The popularity and ethics of PUAs and similar communities

Littlekittylou wrote: »

What would it feel like to have everything you have taught and done, done to you? And would you enjoy that feeling?

I'm not a woman but from what I've observed and read, I'd feel attracted. That's kinda the whole point. If I had to put up with the typical stuff guys do I'd probably be happy and relieved as a woman to not have to reject another needy awkward guy.

As a man I wouldn't feel attraction, I'm not sure what I'd feel, probably wouldn't register as anything to me. For most of the things I mentioned it would make me think he's a non needy guy as that's what a lot of it boils down to. Most of these are useful signposts for self improvement for men. If you want to define better as more attractive then they're signposts for how to be a better man.

It's like me asking how you'd feel if a woman showed you her tits. Probably some mild curiosity I'd guess. You wouldn't feel attracted to her.

Maybe the more accurate gender reversed situation is if a girl was trying to make me commit to her. Acting pleasant, trustworthy, feminine, etc. I'd like that very much as well. In fact I wish women would give this advice to other women more often. Likewise, I'd guess that women would like guys to stop being so needy.

It would be helpful if you could be more specific about what you want to address. All I can assume is that you misunderstood my post. I mentioned a lot of the old school PUA explanations which were invented by guys with serious issues. The impression I get is that people are reading a 10 year old book and think that's what's going on, that it's somehow manipulating the girl. I was making the point that the explanations they came up with were nonsense and I'd agree that it would be unethical and destructive to use them if they were true. Can you pick something in particular out so I know what you're taking issue with?

Littlekittylou wrote: »

No as you. So would you consent to someone treating you like that? Would you oblige?

I've already answered as me, it was the paragraph right after the one you quoted. I also flipped it around in two gender reversed scenarios. The answer was yes, I'd not only like it, I'd appreciate the effort.

I've written several paragraphs in my previous posts trying to guess what you're referring to, if you're not going to be specific then I can't answer you better than that.

Littlekittylou wrote: »

Just to add I would not by the way. And I would not consent.

Cool, perhaps you could elaborate on what exactly you wouldn't like and we could have a discussion and learn something.

Not sure what you mean by consent, consent to what exactly?

If you have something specific you'd like to discuss I'm happy to clarify my position but I'm getting the impression you're just trolling me at this stage.

Littlekittylou wrote: »

Do you feel I am less than forthcoming and genuine, in my interactions with you?

Are you objecting to how you feel I am treating you?

Do you feel it's less than is respectful?

You're free to treat me however you like. If I felt it was unproductive I'm free to state that I'm no longer interested in continuing the interaction. If you add an interesting twist then I'm free to continue it.

Your behaviour altered my perception of you. I may have thought less of your ability to form a coherent argument but I can't say I felt disrespected though, no.

Littlekittylou wrote: »

You thought of less of me because you feel I resorted to 'trolling' or less than genuine behavior. It's not attractive. Nor is it clever. And it is disrespectful. Apologies.

I assumed the topic was an emotional one for you and/or that you misunderstood my position.

I eventually got the impression that you might have been wasting my time but my original hypothesis could also have been true. Either way it wasn't productive to continue the conversation at that point.

I didn't think your behaviour was less than genuine until you flipped it around, at which point I was interested to see where you were going with it. If your intention was to be less than genuine in order to help me understand your position better then I don't view that as disrespectful. It's possibly manipulative but you can be manipulative with good intentions.

If your intention was to disrespect me then apology accepted. I didn't get that impression though.

In my view most people are good and have good motivations. Regardless of motivation, if a behaviour crosses a personal boundary then I'll choose not to accept it. I think that's a healthy thing. Sometimes these boundaries can change, there's a certain discovery process to what you're willing or not willing to accept, especially in the dating world.

The techniques of manipulation/machiavellianism are tools as well, they're not good or bad in and of themselves. Women have especially well developed techniques, they were necessary survival tools in a world where they were physically weaker but there were no laws against physical violence. Boys are told not to use violence to get what they want from a young age but women aren't told the same thing about manipulation. I've studied bpd, cluster b and other personality disorders so I'm aware of common psychological manipulation tools. It's amusing spotting women using them, a lot of the time it's subconscious I think, subtle differences in phrasing. My daughter has her little techniques she likes to run, I can understand how some girls have their fathers wrapped around their fingers. It's not that women are evil for doing this, my daughter is 9, the question of good or bad / ethical or unethical doesn't really come into it at that age, it's a biological tendency.

Knowledge of these tools doesn't make you a bad person either. It's often recommended to study them so you can protect yourself from people who would use them against you. Robert Greene's 48 laws of power and Robert Ciadini's influence, the psychology of persuasion make these points in their introductions. Robert was sick of his tendency to buy stuff from salesmen (and especially young, attractive saleswomen) that he didn't really need and sought to understand the process.

It's just marketing though, no matter how good your sales pitch there's no way you'll get me to buy a tractor for example, I have no need for it. Likewise, if a girl doesn't want to sleep with me there's nothing I could do or say to change her mind. That also applies to women who are married to provider types. There are loads of social conventions designed to convince women to go with the stable, nice guys. It's not just about tricking men. Unfortunately, desire cannot be negotiated. A woman might have sex to fulfill her wifely duties or as a reward for getting her husband to do something but no matter how it's marketed, you can't create sexual desire that isn't there to begin with. This is something a lot of guys don't realise, they make sacrifices in the hope that women will appreciate it and reciprocate with sexual desire then get upset that women don't "appreciate everything they do for them". It's a problem with marriage counsellors who are telling men they just need to do more chores around the house and then his wife will be less tired and want to have sex again.

