Women famously say “sometimes I just want to be listened to. Don’t try to solve my problems, just show me that you care.” When men do this, women say “yes, that’s what I’m talking about” and attempt to reinforce that behavior, perhaps unconsciously.
The people that own the bodies that I find attractive are women. If you pay attention women will tell you what they need in order to want to have sex with you.
Evolutionary psychology does not generally leave us conscious of why we react socially the way we react. Who can deny the widespread nature of men acting in a set of ways to attract a woman sexually? Who can deny the widespread nature of women acting certain ways to attract men? That we do this because we want the other person to be attracted to us, and not “sincerely” really mean we all hold each other in contempt?
Does the fact that I hold an evolutionary psychological interpretation of what is going on and express that understanding in unromantic terms make me any more or less likely to hold the object of my affection in contempt?
Oh, and the answer to your final question here is probably ‘yes’. The way you understand and talk about your own attitudes and activities definitely has feedback into said attitudes and activities.
On trying to be attractive: no, that doesn’t automatically translate as contempt. But then, not all attempting to be attractive is deceptive. You say that ‘women’ (all women it seems: this evo psych attitude seems to come with a side-serving of old-fashioned generalisation) want guys to ‘show that they care’. Ever thought that people saying that (even men!) might actually want people to care, not just to pretend?
I’m not saying we should be unconscious of how we’re built. I’m saying that the way we’re built itself means that if we treat something as an abstract scientific issue we experience it differently to if we treat it as a matter of personal relationships. Are you saying that the way we explain and discuss our actions doesn’t affect in turn how we act and think?
I agree with you on this. It matters whether we are conscious of something, it matters because we will act differently.
The way in which it matters is that we can fully engage our rational powers when we are conscious of something, whereas when we act unconsciously of it we rely only on what was hardcoded in.
Consider launching shells. Running irrationally, we would point the mortar in the right direction and tilt it up about the right amount. We would even tend to correct by tilting it further up and down to get the range closer. But using our rational mind, we develop a rangefinder optically, and a lookup table that may even include corrections for wind.
Perhaps the entire point of the rational mind is that it gets us a level deeper into optimizing a broad class of actions. We contain a model of the world, we play out scenarios in our mind, we remember what worked and didn’t work.
So here I am, an ubernerd, wondering why I don’t get the hot chicks while the knuckle-draggers around me have wives who look like hairdressers. They hang out with the guys, bragging about their misbehavior with other women, referring to the wife as “the ball and chain.” Then on the way home they pick up a bottle of white wine and some flowers because they want to get laid.
Am I supposed to learn nothing from watching this? Or pretend I’ve learned nothing?
Yes, I agree with you, the entire point of becoming conscious of something is that we will treat it differently. We will analyze it, figure out the moving parts. We will learn and optimize.
And when I go home with a bottle of white wine and some flowers I can truly say to whatever woman it is that I did it because I hoped she would enjoy it. And that I know that no one is “happy” unless the woman is “happy,” does that make me a selfish monster living in my head?
Ah: this may be the underlying confusion. I don’t see the instrumentalist evo psych as bad and everything else as good. I see any deceptive, treating people as things approach as not valuing people.
I don’t see the people who brag about cheating and slag off their wives as models to aspire to. This is both in that I don’t particularly value the outcome they’re aiming for, and that I object to the deception and the treating people as things.
But on the broader point about attitude mattering: obviously it might change the activity in that way. But my point was more that you can’t step outside of your own psychology and humanity: thinking about people in this detached strategic way is not something done by a person looking in from outside the system: your sex life isn’t a game of The Sims. My intuition and experience is that doing something in a way constantly focused at trying to get individual bits of stuff out of it (’I will now buy this wine to get sex, I will now comfort my friend so that they will help me move house next week, I will try to understand this subject I’m studying so that I get a higher mark in the exam) leads to you having less fun and doing less good than engaging with things in their own terms (which is compatible with being aware of the underlying dynamics).
