Talk:Reciprocal altruism
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User space[edit]
This article hasn't been touched in a year, two of the sections have "(under construction)" marked on them, and it's probably off-mission. Also, a lot of the internal links to it are titled "Nice Guy," or redirects from Nice guy, and I don't think the relevant section at the bottom of the article sufficiently covers the concept (and I'm not all the way sure we should be covering the pathetic antics of bitter, lonely men beyond articles about various MRA beliefs- but that's not why I'm here today).
I'm suggesting that, failing some immediate work done on the article (I'd work on it myself, but I know little about the subject), it be moved to an interested editor's user space. As it stands, it shouldn't be in mainspace.--"Shut up, Brx." 18:30, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
- You could ask User:sen but he's not around much these days. User:EVDebs added some economics stuff, how about him? SophieWilder 18:38, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Question about the last point[edit]
Wouldn't the guys who are doing that be, essentially, taking a "strong" position without realizing it? Or am I missing something? Sensual Endeavor, the sexy pony ;) (talk) 07:44, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
Are nice guys "commitment sluts"?[edit]
bsutansalt writes, "To borrow from a related thread, relationships are, broadly speaking, a trade. The man provides emotional intimacy, the woman provides physical intimacy. A slut is not respected because she provides physical intimacy without requiring emotional intimacy in return. She has sold herself cheap and in doing so devalues women's primary asset: their sexuality/fertility (this is why most slut shaming is done by women). A 'nice-guy' provides emotional intimacy and/or other benefits to a woman without requiring physical intimacy in return. He has sold himself cheap, and likewise is not respected."
If a woman says, "I won't have sex with you unless we're in a relationship," then that's deemed to be okay and even virtuous; she's not being a bitch by saying that. In fact, she's respected for not letting herself be used by a guy who just wants sex.
But if a guy says, "I'm not going to go out of my way to do nice things for you (help you move your sofa, watch rom-coms with you, etc.) unless we're in a relationship," then he's deemed to be an asshole. It doesn't matter that he's just trying to respect himself by not letting a girl use him for emotional support and other benefits, without giving him the sex he wants in return.
Who is actually being the asshole in these scenarios? If a "slutty" girl lets a guy have sex with her, in hopes that he'll get addicted to her body and decide he wants a relationship with her, but actually the guy just uses her for sex before going off and fucking other chicks, then he's an asshole, and she's the victim, because he dashed her hopes. But if a "nice" guy does a lot of favors for a girl, in hopes that she'll get addicted to his personality and decide she wants a relationship with them, but actually she just uses him for the favors and goes and fucks other guys, then he's an asshole, and once again she's a victim, because he dashed her hopes of having a friend who would do stuff for her without expecting anything in return.
Is this a double standard? L's Ideology (talk) 16:16, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
- Uh, no, there's no double standard, if a guy does the latter and gets turned down, then he can fucking move on, just like the woman who doesn't want sex can. You have to construct a really shitty world-view where you think you're entitled to the relationship to be the oh-so-frequently-mocked "nice guy."
- It's not unreasonable to want someone who wants the same things as you, and buddy, you need to get the hell away from the manosphere because it's poisoning your ability to treat relationships between people as relationships between people. The red pill attitude of "You're getting X from me so you owe me Y" is a symptom of genuinely broken people. ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 16:29, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah but these girls who get treated by "players" (i.e. used for sex, without getting a relationship) the way nice guys get treated by the girls who friendzone them (i.e. used for favors, without getting a relationship), don't really move on. They complain bitterly about having been used, mistreated, etc. It's seen all the time on Facebook, where girls say that the reason they get with the wrong guys is that the wrong guys say all the right things. These girls are not considered controlling or abusive when they have trouble letting go of these guys after the guys are done using them.
- Having said that, I think what's much more common than girls friendzoning guys (and being content to have this guy around doing stuff for them, who wants to bang them), is that girls will just dismiss a guy from their lives entirely after LJBF'ing him. I have seen girls act in a manipulative way, and lead a guy on; e.g. there was a chick who told me outright, "If you drive me to the airport, I'll give you five blowjobs" and then she didn't actually do it, but that was more blatant than friendzoning, which is more implicit.