I do lots of things for women even though I know it often reduces my chances of sleeping with them. It's a natural male tendency that furthered the survival of the species and at one time the trade of "I'll protect you and you'll give me sex" was probably what was going on. It's likely a hardwired tendency but people also like to feel useful and it feels nice to help people anyway. It's a shame that helpfulness is a heuristic women use to filter guys out but I'd rather know that it was reducing my chances of having sex and make an informed decision before I decide to help. I'll still help sometimes, ironically I probably do it more when I'm less interested in sleeping with her now.

It can certainly be used for bad purposes though. The 48 laws of power happens to be the most requested book in prison libraries. A lot of people are repulsed when they read about machiavellianism or sales techniques or game but they're just tools, how you use them is up to you. The idea of "ethical marketing" comes from this. A lot of purple pill companies teach "ethical game" but interpretations vary. Some blogs take a more descriptive approach, this is what it is, use it how you want. Some of the old school guys found ways to make women fall in love with them (the paper on falling in love I linked to earlier on the feminist site for example). They had serious issues and wanted the validation, it definitely hurt a lot of girls. Most instructors advise not even qualifying, or at least keeping it very light, when your intentions are short term. They also advise keeping things playful and avoiding discussing deep topics like family or relationships in those situations because it's potentially unfair to the girl.

In order to get good at machiavellianism it needs to be practiced. It's not something I've worked on myself. I'm aware of my own natural tendencies and will sometimes repress certain behaviours. For example, a very common tendency for analytical guys is to over justify and add caveats to all their points, "show their work". Exactly like this post. One of the laws of power is to say less than you need to. Sometimes people will intentionally derail discussions in order to win the argument, it's a pretty unethical debate tactic imo. Overly verbose arguments give them ample opportunity to take advantage and I sometimes intentionally keep things short and sweet when I spot this behaviour. I don't technically "lose" the argument when someone does this but perceptively I do. Most of the time I'm trying to get information across and it's nice to get different view points so we can all gain, which is why I elaborate on my points. Productive discussion vs. arguments.

I wasn't really thinking about your behaviour in terms of attraction but it's interesting you mentioned it. I assumed your post was based on emotion and guys getting emotional is certainly an unattractive heuristic for girls. I don't think the same effect applies in reverse, or certainly not to the same extent anyway.

Emotion can be a weakness for women because it prevents planning but strategic emotion is a law of power. Women will cry because of the effect they know it has for example. Men could probably use strategic emotion and not have it be unattractive.

The evo psych explanation would be something like an emotional man is of no use to the tribe and may be a weakness, it needs to be stamped out. An emotional woman may draw attention but she's still of use so she needs to be consoled. That's the big problem MRA have, there's a biological repulsion to men complaining. It's why feminism has gotten so far despite the nonsense and severe societal cost it's caused.

Feminism (and equality) is a philosophy (probably more of a dogma) that evolved from Marxism. It has the same inherent flaw that communism had in that it ignores inherent biological tendencies and differences in the pursuit of "fairness" and "equality". They fail because of human nature. Equality and feminism are ideologies. They start from a premise, we're equal or patriarchy did it, and ignore all evidence to the contrary. Then mandate changes based on the incorrect premise.

Red pill is a philosophy as well. It's one that was based on observation and science. It's open to new ideas and will replace old ideas if better explanations come along. Not everything it proposes is backed up with scientific evidence, a lot is from observation as well. The name is pretty nerdy though.

It can often feel like being an evolutionist in a society of creationists. There's this mountain of supporting evidence but they're worried that people will "feel bad" if dinosaurs are more than 2,000 years old. Likewise I have to be careful about pointing out scientific evidence that says we're not equal in case people "feel bad". I don't know why people would feel bad if the earth was more than 2,000 years old and I don't know why people would feel bad if we're complimentary rather than equal.

Littlekittylou wrote: »

No I am free to treat you fairly. With mutually agreed standards of conduct.

The mutually agreed standards of conduct for posting here are the terms stickied on the forum. If we break them we get the ban hammer but we have scope to operate inside of that. If one of us wants to put a more stringent personal boundary around the conduct they'll accept then we're free to do so. The other person agrees or the conversation ends.

Likewise, in society, we have laws that mandate agreed standards of conduct but scope to operate inside of that. If somebody crosses your personal boundaries you're free to end the interaction.

Littlekittylou wrote: »

Basically I should just stop acting the maggot. I would say

Although i did mean it. You were right when you said there is no excuse to hurt someone.

I object to anything that would hurt people.

I didn't say there's no excuse to hurt someone. I said being honest wasn't an excuse.

For example, if I decide I don't want to keep seeing a girl because she attracts too much drama into her life then I probably wouldn't tell her that was the reason. If I thought it was something that she could fix then I might risk hurting her feelings in an effort to improve her life. In that situation it's probably not the case and I'd just tell her that I'm not looking for a relationship with anyone right now. Also, if I had some sort of personal preference that wasn't shared by others then I might not tell the girl because it's not something she should necessarily change. I might have legitimate arguments for suggesting the change but it's not a black and white area.

