The phrase “If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best” is sometimes the idea.
I would assume that your current “worst” is the best predictor of your future behavior. And frankly, shouldn’t I? I think it is a consensus among the people who use the word that shit-tests never end.
I am ambivalent about the whole idea of shit-testing. On one hand, it makes sense to test your partner’s reaction to your bad behavior. Because, if you stay together for a long time, sooner or later some bad behavior will happen; life will throw a lot of stress on you, and you will snap. You need the kind of partner who can survive it gracefully. If it is someone who would collapse, or go nuclear, that is a time-bomb; better avoid that.
On the other hand, if someone occassionally behaves badly even when everything goes fine, it doesn’t exactly give me confidence that the person will try their best when things get hard. When a life-or-death situation happens (and by the same logic, sooner or later it will), would you want your partner to choose exactly that moment for their next shit-test? And what makes you so sure they wouldn’t, if they already do it habitually?
So… shit-testing allows you to select a better partner… but at the same time, “being the kind of person who shit-tests their partner” makes you a worse partner. (Which is kinda your partner’s problem, not yours, but still...)
It’s like those “if you really love me, you will do X for me” situations, when someone demands an arbitrary sacrifice X as a proof of love. If you are too focused on signaling your love, you may miss the larger picture, which is that a person who loves you would not ask you to make arbitrary sacrifices. So you are setting yourself up for a one-sided relationship; and the right answer would be to walk away, and find someone else who is willing to reciprocate your love. (Even if you believe that sufficiently strong one-sided love may eventually elicit the same feelings in the other party, it still makes more sense to choose someone who will not abuse you before that happens, assuming it happens at all.)
How to get out of this dilemma? Arbitrarily testing your partner is bad, leaving them untested is dangerous...
Perhaps, if you could observe your partner in tests that life throws at them naturally. That would require to spend a lot of time together. If you want to speed it up, you could choose a situation that increases stress levels naturally, for some good reason. For example, spend a vacation in mountains together. Or something else that gets you tired and uncomfortable, but for reasons better than one person choosing to annoy the other.
(I wonder if shit-testing was also so frequent in the past, or whether it is an adaptation to the modern dating market where you have to test your partners quickly.)
Firstly, thanks for you comments and for taking the time to think through this.
Firstly, I contest your underlying assumption that the natural state of the mating market is free of manipulation. The natural state of courtship is full of probing, testing, manipulation, assessment and generally devious 0-sum fuckery. We just don’t notice because most of these behaviors are subconscious. So at a basic level, there’s no consequentialist reason to think the subconscious manipulations are more ethical than conscious manipulations. There is reason to think the opposite because I can at least consider the consequences of my conscious manipulations.
So… shit-testing allows you to select a better partner… but at the same time, “being the kind of person who shit-tests their partner” makes you a worse partner. (Which is kinda your partner’s problem, not yours, but still...)
You can shit-test for lots of different attributes. Your comment mostly assumes I would shit test for loyalty, which I agree is a really bad idea.
Firstly, it’s the most unethical form of shittest because you’re training the person to follow your commands unquestioningly, which is really bad for them.
Its the most hackable shittest.
There’s a failure mode where you fall in love with the power or they fall in love with it or something like that
Finally, I don’t actually think my mate retention is correlated with testable loyalty (Christians and non-Christians get divorced at the same rate despite different loyalty norms).
I suspect the best mate-retention strategy is to maintain your own attractiveness (behaviorally and physically) over the relationship. Have good conflict resolution skills. There’s probably a bunch of evidence-based methods from positive psychology to use as well.
In contrast, I think shittesting for hard to observe and hard to fake traits is a dank and ethical strategy (epistemic status: P(T)= .75).
It saves both of us time because I can reject candidates earlier before we bond (I bond way too fast).
If I get rejected for shit-testing on a first date, I have only lost the time it takes to replace the candidate. I can politely leave the dinner and resign myself to ~20 hours of app use. NOTE If I was the majority in my mating market and I wanted a shorter relationship, I would revise this
The cost of falling in love with someone who lacks these attributes (its a narrow set) is really high. I have to hang out with that person for years! Once I stare into their eyes, I’ll start ignoring their bad attributes, which is really bad for me!
