The Red Queen: Sex And The Evolution Of Human Nature
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The book is saying human choice of mate is genetic. PUA is about getting an advantage in the mating game. PUA tries to codify this genetic code into something a guy can use. Such as status. How is that apply when a person is looking into a crowded room? Or how to predict whether a man will be successful in life? It seems woman can tell. PUA is trying to answer that. Once these are answered, how to get the woman to commit to a relationship? PUA answers that too.
On the contrary, PUA is getting around the genetic. Just like women and their makeups.
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This is the goal of game.
The alternative is, if you're not gifted into being successful, fit, and pleasant company, just give up and settle. Plenty of people end up taking this option, and in some cases ignorance is bliss.
........huh???
The book basically said through the genes women inherited from their ancestors they know what to look for in a male. Those that didn't died out along time ago. The fit and pleasant characteristics of the ideal man is a modern day invention. It had not always been. In the past, it had been the fat guy because it was a sign of wealth.
The most common characteristics that turns a woman's juices on are of a dominant man. Any man can be a dominant man with the right training.
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PUA use the term value alot but what does it mean. Mystery first coined the term in attracting women. He said women has to view a man as high value as herself for her to accept a man's approach. Where did it come from?
The research shows that women value dominant behaviors and status. What is status? Researchers defined it as wealth, while Mystery defined it as having women around and leadership. This gives us 4 triggers of attraction: dominant behaviors, wealth, women, and leadership. Wealth is beyond most men, but the other 3 triggers are available.
The research shows that women value dominant behaviors and status. What is status? Researchers defined it as wealth, while Mystery defined it as having women around and leadership. This gives us 4 triggers of attraction: dominant behaviors, wealth, women, and leadership. Wealth is beyond most men, but the other 3 triggers are available.
roots reggae
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From the reviews I read about The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature:
Ridley uses the Red Queen analogy in a very different way, as seen through the looking glass, to explain sex as a way to keep genes ahead of parasites and viruses. Sexual selection provides a way to enhance genetic reproduction and conquer the factors that try to weaken it. Sex, therefore, allows movement forward.
http://theartofcharm.com/podcast-ep...sdays-on-the-red-queen-by-matt-ridley-review/
Perhaps Mr. Ridley's most daring claim involves the explosive growth of hominid brains, and hence the vastly enhanced intelligence of human beings. According to him, intelligence could have evolved only if humans had persistently selected smarter and smarter mates. Although he neatly demolishes some alternative theories of brain growth, he fails to explain why only hominids found intelligence sexy, or why, in Mr. Buss's cross-cultural survey, women ranked intelligence only fifth out of 18 desirable attributes. (The first four seem to be love, dependability, emotional stability and ambition.)
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/22/books/the-birds-the-bees-and-the-coolidges.html?pagewanted=all
Criticisms and Shortcomings
As far as criticisms, which is what the question asked for, let's see...
I think Ridley overemphasizes the role of parasites. Parasites are certainly one of the many threats to organisms, but are they the most important threat, or the one most related to the evolutionary development of sexual reproduction? I'm not so sure.
The stories about the variation in human sexual behavior are fascinating (monogamy, adultery, polygamy, homosexuality, mating strategies, marriage), but it is easy to get lost in the details. The big picture is that:
One key idea that I think is missed (or not sufficiently emphasized) in the book is this:There is not one best sexual strategy. Multiple conflicting and contradictorystrategies coexist within both culture and human biology for several reasons:
My response,
Sounds like a well-researched study. As with most research, interpretations depend upon the reader's world view.
Ridley uses the Red Queen analogy in a very different way, as seen through the looking glass, to explain sex as a way to keep genes ahead of parasites and viruses. Sexual selection provides a way to enhance genetic reproduction and conquer the factors that try to weaken it. Sex, therefore, allows movement forward.
http://theartofcharm.com/podcast-ep...sdays-on-the-red-queen-by-matt-ridley-review/
Perhaps Mr. Ridley's most daring claim involves the explosive growth of hominid brains, and hence the vastly enhanced intelligence of human beings. According to him, intelligence could have evolved only if humans had persistently selected smarter and smarter mates. Although he neatly demolishes some alternative theories of brain growth, he fails to explain why only hominids found intelligence sexy, or why, in Mr. Buss's cross-cultural survey, women ranked intelligence only fifth out of 18 desirable attributes. (The first four seem to be love, dependability, emotional stability and ambition.)
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/22/books/the-birds-the-bees-and-the-coolidges.html?pagewanted=all
Criticisms and Shortcomings
As far as criticisms, which is what the question asked for, let's see...
I think Ridley overemphasizes the role of parasites. Parasites are certainly one of the many threats to organisms, but are they the most important threat, or the one most related to the evolutionary development of sexual reproduction? I'm not so sure.
The stories about the variation in human sexual behavior are fascinating (monogamy, adultery, polygamy, homosexuality, mating strategies, marriage), but it is easy to get lost in the details. The big picture is that:
- Most practices (homosexuality being a likely exception) confer some strategic advantage in terms of reproductive success to the individuals that employ them. This is why those practices exist and continue as human behavioral drives.
