PUAs and discursive social psychology 1: Speech acts

In my early twenties I read some social psychology to improve social skills, which I already knew to be a problem. The books didn't aid me, as they were very abstract or focused on leftist goals of dealing with social problems, for example by analyzing interactions between a government agency and a victim group. However, they made me familiar with social constructionism, a postmodern sociological theory guiding modern social psychology.

Back then, this blog was named Rakentumistyömaa, a construction yard for the social construction of reality. (In Finnish, the work rakentaa means physical construction of buildings and the word rakentua means the social construction of reality.)

One thing that appeals to me in Roissy's writing is that it fits perfectly to this earlier understanding of social life. I can leave my fundamental ideas unchanged and merely supplement them with extra chapters on how women behave and what I should aim at to get where I want to go.

Austin's theory of speech acts [1, s. 14]

The parts of the long quote that matter have been bolded.

Words as deeds: speech act theory
...
It is important for a clear understanding of Austin's ideas to have some indication of the situation in phiolosophy which he was both reacting against and commenting upon. His main target was the logical positivist view that sentences which cannot be verified, that is sentences for which there is no way of checking whether they are true or false, should simply be treated as meaningless. From this view points, for instance, the statement "God does not exist" should be treated as nonsensical since the truth of the statement can never be validated. In addition, Austin's argument was directed at a wide swathe of views of language which take it to be an abstract system whose central function is the description of states of affairs. What Austin set out to do was to undermine the notion that an understanding of 'truth conditions', states of truth and falsity, is central to an understanding of language.

Stating versus doing

Austin began with the observation that there is a class of sentences which are principally important for what they do, not because they describe things. For instance, the sentence

I declare war on the Philippines

is not a description of the world which can be seen as true or false but an act with practical consequences; ... Austin called sentences of this kind performatives. ... Austin contrasted these kinds of sentences with others whose primary role did appear to be the description of states of affairs, naming them constantives.

The general theory of speech acts

The general theory does not distinguish between sentences which do things and sentences which say things, between performatives and constantives, but casts this distinction in a different way. The fundamental tenet of the theory is that all utterances state things and do things. That is, all utterances have a meaning and a force. In fact, Austin suggested that with any utterance a speaker is simultaneously doing three sorts of things.

First, the speaker is uttering a sentence with (1) a specific meaning - it has a certain sense and may refer to specific events, persons or objects. Second, the sentence is uttered with a particular force. We know what the words 'shut the door' literally mean, but they can be used with (2) the force of an order, a request or even a question. Force is thus an element of utterances which is dissociated from their meaning, although it is often indicated by the use of a certain verb: promise, order, state, and so on. The third feature refers to (3) the effects or consequences of the first two. The sentence 'shut the door' may be uttered with the force of an order but it may have the effect of making the hearer shut the door or it may simply make the hearer annoyed.

Speech acts in seduction

For example, Roissy recently wrote about The "I can leave you if you want" shit test. He met a girl at a nightclub and teased her about her accent. The girl feigned indignation and asked "Do you want me to return to may friends?".

According to speech act theory,

• The meaning of the sentence is to ask about his mental state; whether he prefers her to return to her friends or not.


• The force of the sentence is either a question or a show of indignation


• The effect of the sentence is to execute a shit test. If he is eager to keep her close, then he considers her presence an exceptionally good deal and he has a weak negotiation position. If he eagerly advices her to indeed return to her friends, then he is used to the company of girls like her and has a strong negotiating position.

In Roissy as in discursive social psychology, all utterances are speech acts. What matters are the deeds and effects people want to achieve with them.

[1] Potter and Wetherell: Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour

Game of Talking in science

Isegora writes about a group performance study. The study investigated if group ability is "sum of its parts" or "more than sum of its parts". They both measured the individual IQs of the group members, and also looked at the interaction in the group. Group dynamics overwhelmed individual ability.

One result was that the whole group dynamic suffers if one asshole insists on blabbing and blabbing and blabbing in order to win the Game of Talking by big margin:

...neither the average intelligence of the group members nor the person with the greatest intelligence strongly predicted how well the group did.

Other tenets of group success also seemed to fall by the wayside: A group’s motivation, satisfaction, and unity were unimportant. Instead, the researchers found that when a group had a high level of collective intelligence, the members tended to score well on a test that measured how good they were at reading other people’s emotions. They also found that groups with overbearing leaders who were reluctant to cede the floor and let the others talk did worse than those in which participation was better distributed and people took turns speaking. And they also found that the proportion of women in the group was a predictor of collective intelligence — a factor they believe was likely influenced by women’s generally superior social sensitivity.