Conversely, I'll almost always tell women the truth about fertility rates if children is something they claim to want in their life. I risk hurting their feelings but if I can get them to make better choices about how they plan their life and the risks involved in delaying starting a family then I think it's worth it.

So much of feminism and equality is seriously damaging to women, there's plenty of studies on this. I'm not pointing it out to be mean or to hurt people. Likewise, I'm not pointing out the flaws in blue pill wisdom to hurt men. I think the chances of helping people outweigh the downside of hurting some feelings.

You're free to disagree on this of course. Some people might take the opposite extreme and argue that honesty and full disclosure is always correct and I'd disagree. It's a philosophical debate, not something that can be proven one way or the other. If we can't convince each other then we fall back to "agree to disagree".

KomradeBishop wrote: »

The entire set of primary/main problems that I have with a lot of the content in your posts RedJoker, is the gender-based generalizations - especially when you claim things such as certain behaviour traits (manipulative ones), being biological tendencies, or generalizations about what turn women away from men.

As soon as I start seeing stuff like that I think 'citation needed' - and there is a lot of stuff like that in your posts. Far too much of it, to actually address on a point by point basis.

Ok, thanks for letting me know.

I was stating the red pill positions so we could discuss the ethics of it rather than trying to prove them. It's hard to have an ethical discussion if we're disagreeing about what we're talking about.

I can't put citations beside everything I write, wouldn't be feasible especially when there's a massive community who have already covered all of these points. I've linked to multiple studies and articles in earlier posts when I've had them to hand.

If you want a bunch of research you could read the science tag on chateau heartiste.

If you want the evolutionary psychology side then rationale male probably does the best job of it.
Edit: there's a lot of references for evolutionary psychology in the Wikipedia page. Some interesting stuff about mating differences between men and women as well. I'd trust the game blogs more than the academics for that topic though.

If you want the personality disorder and manipulation stuff then therawness.com has some great content. Illimitablemen.com has loads of content on machiavellianism as well as a good overview of the main positions of red pill.

I'm already explaining a lot of very basic stuff, how far down to first principles do I need to go? I had to justify why I believe in inate gender personality differences in another thread like it wasn't completely obvious from living in the real world for 5 minutes. I enjoy the discussion and going down to the basics sometimes improves my understanding as well.

If I link too much stuff then it stifles discussion, I can't expect people to read everything. That's why there's so much terminology, it's not possible to develop deeper ideas if every basic premise needs to be explained each time.

Here's a good start:The remedial red pill.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

There are a lot of problems with evolutionary psychology as a field of study, which make it a dubious base for making solid claims - while some of it is valid and beneficial, some of it is also quite dubious and the problems with it may not be obvious or easy to pick apart (unless you research the problems in the field - which I may do more of, as I come across case-by-case EP arguments).

Yes, I'll admit it has a pretty major problem - it hurts people's feelings and disproves the accepted ideology (dogma) of the day. It's the same "problem" evolution had at the start, it disproved parts of the Christian ideology of the day and people felt bad that they were evolved from monkeys, which is why people said evolution had "problems" back then in an attempt to discredit it.

There are a bunch of other interesting parallels between evolutionary psychology and evolution, which isn't surprising since they're the same thing. In simple terms, psychological (biological) mutations proved favourable for the environment, improved survival and/or reproduction chances and these traits were more likely to be passed on.

You can see this in domesticated dogs, breeders purposely selected for tameness. In Greenland, breeders didn't do this and dogs are still wild, more like wolves. Source. That's evolutionary psychology in action. And evolution since biology and psychology are linked. They're so linked you can even effect your hormones and personality by changing the way you stand. Source.

The same "problems" happened with global warming and smoking causing lung cancer. You hit on the reason these "problems" exist - people don't have the time or ability to verify everything independently and saying there are "problems" is enough to cause doubt in lay people.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

A particularly big problem with generalizations, is taking something where there is evidence that a proportion (even majority) of women act in a certain way, and then generalizing that to all women - I've seen that a hell of a lot on gender-based topics.

That's the not all women are like that (NAWALT) argument. Some discussion of this social convention.

Some women repress their natural drives in the same way that some men have been conditioned to repress their natural drives. It doesn't mean those drives/tendencies/predispositions don't exist. Some people use these tendencies for good or bad, it doesn't make the tendencies good or bad in and of themselves.

Not all generalisations are assumed to be biological, some are environmental/cultural/situational. For example, if you took any of the heuristics women use and changed the demographics of men who exhibit the tendency then it would cease to be a useful heuristic, or would be a weaker one. In South American cultures it's been observed that men tend to approach more so this becomes a weaker indicator of attractive men. In Scandinavian cultures men approach less so the act of approaching is a much more accurate heuristic for women there. This same effect has been observed in daygame vs. nightgame. Many men have observed vastly different responses from women due to this dynamic. The great thing is that you can go out and test this for yourself whenever you like, it's completely falsifiable.

