For Men: How to Get Laid and Win Debates

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

The greatest pitfall in the intellectual realm is the urge to mix one's socializing with one's intellectualizing.

A groundbreaking thinker must learn to divorce his social efforts from his intellectual work, lest he lose all hope of maintaining the impartiality to pursue the truth wherever it leads, the imperturbable civility and charity required to change minds and conduct elucidating debate, and the stillness of mind to detect subtleties that others have missed.

This process of delineation must be so thoroughgoing that he learns to carefully distinguish words from the thoughts and concepts they point toward, lest the social pressure of language tightly yet imperceptibly bind him to those semantic lines along which previous thinkers carved up concept-space.

What could be more common than an intellectual thinking secretly, and soon enough subconsciously, that the surest path to winning the adoration of their peers and the affections of women is this very intellectual work they have dedicated their lives to? And then, as surely as experience shows this to be a fine way of impressing one's fellow thinkers, it likewise proves a remarkably poor means of consistently attracting females that are sexually satisfying.

However, the damage wrought in the effort itself is in both cases equally severe. Intellectual work becomes, at root, no longer a search for truth in the fundamental sense, but a quest for social validation along with its modest accoutrements: minor fame, minor fortune, and a commensurate minor increase in attention from the opposite sex. It is a quest for whatever "truth" will be readily accepted by society, smoothly pass peer review, easily score grant money, perhaps even have an air of deliberate mysteriousness that dazzles those who haven't understood that paradox is not a sign of scientific progress but rather of a dead end.

In engineering projects like Bitcoin at least we have the saving grace that when rubber hits road the market has the final word. Here the problem is limited to slowing progress by hampering debate, due to people's egos getting in the way, and of course tribalistic insularity. This applies to both camps, though perhaps one more than the other

If every man in these debates were getting sex and affection easily from satisfying women (and for most guys I think that means a variety of women), such behavior would be dramatically reduced. It would no longer be a game of showing how smart you are, maintaining a brooding pessimism because it fits society's image of an intellectual, allowing your character to be defined by what side of you most impresses people with your intellect, cowing the audience with semantics ("XT is an altcoin") that those unable to resist the social pressure of language are so easily swayed by, employing passive-aggressive argument styles and stonewalling, getting autistically lost in small games with narrow code focus while missing the big picture of the economics, actual usage, and the possibility of paradigm shifts in development.

When a man isn't confident in his ability to directly obtain romance and sex with those he considers desirable, his thoughts immediately and inexorably (yet often subconsciously) turn toward indirect means. This permeates and colors nearly everything he attempts in life.

TL;DR so far: How often in the blocksize debate have you thought, or would it have made sense to think, "This guy really needs to get laid" when reading a comment by some of these people?

What to do, then? Learn how to have an abundance of options with women. That will help you be your best in debates, remaining charitable, keeping the big picture in mind, not falling prey to semantic fudgery or intellectual intimidation. It will be easier to make the hard points without losing your composure, without getting petty, and without failing to recognize any good points raised by the other side. (And realizing that there aren't really "sides" if everyone is simply pursuing the truth.)

I know many will be incredulous, not seeing immediately how the effects would really be this pronounced. Push back on anything that seems bogus, because there is too much inferential distance to attempt to cover every objection in this OP.

How to actually learn this? It's not so hard anymore, with the Internet as your guide, but there is a lot of misleading content out there. Mostly just go out, drink, and get used to being social with females on a quasi-daily basis. Don't need to spend money except to get your own passable room and/or car (logistics are important). Maybe I will expand this in the future. For now, inferential distance yadda yadda, so feel free to ask for help if you get stuck

 

[Ivanhoe]

Good post. I did read a lot about evolution and psychology. A theory of mine is that we see this behavior more in the IT sector than other sectors because of the low woman to man ratio. A man has to fight harder for a woman than elsewhere so a damaged ego i more harmfull for them.

 

[Peter R]

I very much enjoyed this post, @Zangelbert Bingledack!