- Actually, what both guys and girls will do sometimes is emotionally fuck someone over, by saying "I'm your friend" and then accepting favors from the person, without reciprocating. An example being, they might ask for help when they're out of a job, and then not help you (and even vanish from your life entirely) when you're out of a job, before showing back up when you have money again. I would almost call that "acquaintancezoning". L's Ideology (talk) 18:08, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
The Highway Code[edit]
On one level are not 'common courtesy' and The Highway Code (and its equivalents) forms of reciprocal altruism (whether or not codified)? Anna Livia (talk) 18:27, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
- Sure. The people who support reciprocal altruism as a concept say most altruism fits it. Here's a general form you can use to test whether something fits the bill "If everyone in the world did X the world would be a better place, therefor I should do X". Fill in any X. If the statement holds, it is a reciprocal altruistic concept. The exceptions are harder to find. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:28, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
- Partly to note that reciprocal altruism can exist in small doses/in places where it is not immediately obvious.
- And is there common ground with Benthams 'Felicific calculus' (which is not a stone cat)? Anna Livia (talk) 16:27, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
- I suppose it could be argued to be a Utilitarian ethic, like you're saying. But honestly, it works just as well as a is-should bridge for a virtue ethics system, and I've always thought of those as deontological. I dunno. Depends. What's your goal in connecting the concepts? ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 16:42, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
Nice guy: being nice for the sake of being a decent human being vs. being nice for the sake of wanting something[edit]
A distinction should be made between motives for being nice. I try to be nice for the sake of being a decent human being not because I demand relationships. As for incels, they pretend to be nice for the sake of demanding a relationship. Major distinction there. --Racia zombio94 (talk) 02:09, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Scott Alexander on Nice Guys[edit]
“”But Feministe is also the first to show a glimmer of awareness (second, if you count Jezebel’s “I realize this might be construed as mean BUT I LOVE BEING MEAN” as “awareness”):
Okay. Let’s extend our analogy with Dan from above. It was wrong of me to say I hate poor minorities. I meant I hate Poor Minorities! Poor Minorities is a category I made up that includes only poor minorities who complain about poverty or racism. No, wait! I can be even more charitable! A poor minority is only a Poor Minority if their compaints about poverty and racism come from a sense of entitlement. Which I get to decide after listening to them for two seconds. And If they don’t realize that they’re doing something wrong, then they’re automatically a Poor Minority. I dedicate my blog to explaining how Poor Minorities, when they’re complaining about their difficulties with poverty or asking why some people like Paris Hilton seem to have it so easy, really just want to steal your company’s money and probably sexually molest their co-workers. And I’m not being unfair at all! Right? Because of my new definition! I know everyone I’m talking to can hear those Capital Letters. And there’s no chance whatsoever anyone will accidentally misclassify any particular poor minority as a Poor Minority. That’s crazy talk! I’m sure the “make fun of Poor Minorities” community will be diligently self-policing against that sort of thing. Because if anyone is known for their rigorous application of epistemic charity, it is the make-fun-of-Poor-Minorities community! I’m not even sure I can dignify this with the term “motte-and-bailey fallacy”. It is a tiny Playmobil motte on a bailey the size of Russia. |
I think he raises some good points. What do you guys think? — 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 12:05, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
- in fact I think the entire post is pretty good and I can't find good criticisms for it; I would say though that he takes a very american-centric view on feminism and thinks that feminists are people who write shitty news articles whereas I think of feminists as more like philosophers but still; I feel he's absolutely right and shows a mechanism where incels get trapped into the alt right rabbit hole https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/ — 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 12:13, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
- The excerpt you cite is transparently uncharitable; it is openly engaged in mockery of the author's opponents. It also doesn't really offer a reason why we should think the analogy is a good one. Indeed, earlier in the year that post was written, Elliot Rodger shot 20 people (killing 6) and left a manifesto explaining that he was trying to punish women for rejecting him. There have been other similar incidents, and the "manosphere" is a real and quite toxic phenomenon, at least on the internet. That would seem to constitute a group of people that merit criticism, whereas "Poor Minorities" is a category that the author invented for the purpose of mockery, and which does not reflect some extant, toxic social movement. Nor do the attitudes of incels towards women seem comparable to the attitudes of what the author describes as a hard-working person resentful of wealthy others' ability to coast through life, in his first false analogy.
