>On Fri, 13 Mar 1998, Gifford, Nate F wrote:
>> Among the several books I'm currently reading is a Science
Fiction
>> novel called "The White Queen". In the book a race of telepathic
aliens is
>> amused that humans pretend that males and females aren't separate
species.
>> They view reproduction as being symbiosis between the species.
Game theory
>> would work provided that you could ever determine a player's
utility
>> function ... It's the three body problem ... once you have more
than two
>> players, each with their own utility functions you get a
combinatorial
>> explosion of possibilities....the three bodies being you, the
woman, and
>> "the relationship". Richard Brodie first posted the
www.seduction.com site
>> ... which offers NO insight into the dynamics of interspecies
interactions,
>> but certainly offers some strategies for improving your chances
with the
>> parasitic components of the symbiosis. It allows you to reduce
the problem
>> of seduction to a two-body problem by ignoring "the relationship"
component.
>Readers interested in this aspect of communication breakdowns will
want to
>read _Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus_. It makes
generalizations,
>and an individual's mileage may vary, but I think it contains some
useful
>insights.
I'll second that ... although my wife and I had more fun using it as
justification for behaviors that we'd otherwise have avoided ....
>Regarding Jeffries' Speed Seduction stuff, I expect that most of
his
>techniques work, at least on a fair subset of females. The thing
that
>puzzles me is that he completely skips examining your primary
goals,
>assuming that the all-encompassing one is to get laid. This may in
>fact be true, and, assuming the partners are happy about that too,
I have
>nothing against it, but it does seem odd not to question that
choice of an
>overarching ambition.
I'm sorry I didn't make myself a bit clearer in my initial
paragraph. The original poster referred to a combination of memetics and
game theory to understand women....or perhaps one woman. My point was that
"understanding" is an infinite regress ... ala the three body gravitational
problem where all simulations are destined to be inaccurate due to the
discrete nature of your calculations ... likewise the seduction techniques
... which combine game theory and memetics are likely to yield
unsatisfactory results if you're trying to establish a long term
relationship. The original poster referred to the human race as a "vector
field" ... if you think of personal ads <real: in the newspaper, implied:
small talk, non-verbal clues?> being the definitions of subsets of
individuals then the search for a mate becomes a question of determining
your ideal subset and then locating members of that subset. Remember that
if you're one in a million there are 7 more just like you in New York City.
This is where my wife and I argue about how reductionist memetics is. I
believe she is an optimal match for me ... but I'm unable to specify what
the necessary and sufficient characteristics for an optimal match are. The
longer we stay together <and its been 10 years now ....> the more specific I
can be ... but I'll never be sure that somewhere down the road we won't find
some fundamental issue that causes us to go our seperate ways. Lets assume
that that fundamental issue is that I find I have a penchant for young
blondes and fast cars when I'm 50. Is that penchant implied in my current
personality? Can we say that in 12 years I will be X% likely to be infected
with a midlife crisis meme that will make me insufferable? Of course people
do unexpected things all the time ... but ... this is going to lead back to
the free will arguments we've had before ...
Before I get on with my weekend I'll leave it up to the group ... is
memetics a useful predictive tool ... or is it more an arbitrary method of
classification? Or does this question not even follow from the previous
paragraphs?