Survey results show that 57.5% of people here are single (plus most a likely large number of people who are in less than happy relationships with not very desirable partners, and this it’s best they can do and stay in them because it beats being single).
Let me express again a shock at this figure, which seems a lot higher than society average. As far as I can tell techniques developed by PUA community for getting romantic and sexual partners are the only case ever of evolutionary psychology getting used to achieve very significant practical results in people’s lives. So why doesn’t absolutely everyone here learn them?
It cannot possibly be lack of interest, unless your emotions are very far from human mainstream sex, affection, connection etc. are probably very high on your list of priorities. So when you can have a solution to a major problem in your life using your favourite tools of rationality and evolutionary psychology, why not take it?
Also advice like avoiding people with opposite political views makes me just sad. That’s not how it works. You have a wrong model.
So when you can have a solution to a major problem in your life using your favourite tools of rationality and evolutionary psychology, why not take it?
But where are the peer-reviewed studies?!!! (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Edit to add actually useful information: most PUA material focuses on what’s called “club game”, and is therefore unlikely to be as useful for an introverted rationalist who values IQ and thoughtfulness over conventional attractiveness. The keywords you want to look for are “day game” (talking to people in non-nightclub surroundings), “social proof” and “social networking” (not the online kind!), and “charisma arts” or “conversation skills”. There is a lot of useful information out there for that sort of thing, that doesn’t require you to lie or make up stories. (Which is really not a great way to start a lifelong relationship, especially if—as Alicorn suggests—you’re dating within your overall social network.)
I think club game is the focus of most big PUA names because they became big before the big advent of online dating, and day game is considered much more difficult. I checked what David DeAngelo had to say about online dating, and he basically advises getting the woman off the internet and on the phone / for a coffee as soon as possible, what will definitely work if your offline game is already good, but really misses vast potential of online dating.
I’d guess the next generation of PUA artists will much more focused on exploring the full potential of online interaction—they might already be here, just not as well known.
Right now there’s so much PUA material with all kinds of approaches that I would be surprised if there was any that didn’t fit everyone’s goals and circumstances. There’s also quite well developed PUA community that can help separate valuable material from garbage.
I checked what David DeAngelo had to say about online dating, and he basically advises getting the woman off the internet and on the phone / for a coffee as soon as possible,
This is probably because most of his market will want to quickly validate that the woman looks like their profile. I’m on one or two PUA companies’ mailing lists, and recently saw a promo for tips to help you figure out if a woman’s picture is fake, or signals other undesirable qualities.
I’d guess the next generation of PUA artists will much more focused on exploring the full potential of online interaction—they might already be here, just not as well known.
Good point. In my wild days it was BBSes, not the Internet, but I met a lot of the women I dated or ONS-ed online, including my future wife. We didn’t have online pictures then (took forever to download, and nobody had a way to get them into the machines in the first place), so text was king, and that meant a goldmine for writerly types like moi.
For some reason, though, I tend to forget that other people might need help with their online game, since I was sort of a “natural” in that limited sphere. ;-)
This is probably because most of his market will want to quickly validate that the woman looks like their profile.
I never encountered fake picture problem, what makes me think it must be very rare. Most people don’t even do something as simple as selecting their best photo (professionally taken, or with proper hotornot testing), they just put a few random pictures. If you care a lot you can just ask for some extra pictures or webcam session (right now most people don’t have webcams, but it’s only matter of time), but it’s not really worth it.
I’m almost absolutely sure David DeAngelo simply wants to reuse his existing system in a new context, instead of developing a new approach. That’s perfectly understandable if you’re already good offline. If you’re not, but you’re smart and good at writing, I would I would advice going directly online to start with, and not bothering much with the club game.
PUAs make claims that are based on naturalistic observation, and hence lack rigorous scientific backing. I personally think that PUA “theory” is probably generally accurate and actionable, but I think many LW style rationalists doubt the claims of PUAs, because they seem grandiose and self-serving. Indeed, I suppose that many LW patrons consider PUAs to be manipulative and immoral, and don’t use PUA advice for that reason.
Also, don’t forget that LW might have a large number of atomistic loners who don’t want to be in relationships, and this might contribute to the high percentage of singles.
PUAs make claims that are based on naturalistic observation, and hence lack rigorous scientific backing.
Correct. Naturalistic observation is indeed inferior to rigorous science on mating preferences… except that the latter doesn’t really exist yet, at least not to a degree that it is sufficiently comprehensive and actionable. For people lacking knowledge or experience, naturalistic observation, backed by a little evolutionary psychology still beats, hands down, anything else available right now, especially the most common alternatives (a) blundering around without knowing what you are doing, and (b) following the outdated conventional advice.
