Downvoted.
It's interesting and potentially useful, and I liked some of the links; however, I felt seriously skeeved-out throughout, probably due to the combination of uncomfortably personal authorial bildungsroman (with connotations of "if you do this right, you can be just like me"), and the implied promotion of polyamory. Would work much better if you could remove the autobiographical aspects.
I felt skeeved as well. I didn't mind the polyamory plugs, and in general I like autobiographical bits, as they bring more of a human element into posts.
What bothered me was that the discussion about romance felt very cold, somehow. Talking about "suboptimal" relationships, saying that you "scored" your first one-night stand, and such. It sounded like you weren't interested in other people as, well, people.
The interesting thing is that I don't really endorse these emotional reactions to your writing. In general, I'm completely fine with PUA stuff as long as it stays ethical, which I think your post did. Nor do I feel, on an intellectual level, that there's anything wrong with considering a relationship "suboptimal" - many relationships are that. Yet the post managed to push buttons on an emotional level anyway. For that reason, I'd very strongly prefer to not see this post on the front page, as I suspect it would give a lot of people an unreasonably negative image of this community.
I agree with you on the skeeviness of the terminology of "scoring" a one night stand; interestingly, version 1 of the post instead states that Luke "had [his] first one-night stand." Although I haven't compared the versions carefully, it therefore seems like version 1 may make more of an attempt to avoid that sort of language.
I found the Coming of Age series to be both self-indulgent and quite dull, and I think that it's very difficult to use yourself as an example of vice or virtue without running into one or both of those issues. I also find that I (more-or-less automatically) downgrade an author's ethos by a lot when he's talking about himself as an illustrative example. But for this one, it's the skeeviness factor that dominates — it's just plain creepy to hear about your love life as a source of telling anecdotes. And that's distracting.
Polyamory may be great, but the right way to promote it is not by slipping into a post the implication that it's the endpoint of rational thinking about romance. Which is what this reads as, whether you intended it to or not. If you want to advocate polyamory here (and honestly, I'm not sure that Less Wrong is the right place to do so), you should devote an entire post to it, and set forth clear arguments as to why it's the better option, rather than presuming it in your advice.
The Sequences do not consist of Eliezer promoting himself as a master rationalist, nor do they assume that you already think he is. He argues for certain positions, and the reader comes to be...
I downvoted because of the assumption that there's something obviously wrong with jealousy and that monogamy is suboptimal. It's possible that both jealousy and monogamy are necessary components of reaching areas of utility that can't be accessed in the context of casual relationships. You could be gaining short-term pay off (not feeling jealous, being able to satisfy short-term urges) at the cost of higher utility long-term pay off (a traditional romantic relationship). Nothing is the story suggest that you'd obviously know if you were missing out on the latter either.
I downvoted because...
Whatever you [Luke] were split testing for (a quick look suggests "Lesson" vs. "Rationality skill") is probably undone by the first reply comments on this post compared to the other one.
An interesting observation that was noted at Hacker News a while back is that the top rated comment on almost any opinion piece is disagreement - because people who passionately disagree are more likely to look for an argument to back in the comments.
If you skim discussion sites where voting moves comments up and a culture of dissent being respected reigns - you'll see it's usually true.
But the difference between the A version and the B version is that, as of the time of this writing, B starts with "I downvoted because..." whereas A's first comment is also disagreement, but of a more encouraging sort. I think this will probably dominate the results far more than the phrasing and exact structure of lesson/skills learned.
Neither upvoted nor downvoted. I didn't learn anything new from the article, but it doesn't look obviously wrong either.
Just a note about jealousy: beating yourself up for "immaturity" whenever you feel jealous doesn't sound to me like a healthy way to self-modify, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who's just starting out. IMO it's better to err in the other direction and grow confidence until you lose jealousy as a side effect. That happened to me once and I didn't even notice the change until afterward. But I'm sure you're already happy in the place you are, so it's probably no longer relevant to you.
I'd say there's a good chance that you're equating correlation with causation, to an extent; it might not be your systematic self-improvement plan that's effective insomuch as you, yourself, have grown and matured over the past few years and are now more confident and self-assured with different needs and traits than those you had years ago. That, to me, seems like pretty typical individual maturation.
I'd question the inherent assumption that polyamory is inherently more ethical. While monogamy does limit some relationships from forming, it can also prompt deeper emotional bonds and trust between the partners within that relationship.