- All practices (no doubt including homosexuality) confer some advantage to thehuman specie as a whole, which is why they exist and continue.
One key idea that I think is missed (or not sufficiently emphasized) in the book is this:There is not one best sexual strategy. Multiple conflicting and contradictorystrategies coexist within both culture and human biology for several reasons:
- Each strategy has its benefits
- Sexual strategies form their own behavioral ecosystem within society, so that each works partly because the other strategies are being used by other people.
- Society as a whole is more robust, resilient and adaptable when many different strategies are operating simultaneously
- Sexual strategies, including attractive qualities in a mate and cultural notions of beauty, evolve at the level of society as a whole and not at the level of the individual. Furthermore, this evolution is cultural as much as it is genetic. In fact, culture can even accelerate and shape genetic evolution by guiding its hand, if you will.
- For a social specie such as humans, who form unusually complex and sophisticated community structures (family, social circle, tribe, community, village, society, civilization), selection and survival at the level of the community unit may be more important as an evolutionary pressure than individual reproductive success.
My response,
Sounds like a well-researched study. As with most research, interpretations depend upon the reader's world view.
Wwanderer
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***IF*** the book actually says that, then it is wrong. (I say "if" because I have noticed that you routinely misunderstand what you read.) Pretty much *nothing* about human behavior is purely genetic. Rather it is merely influenced by our genes, but it is heavily modified by our minds, cultures, interactions, memories, reason, inventions etc. The fact that humans routinely defy their genes and behave in contradiction to their instincts is exactly the trait that sets us apart from other species.
Modern humans live almost entirely in an environment VERY different from the natural one(s) in which we evolved and to which our genes are adapted. Our environments and circumstances, including those connected to mating, are of our own creation and are changing ever more rapidly. Very soon we will also use our minds and technologies to modify the genes of human species themselves.
"The times they are a changin'..."!
To the extent PUA is about entirely genetic components of human behavior, it is already among the walking dead of our time, headed for the dust bin of history. Let me say R.I.P. in advance.
Fwiiw, as far as I can tell, @4vibes ' version of PUA is quite different from many others, including the version(s) promoted by other TAG PUAs. So I do not claim that the previous paragraph applies to all versions of PUA or its ideas.
-Ww
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I do agree with your stance that our behaviours are not purely genetics. But I'm less comfortable saying they have a mere effect on them.
I would say that our genes don't make us who we are but they contribute heavily.
To come back to the PUA thing, the whole idea behind is to pretend to be more assertive than you are as women are attracted to assertive men.
The big drawback is that if you are an unsecured person practicing PUA, you may for sure manage to pick up girls with your tricks but you won't gain more confidence on the longer term if they keep on dumping you after figuring out you were just pretending.
In the Game, Mystery was quite pathetic and unable to have a stable relationship despite his knowledge of the field.
Women can get tricked the time to put your dick inside... But the frustration may come later.
It seems better to me to go to the gym, work hard in the office and develop your social skills. Girls will come in no time.
Always putting words in my mouth. Did I say purely genetic? In the chapter about beauty, the gene allows society to finish the specific of what is beauty because it changes as society evolves. Between the ages of 8 and puberty, what is beauty as society defined it is written into the person. Nature is flexible.
I just love it when -Ww is mad and tries to put words in my mouth. Now PUA is purely genetic? My assertion has always been that PUA is base on sound scientific foundation.
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Sinapse
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This seems to be an oft-repeated idea on this board. In reality, there is nothing written in stone that PUAs must pretend to be anything.
I often tell guys to simply own whatever they feel. If they are nervous, go up to the girl and tell her "Hey I'm nervous but I wanted to talk to you."
It's not about confidence or pretending to be anything. It's about talking to girls and taking action rather than making excuses and sitting on the sidelines. The confidence comes with experience.
The game Mystery was teaching is almost entirely external game. In other words, copying words and behaviors without much attention to the internal state of the guy or, for that matter, the girl. This is massively outdated in pickup literature, and rightfully so.
Rather than a skillet to bedazzle women for a night, modern gamers focus on developing themselves in a way just as you describe here:
The only difference between what you say here and game, is that game teaches you *how* to develop your social skills, and tells you to take action, not that girls will come to you.
hkAlone
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Hmm. Ok, you make me curious.
After reading the Game a few years ago,
I really thought the PUA movement originated as a way offered to geeks to pick up women by hacking the women brain. The community was exchanging tricks and experiences to optimize some kind of global knowledge of how to get laid. I'm actually quite convinced there are many mechanisms in both gender brains that may be leveraged.
To be completely honest, after reading on some forum that women feel more comfortable to get laid the same day if they associate you with at least three different locations/places, I suddenly understood why I failed some potential ONS miserably or succeeded. Then, I have some kind of respect for this concern of documenting experiences and formulating hypothesis in a very scientific ( geeky ?) way.