Although PUAs should be studying studying science (well, they are, though they are making a few oversimplifications), scientists should also be studying PUAs by taking hypotheses from their theories for testing. But until scientists catch up, a guy need some ideas that are better than his nerdy male brain’s model of women combined with the advice of Maxim, his mom, and his friend Joe.
Indeed, I suppose that many LW patrons consider PUAs to be manipulative and immoral, and don’t use PUA advice for that reason.
Yes, there are attitudes and techniques in the seduction community that are unethical, or not as ethical as a better option even if they are not actually unethical. In other cases, observers might have overly narrow views of sexual morality, or misunderstand the nature of PUA techniques. Indeed, a blanket rejection of PUA techniques really shows that the person involved doesn’t know very much about pickup, because there is plenty of stuff in the community that works and can’t be reasonably considered unethical outside of certain religious or radical feminist frameworks.
Personally, I’ve found that I can add my own moral constraints to what I practice. In fact, I go through implicit calculations about just about everything I do to figure out the expected value of the behavior for both myself and the other person. There is some stuff that I just won’t use, even though I know it can be effective (examples upon request). Yet since I have strengths in other areas, I can take this moral stand without destroying my practical success. It is precisely because of my pickup skills that I don’t have to make a choice between morality and any kind of success.
Another reason that people on LW would shy away from pickup is that they perceive it as inauthentic and incompatible with their personalities. In response, I would make a similar argument that I made about ethics. If someone is blanketly rejecting pickup out of authenticity, I would suspect that they have an overly narrow notion of their identity. For instance, I had identity-related beliefs such as “I’m not a people person,” or “I’m shy,” or “I don’t do small-talk.” Yet such qualities like shyness are really not intrinsic parts of people’s personality or identity. Sometimes, to find out what your personality is, you need to stretch it to its limits, and then see what shape it snaps back into.
In my experience, it was possible to take what I wanted from the seduction community and increase my success with women by orders of magnitude, without selling my soul or my identity. This does indeed sound “grandiose,” but that doesn’t make it not true. YMMV.
In my experience, it was possible to take what I wanted from the seduction community and increase my success with women by orders of magnitude, without selling my soul or my identity. This does indeed sound “grandiose,” but that doesn’t make it not true. YMMV.
Orders of magnitude improvement is definitely possible, especially if you start really low (or at pretty much zero). Most people would be really happy with as little as doubling their success rates, what is really trivial with very mild approaches.
Indeed, I suppose that many LW patrons consider PUAs to be manipulative and immoral, and don’t use PUA advice for that reason.
I’m yet to see someone who has the skills but doesn’t use them for moral reasons. While it’s possible to use them immorally, there’s nothing about PUA skills that’s inherently immoral.
Also, don’t forget that LW might have a large number of atomistic loners who don’t want to be in relationships, and this might contribute to the high percentage of singles.
It would require a vast deviation from human emotions not to want any kind of relationship (committed or casual, sexual or romantic etc.) with any partner whatsoever. The more likely explanation is that they don’t want the kind of relationships with the kind of partners they think they can get, which is basically lack of skills together with perhaps too much rationalization (which is considered wrong thing to do on this site).
Let me express again a shock at this figure, which seems a lot higher than society average. As far as I can tell techniques developed by PUA community for getting romantic and sexual partners are the only case ever of evolutionary psychology getting used to achieve very significant practical results in people’s lives. So why doesn’t absolutely everyone here learn them?
They don’t work nearly as well as advertised.
They don’t work as well as going to the gym a few times a week.
They have low information density. If you chose to study just the works of David DeAngelo, that would be about (I’m guessing, but not wildly) 25 hours of DVDs and 60 hours of audio, plus another 200 hours of recommended readings, not counting practice and review.
You would probably be better off taking that time and learning how to dance, play an instrument, or speak a foreign language.
Does anything work as well as advertised? Anecdotally, I’ve seen most people who try it getting some sort of improvement, and orders of magnitude improvement is not uncommon. Unless you’ve tried it yourself, or have friends who have, or have some empirical evidence, then I don’t know where this claim comes from. Even if this improvement doesn’t quite measure up to some of the more sleazy marketing materials, it can still be substantially better for some guys than any other alternative currently available.
They don’t work as well as going to the gym a few times a week.
Evidence or reasoning, please.
They have low information density. If you chose to study just the works of David DeAngelo, that would be about (I’m guessing, but not wildly) 25 hours of DVDs and 60 hours of audio, plus another 200 hours of recommended readings, not counting practice and review.