Conditions
I do not accept your proposition that waiting for natural stimuli is as a rule more ethical than shittesting, mainly because everyone benefits from assessing each other’s attributes quickly and accurately.
So when is a shit-test ethical and when is it unethical? After reading your comments I would propose the following.
Loyalty tests are more unethical and less instrumentally rational than attribute shittests
Shittesting later in a relationship is less ethical and less IR than in the beginning
I’m not a native english speaker or completely familiar with the term, but it seems to me that the behaviour you are proposing is simply “testing” rather than “shit-testing”.
From what I understood, shit-testing refers to behaviours that stress, impact negatively or try to entrap the partner to check his/her reactions.
Debating or discussing issues is an enjoyable activity for many people, and providing contrary evidence or asking someone to better explain or prove his position shouldn’t have any negative consequence for the target (if it does, then running for the hills seems a reasonable response), so it seems just a way as any other to investigate his interests or traits while conversing with him.
Purposefully providing bad behaviour to see how she’d try to shape it does seems more like shit-testing.
I’d expect that in the early stage of a relationship such attempts would either be ignored, as you suppose, or reduce the chances a partner would want the relationship to become long term. I think most people expects their partner to be on their “best behaviour” in the early stage, since it’s what they are doing, so seeing bad behaviour then would 1) make them assume even the partner’s best behaviour isn’t that good and 2) cause them to evaluate whether tolerate it and continue the relationship or not when there would be a lot less reasons to than later on. Even if you don’t mind this outcome on the first date, I hardly imagine someone who is reconsidering the chances of the date to evolve in a relationship would provide a shaping attempt, since they wouldn’t see many reasons to put in that effort. My impression is that shit-testing is only effective at selecting for meek, insecure or remissive partners, since they are the ones who most likely wouldn’t consider early bad behaviour as a deal breaker.
So, especially taking in your priorities where the information have to be gained quickly, and even accounting that you don’t mind having many dates not work out as long as you can avoid bonding with the wrong partner, it seems to me that “shit-testing” wouldn’t serve you well, since the responses you’d get to negative behaviour would almost always be extremely different than the ones you’d get later in the relationship. I’d advise to stick to “testing” and refer to it that way, since the term shit-testing would likely cause your brain to suggest needlessly “mean” strategies.
To test the shaping behaviour, I think you could:
Try providing good behaviour you’d like to be reinforced from her, to check if she uses reinforcements as shaping.
Discuss what you both like or don’t like in a partner to find out which traits she’d try to change.
Discuss previous instances when you had to react to behaviours you didn’t like to elicit the same kind of anecdotes by her (or discuss theoretical scenarios).
Once in a relationship, try to shape her shaping with rewards to the kind of shaping you’d like her to use.
I’d renounce straight away to test for watching the Diana Fleishman lecture unless you are dating partners coming from very specific knowledge backgrounds (cognitive-behavioural studies and rationality studies), I’d expect it would be very, very hard to not have early mentions of such arguments read as you wanting to control your partner or manipulate it. To clarify: I’m 100% aware that is not what it is about and that it isn’t what you want, just stating that people who aren’t really familiar with that background or really trusting toward you would see it as a huge red warning sign and would react negatively.
You could try to introduce the theme as:
A way you use to improve yourself, and that would be really helpful to everyone (like: people really have to remember to tell themselves they did a good work, we only seem to bash ourselves when we don’t).
A way to make communication more straightforward, honest and positive, that you think is a good way to make sure a relationship works (like: I really like to be sure people know I appreciate what they do for me, or if I notice them being kind or are doing something positive for themselves).
When they have a good sense of how you feel about such subjects, you could try showing them the lecture and ask them what they think about it. The more time they had to get used to how you think about positive feedbacks and to build trust toward you the better.
Also: the average person seems to be 100% against the idea of shaping behaviour and providing reinforcements, but 100% for showing appreciation and providing positive feedback, the term and frame used really makes a world of difference even if you are describing the same process, applied to the same goals and with the same methods.
the average person seems to be 100% against the idea of shaping behaviour and providing reinforcements, but 100% for showing appreciation and providing positive feedback, the term and frame used really makes a world of difference even if you are describing the same process, applied to the same goals and with the same methods.
So true. What I really want is a woman smart/rational enough to notice this without having to incept it.
