4 ms·

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

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.

philwelch 16y ago
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.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  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.
  - zaidf 16y ago
    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.
  - photon_off 16y ago
    "care, but don't care too much" 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.
- datapimp 16y ago
  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.
  - zaidf 16y ago
    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.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    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.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- gaius 16y ago
  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...

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.

philwelch 16y ago

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.

potatolicious 16y ago
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.
- zaidf 16y ago
  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.
- photon_off 16y ago
  "care, but don't care too much" 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.
datapimp 16y ago
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.
- zaidf 16y ago
  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.
- philwelch 16y ago
  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.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
gaius 16y ago
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...