This one is correct. You have to filter through this stuff and figure out what applies to you, how to become an intelligent consumer, and how to throw out what you regard as incompatible with your ethics or personality. Low information density is unfortunate, but it will have to be dealt with by those who don’t have better options.
You would probably be better off taking that time and learning how to dance, play an instrument, or speak a foreign language.
What evidence do you have for this claim? Anecdotally, there are many men who do these things but still lack success. For me, being multi-talented got me some attention, yet that attention was useless when I couldn’t capitalize on it.
The advice you are giving is pretty much conventional wisdom. If I had followed it years ago, I suspect I would still be more-or-less at where I was then. Instead, I have wildly more success than back then, and I’ve seen other guys accomplish the same thing. Consequently, I hope you are not merely repeating conventional wisdom and that you have some additional evidence or arguments for the claims of this post; otherwise, the overconfidence displayed might lead others astray.
Survey results show that 57.5% of people here are single (plus most a likely large number of people who are in less than happy relationships with not very desirable partners, and this it’s best they can do and stay in them because it beats being single).
Let me express again a shock at this figure, which seems a lot higher than society average. As far as I can tell techniques developed by PUA community for getting romantic and sexual partners are the only case ever of evolutionary psychology getting used to achieve very significant practical results in people’s lives. So why doesn’t absolutely everyone here learn them?
It cannot possibly be lack of interest, unless your emotions are very far from human mainstream sex, affection, connection etc. are probably very high on your list of priorities. So when you can have a solution to a major problem in your life using your favourite tools of rationality and evolutionary psychology, why not take it?
Also advice like avoiding people with opposite political views makes me just sad. That’s not how it works. You have a wrong model.
But where are the peer-reviewed studies?!!! (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Edit to add actually useful information: most PUA material focuses on what’s called “club game”, and is therefore unlikely to be as useful for an introverted rationalist who values IQ and thoughtfulness over conventional attractiveness. The keywords you want to look for are “day game” (talking to people in non-nightclub surroundings), “social proof” and “social networking” (not the online kind!), and “charisma arts” or “conversation skills”. There is a lot of useful information out there for that sort of thing, that doesn’t require you to lie or make up stories. (Which is really not a great way to start a lifelong relationship, especially if—as Alicorn suggests—you’re dating within your overall social network.)
I think club game is the focus of most big PUA names because they became big before the big advent of online dating, and day game is considered much more difficult. I checked what David DeAngelo had to say about online dating, and he basically advises getting the woman off the internet and on the phone / for a coffee as soon as possible, what will definitely work if your offline game is already good, but really misses vast potential of online dating.
I’d guess the next generation of PUA artists will much more focused on exploring the full potential of online interaction—they might already be here, just not as well known.
Right now there’s so much PUA material with all kinds of approaches that I would be surprised if there was any that didn’t fit everyone’s goals and circumstances. There’s also quite well developed PUA community that can help separate valuable material from garbage.
This is probably because most of his market will want to quickly validate that the woman looks like their profile. I’m on one or two PUA companies’ mailing lists, and recently saw a promo for tips to help you figure out if a woman’s picture is fake, or signals other undesirable qualities.
Good point. In my wild days it was BBSes, not the Internet, but I met a lot of the women I dated or ONS-ed online, including my future wife. We didn’t have online pictures then (took forever to download, and nobody had a way to get them into the machines in the first place), so text was king, and that meant a goldmine for writerly types like moi.
For some reason, though, I tend to forget that other people might need help with their online game, since I was sort of a “natural” in that limited sphere. ;-)
I never encountered fake picture problem, what makes me think it must be very rare. Most people don’t even do something as simple as selecting their best photo (professionally taken, or with proper hotornot testing), they just put a few random pictures. If you care a lot you can just ask for some extra pictures or webcam session (right now most people don’t have webcams, but it’s only matter of time), but it’s not really worth it.
I’m almost absolutely sure David DeAngelo simply wants to reuse his existing system in a new context, instead of developing a new approach. That’s perfectly understandable if you’re already good offline. If you’re not, but you’re smart and good at writing, I would I would advice going directly online to start with, and not bothering much with the club game.
PUAs make claims that are based on naturalistic observation, and hence lack rigorous scientific backing. I personally think that PUA “theory” is probably generally accurate and actionable, but I think many LW style rationalists doubt the claims of PUAs, because they seem grandiose and self-serving. Indeed, I suppose that many LW patrons consider PUAs to be manipulative and immoral, and don’t use PUA advice for that reason.
Also, don’t forget that LW might have a large number of atomistic loners who don’t want to be in relationships, and this might contribute to the high percentage of singles.