There’s also an issue of sincerity here, which to unpack into something that might be more appealing to your approach, is essentially game theoric. If you reassess for your benefit at every point, people can’t rely on you in tough situations. I would like people to be able to rely on me, and to be able to rely on them. Taking other people seriously and relating to them as people rather than strategies allows you to essentially pre-commit.
Women famously say “sometimes I just want to be listened to. Don’t try to solve my problems, just show me that you care.”
I generally decide whether to give people emotional support or concrete help based on what their problem is and on which way they tell me about it, not based on what type of genitalia they have. (It does correlate with what type of genitalia they have, but the correlation is not overwhelming—the correlation between genitalia and (say) height is much stronger.)
Women famously say “sometimes I just want to be listened to. Don’t try to solve my problems, just show me that you care.”
I would interpret that as being specific to problems. There may also be women who would like feigned interest in dopey things they’re into, or they may prefer to just discuss them with their girlfriends who are actually interested.
When men do this, women say “yes, that’s what I’m talking about” and attempt to reinforce that behavior, perhaps unconsciously.
Explicitly saying this can be taken at face value, I think, but unconsciously reinforcing the behaviour may be meant to reinforce actual interested listening. You can’t deduce which is the true preference.
The reason to think that sincerity may not be the main thing is the seeming fact that sexual attraction is pre-rational. I think it is quite common, especially among older humans, to WANT to have the close pre-rational relationship with someone who rationally fits a pile of criteria for you, but to not so strongly feel the sexual attraction as you did when you were younger and when they were younger. At that point, you thank them for wearing makeup and flattering clothing and presenting decolletage and batting their eyes at you and making you feel like a million dollars in a pre-rational way. If it brings the relationship over the pre-rational threshold for some hotness, then you both feel like winners.
Like any other tool, hacking attraction can be used for purposes you think are good and it can be used for purposes you think are bad. But given the prevalence of makeup, push up bras, slinky black and red dresses, hair coloring, flattery, brand-name signalling of wealth etc etc etc, I think hacking attraction is quite the norm across broad swathes of the population, inside and outside the rationalist community.
Women famously say “sometimes I just want to be listened to. Don’t try to solve my problems, just show me that you care.” When men do this, women say “yes, that’s what I’m talking about” and attempt to reinforce that behavior, perhaps unconsciously.
The people that own the bodies that I find attractive are women. If you pay attention women will tell you what they need in order to want to have sex with you.
Evolutionary psychology does not generally leave us conscious of why we react socially the way we react. Who can deny the widespread nature of men acting in a set of ways to attract a woman sexually? Who can deny the widespread nature of women acting certain ways to attract men? That we do this because we want the other person to be attracted to us, and not “sincerely” really mean we all hold each other in contempt?
Does the fact that I hold an evolutionary psychological interpretation of what is going on and express that understanding in unromantic terms make me any more or less likely to hold the object of my affection in contempt?
Oh, and the answer to your final question here is probably ‘yes’. The way you understand and talk about your own attitudes and activities definitely has feedback into said attitudes and activities.
On trying to be attractive: no, that doesn’t automatically translate as contempt. But then, not all attempting to be attractive is deceptive. You say that ‘women’ (all women it seems: this evo psych attitude seems to come with a side-serving of old-fashioned generalisation) want guys to ‘show that they care’. Ever thought that people saying that (even men!) might actually want people to care, not just to pretend?
So as long as we operate unconscious of how we are built we are OK? A surprising assumption for a utilitarian.
I’m not saying we should be unconscious of how we’re built. I’m saying that the way we’re built itself means that if we treat something as an abstract scientific issue we experience it differently to if we treat it as a matter of personal relationships. Are you saying that the way we explain and discuss our actions doesn’t affect in turn how we act and think?
I agree with you on this. It matters whether we are conscious of something, it matters because we will act differently.
The way in which it matters is that we can fully engage our rational powers when we are conscious of something, whereas when we act unconsciously of it we rely only on what was hardcoded in.