We all tell ourselves stories that the decisions we make are based on logic and fact. In reality, our decisions are usually based on emotion/deep-seated biases/unfilled desires, and then we rationalize this away. Have you read the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman? The premise is that we are really two beings: System 1 and System 2. System 1 is the emotional/reactive ("fast") part of our brain and System2 is the logical ("slow") part. The book is full of scientific evidence that System 1 is largely responsible for the choices we make.

Since you offered help, I'll describe the two areas I personally struggle with the ethics of:

Intellectualizing: I realized probably ten years ago that the most effective way to influence opinion is to simultaneously appeal to people's rational brains and their emotional/reactive brain. For example:

- My figure that shows us approaching the "red zone" regarding block size is (a) visually appealing/interesting, (b) invokes an emotional response (the red zone is bad), and (c) uses completely objective data that no one can argue with.

- The animated GIF that shows the deprecation of Core only really contains the information that "multiple protocol implementations could emerge"; however, by showing it visually like this, it (a) seems more real, (b) makes the process appear familiar, (c) draws a parallel to the mining pie charts that people are pre-biased to believe that "more slices are better."

My question is: is intentionally appealing to people's rational and emotional sides like this ethical?

Socializing: An effective way to gain friends (both female or male) is to act in a way that they feel cool/smart/important/attractive/mysterious [whatever it is that they want to feel] when they are with you. Again, I struggle with ethics here. On the one hand, I believe it is important to be honest and act with integrity, but--especially in social situations--it's a lot more fun to go with the flow and be quite obliging to their story.

On a similar topic, many people (women especially) want to hear promises about the future (e.g., you'll love them forever, you can see a long-term future together). If you are completely intellectually honest, you cannot really make the first promise logically, but it might be a romantic and enjoyable story to allow yourself to get caught up in.

 

[Bloomie]

So tempting to post this in /r/bitcoin, damn.

 

[chriswilmer]

Great writing Zangelbert! Someday I hope to have Zangelbert's Collected Writings on my bookshelf.

 

[Georg Engelmann]

@Bloomie

Submit it to /r/bitcoin_uncensored, /r/btc or /r/bitcoinxt instead.

 

[awemany]

So a proposal that might be able to finally rise the blocksize would be a crowdfunded campaign to hire a large set of prostitutes?

That a) doesn't go well with the feminists (but who cares) but more importantly b) feels awfully close to mafia/high-level corporate tactics to compromise people...

 

[megadeth]

Going to post one of ZB's relevant posts from BCTalk here.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.msg9158791#msg9158791

I usually don't get into off-topic, but this is relevant to investing in a not-too-roundabout way. It's very hard to make good investment decisions if you're sexually frustrated, or if you're relying on getting rich as the way to solve this area of your life.

First, most obvious thing: stop spending time online (no computer except maybe dating sites, no phone except for setting up in-person meets). Never be home. NEVER. BE. HOME. Home is for sleep, breakfast, and sex. Everything else is out there. Stop doing every anti-social/unsocial thing you're doing and start doing social things where you actually interact with people face to face. Doesn't matter what it is or who it is, because for the first few weeks practice is your only goal.

And for those times that you must be online, because you're addicted to content, watching TV/movies is way better than reading things. Couchtuner has most of the good shows. Comedies like Wilfred and visceral shows like Vikings will at least put you in a decent semi-social mindset before you go out. Better yet, take a laptop or smartphone to a coffee shop and watch there. Of course you'll have to graduate from that, but start small if you have to.

You can read pickup books if you want to, as they may provide inspiration on what's possible and open your mind, but beware that a most of them focus on the wrong things (gimmicks, getting numbers) rather than correcting the basic errors most guys end up with from years of indoctrination: scarcity mindset, putting her on a pedestal, taking yourself too seriously, etc. If you want to see material of this nature, as far as I'm aware of, you have to go back 15 years to the Usenet newsgroup alt.seduction.fast circa 1999-2001, which I don't even know how to browse now. Anyway, if you look hard and you need it, you can find it. Even there you have to carefully sort the wheat from the chaff, of course, but there is a lot less harmful advice. Re: The Game (Neil Strauss), it's definitely not the right mindset overall but in with the silliness there are some gems so if you've never done well in your life it can help. I'd look elsewhere first.