Hat tip: Aretae

Status 4/4: When status signaling utterly and completely fails

A child is not considered competent to evaluate himself if he is thirsty or hungry. He should obey orders from any familiar adult. This true story tells how a group of people used invisible status signals to reduce me to a child's subject position.

Two months ago The Club organized a short forest walk (vaellus). It lasted 4 hours. There were 6 of us. We walked to a sleeping place, grilled some sausage and returned. I'll tell the events from status perpective. Here DHV means demonstrating high value (superior status) and DLV means demonstrating low value (low status).

The only participant which I knew beforehand was Mikko. I had seen him in The Club's monthly bar evening. There he told that Pulse will hold a concert the following day. I joined him there, thus DHVing (obeying) him.

Another participant was Veikko. Since neither me nor Mikko had a car, Veikko took us from the bus station to the starting spot of the forest walk, thus DHVing himself and DLVing me and Mikko.

Earlier, I got drunk at a metal concert. I was hung over and had slept for only 4 hours, which made me very grumpy. This DLV:d me, since I was in no position to play the Game of Talking competently. Already in the car I yapped way less than 25% of the chit-chat.

The first warning sign happened when we left the car and were about to leave. Mikko told me that I should put my jacket to the bag, because we wouldn't stop during the journey. I DLV:d by putting my jacket to the bag.

The second red flag emerged when there was a pool of water in the path. Mikko told me to cross the pool from the right side. This confused me: he acted as if I needed advice in crossing a pool of water! I rejected his offered subject position firmly put politely by using the other side. I thought that this represented only his opinion, to be met with zen-like calm and indifference, not realizing that vultures had already smelled blood and were circling in for a kill.

When we held a pause, Mikko offered me water. Starting to see a pattern, I rejected. Mikko no longer believed my "no" even after I had repeated it 10 times and emphasized that I had done comparable blueberry picking trips many times before. He insisted that I should take some water. After a few more repetitions he believed, commenting that he can't force me to take water and it is my own fault if I dehydrate or get a sunstroke.

In the grilling place the same thing happened again with Veikko and sausages. It ended only when Veikko shouted with semi-angry tone "Take the fucking sausages now!" and I complied. After 30 seconds, I put them back to his sausage packet and he finally understood that he can't force me to take them.

Somehow, Mikko and Veikko had conspired to put me into a child's subject position - of someone whose word is worthless, who should take orders from anyone on trivial matters like crossing a pool of water, and who can't evaluate if he is thirsty or hungry. They reached their consensus with signals which were completely invisible to me.

One reason why I want to learn status signaling is to avoid these kinds of total collapses of social fabric, where all assumptions of normal conversation are cancelled. Earlier, I used to be scared shitless by these incidents and withdraw from social interaction for weeks, thinking that I did something bad to deserve then. After going to gym, my personality changed so that now I am merely angry at people who conspire against me and motivated to learn how to execute the right game moves to avoid these kinds of accidents.

Status 2/3: To ignore or not to ignore, that is the question

Old opinion on status

Earlier I thought that mainly upper class persons have status. Marketing men take advantage of people's natural drive to improve their lot. Lower and middle classes buy status symbols because companies like to sell overpriced goods by associating them with high status. Status is a ruse to separate the gullible from their money.

There is an old saying that money does not bring happiness, but it's better to be unhappy in a Lexus than in a Lada. When we consider status as a ruse, it would be better for those people to sell their Lexus and save or invest the money, Ilkka style. If they retain the Lexus, they are bleeding money when its price depreciates month by month, while getting only hallucinations in return. The only exceptions are people who are so dirty rich that the cost of the car is neglible.

Seen this way, status matters only for persons who need to make a good impression on many others, like salesmen or celebrities. The 1% of people who get 50% of visibility benefit from status symbols. This strengthens the illusion that status is more important than it really is.

New opinion on status

Reading Roissy and paying attention to the Game of Talking has made me realize that there is a special kind of status, psychosocial dominance, which is tightly vowen to everyday interaction and orthogonal to economic status. If I want to have a sex life and settle down at around age 35, I must learn the ropes of these status games.

This does not make the old opinion obsolete. Rather, I need to complement it so that I can express status enough to come across as a desirable sexual partner, while still being able to avoid getting stiffed by marketers.

