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Comment by solveit | Hacker News Reader

> I agree w you mostly but you extended this form of systemic analysis to "making a date happy" which I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of relationships. To everyone reading this: please don't go around treating other people as systems to be optimized!

I think people who say this kind of thing have a fundamental misunderstanding of how a certain type of people think.

Of course people are systems to be optimized! What else could they possibly be? It's like people who object to love being a chemical reaction. What else could it be possibly be? And why in the world would love being a chemical reaction and people being systems to be optimized rule out treating people with respect, empathy, and kindness? What kind of straw Vulcans do you think we are?

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> It's like people who object to love being a chemical reaction. What else could it be possibly be?

Did you learn that by study, or did someone tell you that? Where else have you looked for love?

You might find “love” contained in the electrical impulses in a computer program. It might be in the words of a screenplay. A complicated mechanical automaton might experience love. You could notice it in a melody, or in the pattern of behavioral incentives among a society of human beings.

None of these things are chemical reactions in any systematic sense. You may notice chemical reactions everywhere you find these things, but that’s just because chemical reactions are contingently intrinsic to your own cognition. You’re only noticing yourself noticing the subject, and what you learn from that is almost entirely arbitrary.

Heartbreak is a form of neurotransmitter withdrawal, and it can be treated in similar ways to substance abuse issues. That’s because “love” is a “chemical reaction”. But that’s just a random fact about earthlings. It won’t help you write a pop song, let alone make a friend.

This is the reason “reductionism” has become a bit of a dirty word in philosophy. You feel like you are understanding the world better and better the whole time you are decomposing it into its constituent parts. Then you get to the bottom and you realize that the universe is made of many kinds of constituent parts, and you have decomposed a useful idea all the way down into nonsense.

somefamousperson (shrug) once said (I roughly paraphrase) that you could be handed a picture, and you could analyze the makeup of every square millimeter of it without ever seeing the picture.

What does it gain? I can never know anyone. After long effort, I've made some progress knowing myself. Yet we manage to have some kinds of relationships. We can enjoy (or suffer) them, but comprehension is a fantasy.

> And why in the world would (...) people being systems to be optimized rule out treating people with respect, empathy, and kindness.

Because seeing people as systems to be optimized is per definition dehumanizing which is an action that is not respectful or empathetic?

Have you ever told a woman, after coitus, how you ran the same Game on them that you've run dozens of times before? Did they get pissed and never talk to you again? I'm going to guess "no", at least neither I nor anyone I know has had that happen. They'll usually just laugh it off / not take it seriously. The empathy and connection has been built successfully, and no amount of ex post facto chastisement about "hey you were just dehumanized and disrespected" tends to register.

I’m beginning to believe people is pissed because the example was dating, and now they think the whole argument was how some people can be made to do/feel things, instead of a miserable simple example on how even people is a system that can be analyzed (to a certain extend)

HN gets weird about dating-related subjects IMO. Any other topic seems to embrace analysis, exchanging and comparing anecdotes/techniques, and "life hacks", but sex and relationships? Whoa boy, better don your flame suit first...

That's a terrible example and yes many people would be offended by that and not "laught it off", that is highly dependent on the individual and situation. Just because you made a connection doesn't mean you can't destroy it just as easily, by say pointing out the shallow nature of your connection.

>>>That's a terrible example and yes many people would be offended by that and not "laught it off"

Here's the thing: there is a HUGE gulf between how people SAY they will react in that (or a similar) situation, and how they ACTUALLY react. That's why I explicitly asked for actual experiences, not hypotheticals. It's the same thing with the legion of women on Tinder who put "No hookups" in their profile and still have sex on the first date. Actions speak louder than words. Anyone who takes their profile at face value would draw erroneous conclusions about their dating proclivities. Conclusions which are easily debunked by accumulating a significantly large base of in-the-flesh (pun intended) encounters.

>>>Just because you made a connection doesn't mean you can't destroy it just as easily, by say pointing out the shallow nature of your connection.

How are you making a determination that a connection built (however-quickly) on well-rehearsed techniques is "shallow"? Is a connection shallow if years later the other party is still blowing up your phone pining for you? What are the metrics used to assess shallowness?

Are you seriously asking me about metrics? You're entire post is a bunch of anecdotes. I'm not basing my response off of any real data and neither are you.

> The empathy and connection has been built successfully, and no amount of ex post facto chastisement about "hey you were just dehumanized and disrespected" tends to register.

This doesn't even make sense. You call it chastisement but then put dehumanized and disprespected in quotes. Why? Are you disagreeing that it's dehumanizing? Or that it actually is dehumanizing and disrespectful, but that doesn't matter at this point?

I can tell you personally that

1. If it's the case that you disagree in it being dehumanizing. Fine, that is your opinion. I disagree and think it is dehumanizing and if someone said that to me after sex I would be pissed and lose interest. How about myself for a reference no data needed. This isn't just about Women on tinder.

