative. Know your audience...
Lukeprog said people like pictures. The feedback has been primarily negative because pictures are not the status quo and people, including LW readers, have a mild preference for cultural norms to be preserved, not challenged.
So you’re saying pictures add so little value that “aiee, this is a change” overwhelms it? Can we remove them and be done with it, then?
Crowds typically react negatively to change no matter what postive effects it brings. Wizards of the Coast has a track record of making decisions that were necessary and beneficial to the long term health of their games, each of which brought in new players and which old players eventually adapted to, and every single one of them produced an uproar.
To me, the proper response seems more likely to be using this as an opportunity to adjust our status quo bias downwards.
Yes, but in addition to it being change, it’s also genuinely a change I don’t like. I’ve visited enough website to know what I do and don’t like. A small topic indicator icon like you see on Slashdot would be fine.
I realize you’re getting rather piled on in this thread, so I’m somewhat reluctant to nitpick like this, but:
expresses an idea that is distinct from
It’s not all about you, basically.
I like pictures, though not necessarily these particular pictures. Still, I like seeing at a glance a picture that has some connection to the topic of the article.
Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is a change.
No. It’s an explicitly hetero story because you wrote it that way.
You also entirely ignore the options of not having a picture. If you can’t find any inspiration for a picture which isn’t tied to sexual orientation, maybe that would be the best option?
Are you requesting that he omit the genders of the participants in his life, including his romantic life?
If so, are you prepared to support with evidence an argument that hetero romance and the hetero dating scene is completely identical in all aspects to gay romance and the gay dating scene, and therefore knowing the genders and the sexual orientation of the participants isn’t at all necessary to be communicated?
In context I agree with your general point, but this seems like a strong demand for particular proof. To establish the point handoflixue would not need to establish that they are ‘completely identical in all aspects’ but rather that they have enough similarities for the genders and orientations to not be relevant in this context.
(Incidentally, I’m a het male who agrees that there’s been a serious problem of focusing on advice for het males here. The most obvious solution is for the people who aren’t in this set to write more general pieces. Or volunteer to work with someone like luke to coauthor a piece that is more broad. There’s not some magic rule that luke and a few other people have to write all the posts on this subject.)
Um, if the “heterosexual male romance” angle is essential to this story, then it’s heterosexual dating advice, and LessWrong is not a dating advice site. So lukeprog should stop posting about it. Rationality (y’know, core focus of this site?) does not, to my knowledge, care whether I am a heterosexual male.
I will also point out that Alicorn managed a relatively gender-free story, by focusing on the rationality and internal aspects, rather than on dating advice and “how to get a girl”.
How does this follow? Why is it okay for lukeprog to post dating advice which are independent of gender-orientation-independent, but it’s not okay to post advice which are dependent on gender-orientation? You may argue that the former interests more people, but that’s just a difference in the number of people that may be interested, not a qualitative difference.
I doubt you believe that all rationalists must be by necessity bisexuals.
First of all, is this sentence supposed to actually mean something? What would it mean for “Rationality” to “care” about your orientation, as opposed to “rationality” not caring about it?
Secondly, if anything, rationality means that you care about the elements that are relevant, and you don’t care about the elements that aren’t relevant. You’ve still not argued that sexual-orientation wasn’t actually relevant to Lukeprog’s story. Don’t you think it would affect, for starters, whether he would seriously break up with someone and argue it’s because they lacked evolution-promoted fitness markers?
And I will point out that Alicorn is bisexual, so gender would be less relevant to her criteria than to lukeprog’s. But hopefully not everyone needs be bisexual, for their existence and experiences to matter.
I can recognize verbal signals of implicit condescension, so do be a bit careful over those.
“X doesn’t care about Y” is often used idiomatically to mean “Y does not change X”. This is clearly a true statement when it comes to rationality and gender/orientation; there are not separate versions of Bayes’ theorem for various preferences.
Bingo :)
I will try to clarify points when I see them missed. This should not be interpreted as me siding with you in the debate, necessarily.
This was not one of my favorite posts on the site, but I did find it interesting—and, more particularly, I think there is space nearby for more interesting things. I think where I most strongly disagree with you is your classification (mentioned a few places) of this as dating advice at all. I see it as more of a case study in the exercise of rationality.
That rationality itself doesn’t care about sexuality, therefor, cuts both ways. If we are going to examine Luke’s rationality, we look at the evidence he has acquired and how he has turned that into conclusions. The conclusions are therefor material, but are not themselves the point of the post. In this case, it is a feature of that evidence that it was drawn from a skewed sample; it would not necessarily be better for Luke to generalize to cases excluded from sampling. While there are certainly other ways in which the sampling was nonuniform, this was a big, clear, intentional one and it makes sense to note it.
Seriously? I’m being down voted for confirming that somebody else had the correct interpretation of what I said? o.o
This kind of moral outrage is a bad reaction to have to voting.
That’s not outrage, that’s genuine confusion.
My apologies.
Why is this being downvoted? I’d be confused too.
Sorry, I thought the logic was clear, but I can see how that wouldn’t have been clear:
ASSUME rationality is not changed by sexual orientation (see dlthomas if this is unclear)
IF (the advice is heterosexual oriented) THEN (the advice must be discussing something which is not rationality) OTHERWISE (the advice might be about rationality, but also still might be about something else)
Condescension there is intentional, but meant generally, not targeted at you specifically. Given that dating advice got posted, it’s clear that at least one person on this site is confused as to the focus of the site, and feels that their dating advice is appropriate to post.
Color me marginalized.
Exactly! Instead of this being a generic discussion of how maybe you can get the romantic utilons you want from more than one person, suddenly it’s about the conflict between the educated man’s logical evolutionarily dictated interest being directed towards multiple concubines, and the irrational woman’s investment in marriage, imposed upon her by society. The shot’s composition itself supports this, with the man clearly on top by virtue of more than just being naturally taller.
Is all this Luke’s intent? Well, I’d like to think not, especially given his comments about trying to reduce the perception of misogynistic tones in the piece. But as he is a heterosexual man (yes? as far as I’ve been able to tell Luke’s not bisexual or at least didn’t present that way during the time period of these stories, please correct me if I’m wrong) Luke’s story doesn’t deviate from these norms, and the picture is definitely reinforcement.
Would an actual photo of Luke and Alice be better?
Now I’m imagining a picture of Luke with a redacted silhouette of a woman entitled “woman I am not attracted to any more”. There are arrows pointing to various lacking physical attributes lacking from an evolutionary psychology perspective, complete with sketches of what they should look like… Perhaps with a supplemental craziness vs hotness chart or two.
Okay, this would actually be really epic and I would support it assuming it didn’t have the whole fracking white background creating cutouts thing going on.
I think this could easily lead to an outside observer interpreting this very negatively. I believe the relevant vague catch-all term is “objectifying”. The entire approach of a silhouette for the female and an actual picture for the male could easily send very negative signals to a lot of people.
Agreed, but the idea still made me laugh :)