So too, it's unclear how long you've been in your current relationship. I'd question any analysis of "good relationships" that didn't look at quality over the course of a relationship for a significant amount of time. What "significant" is is debatable, but relationships tend to get harder as they go along, not easier, and if overall quality of one's relationships is one's goal, then initial quality would be, at best, misleading.
I thought this was a pretty good post. However, I may be biased as I agree with most of the things you said.
One thing that keeps me from immediately wanting to spend time going through the same set of scholarship/practice that you did is that it seems to me like the sort of person I would want to date long-term is extremely gender-atypical, and therefore these strategies will not help me much in this regard. So all this would buy me is lots of good casual sex, which may not be worth the seemingly large initial time investment.
I also, for instance, don't think I would want to build rapport with almost anyone --- to put it bluntly, talking to most people is a waste of time from the perspective of both personal enrichment/enjoyment and my long-term instrumental goals.
I did not upvote or downvote. Some parts contained useful information (despite being somewhat cursory), but other parts seemed like other-optimizing (the mostly one-sided pro-polyamory presentation).
Normally I like seeing individual stories and anecdotes and having information broken down into small pieces. Insofar as I might be interested in self-modifying toward polyamory in the future I think that this post would be helpful.
On the other hand, I was skeeved just like many other commenters. Major parts of that may have been from:
One thing that really intrigues me about the comments is how negatively some people react to the personal-story element of it, contrasted with Alicorn's Luminosity sequence, where people requested personal stories because they made it easier to identify with the material.
One big difference is that Alicorn's stories were third-person, and yours are first-person; another is that Alicorn's were nominally fictional and yours are nominally factual. Of course, the content is also different, and the community has changed.
Still, I wonder how this same post would have been received in a third-person-hypothetical mode.
I upvoted, but mostly because I too dislike our culture's promotion of owning other people's sexualities through monogamy, and am irritated that this is a cached thought that most rationalists either tacitly endorse or defend with crappy "evolutionary psychology".
I very strongly dislike the idea of having monogamy as the only accepted option, but I also strongly dislike the notion of polyamory being somehow inherently superior. It seems to me like mono/poly is to a large degree a personal orientation the same way hetero/bi/homo/othersexuality is. Poly people will be miserable in a mono relationship, but so will mono people in a poly one. (And like with bisexuals, there are people who can be fine with both.)
I believe that your interpretation of the phrase as it was used is correct, but the more I think about it, the more this is just giving an ugly name to a practice that may or may not be ugly. Any of the following could also be called "assuming ownership of another's sexuality" if you felt like calling it that:
"I'm aware that you want to go ahead and risk it regardless of what the doctor said, but I'm worried about hurting you and I want to wait another week."
"While we are in a relationship, don't have sex with HIV-positive secondary partners, especially not without a condom."
"Since you're into it, I forbid you to have an orgasm for the next week. And I'm going to enforce it with this device."
"Since you're into doing whatever I say whether it's your cup of tea or not..." (as above)
"While we are in a relationship, don't have sex with anyone who isn't aware of that fact, because it's dishonest."
"Because condoms+spermicide are the only form of reversible birth control I can personally take responsibility for and they're not very reliable, and I don't want to knock you up, please use another form of birth con
(I'm not sure where to put this but am saddened that more people don't mention it:) Monogamy (monoamory?) is also just a lot more aesthetic in certain ways, at least for me and probably many others. There's the rich history and culture associated with monogamy. There's more opportunity to notice small details about the other person. It's often less dramatic, or when it is dramatic it's dramatic in aesthetic interesting ways instead of ugly awkward ways. For example, there's the opportunity for implicit mutual agreements to "cheat" and the drama as those agreements are made, are used as implicit threats of blackmail, are made explicit as if just noticed for the first time but both know that's silly. That's a stupid way for things to go downhill but it has certain subtleties to it at least. Monogamy has a neat simplicity. It's generally more sustainable if so desired, and more easily broken up too.
I haven't decided whether to upvote or downvote yet. For now a quick note about the intended method of getting feedback: I don't know if A-H has the same number of people roughly as from I-Z. Moreover, there may be other issues if some cultural groups are more likely to have surnames that end in a letter from one part of the alphabet.
Here I am on this post now! And... gosh, I'm annoyed that there's not enough difference between the two posts for it to be worth my time to look over both. I understand your motivation, but as a reader I...
Feel cheated.
::BADUM-TISH::
But seriously. I do feel kind of bothered that you put the reader through a serious inconvenience just for the purpose of your own statistics. Is it a logical thing to do? Yes. But I'd really like to have two posts to read out of your little experiment, not 1.1 posts.
