Almost invariably, all of the painfully single "nerds" I know have such a thick bubble of pretension that they can't realize that they suck to be around.
I've seen math used to model relationships on HN a couple of times, and even as an intellectual curiosity I believe it to be a complete waste of time.
Using social dynamics and behavioral psychology as a method for avoiding social mistakes gets you way further than applying it as some sort of game, from any "guru" of any evo-psych, behavioral analyst, game-community leader or persuasion researcher/author.
Almost invariably, all of the painfully single "nerds" I know have such a thick bubble of pretension that they can't realize that they suck to be around.
No doubt that's true in many cases. But there's a sizable category of single males who constantly wind up in the friend zone with women because they (who am I kidding: we) fundamentally don't produce attraction. PUA techniques are designed to correct that; I can't do them at all, but they really work.
This hypothesis was tested by Feynman (Surely You're Joking ...), naturally with success. I think I'd feel a little weird trying to psychologically hack my love life (if I had a love life). Also, the mathematical approach doesn't work:
Let x denote beauty, -- y, manners well-bred, --
"z, Fortune, -- (this last is essential), --
"Let L stand for love" -- our philosopher said, --
"Then L is a function of x, y, and z,
"Of the kind which is known as potential."
"Now integrate L with respect to dt,
"(t standing for time and persuasion);
"Then, between proper limits, 'tis easy to see,
"The definite integral Marriage must be: --
"(A very concise demonstration)."
Said he -- "If the wandering course of the moon
"By Algebra can be predicted,
"The female affections must yield to it soon" --
-- But the lady ran off with a dashing dragoon,
And left him amazed and afflicted.
Ah, but it's more subtle than that. You see you have already been hacked. Why do boys automatically buy drinks for girls? It's almost as if we've been programmed to do so, and therefore do it regardless of it "working". But any bloke whose spent any time in pubs knows, if he thinks about it for a second, that you buy rounds of drinks with your mates. Buying drinks is a friendship signal, not a mating signal. And if you do it, that's where you'll end up.
Buying drinks is a friendship signal, not a mating signal.
Not really. Do you buy drinks for your friends? Of course you do! But do you buy drinks for strangers in bars because you're interested in becoming their friend? No, that would be weird.
Why would it be weird? Because buying drinks is widely recognized as a sexual come-on. It's just not a very good one. It's not very good because it's a signal of the form "I am sufficiently desperate for company that I am willing to bribe you just to talk to me".
Anyway, it's a bad idea for all sorts of reasons, but "friendship signal" is not, I think, a good description.
My wife was my best friend, I've also known lots of friends who've gone into very long term relationships by doing it, and I just saw a friend start dating his best friend of like 5 years and they've been going well.
Honestly, having sex with your (female) mates is the best thing you can do. My biggest problem is finding things in common with women I'm not friends with, but I've already got a list as long as my arm and leg with women I'm already friends with.
Honestly I could have spent every night in the pub giving 110% game and I wouldn't have got nearly as much sex as getting married. For a nerd it was a no brainer and my penis thanks me.
Not that there's anything wrong with that! (courtesy nod to Seinfeld). It is odd (I don't say telling!) that the standard term for sex partner is a preferred term for a guy's male friend in some places.
Although we are naturally superficial, I think that looks actually have very little to do with getting the girl. How many times do you see guys with women that look a lot better than them? A lot in my area. Some of the most "popular" guys in high school and college wouldn't stand a chance in a modeling competition but they certainly were confident.
I think the most important traits to develop are confidence, mystery (not being predictable) and humor. Take care of yourself and try to keep looking nice, but don't hone in on that aspect.
I don't get if your is irony or not, but I think that having high standards for the partner we want (especially for life) is a good thing. I don't think that this is something that has something to do with "being cool".
Why should we settle when the world is full of girls that could match our preferences? When people start their own startup, they have high aims. Why should we aim low in our relationships?
People sure do love the appearance of consistency. Your criticism is logically invalid: just because I think that Alan Kay is a great individual doesn't mean that he meets my personal "standards for excellence in a mate".
However, your criticism is valid from a practical perspective, so I sincerely thank you.
It really depends on what your standards actually are and if those are truly what will make you happy.
In college I remember a lot of girls had core requirements that were like: 6'4" and taller. six pack, seven-figure salary, nice clothes, nice smell, college degree, nice and monogamous, good in bed, good kisser, a bit of a bad boy.