Same thing with my manipulation generalisation (just to make the point once again that manipulation is a tool and can be used for both good and bad, even though the word has negative associations to most people). You can read about common manipulation techniques (therawness.com is a good source) and observe men and women in your own environment to see if the generalisation is true. You can also observe girls and boys to get an indication of whether this is likely to be an innate gender difference. You could also apply evolutionary logic to see if this tendency would have caused a survival/reproductive advantage. In fact, it's encouraged that you do so and report back with your findings so that we can learn from your experiences. That's the scientific process red pill philosophy is based on.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

I've spent a good while going through some Wiki links, where there has been some useful (though sparse) information - but after a brief look I don't really take those blog links as being a good source of information, as obviously the sites have their own slant on research they pick out, and also there is so much content (which is not very well focused) that it's not worth the time picking through.

Sparse? There's 170 notes, dozens of additonal references and a half dozen further readings on the wikipedia page.

Here's an interesting one:
"...critics of the field, when they err, are not slightly missing the mark. Their confusion is deep and profound. It’s not like they are marksmen who can’t quite hit the center of the target; they’re holding the gun backwards." Source. Also Could Evolutionary Psychology’s Critics Pass Evolutionary Psychology’s Midterms?

I agree that there's a lot of content on the game blogs, it's a very diverse topic. There's the philosophy angle. The self improvement angle. The having more success with women angle. A lot of these overlap as well. The "slant" on the research is generally seeing if game works (which has already been observed so it's not surprising that research confirms it), seeing if feminist/equalist ideology is hurting or helping society and in what ways, getting a deeper understanding of gender differences, etc.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

I think any generalizations will need to be justified/challenged on a case-by-case basis as you post them - it might be inconvenient to have to explain that every time, but unless other posters already agree with you, that's kind of inevitable - there are a lot of economic discussions I'd like to have, which I can't because I can't get past first principles with many posters

I can't justify generalisations unless we accept basic first principles (like the validity of evolution). It's not expected that you accept every part of it or that you'd be interested in every part of it. Some generalisations give plausible explanations for other observed generalisations or lead to predictions of other generalisations, which can be tested. That's how higher levels of understanding evolve. Brain scans and hormone analysis (pre and post natal) are showing predicted effects and raising more fascinating questions. (Assuming we accept the validity of those fields).

Red pill itself is very new, it began from a group of men from different walks of life and different perspectives coming together and sharing their observations in an attempt to improve their lives and the lives of other men (and women, there are red pill women groups now). It's grown from there and spread in various directions with different perspectives and beliefs. You might not be interested in the game side of it but observations from the field can influence your understanding of gender and culture differences which might be a topic of interest to you.

Perhaps you're interested in the ethical use of these tools and want to focus on that area, it's a very important discussion. In a similar way to people discussing "ethical marketing". Ethical game topics include things like "leave her better than you found her", "be upfront about your intentions and behave in a manner congruent to that", "end relationships as soon as possible if a girl is becoming attached and you're not interested in continuing it", "don't tell her why you're not interested if it's unlikely to be something she can or should fix so you don't unnecessarily hurt her feelings". To give an example from earlier, if you're interested in a one night stand then don't do heavy qualification or deep comfort.

If you don't personally believe a certain red pill point (or don't feel the research is conclusive enough) then you might not agree with the ethical tenet that's based on it. The "alpha widow" concept might make sleeping with girls you don't intend to marry unethical if taken to an extreme for example. Very important topic of discussion but you need to understand the techniques and why they work, innate gender differences, etc. in order to have that conversation. What about in a gender reversed role, is a woman ethically responsible for ending a "friendship" when it's obvious the guy wants more despite claiming to be happy to "just be friends"? What about ethics surrounding accepting drinks from guys? Or are these red pill observations about gender differences in the field not applicable because they don't actually exist and scientists haven't spent time in nightclubs measuring it?

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Evolutionary psychology is not Evolutionary biology, and it did not discredit Christian ideology, EB did. EB is a science, EP is not.

I said that EB discredited Christian ideology. That was my point. EP is a science, it's testable and falsifiable. It's also predictive. The wikipedia link mentions all of this with sources.

Not everything that's hypothesized (in EB or EP) is testable or falsifiable but that doesn't make it not a science. Not everything in physics is testable, doesn't make it not a science or not a useful model of predicting the real world.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Evolutionary psychology - depending upon the claims made - can often be untestable/unfalsifiable; it doesn't all fall under this, but EP based claims that do, definitely warrant being considered 'highly dubious'; in those cases, it can just become its own dogma, and it has a track record of being used like this to promote racist views and even eugenics, or for bigotry against *insert target demographic*.

Sure, that's a fair point. Creationists will use pseudo-scientific arguments to back up their points.

The observation that women exhibit more manipulative behaviours than men is completely testable and falsifiable, you can do it yourself if you like. Observing this in children is testable and falsifiable. If we do brain scans or can link the behaviours to certain hormones then we can test whether these things develop prenatal. If you want to wait for more evidence then that's fine, I'm certainly not against more research.

Likewise if you want to wait for more evidence before believing the observation that men exhibit more physically violent behaviours than women that's your choice.

In my view, I think the downsides to ignoring this observation are greater than the risk that somebody would suddenly become bigoted against women. I also think the downsides to ignoring the observed male tendency towards physical violence as a tool would be greater than the risk that some women might use this as a reason to hate men (which some misandrists certainly do).