It doesn't seem like this strategy will continue to be effective when you are no longer a young man. Is this a short-term strategy?
It doesn't seem like this approach will yield stable and reliable companionship into old age.
There is no mention of the desire for offspring in this post. Historically the point of sexual relationships has been offspring, the nominal "reason" for dating has been to find a suitable partner with which to raise offspring.
Sorry if this post is unbearably quaint, but I can't figure out why you're even bothering with all this. I mean, save yourself the trouble, just remain celibate or use prostitutes.
It doesn't seem like this strategy will continue to be effective when you are no longer a young man. Is this a short-term strategy?
Why does it seem unlikely to remain effective? He radically improved his general social skills, and made himself much better at initiating new relationships (of all kinds, not just romantic). Why would said skills atrophy?
It doesn't seem like this approach will yield stable and reliable companionship into old age.
Why not? At a minimum, why would being better at starting new relationships make him worse at maintaining ones already in place?
There is no mention of the desire for offspring in this post. Historically the point of sexual relationships has been offspring, the nominal "reason" for dating has been to find a suitable partner with which to raise offspring.
History need not dictate our preferences. If we demanded that all sexual relationships lead to children homosexual relationships would be illegal, as would ones where one partner was infertile, and marriages would be dissolved upon a female partner reaching menopause.
...Sorry if this post is unbearably quaint, but I can't figure out why you're even bothering with all this. I m
I like the personal example of using rationality to figure out what will really make you happy. I don't like the implication that what you learned about yourself would also be true of everyone else. For example, the implication that everyone could or should be polyamorous is not adequately justified.
I didn't upvote or downvote-- the post doesn't seem wildly different in quality than other vaguely ok posts I've seen.
It took me a while to get past sympathy for Alice to think about other aspects of the post. What is your understanding of your mistake when breaking up? I've got my own theory, and I'm curious about whether they'll match.
I'm surprised that you got so much good out of research.
I think there was a comment tweaking you for needing to figure out that women are looking for positive subjective experiences. (One annoying thing about the double pos...
i would find this a more compelling narrative if you explained more clearly the ends towards which various actions were directed. What kind of relationship[s] did you want, at each stage of this process? Are there other goals for which these means would have been more or less applicable?
Neither voted up nor down. For one, the thought that there's another post out there was extremely distracting as I was reading. I kept speculating on what was different and whether it was a kind of test (of the reader; clearly it's presented as a test of the article).
As for the structure of the article, it seems unfocused. There are a few good bits here and there, but it's mostly a repetition of things I've seen many times elsewhere. I would have gotten more out of a post that explores your approach to polyamory in more detail and leaves the other stuff out.
Now I'm going to go read the other version, since I'm curious, but I promise not to vote on it one way or the other.
I wasn't sure where the post was going. It has interesting, potentially useful points, but I wasn't clear on the goal of the post. The first heading gives a clue, but I think it would be helpful to expand on this.
Upvoted for several different reasons:
1: I liked the general progress of the story. It contains several thematic elements that in general I find appealing (finding emotional happiness, building skills)
2: I know people who I believe this advice would be of great help to. Specifically this section:
...Every book on dating skills told me to go talk to women, but I thought I needed a completed decision tree first: What if she does this? What if she says that? I won't know what to do if I don't have a plan! I should read 10 more books, so I know how to handle eve
I don't see what you plan to gain from splitting the article into two slightly different versions - you won't have the statistical power to get results that would, e.g., convince me to change my article-writing behavior about anything important.
No vote, because I don't typically vote unless something sticks out.
I thought the article was pretty ok. I liked reading your story of personal development. :) The short sections with clearly labelled points were effective. I don't have too much objection to the specific advice you mentioned, except: there were certain ones that apply to, yes, a nice large portion of people, but an individual might find that they are more compatible with people outside that portion (eg. people who appreciate math jokes as flirtation) and I think it's worth looking for that compatibility even if it's not as common.
Neither upvoted nor downvoted. It contains material that would be helpful for some in the LW community, but you personally come off as a bit callous in the process, and that's fairly off-putting.
Second the neither upvoting nor downvoting part. While I enjoyed the humor, I'm not actually sure I want to encourage it on LW - Luke being Luke, there's all the hard science I want in the links, but for other contributors...?
And now I have to go read the other version to try to figure out what the difference was and what responses Luke expected!
You don't touch too much on the ways by which you form relationships, but if the approaches described in the "Use Science" section are indicative of what you always do, I'm appalled.