Still, I had some kind of doubt about the goal itself than the efficiency of the process. The geeks were hardly more social but at least they manage to get laid.
If you're telling me that now PUA is more some kind of life coaching than learning magic tricks, it's another story.
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Wwanderer
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Well, you are the one that made this flat, unqualified statement:
But if what you mean is that our genes influence our choice of mates, then you're of course completely right...no question about that. Also no reason to post it or write a book about it because no one doubts that. It has been blindingly obvious for as long as we have known about genes and species. It is like writing a book or a post saying that the Sun is what makes it brighter outside during the day than it is during the night.
But anyway and regardless of what you meant or the book says, my basic point is that in the modern/First world
- The time when women needed strong/dominant men to protect them and their offspring from wild animals, neighboring tribes and such is gone.
- The time when women needed a successfully/competent/dominant man to provide for them and their offspring economically is rapidly going.
- The time when women need a man, or even a man's semen, to produce offspring will soon be gone (think stem cells).
- The time when our genes are controlled entirely, or even primarily, by our evolutionary past will go in the foreseeable future.
"The times they are a changin'..."!
The far future of human males, if any, is as partners...not dominators...and for many modern, highly competent, feminist women, this is already how they select their mates. Like it or not.
The MGTOW movement (speaking of groups/genes headed for extinction) perceives (in its vague way) this long historical trend and is taking a "sour grapes" approach.
-Ww
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Wwanderer
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Fwiiw and btw, this is pretty much *exactly* the advice I'd give a nervous guy if he asked me and is definitely what I would do myself if I were nervous about talking to a woman in a social situation (and, despite my aged memory, I am fairly sure there were times that such a situation made me a bit nervous at some point decades back).
Perhaps our main difference is that I don't seek out other men and try to convince them to handle their nervousness or other social issues the way I do or did. Imo, that is already telling them not to be themselves but to pretend to be something/someone (me, in this case) else. Do you see what I mean?
-Ww
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I don't message men or "seek them out" per se, merely discuss in forums my own experience and illustrate what I did to get where I am, which is something I get asked all the time anyway (and I think it's actually the same thing you do in that way!). Many find it valuable. Some don't believe it. I let them decide, but what I speak is nothing but the truth of my experience. Those who are open to it listen, and those who aren't, don't.
Wwanderer
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@Sinapse 's posts on his style or version of PUA/game often seem inconsistent and confusing to me. When he describes it in abstract terms such as this:
It all sounds much more acceptable and unobjectionable, if sometimes a bit lame and obvious. Basically I would have little or no complaints about the "life coach", as you call it, form of PUA.
However, when @Sinapse is much more specific about his PUA activities and opinions in posts such as these (just examples):
https://tokyoadultguide.com/threads/rampage-in-fukuoka-7-snls-in-3-days.9221/ (and other posts in that thread)
https://tokyoadultguide.com/threads...hing-her-on-the-street.9450/page-3#post-42068
It sounds much more manipulative, shallow and disrespectful of women...much more Mystery style...to me and to many of the women on TAG (or so they tell me).
With all due respect to @Sinapse (whom I do respect), there is a sort of "have your cake and eat it too" feel to it.
-Ww
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Indeed, it started this way. In some ways it was very much "revenge of the nerds" - men who had felt slighted and ignored by women all their lives "getting back" at them by using certain routines and techniques to get them into bed.
Magic tricks.. No. However there is both "life coaching" or inner game element, as well as outer game - certain ways of phrasing things and doing things which are more effective. I wouldn't put it quite at the level of manipulation, but certainly increased efficacy.
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It does not bother me that you feel this way, nor that it's confusing to you. And if it's a cheesecake I'm perfectly happy having it and eating it as well (not too much a fan of most other cakes)!
Wwanderer
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Good! It is not my goal to bother you, and if I did, I would be sorry. My intent is to make a comment, and in this particular case to second what appears to be @hkAlone 's somewhat similar sounding impressions of PUA/game, not to harass or bother you or anyone else. Sometimes I tease and mock a bit (not just or mostly you, of course), but even this is meant in a friendly, joking way.
-Ww
Geeks rule. Two of the riches men in America are Geeks: Gates & Buffet. Most if not all of top 0.5% in America are made of Geeks. Only Michael Jordon is the jocks among them.
Wwanderer
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Maybe my brain is just too foggy at the moment, but I cannot decode that one.
This one is pretty funny (no...not the misspelling). If meant seriously and literally, you might want to consult some of the TAGers, male and/or female, who have met both of us and can testify about how much we resemble each other!
-Ww
You mean the opposite right? Just consider the increasing chaos in the world right now. No system of governance last. A distribution of the world wealth is coming. Feminist only works in a stable environment.
Nature is chaos. Two attacks against police in two weeks in America. It looks America is headed towards civil war. Terror attacks in Europe almost monthly. Coup in Turkey.
Poor -Ww always taking things out of context.
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