Bigots will use anything to justify their positions. They're following an irrational ideology as well. Their beliefs start from "insert target demographic" is bad, let's justify this and base all our recommendations on this. Christianity uses this process. Feminism as well. As do equalists. Misogynists do this and I fully accept the point that misogynists will use red pill knowledge to justify horrible recommendations. I'd advise filtering everything through your own personal experiences first.

I had a quick google. Here's an article on a study published from the journal Human Nature:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141104083742.htm

"Based on the fitness costs documented in these stories, Scalise Sugiyama believes that ancestral women may have developed certain strategies to increase their odds of survival and their ability to manage their reproduction in the face of warfare. These include manipulating male behavior, determining whether the enemy's intent was to kill or capture them, and using defensive and evasive tactics to sidestep being murdered or to escape captivity."

Interesting point about the observation that women are more susceptible to stockholm syndrome:

"The so-called Stockholm Syndrome, in which hostages bond with their captors, could have ancestral roots, hypothesizes Scalise Sugiyama. It often occurs under conditions of physical confinement or physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse, which are characteristic of captivity in ancestral forager and forager-horticulturalist groups. "

KomradeBishop wrote: »

This doesn't make EP inherently 'bad', but it is known as a field that - in among good research - puts out false/misleading 'research', that can get taken up by others to promote their own dubious views.
Everyone should give EP-based arguments, an extremely thorough vetting (doing their own research on criticisms of presented research), before considering such arguments as credible.

Yes, I think the source and motives of the presenter should determine the level of scrutiny. However, if the societal ideology of the time, as well as your innate protector instincts, makes every potentially negative comment about women cause you to subconsciously assume misogyny then it's going to take a long time to analyse everything.

That's the reason I haven't linked to return of kings or roosh V in any of my posts, I'm not confident in their motives. A lot of it is click baiting type stuff so I'm much more skeptical about accepting it. I linked to Dalrock earlier with the caveat that it was a Christian blog. I also didn't link to alphagameplan because it's a Christian blog as well.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

The article you posted in response to me pointing out the problem with generalizing to all women, doesn't seem to make a coherent point; you're going to need to make your argument in your own words there.

Ok. I'll cover this below to keep it together.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

I don't know what you mean by 'natural drive' either - there is no Googlable information on that.

Sorry, sloppy wording. Natural sexual drives, our drives to reproduce.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

A generalization is still faulty thinking either way - 1: It is rare that any generalization, is backed by proof showing a majority of a demographic display that trait, and 2: Even when a majority does display such a trait, that does not justify a generalization, which is usually applied to all of a specific demographic.

1. Lots of it is backed by scientific proof. Large numbers of men independently observing a tendency and testing it (often with tangential motivations unrelated to the test) is arguably an even better form of proof. Lots of it is testable. You can test it yourself. You're encouraged to.

2. I think we're using different meanings here. It's not applied to all people in a specific demographic, I never said that.
- There are distributions of behaviour.
- People fall on various points on these distributions.
- These distributions can be analyzed across gender, age, race, etc., etc.
- Sometimes there will be overlap (hence why NAWALT or some men are like that too isn't a rebuttal, I think that's the issue here)
- When I say women tend to exhibit a behaviour more than men I'm not saying all women do this and no men do it, I never did.

If there's a particular tendency observed with specific demographics it's only natural to ask why these tendencies happen, is this tendency observed prenatally or linked to hormones which develop prenatally. What can we hypothesise would increase or decrease the prevalence of this particular behaviour.

For example, men have higher sex drives, this is linked to testosterone, men have higher testosterone prenatally. It's a biological trait. In some cultures men exhibit less sexual behaviours compared to other cultures. Likewise, for women. Sometimes there's an inverse correlation to these trends. An interesting question is whether this is an innate racial difference or a cultural influence. What historical environmental influences might have caused these differences in race or what current social conventions are more common in one culture than another which might have caused these trends.

We can also examine the effects on health, well being, etc., etc. that are observed with these tendencies. This can help us to make changes to improve lives and society as a whole.

Or we can decide that a particular irrational ideology is right because it "feels good" and make society changes and recommendations for how people live their lives based on that.

These generalisations can be extremely useful in other ways. For example, the sex of a fetus can often be determined from where the hands are. Girls tend to keep their hands by their face, boys by their crotch. I'll leave the explanation for this and other potential hypothesis that might be drawn to the reader.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

You can't test these things yourself either: That's personal anecdote which tends to result in confirmation bias - you need large scale studies, which do not have any flawed research methods, to try and back such claims.
If 'red pill' stuff relies on anecdote a lot like that, that gives good cause for treating all of it as extremely dubious.

If thousands and thousands of men, often with confirmation bias in the opposite direction due to social ideology, can discover these tendencies over the course of more than a decade and draw similar conclusions I think we should start to give it a bit more weight than "extremely dubious". If instructors who have personally taught hundreds of men and have personally slept with hundreds of women (and interacted with thousands more as part of their jobs) report similar things I'm inclined to believe them. You might not be and that's your choice, some people don't want to take the red pill and I understand why. Some people don't want to give up their religious beliefs either and I understand that as well. However, if religious beliefs or other ideologies have started showing negative society effects or severe risks to men (or women) then I think that should be pointed out and people should be warned.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

The links you provided are heavy on information, but are so general they are sparse on useful/relevant information - so again, going to have to make arguments in your own words, rather than deferring to links.