It surprises me that your "rational" approach to getting women involves being largely dishonest about who you are to them. Why avoid talking about politics, math, programming, and religion if that's what you enjoy talking about? If she doesn't, then maybe you shouldn't be together. If forming a satisfying relationship is truly your goal I don't think this is...
It surprises me that your "rational" approach to getting women involves being largely dishonest about who you are to them. Why avoid talking about politics, math, programming, and religion if that's what you enjoy talking about?
He's optimising one of the steps in his funnel. If there are three steps you need to get through to form a relationship; flirting, dating/intellectual compatibility, relationship compatibility, and success in each is 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, it takes a thousand tries to get a success. If by improving your flirting skills you move to 0.3, 0.1, 0.1, you only need 333 tries.
And as I read it he wasn't dishonest, he just optimised step 1, flirting. Flirting is fun, but with the majority of people it isn't compatible with serious intellectual conversation. He didn't hide his intellectual interests, he just didn't present them at a time when it would be sub-optimal given his goals.
It surprises me that your "rational" approach to getting women involves being largely dishonest about who you are to them.
I disagree. There are times with my friends and family when I don't talk about politics or religion, either, because those subjects don't work for particular situations. I was never dishonest about my views or values, and they inevitably came out after I spent more time with someone.
I don't think this is dishonest.
I am more attentive to my personal appearance, the cleanliness of my surroundings, etc etc when I'm courting somebody. I am sure they were aware of this. The way much [all?] of society works, extra efforts to impress somebody are viewed as signalling the effort they're worth. It's not deceitful, because the other party understands the signal being sent. To show up on a date looking or acting slobby would be read as a signal that you weren't very motivated.
I think camouflaged changes of conversation topic are likewise not misleading. They're a routine social artifice that most people use and that anybody can notice if they care. The people who don't notice the topic shift are the people who weren't firmly attached to that topic and have no reason to object.
At first i had the same feelings about the article you did.
But then i remembered what my life-coach taught me: "All behaviours start out as "gimmicks", after some time of training they go from gimmick to part of your natural behaviour and lose their gimmickness"
This was the best lesson i ever learned as refusing to use gimmicks has put me at a serious disadvantage to those people whole naturally learned about the gimmick when they where little children.
Like luke, using gimmicks has been the best thing to happen for my work and private life. (also people who know that im gimmicking appreciate the effort i put into bettering our relationships and actively help me)
Your comment qualifies as a proof that I disrespect most people, including some of my loved ones. You could view it as a reductio ad absurdum of my opinion, or of your opinion; whichever you like better.
Interesting I went through a similar assessment of my sexual and social results, and ultimately reached similar positive results with a different arrangement.
...So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked. I thought she would appreciate this because she had previously expressed admiration for detailed honesty. Later, I realized how hard it is to think of a more damaging way to break up
I didn't upvote or downvote (and haven't yet read the other article), because I generally don't unless I feel strongly about the content of a post, one way or another, and I didn't, aside from wanting to argue about polyamory and such.
Having now read them both individually and then side by side, the other is far better. The other comment I made still stands though, for both articles.
I seem to have put in a lot less effort to get what seem to me to be similarly awesome results. This very weakly implies that a lot of your skill gaining might not have been necessary:
There might have been a learning curve, but by golly, at the end of all that DIY science and rationality training and scholarship I'm actually seeing an awesome poly girl, I'm free to take up other relationships when I want, I know fashion well enough to teach it at rationality camps, I can build rapport with almost anyone, my hair looks great and I'm happy.
I didn't reall...
Note: I am testing two versions of my new post on rationality and romance.
Please upvote, downvote, or non-vote the below post as you normally would if you saw it on the front page (not the discussion section), but do not vote on the other version. Also, if your last name begins with l–z, please read and vote on this post first. If your last name begins with a–k, please stop reading and read this version instead.
Rationality Lessons from Romance
Years ago, my first girlfriend (let's call her 'Alice') ran into her ex-boyfriend at a coffee shop. They traded anecdotes, felt connected, a spark of intimacy...
And then she left the coffee shop, quickly.
She told me later: "You have my heart now, Luke."
I felt proud, but even Luke2005 also felt a twinge of "the universe is suboptimal," because she hadn't been able to engage that connection any further. The cultural scripts defining our relationship said that only one man owned her heart. But surely that wasn't optimal for producing utilons?
And thus began my journey toward rational romance — not at that exact moment, but with a series of realizations like that about monogamy, about the assumed progression toward marriage, about the ownership of another person's sexuality, etc. I began to explicitly notice the cultural scripts and see that they might not be optimal for me.