Now, nuts and bolts: Never turn down a request to hang out with someone, go to every gathering, party, etc. Find groups that share your interests, hiking clubs, tennis circles, Bitcoin meetups... no matter what it is, it's definitely going to be better than whatever you're doing that led to no social life and not touching a woman in a long time. And do it all, every day have multiple things in your schedule, even better would be to get a part-time job that requires social contact, like being a waiter. Look up every event, festival, concert, etc. in your area, put them in your scheduler and go to as many as you can. Anything to force you out of the house and to interact with people, or at least just be around people as a start.

Alcohol is called a social lubricant for a reason. If you don't drink and have no history of problems with alcohol, I invite you to start - but only in social settings! Drink a decent amount three times a week, at a bar or other such place, never to excess but just enough to get a solid social buzz. (To do this comfortably might require eating better and exercising more, which is a great idea anyway, and you'll need to drink a lot more water.) This alone can work wonders. If, as your name suggests, you prefer other substances, force yourself to only do them with other people. Once you're drinking, it will be way easier to talk to people and make friends. In fact, "drink until girls start returning eye contact" and "drink until you strike up conversations without even noticing" are good guidelines to ensure you're drinking enough (feeling sick, uncoordinated, sloppy, etc. are of course signs you drank too much). At first it might be that you get sloppy drunk and still aren't able to overcome social anxiety, but don't worry; just like in investing, "the trend is your friend" and you're moving in the right direction even if it might take a few weeks to see results. You have to see the upside even when it feels like nothing good is coming, knowing you're doing things that will change your results despite any short term inertia and noise. In other words, you have to HODL through it.

Just keep drinking 3x per week outside the house, keep exercising, keep going out, never be home, never do anything unsocial, never use the computer, never refuse an invitation, fill your schedule with meets any way you can, never dwell on negative thoughts, never analyze, just get out there for a few weeks and it will start to happen naturally. Input creates output; whatever you're doing every day is creating a certain mindset in you that creates a social output that is not working. Hanging out on the Internet and whatever else is pushing you down socially. Take that giant millstone off your neck and start doing all the things that you know push you up socially, and it won't be long before things turn around, assuming you've ever had any success before.

Once you feel up to it, you can do more deliberate things. One easy progression when you're out on the street, at a mall, etc. is to simply lock eye contact with every person you pass. Once you can do that, eye contact and smile. Then graduate to a "Hi!" if you want. That alone will put you in a much more social state.

Then as far as women specifically, you'll want to either go to bars/clubs/etc. or rely on connections, or use the Internet, or do cold/buzzed approaches, or better yet kitchen sink it. Do it all, and do it all at once. If you have specific problems after several weeks, PM me.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

My question is: is intentionally appealing to people's rational and emotional sides like this ethical?

Ethics I'm not sure about, but in terms of efficacy if someone else can turn around and post a graph colored differently (as is now quite possible with the rapid pace of discussion on the Internet), the additional effectiveness may be short-lived and might even backfire. People on the other side will tend to notice the emotional appeal, so they will likely be even more incited to neutralize it. In the case of /r/Bitcoin they don't even need to mess with graphical rebuttals, since they can just "moderate" it away.

Perhaps this is a question of ethics of a sort, in that ethics are often aimed toward sustainability (for example, honesty is more sustainable than, say, ad hoc deception as a social strategy). I would say it's more sustainable in debate to use the least amount of artifice. However, some even very powerful framing effects almost cannot be avoided when making an argument or a graphic, so on the other side it may be a lost cause to avoid such things completely. I suppose my policy is to at least make a solid effort to avoid appeal to emotion or other "dark arts," if for no other reason than I'd like to raise the sanity waterline of the community for the sake of future discussions. Still, the back and forth of dark arts countered by dark arts, as in the case of the classic, "Look, I can color rainbow charts, too," (counter to the "buy/hold/sell" BTC price rainbow chart) themselves teach the audience not to fall for such tactics as easily.

It seems to me that with the advent of fast and ubiquitous back-and-forth discussion on the Internet we have departed from the Age of Propaganda, where the game was to convince as many people as possible of your perspective by whatever means necessary because the other side was going to do the same so you simply had to hurry up and proselytize.