- The overall article is rather gross, and tries to disguise dubious arguments beneath skillful rhetoric. We are apparently to believe that feminists are morally responsible for the behavior and attitudes of incels, because a a 2002 post on a feminist blog developed the derogatory use of the term "nice guy", and the manosphere was not influential before 2005, based on Google trends (presumably, we are to imagine that no notable misogynistic subculture predates the online manosphere). We are also to suppose that quotations from several blogs prove a generally hostile attitude among feminists, despite the clear evidence that the misogynistic subculture apparently targeted by their commentary was real at the time the comments were made (see, e.g., Elliot Rodger). The author also apparently finds something unfair in the ability of abusers to attract sexual partners while he (or others like him) are unable to do so - glossing over abusers' routine targeting of vulnerable women, including those with mental illnesses and those in precarious financial situations, among others. Perhaps it's true that the manosphere can recruit people by deceiving them about the nature of their problems (in a way that preserves a favorable self-image), but the author's belief that abusers are especially likely to "find a soulmate", and that this reflects some objectionable unfairness, is ignorant, poorly justified, and, on account of it's framing of the issue, and what it leaves out, rather misogynistic. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 talk 23:42, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
You have made a lot of really good points that deserve to be in Scott Alexander's article. I might do that one day... But still I feel some criticisms are invalid.
"The excerpt you cite is transparently uncharitable; it is openly engaged in mockery of the author's opponents."
Isn't that what we do at RationalWiki?
"It also doesn't really offer a reason why we should think the analogy is a good one. Indeed, earlier in the year that post was written, Elliot Rodger shot 20 people (killing 6) and left a manifesto explaining that he was trying to punish women for rejecting him. There have been other similar incidents, and the "manosphere" is a real and quite toxic phenomenon, at least on the internet."
I don't think this is an argument against the usage of "Nice Guys". Yes, the manosphere is a real and quite toxic phenomenon, and Scott himself cites examples of terrible misogynists in his article (but not that Elliot Rodger example), but that doesn't give an excuse for anyone to be mean.
I agree that Scott's dismissal of feminism is bad. For him, feminists only refers to people who write shitty blog articles on the web while for me it means people in academia trying to make the world a more egalitarian place, or trying to make men not kill women in rejection killings.
"That would seem to constitute a group of people that merit criticism, whereas "Poor Minorities" is a category that the author invented for the purpose of mockery, and which does not reflect some extant, toxic social movement."
Manosphere definitely merits criticism yes, but so does the usage of "nice guys".
'Poor Minorities' is a category the author invented to show how, even if there is some extant toxic social movement surrounding it, it's not a very good term at all and is ripe for abuse. It can be used to harass... well, poor minorities.
"Nor do the attitudes of incels towards women seem comparable to the attitudes of what the author describes as a hard-working person resentful of wealthy others' ability to coast through life, in his first false analogy."
Yes, there are incels who murder women, and I can't name any incidents but I am sure some poor-hard working people have murdered their bosses in the past.
"We are apparently to believe that feminists are morally responsible for the behavior and attitudes of incels, because a a 2002 post on a feminist blog developed the derogatory use of the term "nice guy", and the manosphere was not influential before 2005, based on Google trends (presumably, we are to imagine that no notable misogynistic subculture predates the online manosphere). We are also to suppose that quotations from several blogs prove a generally hostile attitude among feminists, despite the clear evidence that the misogynistic subculture apparently targeted by their commentary was real at the time the comments were made (see, e.g., Elliot Rodger)."
I agree that the article seemingly cites certain "feminist"'s meanness as the sole reason for the alt-right, which is probably not the case. And Elliot Rodger definitely didn't just kill 6 people because they were mean to him; it's clear he was radicalised by the alt-right. But Scott puts out a very convincing mechanism for how people get into this alt-right trap and how the alt-right preys on shy guys in the first place. The article doesn't downplay how bad the alt-right is or try to prove that it's better than feminism or whatever.
About that "manosphere was not influential before 2005" thing, you are obviously right. I remember being skeptical of it when I read it, but I completely forgot about it by the end of the article. Thanks for that.
"The author also apparently finds something unfair in the ability of abusers to attract sexual partners while he (or others like him) are unable to do so - glossing over abusers' routine targeting of vulnerable women, including those with mental illnesses and those in precarious financial situations, among others. Perhaps it's true that the manosphere can recruit people by deceiving them about the nature of their problems (in a way that preserves a favorable self-image), but the author's belief that abusers are especially likely to "find a soulmate", and that this reflects some objectionable unfairness, is ignorant, poorly justified, and, on account of it's framing of the issue, and what it leaves out, rather misogynistic."
I am going to be completely honest I glossed over that rather simple explanation as well. Thanks for that as well; I will be trying to add these to the Scott Alexander article. — 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 talk stalk 06:55, 23 February 2024 (UTC)