Rationality Skill: Notice when things are suboptimal. Think of ways to optimize them.
Gather data
But I didn't know how to optimize. I needed data. How did relationships work? How did women work? How did attraction work? I decided to become a social psychology nerd. The value of information was high. I began to spend less time with Alice so I could spend more time studying.
Rationality Skill: Respond to the value of information. Don't keep running in what is probably the wrong direction just because you've got momentum. Stop a moment, and invest some energy in figuring out which direction to go.
Sanity-check yourself
Before long, I noticed that Alice was always pushing me to spend more time with her, and I was always pushing to spend more time studying psychology. I was unhappy, and I knew I could one day attract better mates if I had time to acquire the skills that other men had; men who were "good with women."
So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked. I thought she would appreciate this because she had previously expressed admiration for detailed honesty. Later, I realized how hard it is to think of a more damaging way to break up with someone.
She asked that I kindly never speak to her again. I can't blame her.
Rationality Skill: Know your fields of incompetence. Sanity-check yourself by asking others for advice, or by Googling "how to break up with your girlfriend nicely" or "how to not die on a motorcycle" or whatever.
Study
During the next couple years, I spent no time in (what would have been) sub-par relationships, and instead invested that time optimizing for better relationships in the future. Which meant I was celibate. But learning.
Alas, neither Intimate Relationships nor Handbook of Relationship Initiation existed at the time, but I still learned quite a bit from books like The Red Queen and The Moral Animal. I experienced a long series of 'Aha!' moments, like:
Within a few months, I had more dating-relevant head knowledge than any guy I knew.
Rationalist Skill: Scholarship. Especially if you can do it efficiently, scholarship is a quick and cheap way to level up.
Avoid rationalization
Scholarship was comfortable, so I stayed in scholar mode for too long. I hit diminishing returns in what books could teach me. Every book on dating skills told me to go talk to women, but I thought I needed a completed decision tree first: What if she does this? What if she says that? I won't know what to do if I don't have a plan! I should read 10 more books, so I know how to handle every contingency.
The dating books told me I would think that, but I told myself I was unusually analytical, and could actually benefit from completing the decision tree in advance of actually talking to women.
The dating books told me I would think that, too, and that it was just a rationalization. Really, I was just nervous about the blows that newbie mistakes (and subsequent rejections) would lay upon my ego.
Rationalist Skill: Notice rationalizations and defeat them: Consider the cost of time and trust happening as a result of rationalizing. Consider what opportunities you are missing if you don't just realize you're wrong right now.
Use science
The dating books told me to swallow my fear and talk to women. I couldn't swallow my fear, so I tried E&J brandy instead. That worked.
So I went out and talked to women, mostly at coffee shops or on the street. I learned all kinds of interesting details I hadn't learned in the books:
After a while, I could talk to girls even without the brandy. And a little after that, I scored my first one-night stand.
I was surprised by how much I didn't enjoy casual flings. I wasn't very engaged when I didn't know and didn't have much in common with the girl in my bed. But I kept having casual flings, mostly for their educational value. As research projects go, I guess they weren't too bad.
Rationalist Skill: Use empiricism and do-it-yourself science. Just try things. No, seriously.
Try harder
By this time my misgivings about the idea of owning another's sexuality had grown into a full-blown endorsement of polyamory. I needed to deprogram my sexual jealousy, which sounded daunting. Sexual jealousy was hard-wired into me by evolution, right?
It turned out to be easier than I had predicted. Tactics that helped me destroy my capacity for sexual jealousy include:
This lack of sexual jealousy came in handy when I grew a mutual attraction with a polyamorous girl who was already dating two of my friends.
Rationality Skill: Have a sense that more is possible. Know that we haven't yet reached the limits of self-modification. Try things. Let your map of what is possible be constrained by evidence, not popular opinion.
Finale
I now enjoy higher-quality relationships — sexual and non-sexual — of a kind that wouldn't be possible with the social skills of Luke2005. I went for years without a partner I cared about, but that's okay because the whole journey was planted with frequent rewards: the thrill of figuring something out, the thrill of seeing people respond to me in a new way, the thrill of seeing myself looking better in the mirror each month.
There might have been a learning curve, but by golly, at the end of all that DIY science and rationality training and scholarship I'm actually seeing an awesome poly girl, I'm free to take up other relationships when I want, I know fashion well enough to teach it at rationality camps, I can build rapport with almost anyone, my hair looks great and I'm happy.