Now, at least in sufficiently long debates with sufficiently sophisticated participants and audience, I think the game is to get everyone as sharp as possible so that the greatest number of people come to the most rational conclusions. On reddit especially it is common to see the main mechanism by which this dynamic has come about: any overreach (including any kind of dark arts) by one poster is - in the capable hands of another poster - a chance to strap a rocket to the upvote count of their counterpoint. They simply lay bare the overreach or artifice or emotional appeal, thus winning an inordinate amount of upvotes and reader trust, which nets free attention for their perspective and serves to strike down the opposing view. This kind of thing changes minds.

In the most rarified circles it develops into a careful dance of avoiding such overreaches, lest they be used as free tickets for powerful rebuttals, with any dark arts that are used being of the fully deniable sort (many of the Core devs excel at this; still it merely extends the sustainability a bit longer, not indefinitely, as patterns become apparent eventually).

Given this sea change in the basic dynamics of how opinion change happens, I've tried to focus on a straight "raise the sanity waterline" approach, except maybe in cases where there is simply not enough time and it devolves back into a simple propaganda war. Hopefully the blocksize debate is not in such a time crunch yet, but given how difficult it is to explain the relevant concepts to the masses, one could credibly argue that it is.

To get back to specifics, something like the coloring of the blocksize chart seems like a small and obvious enough injection of framing bias that it shouldn't be an issue. It seems fairly obvious that the coloring is meant as the opinion of the creator of the graphic, and one might even say that if a reader is unable to screen out that modest level of manipulation they aren't going to have much chance of separating the wheat from the chaff in the greater debate anyway.

Socializing: An effective way to gain friends (both female or male) is to act in a way that they feel cool/smart/important/attractive/mysterious [whatever it is that they want to feel] when they are with you. Again, I struggle with ethics here. On the one hand, I believe it is important to be honest and act with integrity, but--especially in social situations--it's a lot more fun to go with the flow and be quite obliging to their story.

I see socializing as mainly about having fun and enjoyable interactions,* whereas I see intellectualizing as mainly about gaining useful knowledge. I give myself fairly free rein to play up someone's coolness, smartness, importance, etc. in a social interaction because it will be more enjoyable. Even in those cases where it would seem like it could come back and bite me because I ended up making someone feel unrealistically important/smart/cool, in practice I've found it's a rare person who has so much genuine confidence in themselves that they are worse off for having it artificially boosted.

*or "winning friends and influencing people" and other status plays, but part of my interest in getting satisfying relationships with women easily is to try to avoid the need for status plays, since they interfere especially strongly with intellectual work

However, happily there is a nice solution for this concern: you can generate the core "whatever it is the person wants to feel" in another person by simply listening very attentively to them, smiling warmly at them, and pausing a few seconds before replying (and actually keeping your replies very minimal seems most effective, despite the logical urge to show you really understood by making relevant points).

The key is that this is content-free, so there is no fear of accidentally imbuing the person with an unrealistic self-assessment that could possibly harm them later. Despite being content-free, I find this kind of focused listening to be the most effective thing of all for making someone feel important (cool, smart, attractive, and mysterious just being roundabout paths to the same core need).

The content-freeness of this also allows it to be used with women effectively in a seduction situation, since you aren't in danger of looking like you're trying to flatter her. It's perfect when you need to build her confidence (not to be read as "bitchiness") or feel like you need more trust/rapport between you, as it seems to be the most powerful and direct method of accomplishing both.

This is also extremely effective in ongoing relationships before sex, if the girl is talkative, because building confidence builds sexual response potential. A guy on reddit wrote about a technique where he sits on a sofa with his girlfriend, draping her legs over his so they are partly facing each other, puts his arm around her, and gets her to just talk and talk while he listens intently, smiling and looking warmly into her eyes, not really responding to the content just instead saying "Uh-huh" and such. He says after 20 minutes of that she just melts. From there the eye contact naturally transitions to a makeout,* then excellent sex. For many girls it's unreasonably effective.