Intelligence and memory

Last year I was deeply disillusioned with intellectual approaches to life, as you could see from this blog which was restricted to sports and socializing. To turn a new page in my life I went to Mensa test, thinking "Let's face it - I'm not smart. My life outcome is thoroughly mediocre. I'm much better off with stupid approaches like sports and surfacial skills. After math high school, I haven't had success in anything intellectual."

To my surprise I passed the test with the same score as BB-Esa A. I also joined the club because it supports my New Year's goal of getting a more active social life. Within one month, I have done the following:

• Seen the movie 2012 and talked about it.
• Listened to how a Tampere city planner lectured about developing public transit and city center.
• Went to a Pink Floyd cover concert by Pulse and talked about the music (a person in The Club recommended the gig).
• Went to the monthly bar evening and talked with two cute girls who are a few years younger than me, among other members.

The Club has 300 members in Pirkanmaa. However, I've seen only 20 of them in any event, so mostly the club doesn't appeal even to its members. However, it fits perfectly to my current life situation, where improving social skills is a proprity. The people are in the same wavelength in some subtle manner - I'm not an introvert in their events.

To summarize, The Club is an organization of well-rounded slackers. The events are versatile. The age of the active members varies from 20 to 70. Occupations are also versatile - a sheep farmer gets regular publicity in the "members in the news" page. In the same way as my past fraternity Luuppi brought out The Drunkard and go club brings out The Nerd Intellectual, Mensa events bring out The Well-Rounded.

Now people who have followed the human biodiversity debate may want to know how the folks inside Mensa talk about it. Overall, they don't. Instead, they cultivate self-depracting humor, which is otherwise just like metodinen alemuudentunto, but more restricted:

Tuuli: When I was young, I had a Rubik's cube and I couldn't solve it.
Kari: So your intelligence emerged only after you joined the club?
Tuuli: I'm still waiting for it to emerge.

Naturally, taking the test doesn't change anything in me. I still have 10 years of life experience as an independent adult to show that I'm nothing special in intellectual pursuits. High IQ is not so much an unfair advantage as it is a bargain with the devil - and the price I pay is that my memory is wiped clean every 5 years from stuff which has not been used recently.

The Scientist wrote about general knowledge of facts as well as reading.

When I was younger I used to read quite a bit, things like Enid Blyton (Viisikko, Seikkailujen sarja) and The Girl Detective. The funny thing is that I remember absolutely nothing from them. The same is true for all children's books. Not a single plot has stuck to my mind, while many people remember even details. (Earth Search is one of the almost forgotten ones.)

About 5 years ago I tried to civilize myself by reading about each European state, and ended up finishing about 10 books. The traces are pretty non-existent.

But there is one type of knowledge which does stick - information linked to skills. Maybe the best examples are programming skill which I started to exercise at young age and math high school where I went as a teenager. Both are skills to be trained rather than knowledge to be assimilated. They do involve lots of details, but remembering those is not a problem.

I remember so little facts from books that for me it is primarily language practise. Nowadays I hardly read at all, as Finnish and English don't need extra practise and Chinese is still on the verge of usefulness.

The only question about Ridge Forrester which I could answer is "In which TV series there is a character named Ridge Forrester?" All I know about Rocky is that it is a wrestling movie which made "Eye of the Tiger" a hit song.

Update: The post was completely rewritten.

Looking good and getting the girl

In India I realized that it is my surfacial skills which are the bottleneck. Doing microeconomic analysis about the situation at hand went fine; connecting with people by talking to them did not.

Most people develop these surfacial skills as young adults. Unfortunately, you can't skip the development of social skills. If you fail to complete this developmental task as a young person, it will continue to haunt you and drag you down until you solve it.

My current diagnosis is that the root cause of problems is constant losing in the Game of Talking. The best way to solve this is to get exposure to new social situations. Going alone to bars is lousy practise, since I've failed to get much positive reactions that way. Sports courses on the other hand look promising, since they offer an abundance of natural conversation fodder without any need to ponder ways to open up talking. Besides, as a side effect they produce better physical condition while bars only produce hangover.

Advanced forms of the Game of Talking

In groups of 5 - 20 people, it gets more complex:

• Usually there is some social organization, which gives people specialized roles.
• Groups of that size usually fill some purpose. This brings "subject matter" element forward more strongly. This may make the game easier or more difficult.
  