So what I really want to sort for is.
Low Need For Closure
Low emotional lability
Creative problem solving skills
Instrumental rationality
Curiosity
I know how to assess everything but emotional lability. I think the shaping behaviors will be closely correlated with emotional lability so we mainly want to assess that.
Try providing good behaviour you’d like to be reinforced from her, to check if she uses reinforcements as shaping.
This is a good idea. I cannot yet think of a way to do it.
Discuss what you both like or don’t like in a partner to find out which traits she’d try to change.
She will try to change my conscientiousness. I have ADHD and it makes lots of problems. Since conscientiousness is the trait women most often try to shape and its my worst trait, good bet that almost any woman will go for it.
But what else might she shape? That’s actually an interesting question. I will start asking it on second dates.
Discuss previous instances when you had to react to behaviours you didn’t like to elicit the same kind of anecdotes by her (or discuss theoretical scenarios).
I doubt this would work. If you ask people on a date “Do you often get angry at people when they make a mistake” how do you think they would respond? What if I asked them “In what situations should a person get angry”? That is much more interesting question.
Purposefully providing bad behaviour to see how she’d try to shape it does seems more like shit-testing.
Interesting idea. I could, for example, forget to make a restaurant reservation then observe her reaction when we have to look for a new place.
Once in a relationship, try to shape her shaping with rewards to the kind of shaping you’d like her to use.
In the long run, I should use this as well.
Appendix
the responses you’d get to negative behaviour would almost always be extremely different than the ones you’d get later in the relationship.
I disagree with this statement. I’m not interested in her response to my best behavior. I’m interested in the full spectrum of her behavior. Firstly, I will make mistakes in the future and she will subconsciously try to shape them. Secondly, her behavior toward others (like a waiter) is pretty important to the partnership. I don’t want to date someone who is only well-behaved to me. I had a girlfriend who was mean to other people all the time; it was awful.
I’m not a native english speaker or completely familiar with the term, but it seems to me that the behaviour you are proposing is simply “testing” rather than “shit-testing”.
That is correct. I intentionally picked the edgiest definition to get more comments (more comments improves my writing sklls).
I’d renounce straight away to test for watching the Diana Fleishman lecture
Those are great points and you are right.
You could try to introduce the theme as:
Outside of my sorting, I should work on these skills. That is a compelling influence strategy.
Seems that we mostly agree here, the major disagreement is about terminology.
I disagree about too wide use of “shit-testing” to include… maybe not testing in general, but still more than the narrow meaning in the PUA literature… which is approximately “purposefully annoying your partner, in order to find out whether the partner is good at keeping their boundaries”.
I agree that if there are incompatibilities between people, it’s better to find them sooner rather than later. And that sometimes you need to search for the possible incompatibilities actively.
I would assume that your current “worst” is the best predictor of your future behavior. And frankly, shouldn’t I? I think it is a consensus among the people who use the word that shit-tests never end.
I am ambivalent about the whole idea of shit-testing. On one hand, it makes sense to test your partner’s reaction to your bad behavior. Because, if you stay together for a long time, sooner or later some bad behavior will happen; life will throw a lot of stress on you, and you will snap. You need the kind of partner who can survive it gracefully. If it is someone who would collapse, or go nuclear, that is a time-bomb; better avoid that.
On the other hand, if someone occassionally behaves badly even when everything goes fine, it doesn’t exactly give me confidence that the person will try their best when things get hard. When a life-or-death situation happens (and by the same logic, sooner or later it will), would you want your partner to choose exactly that moment for their next shit-test? And what makes you so sure they wouldn’t, if they already do it habitually?
So… shit-testing allows you to select a better partner… but at the same time, “being the kind of person who shit-tests their partner” makes you a worse partner. (Which is kinda your partner’s problem, not yours, but still...)
It’s like those “if you really love me, you will do X for me” situations, when someone demands an arbitrary sacrifice X as a proof of love. If you are too focused on signaling your love, you may miss the larger picture, which is that a person who loves you would not ask you to make arbitrary sacrifices. So you are setting yourself up for a one-sided relationship; and the right answer would be to walk away, and find someone else who is willing to reciprocate your love. (Even if you believe that sufficiently strong one-sided love may eventually elicit the same feelings in the other party, it still makes more sense to choose someone who will not abuse you before that happens, assuming it happens at all.)