*If the makeout doesn't naturally happen, be sure your faces are very close - like 6 to 9 inches - and start viscerally and enjoyably visualizing a makeout (or sex act, if you want) as you make eye contact, maybe even moving your eyes from her eyes to her mouth for a brief moment then back; listening lets you hold eye contact without it feeling strange, eye contact lets you build the right subcommunicated vibe for kissing, kissing leads to sex through physical escalation (can elaborate here if needed)

On a similar topic, many people (women especially) want to hear promises about the future (e.g., you'll love them forever, you can see a long-term future together). If you are completely intellectually honest, you cannot really make the first promise logically, but it might be a romantic and enjoyable story to allow yourself to get caught up in.

This gets to the split between what has been called "commitment mode" or "resources mode" where the woman's enjoyment of the interaction comes primarily from romantic, long-term oriented feelings that eventually lead toward the man as father and provider, and what might be dubbed "hookup mode" or "genetics mode" where the woman's enjoyment of the interaction comes primarily from her sexual interest in the man based on his perceived genetic fitness (someone she might be tempted to cheat on her nice stable husband with). In commitment mode, it will feel good to make such promises, whereas in the other mode it will simply "mix the messages" and end up either changing the mode toward commitment or making the woman lose interest.

Anyway, while this is ostensibly a commitment mode situation, it's also possible that a man who wishes to operate in genetics mode ends up making such statements in an effort to keep the girl around. That is not recommended, for perhaps obvious reasons: it gets her hopes up deceptively, mixes the messages resulting in more friction and less enjoyment, and probably will not be believed for long as she will be impelled to test this new development by asking for increasingly difficult commitment signals.

I think this is something to only ever say - if ever - when you are willingly in commitment mode and you actually want to have children with the woman after years of stable relationship. Playing with commitment mode prematurely or using it as a carrot for the girl when you actually want to remain in genetics mode is a recipe for heartache (and usually less exciting sex).

I recommend starting in genetics mode, mastering it, and then moving to commitment mode when you want to have kids.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

A theory of mine is that we see this behavior more in the IT sector than other sectors because of the low woman to man ratio.

Yeah that would add even more pressure beyond the usual.

Great writing Zangelbert! Someday I hope to have Zangelbert's Collected Writings on my bookshelf.

Thanks, Chris! I slammed the OP out, but I guess I've had this brewing in my head for years while following the debates.

So a proposal that might be able to finally rise the blocksize would be a crowdfunded campaign to hire a large set of prostitutes?

The title is a bit misleading as it's not really about failing to get laid per se (though that is certainly a substantial thing in itself), but about trying to get the social validation one is missing from one's general failure to get satisfying relationships with women, from other sources. If intellectual work, social ladder climbing in the intellectual community, or even just debate becomes a way to gain that missing social validation, pernicious problems quickly arise. Yet I think this is unfortunately the norm, though to varying degrees depending on the person.

My guess is some kind of mass hiring of prostitutes would provide a short-term boost in that area - if they were very good ones, meaning good at making the men feel validated - but not a sustainable one. Ultimately I think for complete "objectivity" (a placeholder word for the points covered in the OP) a sexually typical man in his sexual years needs to feel like getting another highly satisfying woman to have sex with him and fall deeply in love with him - if he chooses to take it in that direction - is a matter of a couple of weeks of going out.

Going to post one of ZB's relevant posts from BCTalk here.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.msg9158791#msg9158791

Thanks, to put it in context it was addressed to someone who was having trouble going out at all and hadn't touched a women in some years. I assume this is the situation with quite a few forum posters and lurkers, though.

 

[awemany]

@Zangelbert Bingledack : Interesting posts you did on BCT

My guess is some kind of mass hiring of prostitutes would provide a short-term boost in that area - if they were very good ones, meaning good at making the men feel validated - but not a sustainable one. Ultimately I think for complete "objectivity" (a placeholder word for the points covered in the OP) a sexually typical man in his sexual years needs to feel like getting another highly satisfying woman to have sex with him and fall deeply in love with him - if he chooses to take it in that direction - is a matter of a couple of weeks of going out.