• Time becomes an issue: In a group of ten, not everyone can talk 10% of the time. Game of Talking is partially shut down. This does not mean that you can stay quiet: often Game of Talking is restricted to certain periods between "real talk" and you win or lose the game during these intervals which sometimes require quick thinking to even spot if the game is being played or not.

A better "bar" evening

This evening I achieved two conversation openers, and wasted only one hour.

Timeline of events (skip if you're in hurry)

After a lazy day I went to gym until it closed at eight. After eating at the Chinese restaurants which has replaced Atig Pizza (the meals are big and cost about 9e but it is not as fast as fast food. Overall, a good place if you're genuinely hungry, you get a big and healthy meal for a slightly bigger price.) I went to a party. I had talked with the organizer before and wanted to try my new social skills with him. I also wanted to dance to stretch my hands after gym training.

I entered at the same time as a man and a woman. After ordering I opened conversation:
me: "Have you been in this kind of sweg events before?"
he: "No, we just came here to wait for bus."
me: "Good way to spend a few mins...anyway, they don't usually have it here, it's usually at vastavirta or klubi."
After this the talk ended and they went to a table.

I waited for an hour for the dance to start. It didn't. After sipping the beer for one hour I left the bar.

In the bus stop, timetables had been torn away. I commented to a girl near the time tables "Of course _Saturday's_ time tables have been torn away!". She replied "Nii." Then I noticed that the electric display showed that bus would arrive in 10 minutes - enough to walk to the next bus stop. I realized that having opened the conversation I could ask the girl to accompany me in walk to the next stop, but 30 seconds has already elapsed, so the opening had "closed".

Initiative and implusiveness

Both conversation openings were exercises in making implusive initiative based on context. I want to practise impulsive initiative.

The two big differences between me and the men in relationships in India were exactly that they talked more and made more initiatives. If I become fluent in the game of talking and in making impulsive initiatives, the gap between me and them becomes much smaller.

Also, they say that impulsiveness is attractive to women.

I also missed one opportunity to impulsive initiative. When dancing didn't start at bar, I should have simply walked to some group and asked them if they want to dance to drive boredom away. A polite "no" or silence would have been the worst outcome, since in a dance music event the proposition would have been reasonable.

Didn't you just say you don't like bars...

I achieved the conversation opening in the first 2 minutes and just wasted the next 58 mins. The bottom line was positive only because I cut the losses, not because the bar gave much value for money and time spent. Stretching hands was necessary anyway, so having failed to do it at the bar I did it with some pp videos at home.

The Game of Talking

My late big realization, of once-in-ten-years scale, is that there is a Game of Talking going on all the time when people meet. You always participate in it even if you don't register it consciously. I believe that in the last 10 years most of the unexplained shit I've received as well as almost total failure in human relationships were caused by too frequent losing in the Game of Talking.

The Game of Talking requires 2 - 4 players. The basic rules are simple:
1) You win if you talk more than anyone else.
2) You lose if you talk less than 20% of the utterances.
3) Your result is decent if you neither win nor lose.

In addition there are extra rules which make the game complex. The first extra rules ensure that conversation keeps flowing:
1) You get minus points if you shout, insult or say inappropriate things.
2) You get minus points if your comments are neither relevant nor funny.
3) You get plus points if you remove an obstacle which distracts someone else from playing well.

Too many minus points lose the game. Plus points can change a decent outcome into a victory,
but usually they are an extra game for someone who is already winning.

In addition, there are context-dependent rules, especially the balance between
sheer amount and relevancy varies wildly in different situations.

Losing too often spells serious trouble.

Signs that you are losing

There are two main punishments, which are usually meted out by the most extroverted person
in the group.
1) Insults.
2) Being treated as a child or otherwise helpless. This is more common among adults, where direct insults are often considered too game-breaking.

Earlier, I used to get punished for losing the game. I could analyze people's despise far too well, but couldn't figure out why I was being despised. After all, I didn't do much anything! I didn't realize I was participating in a game and losing hands down, every time.

Need for speed

Unlike in go, in the Game of Talking you don't have time to think. Quite the contrary, the aggressive players are all the time talking on each others, switching topic and even distracting with stuff that leaves you speechless if it catches you by surprise.

Earlier, I couldn't have played the Game of Talking because I wasn't quick enough in generating talk. It would have helped to know the factoid that to avoid despise, the amount of talk beats quality any day. However, the Game of Talking is not a factoid but a much deeper attitude.