I'm trying my best here. I appreciate there's a lot of information, which is why I didn't quote sources so we could have a discussion of the ethics. You asked for sources so I went looking for them, it's easier for me to find them since I'm more familiar with the material so that's reasonable enough. I've tried to find relevant and useful information as much as possible.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

I would say my main interest in red pill, would be to just dissect it enough to understand exactly where it is flawed and based on bad information (might learn something along the way - like the flaws in EP), and then see if there is anything left after that.

Cool, an extremely valuable pursuit. Perhaps you could post it somewhere for others to learn from as well.


I'm going to have to bow out of the discussion I'm afraid, it's taking up a lot of my time. I figured it would once I addressed the ethics side of it but it's a valuable conversation and I've certainly learned a lot and reevaluated my beliefs. Many thanks to the other contributors and to the mods in particular for being so flexible yet again.

EDIT: If I've convinced anybody to take the red pill, talk about it in polite society at your own risk, you may be ostracised.

Let's finish off these last points, hopefully without going on tangents (I'll do my best).

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Evolutionary biology and psychology are not the same, as I explained. You're using them as if they are interchangeable, when they aren't. Evolutionary psychology is not a science, evolutionary biology is.
If something in physics is not testable - for example string theory - then no, arguably that part of it is not actually a real science anymore; this is presently a huge problem with theoretical physics.

I use them as almost interchangeable because biology and psychology are extremely closely linked as I explained and sourced.

There is a more detailed explanation on wikipedia for why it's a science but if you want it in my own words:
DNA (along with other things) effects hormones (and other things) which effects both biology and psychology.

Mutations in DNA cause changes in both which are favourably selected due to survival or reproductive advantages.


It is easily falsifiable, testable and predictive, breed some dogs, predict the traits and get a statistically significant sample to either prove or disprove it. Or just read about it since it's been done already.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

You can not test that women are more manipulative than men, based on personal experience, and then use that as a generalization - that is anecdote; if you want to even begin to try and justify that generalization, you need to do a much larger study than that.

I didn't generalise from personal experience. It's been written about multiple times, I linked to a scientific journal which stated it. I used my personal experience to check after the fact before accepting it. If it's not something I can check with personal experience (like stockholm syndrome) then I take the scientific community at face value with the assumption that they've tested it.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

That article you link is also a perfect example - trying to make an EP based claim about an inherent female trait - of a completely untestable claim; there is absolutely no way at all to take conditions in a past society like that, and use it to suggest a trait that is generally unique to women.

Every trait they mention in that article is testable. It's also falsifiable. If more men suffer from stockholm syndrome then women then it's just been falsified. By your definition above it qualifies as scientific.

Who said anything about the traits being "unique to women", you're assuming meaning which was never intended and doesn't follow from the words. Men are completely capable of manipulation or suffering stockholm syndrome, etc.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

That it's easy to pick strong cases to back specific/strong EP claims in one area, doesn't justify generalizations made elsewhere - I agree that EP can put out some valid research, but also has put out much bad research too.

Doesn't justify it??? We're talking about using evolutionary processes to make predictions. You're arguing that we shouldn't use the theory of evolution to make predictions or attempt to explain things.

Yeah, I'll agree that we should test it where possible and maybe add a caveat that we don't currently have the ability to test it (or perhaps it's inherently untestable) where applicable but I completely disagree with you that it's not justified.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this discussion I think.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

This is exactly a good example of a misuse use of EP-based arguments to try and delegitimize an opposing view: Implying it's my "innate protector instincts" making me disagree with you, rather than seeing a pretty straightforward problem in your views. I didn't suggest misogyny either.

On generalizations:
1: Anecdotes are never proof - even if you get lots of them. You need proper studies. Inviting people to 'test' something by anecdote, is an invitation to confirmation bias. This doesn't mean it's not suggestive of something valid, but it's not 'scientific' or 'proof' until properly studied - especially when the sources of such information often have a professional bias to find these correlations.
2: When generalizations are made, they always seem to be a lot less reserved than implied by what you say here.

In any case, we're covering the same ground as the last set of posts mostly - so yes, better to drop this tangent.

1. If you don't want to believe anything that isn't 'scientific' and 'proven' by your definitions that's your choice. Unfortunately, it's not possible to operate in the world unless you form beliefs about things which haven't been directly tested by science. Since we need to hold beliefs and science doesn't have the time (or a reason) to test everything then we'll need to use something else to form beliefs.

Red pill advocates using observations and theoretical scientific frameworks to form those beliefs. Other people use ideology. Whatever you believe has consequences, choosing not to believe something is still a belief in the negative and has consequences.

That doesn't justify bigotry or eugenics. If you want to justify something with such high consequences (if it even is justifiable) then I agree that you damn well better have all your 't's crossed and 'i's dotted, with a mountain of tested scientific evidence behind you. (I can't remember coming across many people arguing that position though, we're probably reading different sites.) However, believing in the ideologies of feminism and equalism has led to justifying discriminating practices like affirmative action and gender quotas, massive society costs as well as negative effects on both men and women. This has all been documented. I realise the tone of some of the blogs can be offputting sometimes but is it really that surprising?