There is this idea/observation that women are genuinely interested in only 20% of the men. If that's true, I strongly suspect that most of the computer nerd types are in the 80% category, and I suspect this to be unfortunately a stable configuration - so the options for an affected individual are a) fake it till you make it (into the 20%), b) remove oneself from the market and seek validation elsewhere or c) or be content with a wife in resource-mode (essentially a variant of prostitution).

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@awemany

I guess not everyone can be getting an endless stream of satisfying relationships, but at least WE can

In fact, since only a tiny portion of the population will be successful intellectual groundbreakers who require this kind of objectivity for their work, there is plenty of room in the 20% for all of them. Certainly most computer nerd types are in the 80% category, but there's no reason they can't learn the necessary skills to enter the 20%, or even the ~1% that have for practical purposes almost total freedom of choice with women.

I was basically a pure nerd and hopeless with women once, too. And it wasn't even a case of pushing it out of my mind like many nerds do; I thought about, wished for it, fantasized about it, and tried ineffectually to make things happen constantly.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

By the way, if any of you fine gentleman would like to visit Japan I can advise on all aspects of your stay, how to hit the ground running and minimize expenses, where to go, what times to go out, how to deal with the language barrier, best practices in talking to women outside, bars/clubs/parties if you want to do that, messaging, ongoing relationships, expectations, sex, online dating, etc.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Getting back to the "How to Get Laid" side of things, it's always striking to me how I can be Mr. Social out there talking to anyone like it's nothing, getting inviting looks from attractive women, never getting a bad reaction from an approach, getting numbers effortlessly, hard to even end the interaction, girls show up to dates on time and ready for anything, etc. but then a few days of immersing myself in Bitcoin or other analytical stuff and I can barely make eye contact with the cashier at a supermarket, let alone talk to any women passing by, and once I do they react badly, trying to end the interaction as soon as it's begun, getting a number is like pulling teeth, almost all the numbers go stale, those that do reply ask to bring a friend on the date, etc. but then a couple days of going out and drinking and socializing and dancing and all of sudden I'm back to everything being easy again. These socializing and de-socializing forces work quickly.

I guess programmers might think of it as "garbage in, garbage out." Not that analysis is garbage, but the mindset of analysis in the moment is almost completely antithetical to social effectiveness.

Input socializing forces for 20 minutes to get warmed up, input them for a few days to get in the groove, input them for a few weeks to change your habit structure to reallign with social success, and input them for a few months to completely change the life you're living and become a social animal.

As a social animal (i.e., a man who is in long-term practice with social skills), your habit structure always has a baseline of fairly good (in medium-term practice with social skills), you always have a fairly good baseline of being in the groove (i.e., in short-term practice with social skills), and you can function fairly well even without a warmup (in immediate practice with social skills).

When your habit structure is good, you have a baseline of being in the groove and being warmed up.

When you are in the groove, you have a baseline of being warmed up.

Conversely,

Input de-socializing forces (analysis, negative stuff) for 20 minutes to get un-warmed up (out of social state), input them for a few days to get out of the groove, input them for a few weeks to change your habit structure to reallign away from social success, and input them for a few months to completely change the life you're living and become an asocial nerd.

As an asocial nerd (i.e., a man who is out of long-term practice with social skills), your habit structure always lacks any kind baseline goodness (out of medium-term practice with social skills), you lack a baseline degree of being in the groove (i.e., out of short-term practice with social skills), and you're completely useless without a warmup (out of immediate practice with social skills).

When your habit structure is bad, you have no baseline of being in the groove nor being warmed up.

When you aren't in the groove, you have no baseline of being warmed up.

Basically, the concept of "being in practice" functions at all timescales in a layered fashion, and those layers compound. The timescales I've found relevant are 20 min to an hour, 2-3 days, ~3 weeks, and ~3 months.

The key, then, is *concentration of practice* in a given time period.

If you're starting from nothing, you'll always be a lot better after warming up, a lot better still if you "warm up" for a few days, vastly better if you keep doing that regularly for a few weeks, and transformative if you continue with it for a few months. Note that doing nerdy things pushes you in the opposite direction. It is quite possible to do both, but just be aware that this factor must be compensated for.