And I'd think, "if you could land this guy, there are clearly things about you that aren't apparent upon first meeting you." My next thought was, "prepare to spend your life being single"
Nice and monogamous /= bad boy
Six pack /= 7-figure salary/college degree
These traits are typically opposites. Monogamy typically doesn't work with a bad boy. Six pack generally doesn't suit up with a 7-figure salary.
The few people I've met that fit the six-pack and 7-figure salary are typically construction workers that have gone on to own their own business. These two rarely coincide for long since the 7-figure salary typically excludes any more physical work and requires sitting in a chair.
For those not in the know, when you're consuming ~4000 calories a day and not gaining weight because of physical activity that when you stop being physical you generally don't stop eating those ~4000 calories until you gain ~20lbs and bury the 6 pack.
I mean a small part of the population has a six pack and a small part of the population has a 7 figure salary, but I think high salary is correlated with six pack, not anti-correlated.
The article had good points (although I'm not sure on topic for HN) however using phrases like "predefined standards of excellence" in regards to people/dating sort of makes it sound like the last time you left your mom's basement was a couple months ago. Since the article writer is into psychology he might also like to research "psychopathology".
Considering your love life with a technical and analytical bent in no way suggests a lack of feelings (psychopathology), and it will definitely improve your odds of being successful. It's a bit creepy to intimidate others into suboptimal life strategies by stigmatizing their attempts at self-improvement.
Not everyone would agree with (seemingly) basing relationships on what criteria they fulfill, which would seem to reduce love to an I scratch your back, you scratch mine scenario. Often times love is seen as an ethical, selfless act, as well as--and even in spite of--one that fulfills happiness.
I don't think that this has something to do with "when people start their own startup."
Hearing a guy talk about "preferred excellence in a mate" sounds to me like someone who would be better off working through one of those professional matchmakers you find in the in-flight magazine, that or a 5,000 dollar sex doll.
Sometimes people write, for whatever reason, in a way that may make them sound like idiots, but that doesn't mean there isn't truth in what they say, and I thought this particular paragraph was very interesting.
OP is learning from Cialdini. But he should really be learning from Mystery, and other pick up artists who have been field testing principles from Evolutionary Psychology for over a decade.
I think the OP's tactics would be great for meeting a long term marriage partner. PUA tactics are for pickups, and a lot of them are a bit too black-hattish, manipulative, and dishonest for serious adult relationships.
That's a common criticism, but it is mostly false and dependent on the person who is using the science to be more successful in getting what they want.
What mystery is talking about is simple attraction psychology, and it is all based on evolutionary psychology. Incidentally, so are all "serious adult relationships". Mystery says that women are attracted to men who display three things: 1) they're leaders of men 2) they are desirable by other women 3) they take care of their people. As anyone who has been in a "serious adult relationship" can tell you, these things are just as important for maintaining attraction in a long term relationship as they are in a one night stand.
The things mystery and more serious evolutionary psychologists have elaborated on are valid in all cases where men desire to maintain the attraction of a woman. It isn't entirely selfish or manipulative either. Women want to be attracted to you.
If I was going to try and look for scientific backing for my dating technique, I would use behavioral psychology like the OP rather than evolutionary psychology. Evo-psych is a decent source of hypotheses, but until those hypotheses are empirically verified case-by-case they don't count for much. It's not a theory that's particularly good at picking out one hypothesis as better than the other because you can make up equally plausible evo-psych stories for a lot of hypotheses before-the-fact.
Confounding this, of course, is the huge challenge of overcoming ethnocentrism--you might assume that standard Western behaviors and attitudes around sexuality are universal human things, but in a lot of cases they're just culturally-dependent arbitrary crap. Evo-psych won't help with this. As far as evo-psych helps you, at best it'll help you attract cro-magnon hunter-gatherer chicks, not affluent Westerners with all kinds of cultural influences added on, influences that evo-psych fundamentally has no way of predicting.
Behavioral psych is tricky since any psych study on affluent Western chicks will have conclusions which can only be confidently applied to affluent Western chicks, but if that's who you're trying to pick up that's a help, not a hindrance.
What cultural influences are you talking about? Can you give an example? Specifically, what influences that aren't just a parameter within the framework of evolutionary psychology?