2. Again, I think you're assuming meaning that was never intended. Maybe some people used it that way which caused the confusion. The same thing came up in a previous thread actually, maybe it's a misunderstanding between how it's used casually and the intended statistical meaning of the words (not claiming my personal experience as proof of that of course, just observing and speculating on a potential cause if the generalisation happens to be true, feel free not to believe it).

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, while EP shares some interdisciplinary ideas with EB, are definitely not interchangeable.
They should not be mixed up - EP carries far more shaky ideas than the simple concept you describe there (it's easy to cherry-pick an oversimplified description of EP, to try and put it in a favourable light), and it is definitely not a science.

Take for example, incredibly shaky use of EP to try and give an explanation of why girls prefer pink - from Ben Goldacre:

http://www.badscience.net/2007/08/pink-pink-pink-pink-pink-moan/

On its face that's a ridiculous idea, and there is tons of evidence showing that this is a societal/culture-based preference instead - as Ben goes into in the rest of the article.
That is not science - that is utter nonsense.

Here's an entire RationalWiki page on EP, which is worth a read for anyone who views it in good light:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology


That article you linked is a similarly bad example of unscientific claims - and you're using that article to try and justify your present-day generalization - based on anecdote - when all the article does is give shaky historical speculation about how women were in society thousands of years ago, based on archaeological records.
Frankly, that's a ridiculous attempt at using EP to try and justify generalizing, and try to make it seem 'scientific'; it's bizarre.

It's such completely ridiculous thinking - using archaeological records plus anecdote, to make a generalized claim about women today, instead of actually doing a study of women today - I just don't understand how that could make sense to anyone, it's almost like a present-day study would be undesirable as it's suspected that it would disprove the idea.
Even if a trait is testable by doing such a study, the original EP claim about how that trait evolved is completely untestable/unfalsifiable, with no possible way to get evidence - that's not science.

To be honest, I think that more than justifies me taking EP based arguments as being completely invalid from hereon in - that's more than a good enough example, of bad application of EP.


You're also straw-manning me now - I never said evolutionary theory shouldn't be used to predict things, I specifically said evolutionary biology is a valid science - the way evolutionary thinking is being applied in EP though is clearly subject to a lot of pseudoscience.
It has its (limited) uses, but unfortunately EP as a field goes beyond this, and tries to apply this line of thinking in ways that are just unscientific.


1: It's not scientific or proven, by the definitions of science and the scientific method. You don't get to pick your own definitions of science - which is why EP is not a science.
If it's not proven, yet you form beliefs based on unproven ideas and satisfy yourself with less-than-scientific proof as 'good enough', that's exactly ideology, and if you claim that as 'scientific', that's pseudoscience.

It's not like doing scientific studies - actual ones polling attitudes/traits among the population - is difficult or hard by scientific standards, so there's no excuse for not doing that, and instead settling for such unnecessarily/unjustified lower standards of thinking/proof.

You don't judge whether or not such bad thinking is justified, based on the severity of the consequences either - I think fooling people into believing stuff (especially potentially isolated/vulnerable people like red pill may attract), based on pseudoscientific thinking, would be harmful and bad enough as it is - and that's the risk when you set your standards of proof so low.

Especially, if some of your thinking is based on a reaction to the overly ideological/extreme parts of feminism, then that's just automatically going to create a massive tendency towards serious bias in your thinking - and when you combine that with such low standards of proof and justification for pseudoscientific thinking, what you get is a movement that starts to veer towards ideological opposition to feminism, which is happy to use completely made up propaganda to try and back that (exactly the kind of thing EP is good for, and which it has historically had a use for).

I don't think suggesting possible explanations for an observed phenomenon is anything like claiming it as proof. You're talking about what the times and other mainstream journalists are saying. I would take anything written about science by mainstream journalists with a huge grain of salt, nutrition in particular but pretty much any science or statistics will routinely be misunderstood by journalists.

For example, this Telegraph article said:

"But research has been unclear as to whether children are born with those preferences, with some studies claiming there would be an evolutionary advantage in women attracted to brightly coloured fruits and leaves."

I don't have access to the full paper but the abstract doesn't say that. If they were making that claim then it would probably be in the abstract:

Abstract wrote:

Parents commonly dress their baby girls in pink and their baby boys in blue. Although there is research showing that children prefer the colour blue to other colours (regardless of gender), there is no evidence that girls actually have a special preference for the colour pink. This is the focus of the current investigation. In a large cross-sectional study, children aged 7 months to 5 years were offered eight pairs of objects and asked to choose one. In every pair, one of the objects was always pink. By the age of 2, girls chose pink objects more often than boys did, and by the age of 2.5, they had a significant preference for the colour pink over other colours. At the same time, boys showed an increasing avoidance of pink. These results thus reveal that sex differences in young children's preference for the colour pink involves both an increasing attraction to pink by young girls and a growing avoidance of pink by boys.

Here's an article from a science website which mentions a load of caveats and alternative cultural scenarios:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12512-women-may-be-hardwired-to-prefer-pink.html#.VPWepPmsWiw

"She acknowledges, however, that there might be other cultural influences on colour preference beyond toys that explain why Chinese women prefer pinkish hues, too."