Correct. Naturalistic observation is indeed inferior to rigorous science on mating preferences… except that the latter doesn’t really exist yet, at least not to a degree that it is sufficiently comprehensive and actionable. For people lacking knowledge or experience, naturalistic observation, backed by a little evolutionary psychology still beats, hands down, anything else available right now, especially the most common alternatives (a) blundering around without knowing what you are doing, and (b) following the outdated conventional advice.
Although PUAs should be studying studying science (well, they are, though they are making a few oversimplifications), scientists should also be studying PUAs by taking hypotheses from their theories for testing. But until scientists catch up, a guy need some ideas that are better than his nerdy male brain’s model of women combined with the advice of Maxim, his mom, and his friend Joe.
Yes, there are attitudes and techniques in the seduction community that are unethical, or not as ethical as a better option even if they are not actually unethical. In other cases, observers might have overly narrow views of sexual morality, or misunderstand the nature of PUA techniques. Indeed, a blanket rejection of PUA techniques really shows that the person involved doesn’t know very much about pickup, because there is plenty of stuff in the community that works and can’t be reasonably considered unethical outside of certain religious or radical feminist frameworks.
Personally, I’ve found that I can add my own moral constraints to what I practice. In fact, I go through implicit calculations about just about everything I do to figure out the expected value of the behavior for both myself and the other person. There is some stuff that I just won’t use, even though I know it can be effective (examples upon request). Yet since I have strengths in other areas, I can take this moral stand without destroying my practical success. It is precisely because of my pickup skills that I don’t have to make a choice between morality and any kind of success.
Another reason that people on LW would shy away from pickup is that they perceive it as inauthentic and incompatible with their personalities. In response, I would make a similar argument that I made about ethics. If someone is blanketly rejecting pickup out of authenticity, I would suspect that they have an overly narrow notion of their identity. For instance, I had identity-related beliefs such as “I’m not a people person,” or “I’m shy,” or “I don’t do small-talk.” Yet such qualities like shyness are really not intrinsic parts of people’s personality or identity. Sometimes, to find out what your personality is, you need to stretch it to its limits, and then see what shape it snaps back into.
In my experience, it was possible to take what I wanted from the seduction community and increase my success with women by orders of magnitude, without selling my soul or my identity. This does indeed sound “grandiose,” but that doesn’t make it not true. YMMV.
Orders of magnitude improvement is definitely possible, especially if you start really low (or at pretty much zero). Most people would be really happy with as little as doubling their success rates, what is really trivial with very mild approaches.
I’m yet to see someone who has the skills but doesn’t use them for moral reasons. While it’s possible to use them immorally, there’s nothing about PUA skills that’s inherently immoral.
It would require a vast deviation from human emotions not to want any kind of relationship (committed or casual, sexual or romantic etc.) with any partner whatsoever. The more likely explanation is that they don’t want the kind of relationships with the kind of partners they think they can get, which is basically lack of skills together with perhaps too much rationalization (which is considered wrong thing to do on this site).
They don’t work nearly as well as advertised.
They don’t work as well as going to the gym a few times a week.
They have low information density. If you chose to study just the works of David DeAngelo, that would be about (I’m guessing, but not wildly) 25 hours of DVDs and 60 hours of audio, plus another 200 hours of recommended readings, not counting practice and review.
You would probably be better off taking that time and learning how to dance, play an instrument, or speak a foreign language.
Does anything work as well as advertised? Anecdotally, I’ve seen most people who try it getting some sort of improvement, and orders of magnitude improvement is not uncommon. Unless you’ve tried it yourself, or have friends who have, or have some empirical evidence, then I don’t know where this claim comes from. Even if this improvement doesn’t quite measure up to some of the more sleazy marketing materials, it can still be substantially better for some guys than any other alternative currently available.
Evidence or reasoning, please.
This one is correct. You have to filter through this stuff and figure out what applies to you, how to become an intelligent consumer, and how to throw out what you regard as incompatible with your ethics or personality. Low information density is unfortunate, but it will have to be dealt with by those who don’t have better options.
What evidence do you have for this claim? Anecdotally, there are many men who do these things but still lack success. For me, being multi-talented got me some attention, yet that attention was useless when I couldn’t capitalize on it.
The advice you are giving is pretty much conventional wisdom. If I had followed it years ago, I suspect I would still be more-or-less at where I was then. Instead, I have wildly more success than back then, and I’ve seen other guys accomplish the same thing. Consequently, I hope you are not merely repeating conventional wisdom and that you have some additional evidence or arguments for the claims of this post; otherwise, the overconfidence displayed might lead others astray.