Cultural variations in meeting-and-mating practices are all around if you read the tiniest bit of anthropology on the subject. Can you clarify what you mean by "just a parameter within the framework of evolutionary psychology"?
I mean back in hunter-gatherer days, women were impressed by your animal hides or whatnot, and not your luxury car, but those two things are isomorphic. You can find a lot of such ultimately trivial variation, where you only have to adjust your model a tiny bit. Give me an example of an important social phenomenon not explicable through a minor adjustment to common ev-psych principles.
I think the argument for claiming evo-psych justifications for PUA techniques make the assumption that picking up women in bars is at all isomorphic to human sexual practices among prehistoric hunter-gatherers. You can't even find practices isomorphic to that among all (or even most) contemporary human cultures--how can you claim that as some sort of universal human thing?
Not to mention, it's increasingly difficult to talk about the community as one entity. MM and his style is actually mocked in many circles of the community. They have the most mainstream branding due to the show but in no way do they represent the most popular style anymore.
Not only that, PUA tactics often involve just plain making shit up - which makes it a really, really poor tactic if you ever plan on seeing the girl again.
I'm not so hot on OP's tone, but for people looking for relationships it seems a lot more productive than the "lying through your teeth while maintaining a veneer of confidence" that so much of the PUA community relies upon.
There have been numerous posts about dating on HN (and reddit) over the past few days. I think all of it can be summed up as: "care, but don't care too much". All of the advice on OP's post can really be broken down to that axiom.
I think dependence on lying was more true few years ago. Since The Game came out, a lot has changed. Most popular methods rely a lot less on lying and routines and will readily admit they are crutches that you use until you no longer need it.
which makes it a really, really poor tactic if you ever plan on seeing the girl again.
Donno, I have multiple friends who have been/are in happy long-term relationships as a result of the community. These are some of the biggest nerds until they found the community.
Sure, for a while a lot of the new entrants become super weird and awkward but when the dust settles, I think the community has helped many, many people!
Having said that, in the last few years, there has been an influx of gurus claiming to know the secret. They are nothing more than snakeoil artists who don't know shit about getting with the other sex beyond ripping off desperate--but financially okay--men.
That's a very convenient thing to say, but the phrase "too much" is really a compacted way of saying "are much as the situation would call for in order to be successful, and no more," at which point you really have a circular definition. How do you succeed? Do what you need to to succeed.
In other words, if you want to do the right thing, you should do what is good and not what is bad. Also, we should elect the best representatives if we want our democracy to succeed. And here's some good dietary advice: everything in moderation, don't eat too much of anything.
One of my old college professors used to have a saying, if you want to survive in the long term, you've got to survive in the short term first. This basic concept was how he analyzed why people and organizations made decisions that were in retrospect obviously not in their long term best interest.
In the West not many people get married without dating first...
Am I the only person here who thinks that most of the comments on this thread are indicative of people grossly over-thinking dating?
The only real pre-requisite for dating is that you like yourself; if you like yourself, then other people will (although not all people.) Everything else you'll have to learn experientially - everything from how to collect a phone number to how to tactfully handle delicate / awkward situations.
You said what I was thinking. This idea that you have to manipulate women into liking you through psychology obviously means that your own natural charms aren't working.
Having a good time, joking, laughing, and enjoying yourself is going to help you a lot more than focusing on the pitch of your voice - but that's just my perspective.
In reality, these dating self-help books and the people who use them creep me out a bit. Mostly because I have a sister and many close female friends.
You're missing the point. It's about unlearning things you've been told which are wrong. Like the point about buying a girl a drink, it obviously doesn't "work", yet boys keep doing it anyway, because, umm, well, that's just what you do, isn't it?
Sure there is a lot of bullshit around, but the basic principle of all this pick-artist business is, you're using a "routine" anyway, just without being consciously aware that you are, instead you should take conscious control of it.
I buy drinks for women, and get bought drinks by women, especially if I'm out on a date. I generally don't have any issues with it, and it never really affects my chances - maybe it's just the culture I live in ...
I've seen math used to model relationships on HN a couple of times, and even as an intellectual curiosity I believe it to be a complete waste of time.
Using social dynamics and behavioral psychology as a method for avoiding social mistakes gets you way further than applying it as some sort of game, from any "guru" of any evo-psych, behavioral analyst, game-community leader or persuasion researcher/author.