From a TIME article:

"Ling speculates that the color preference and women's ability to better discriminate red from green could have evolved due to sex-specific divisions of labor: while men hunted, women gatherered, and they had to be able to spot ripe berries and fruits. Another theory suggests that women, as caregivers who need to be particularly sensitive to, say, a child flushed with fever, have developed a sensitivity to reddish changes in skin color, a skill that enhances their abilities as the “emphathizer.”"

You're debunking mainstream journalists EP claims who are trying to sell newspapers. They probably do this intentionally to spark exactly that kind of reaction.


The article I linked uses the EP logic that women were captured and raped historically. Women who could disassociate from the traumatic experiences and bond to captors survived and reproduced. Those who couldn't were killed or suffered psychological stress which reduced their chances for survival. There is a lot of supporting evidence for this theory such as this neuroscience study showing women have no emotional feelings during arousal and orgasm.

That study obviously has a lot of potential implications for men in their relationships with women. It's an important discussion about what those implications might be. If a misogynist wants to use it to justify hating women there's not much that can be done about that but they were going to hate women regardless (it's an ideology after all).



I didn't mean to straw man you. I'm glad we're in agreement that evolutionary theory is a valid tool to predict things.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

2: There is rarely even any standard of proof, to justify a statistical generalization either - because the arguments often are based on EP, which often is based on handwavy speculation about certain traits having an evolutionary basis, when those claims are often unfalsifiable - a completely different matter, to claims being based on actual statistics, which is something a hell of a lot more solid than EP (although that doesn't justify taking stats, and using them to make claims about how traits evolved - like the ridiculous 'why girls prefer pink' article).

Except that the very paper you brought up did the exact opposite of this.

They started with an observed statistical generalisation. That's exactly what the abstract said. They didn't start from EP and make handwavy generalisations. They speculated on potential causes for this observed statistical generalisation so they could get ideas for further research to narrow down the potential causes.

There's always a standard of proof for statistical significance. It's usually p < 0.05 although sometimes it's different. The paper you mention said it was significant.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

That got rather a lot longer than I wanted - but I have to say, this is giving me a really bad impression of the quality of thinking/'evidence', behind red pill.

I'm getting a really bad impression of the quality of thinking and motivations behind criticism of EP.

It's highly unlikely badscience.com and rationalwiki.com were fooled by the newspapers. They're quite clearly lying about how EP is used and a few minutes looking at the actual studies will show this. If you use those sources for information on any scientific field expect to be misinformed.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

No, the journalists were directly citing claims made by Evolutionary Psychologists - the article is here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098220701559X

The article you link - for the third time - makes claims that are completely unfalsifiable. That new neuroscience article doesn't back your point in any way - you're adding a huge number of assumptions of your own, which don't logically follow from that article - much as EP's tend to do.


That paper I brought up did exactly what I claimed, in the part you quote from me: It takes some stats, and used them as a false-justification for making claims about how certain traits evolved, when those statements are completely handwavy and unfalsifiable...

Just because someone uses stats, to make pseudoscientific claims based on those stats, doesn't mean the pseudoscience is valid or any more credible.


Anyway, I'm tired of debunking the same few arguments defending EP, which ignore the criticisms of its methodology I make, only to then make the same methodological mistakes I've criticized to try and back it again - those are just circular arguments.

From the article you linked:

Science Direct wrote:

We find a consistent sex difference in these weights, which, we suggest, may be linked to the evolution of sex-specific behavioral uses of trichromacy.

Science Direct wrote:

Our results demonstrate robust sex differences in color preference, which are consistent with the evolution of sex-specific behavioral uses of trichromacy. Yet while these differences may be innate, they may also be modulated by cultural context or individual experience. In China, red is the color of ‘good luck’, and our Chinese subpopulation gives stronger weighting for reddish colors than the British. Color preference patterns are nonetheless systematically governed by sensory encoding, and, to a significant extent, predictable.

They even cite references for the hunter gatherer theory and ripe fruit theory.

Science Direct wrote:

7
I. Silverman, M. Eals
Sex Differences in Spatial Abilities: Evolutionary Theory and Data
Oxford Press, New York, NY (1992)

8
B.C. Regan, C. Julliot, B. Simmen, F. Vienot, P. Charles-Dominique, J.D. Mollon
Fruits, foliage and the evolution of primate colour vision
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B, 356 (2001), pp. 229–283

All the scientific articles I linked used the exact same wording and never made the claims you "debunked". Only mainstream newspapers, badscience.com and rationalwiki.com use different wording. Do you see why they're described as "blue pill" now?

"Just so stories" reminds me so much of "evolution is a nice 'theory'".

Here are your "rarely seen standards of proof to justify a statistical generalization":

Science Direct wrote:

As further support for the ‘female brain’ hypotheses, we find that observers' femininity scores on the Bem Sex Role inventory correlate significantly with L−M cone-contrast component weights for all subjects (rho = 0.333; p < 0.002), but not with S cone-contrast weights, for the tested subgroup of 90 subjects. Within cultures, for the Chinese sub-population, masculinity correlates negatively with L−M cone-contrast component (r = −0.531; p = 0.019) whereas for the British sub-population, femininity correlates positively with L−M cone-contrast weight (r = 0.437; p = 0.002).