How to get out of this dilemma? Arbitrarily testing your partner is bad, leaving them untested is dangerous...
Perhaps, if you could observe your partner in tests that life throws at them naturally. That would require to spend a lot of time together. If you want to speed it up, you could choose a situation that increases stress levels naturally, for some good reason. For example, spend a vacation in mountains together. Or something else that gets you tired and uncomfortable, but for reasons better than one person choosing to annoy the other.
(I wonder if shit-testing was also so frequent in the past, or whether it is an adaptation to the modern dating market where you have to test your partners quickly.)
Firstly, thanks for you comments and for taking the time to think through this.
Firstly, I contest your underlying assumption that the natural state of the mating market is free of manipulation. The natural state of courtship is full of probing, testing, manipulation, assessment and generally devious 0-sum fuckery. We just don’t notice because most of these behaviors are subconscious. So at a basic level, there’s no consequentialist reason to think the subconscious manipulations are more ethical than conscious manipulations. There is reason to think the opposite because I can at least consider the consequences of my conscious manipulations.
You can shit-test for lots of different attributes. Your comment mostly assumes I would shit test for loyalty, which I agree is a really bad idea.
Firstly, it’s the most unethical form of shittest because you’re training the person to follow your commands unquestioningly, which is really bad for them.
Its the most hackable shittest.
There’s a failure mode where you fall in love with the power or they fall in love with it or something like that
Finally, I don’t actually think my mate retention is correlated with testable loyalty (Christians and non-Christians get divorced at the same rate despite different loyalty norms). I suspect the best mate-retention strategy is to maintain your own attractiveness (behaviorally and physically) over the relationship. Have good conflict resolution skills. There’s probably a bunch of evidence-based methods from positive psychology to use as well.
In contrast, I think shittesting for hard to observe and hard to fake traits is a dank and ethical strategy (epistemic status: P(T)= .75).
It saves both of us time because I can reject candidates earlier before we bond (I bond way too fast).
If I get rejected for shit-testing on a first date, I have only lost the time it takes to replace the candidate. I can politely leave the dinner and resign myself to ~20 hours of app use. NOTE If I was the majority in my mating market and I wanted a shorter relationship, I would revise this
The cost of falling in love with someone who lacks these attributes (its a narrow set) is really high. I have to hang out with that person for years! Once I stare into their eyes, I’ll start ignoring their bad attributes, which is really bad for me!
Conditions
I do not accept your proposition that waiting for natural stimuli is as a rule more ethical than shittesting, mainly because everyone benefits from assessing each other’s attributes quickly and accurately.
So when is a shit-test ethical and when is it unethical? After reading your comments I would propose the following.
Loyalty tests are more unethical and less instrumentally rational than attribute shittests
Shittesting later in a relationship is less ethical and less IR than in the beginning
I’m not a native english speaker or completely familiar with the term, but it seems to me that the behaviour you are proposing is simply “testing” rather than “shit-testing”.
From what I understood, shit-testing refers to behaviours that stress, impact negatively or try to entrap the partner to check his/her reactions.
Debating or discussing issues is an enjoyable activity for many people, and providing contrary evidence or asking someone to better explain or prove his position shouldn’t have any negative consequence for the target (if it does, then running for the hills seems a reasonable response), so it seems just a way as any other to investigate his interests or traits while conversing with him.
Purposefully providing bad behaviour to see how she’d try to shape it does seems more like shit-testing.
I’d expect that in the early stage of a relationship such attempts would either be ignored, as you suppose, or reduce the chances a partner would want the relationship to become long term. I think most people expects their partner to be on their “best behaviour” in the early stage, since it’s what they are doing, so seeing bad behaviour then would 1) make them assume even the partner’s best behaviour isn’t that good and 2) cause them to evaluate whether tolerate it and continue the relationship or not when there would be a lot less reasons to than later on. Even if you don’t mind this outcome on the first date, I hardly imagine someone who is reconsidering the chances of the date to evolve in a relationship would provide a shaping attempt, since they wouldn’t see many reasons to put in that effort. My impression is that shit-testing is only effective at selecting for meek, insecure or remissive partners, since they are the ones who most likely wouldn’t consider early bad behaviour as a deal breaker.