Nowadays, if my talk percentage goes too low enough, I get a physical emotion of disgust, anticipating all the bad things that may happen if I don't open my mouth very soon. Since my natural instincts don't give much help, having the Game of Talking in the physical/emotional level is the only way to react quickly enough in deteriorating speech position, when I have nothing to say.

Better body language and the new purpose of this blog

During the last 1.5 years, two events have notably improved my social skills and body language. At least Tommi commented once that he saw the difference, so it's not just in my head. For the first time in my life I see light at the end of the tunnel in getting a normal social life, including relationships with women. However, the base level was so low that there is still a long way to go.

In the first event I became a de-facto tech lead for a subproject of 3 people, being the only one who had earlier experience about the technology. For the first time, I had some responsibility for other people's work. Naturally, I didn't do it very well.

I had mental block against telling other people what to do, even when they expected it from me. (It wasn't born out of thin air. I remember quite well when there was Kanpai's meeting in Konttori. I was standing in the doorway. When it was time to choose a chairmain, Tarvainen jokingly said that at least not Simo, and everyone laughed at the idea of me being a chairman. I expected that mere hint of me in a position of responsibility would be answered with a sea of insults for years. It was surprising for me to notice that this didn't happen.)

Secondly, the abrasiveness of my interaction became visible in an ugly way. One person went into a kind of failure mode, where he let out helpless sighs of an oppressed victim daily. It irritated the hell out of me, but also made me realize that he probably expected me to debug the problem, but I couldn't really do anything about it. When I looked at other people around me they were surprisingly confident, encouraging at each others, and relaxed. Their pressure-relief skills and mechanisms would have solved the problem before it started.

Overall this experience made me smile more, made my interaction style less abrasive and removed many mental blocks.

During the trip to India two things happened. First of all, I noticed the importance of talking much. In small groups, talking less than 20% of utterances spells serious trouble, but this is a topic for a whole new post. Secondly, I was able to see how other people spend their days. Normally people keep their work/school, hobbies and chores so separate that I had very little idea how people of my age and social class live.

As a result, I saw that I'm not such a hopeless case, although the difference between the men in relationships and me is large in a few areas. Secondly, I talk more nowadays, and I've seen it have a positive effect.

Now it's a tight race between improving social skills and aging, which is going to cripple my ability to learn new social attitudes as well as my body. It's possible that I've already lost: they say that if you don't have sexual experiences by age 25, you are doomed. However, since there is a lot at stake (living alone 50 years without purpose vs. achieving middle-class happiness of an apartment loan, spacious car, 2.5 kids, and let's not forget the golden retriever) and since I'm seeing slow but steady improvement, I'm not ready to give up just yet.

The latest renaming of the blog is a sign that I'm raising the cat on the table and fighting to reach the end of the tunnel before the approaching train of aging hits me.

If I successfully solve this practical crisis, then I can again concentrate my blogging on technology, culture, politics, economics and philosophy like the rest of you. But before that I'm going to be anti-intellectual and keep both feet on the ground and blog about myself and practical daily life.

Drunk: The Essence Of Social Life

Lately, I've noticed the importance of social skills. They didn't matter a year ago, when I was just expected to do what I've told and to apply a little proactive attitude in it. But then I had a worldview-changing experience: Having a little responsibility about other people. That made many things click, especially the motto "Judge talent by its best, character by its worst." Social skills still don't matter in the leisure, since social skills don't produce much fun in the leisure, and the marginal benefit of being more skilled is very small.

The two things I realized were:

• Social skills matter, since there is a process which tends to put me to a position where I run into trouble if I don't have enough social skills. The process has repeated thus far two times. There are valid reasons to believe both that it will repeat itself and that it won't repeat itself a third time .


• Having your shit together goes a long way. Even without social skills, you may become a one-eyed king in the land of the blind.

So, here are a few posts about getting a rich social life.

Mostly, we thing you're boring.

Loud for sure. Less reckless than you might think.

Life Is Full of Choices

On the one hand, there is Kiuas performing at Jalometalli festival at 18.8.2007. On the other hand, there is Culture Beat performing at D-Fest at 17.8.2007. These events are exclude one another, since if I go to the (chronologically) first, I'll drink so much that I won't be interested in travelling to the second. Is any of my dear readers willing to go with me to either event? If there are several readers, youung, fertile women are preferred. If no reader is interested, I may be too lazy to go to either event.