Consider launching shells. Running irrationally, we would point the mortar in the right direction and tilt it up about the right amount. We would even tend to correct by tilting it further up and down to get the range closer. But using our rational mind, we develop a rangefinder optically, and a lookup table that may even include corrections for wind.
Perhaps the entire point of the rational mind is that it gets us a level deeper into optimizing a broad class of actions. We contain a model of the world, we play out scenarios in our mind, we remember what worked and didn’t work.
So here I am, an ubernerd, wondering why I don’t get the hot chicks while the knuckle-draggers around me have wives who look like hairdressers. They hang out with the guys, bragging about their misbehavior with other women, referring to the wife as “the ball and chain.” Then on the way home they pick up a bottle of white wine and some flowers because they want to get laid.
Am I supposed to learn nothing from watching this? Or pretend I’ve learned nothing?
Yes, I agree with you, the entire point of becoming conscious of something is that we will treat it differently. We will analyze it, figure out the moving parts. We will learn and optimize.
And when I go home with a bottle of white wine and some flowers I can truly say to whatever woman it is that I did it because I hoped she would enjoy it. And that I know that no one is “happy” unless the woman is “happy,” does that make me a selfish monster living in my head?
Ah: this may be the underlying confusion. I don’t see the instrumentalist evo psych as bad and everything else as good. I see any deceptive, treating people as things approach as not valuing people.
I don’t see the people who brag about cheating and slag off their wives as models to aspire to. This is both in that I don’t particularly value the outcome they’re aiming for, and that I object to the deception and the treating people as things.
But on the broader point about attitude mattering: obviously it might change the activity in that way. But my point was more that you can’t step outside of your own psychology and humanity: thinking about people in this detached strategic way is not something done by a person looking in from outside the system: your sex life isn’t a game of The Sims. My intuition and experience is that doing something in a way constantly focused at trying to get individual bits of stuff out of it (’I will now buy this wine to get sex, I will now comfort my friend so that they will help me move house next week, I will try to understand this subject I’m studying so that I get a higher mark in the exam) leads to you having less fun and doing less good than engaging with things in their own terms (which is compatible with being aware of the underlying dynamics).
There’s also an issue of sincerity here, which to unpack into something that might be more appealing to your approach, is essentially game theoric. If you reassess for your benefit at every point, people can’t rely on you in tough situations. I would like people to be able to rely on me, and to be able to rely on them. Taking other people seriously and relating to them as people rather than strategies allows you to essentially pre-commit.
I generally decide whether to give people emotional support or concrete help based on what their problem is and on which way they tell me about it, not based on what type of genitalia they have. (It does correlate with what type of genitalia they have, but the correlation is not overwhelming—the correlation between genitalia and (say) height is much stronger.)
I would interpret that as being specific to problems. There may also be women who would like feigned interest in dopey things they’re into, or they may prefer to just discuss them with their girlfriends who are actually interested.
Explicitly saying this can be taken at face value, I think, but unconsciously reinforcing the behaviour may be meant to reinforce actual interested listening. You can’t deduce which is the true preference.
The reason to think that sincerity may not be the main thing is the seeming fact that sexual attraction is pre-rational. I think it is quite common, especially among older humans, to WANT to have the close pre-rational relationship with someone who rationally fits a pile of criteria for you, but to not so strongly feel the sexual attraction as you did when you were younger and when they were younger. At that point, you thank them for wearing makeup and flattering clothing and presenting decolletage and batting their eyes at you and making you feel like a million dollars in a pre-rational way. If it brings the relationship over the pre-rational threshold for some hotness, then you both feel like winners.
Like any other tool, hacking attraction can be used for purposes you think are good and it can be used for purposes you think are bad. But given the prevalence of makeup, push up bras, slinky black and red dresses, hair coloring, flattery, brand-name signalling of wealth etc etc etc, I think hacking attraction is quite the norm across broad swathes of the population, inside and outside the rationalist community.