So, especially taking in your priorities where the information have to be gained quickly, and even accounting that you don’t mind having many dates not work out as long as you can avoid bonding with the wrong partner, it seems to me that “shit-testing” wouldn’t serve you well, since the responses you’d get to negative behaviour would almost always be extremely different than the ones you’d get later in the relationship. I’d advise to stick to “testing” and refer to it that way, since the term shit-testing would likely cause your brain to suggest needlessly “mean” strategies.
To test the shaping behaviour, I think you could:
Try providing good behaviour you’d like to be reinforced from her, to check if she uses reinforcements as shaping.
Discuss what you both like or don’t like in a partner to find out which traits she’d try to change.
Discuss previous instances when you had to react to behaviours you didn’t like to elicit the same kind of anecdotes by her (or discuss theoretical scenarios).
Once in a relationship, try to shape her shaping with rewards to the kind of shaping you’d like her to use.
I’d renounce straight away to test for watching the Diana Fleishman lecture unless you are dating partners coming from very specific knowledge backgrounds (cognitive-behavioural studies and rationality studies), I’d expect it would be very, very hard to not have early mentions of such arguments read as you wanting to control your partner or manipulate it. To clarify: I’m 100% aware that is not what it is about and that it isn’t what you want, just stating that people who aren’t really familiar with that background or really trusting toward you would see it as a huge red warning sign and would react negatively.
You could try to introduce the theme as:
A way you use to improve yourself, and that would be really helpful to everyone (like: people really have to remember to tell themselves they did a good work, we only seem to bash ourselves when we don’t).
A way to make communication more straightforward, honest and positive, that you think is a good way to make sure a relationship works (like: I really like to be sure people know I appreciate what they do for me, or if I notice them being kind or are doing something positive for themselves).
When they have a good sense of how you feel about such subjects, you could try showing them the lecture and ask them what they think about it. The more time they had to get used to how you think about positive feedbacks and to build trust toward you the better.
Also: the average person seems to be 100% against the idea of shaping behaviour and providing reinforcements, but 100% for showing appreciation and providing positive feedback, the term and frame used really makes a world of difference even if you are describing the same process, applied to the same goals and with the same methods.
So true. What I really want is a woman smart/rational enough to notice this without having to incept it.
So what I really want to sort for is.
Low Need For Closure
Low emotional lability
Creative problem solving skills
Instrumental rationality
Curiosity
I know how to assess everything but emotional lability. I think the shaping behaviors will be closely correlated with emotional lability so we mainly want to assess that.
This is a good idea. I cannot yet think of a way to do it.
She will try to change my conscientiousness. I have ADHD and it makes lots of problems. Since conscientiousness is the trait women most often try to shape and its my worst trait, good bet that almost any woman will go for it.
But what else might she shape? That’s actually an interesting question. I will start asking it on second dates.
I doubt this would work. If you ask people on a date “Do you often get angry at people when they make a mistake” how do you think they would respond? What if I asked them “In what situations should a person get angry”? That is much more interesting question.
Interesting idea. I could, for example, forget to make a restaurant reservation then observe her reaction when we have to look for a new place.
In the long run, I should use this as well.
Appendix
I disagree with this statement. I’m not interested in her response to my best behavior. I’m interested in the full spectrum of her behavior. Firstly, I will make mistakes in the future and she will subconsciously try to shape them. Secondly, her behavior toward others (like a waiter) is pretty important to the partnership. I don’t want to date someone who is only well-behaved to me. I had a girlfriend who was mean to other people all the time; it was awful.
That is correct. I intentionally picked the edgiest definition to get more comments (more comments improves my writing sklls).
Those are great points and you are right.
Outside of my sorting, I should work on these skills. That is a compelling influence strategy.
Seems that we mostly agree here, the major disagreement is about terminology.
I disagree about too wide use of “shit-testing” to include… maybe not testing in general, but still more than the narrow meaning in the PUA literature… which is approximately “purposefully annoying your partner, in order to find out whether the partner is good at keeping their boundaries”.
I agree that if there are incompatibilities between people, it’s better to find them sooner rather than later. And that sometimes you need to search for the possible incompatibilities actively.