2. If it's the case that you agree it's dehumanizing, but because empathy and connection have been built it doesn't matter. Again it's your opinion that it doesn't matter after a connection has been built and I disagree strongly. If you think I'm the only human who disagrees ok... I don't know what the numbers are, and I even stated in another post that there's nothing wrong an approach like this, but some people will clearly see it differently

I can have empathetic and respectful goals and use systems and optimisation to achieve them.

Take sex for example. As a heterosexual man, I’ve no idea what’s intrinsically pleasurable to women. I think that giving sexual pleasure is a respectul, empathetic intention. Given this goal, I can use systematic approach to satisfy it (find pleasure trigger points and apply them).

Where is your systemic approach and optimization in this example? You haven't given any information on the approach other than find pleasure points. That's not using systems and optimization, so no it's not dehumanizing.

If on the other hand you carefully studied adult films, read the kama sutra, and practiced this at every opportunity you might have a systemic approach. And if your partner learned about this I don't think anyone could be called silly for feeling dehumanized by it. This is basically the approach that most people take to some extent, but that doesn't mean you want to advertise how you looked at a huge population and deduced effective methods of sexual pleasure. Of course some men or women may have no problem with this approach, but that is highly dependent on the individual and many people would feel dehumanized by it or uncomfortable with it. Sex is actually a good example because there are often strong personal feelings, even love associated with it.

Again it might be counter-intuitive, like how else are people supposed to figure these things out? But at the same time that fact can be very dehumanizing and seem disrespectful to disclose your "process" if it involved a lot of systematic optimization. Not very lovey dovey.

Not porn and Kamasutra in particular, but yeah I’ve read books, blogs, Reddit, ... definitely experimented a bit (not at every opportunity though).

Just because people cringe at some information doesn’t make the whole thing dehumanizing. You’re right though that most people don’t want to know how the sausage / burger is made...

I agree if someone goes about this approach and is respectful of everyone along the way it's not necessarily dehumanizing and there's nothing wrong with it, but regardless it may feel dehumanizing to the person to find out about since that's more about recognizing and optimizing patterns, and less about their individual uniqueness.

For most people it's not really that extreme and to some extent this has to be allowed for. That's the tricky part especially with sex, you want someone who is good at it, but that typically comes with experience. That may make some people uncomfortable. Find a good balance and just call it what it is, young people living life. But it's also a good warning to not "over optimize" and spend all your time going down that route because then some people would rightfully question that kind of behavior. I know I don't want a partner with thousands of sexcapades.

> That's the tricky part especially with sex, you want someone who is good at it, but that typically comes with experience.

My experience is different. Not very extensive, so I don't want to generalize it... but what I've learned is, that experimentation (i.e. systemic approach to exploration) trumps experience. It's true what they say, "every woman is different" (well, maybe not every, but there's a surprising (to me) amount of variance) so what works for one doesn't (necessarily) work for another. I don't think that experience (as in each additional partner) has really given me anything except maybe confidence.

> I think people who say this kind of thing have a fundamental misunderstanding of how a certain type of people think.

I honestly can’t deduce from your comment what the misunderstanding is. Is it that certain people see optimizing systems as an empathetic action?

What OP means is (I hope), yes, people are complex entities, each with their own nuances, but our behavior is not something astral, magic, that cannot be analyzed and figured out just yet. In fact we can be (to a certain extend, at least) profiled and we can act and plan upon such results.

Making a date happy? Sure, at first there can be some luck/lottery if you don’t know the person, but if you know your game you will try to know as much from that person as you can in order to do/give/say things that will make a moment turn out better for you, or for both even.

You may not like some people think like that, thinking they are just thinking of people as systems, but some of us actually just use that information to complement our spontaneity. Also, I don’t see what fuzz is all about, just because there was an example with people relationships.

People who say such things seem to think that abstraction and reduction to components inherently carry a moral valence. They don't. People think that if you think of love as a chemical reaction it must mean that you think it has no value. I think that it only shows their narrowminded arrogance in thinking that chemical reactions can have no value. One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens and all that.

We all take on different points of view depending on what's most useful at the time, and what patterns of thought come naturally to us. If you're a specific type of person, it's useful and natural to think of people as a system to be optimized. And if you love the people you're modeling, what you're optimizing for is their happiness and dignity. But some people can't conceive of this being the case. They see someone saying sciency words about mushy feelingy topics and pattern-match to the first supervillain they can think of. "People are just atoms, I guess that means I can blow you all up! Mwahahahaha!" Perhaps the people who wrote that supervillain never studied refraction and realized that it made rainbows more beautiful, not less. But probably they just didn't care. They needed a flimsy excuse to justify the awesome fight scenes they wanted to write. And that's all the reader was looking for too, It doesn't take much to let someone suspend their disbelief.

Interesting! I have seen that supervillain, but I had always interpreted the amorality as the flaw, not the justification they use.

People will straight reject reality if it doesn't fit their worldview. Go tell your wife love is just chemistry. Your words will haunt you for years :)

If that's what you think you should be able to say it. Otherwise one or both of the next things are true: -You married the wrong girl -You need to regain your manhood

On the other hand, you do need to look for a good time and a good way to say it, and that just goes to being empathetic and caring about your partner.

Life itself is 'just chemistry'.

And I damn love to be alive.

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