Yes. For all the concerns about IP theft there can be on OpenAI or Claude, there's not even concern when it comes to Chinese companies since it's fully expected that it's a lost cause. Has been for decades.
If only the US was a little bit more like China, nobody would ever know about the Epstein files.
You think China doesn't get its hands dirty because of some moral superiority? The country is utterly brutal towards its own citizens, what makes you think that the lack of warmongering is anything but inability?
>It's funny how you can look at obscenely overvalued Western AI companies, with capex's that are unsustainable, and along comes a system which pokes a gaping hole in this model, and the response is "Ya, but what do those sneaky Chinese have up their sleeve here?!"
The only way this is funny is if you are completely oblivious to how China usually operates.
I think there's a bit of a "marketing" failure happening in this context.
I've been exercising for most of my life, I'm the guy that has been going to the gym since forever to many of my acquaintances, and so they have often talked to me about how they want to start exercising or how they are doing etc.
Nobody, and I mean nobody has ever said anything like "I'm so happy to decrease my risk of diabetes". My father stopped smoking and started riding a bike, motivated by cardiovascular health, what actually makes him happy though is to be able to go up the stairs without breaking into a sweat.
Ask anyone in a gym why they exercise, they will talk about health, just not in the way doctors do. The stick of "You will die in 20 years rather than 35" pales in comparison of the carrot of "you will feel better basically all the time"
>The more reasonable dating coaches are still out there. They simply aren’t part of the mainstream advice.
I really want to ask: what would their reputation be if they were mainstream, in your opinion?
I find it to be a very interesting spot of culture and society, like at one point you had a bunch of guys who were dealing with the cognitive dissonance between what society asks of men and what society wants from them in a context that wasn't yet politicized.
It is my impression that when it started showing up a little bit in the mainstream, the accusations of misogyny came, and with that most who actually cared about misogyny left the boat, in public terms. So now all we have left is Tate and the likes.
A lot of the accusations of misogyny were well founded, but there were also a lot of people who genuinely just did struggle with why they couldn't meet people, and who wanted to genuinely improve.
I think effectively those coaches who worried most about reputations to a large extent pivoted from focusing on the dating aspect to more general self-improvement, where dating success might still get mentioned but without so much focus on it, and especially not so much focus on getting sex.
There's lots of mainstream self-help around overcoming shyness and getting better at socialising for example that was/is directly relevant to a lot of people who struggle with dating, and there are lots of ways of framing the non-manipulative, non-creepy parts of a lot of dating coach advice in ways that nobody would consider misoygynist.
But, yeah, I think at least to some extent the attention given to some of this subculture unwittingly ended up driving some of them into the arms of people like Tate. It's not that there weren't plenty of those coaches that deserved negative attention, but the end result might well have been worse.
> A lot of the accusations of misogyny were well founded, but there were also a lot of people who genuinely just did struggle with why they couldn't meet people, and who wanted to genuinely improve.
Agreed
> and there are lots of ways of framing the non-manipulative, non-creepy parts of a lot of dating coach advice in ways that nobody would consider misoygynist.
Yea, agreed
One issue is that pickup artists always framed it as men seducing women. But quite frankly, most ideas would also work the other way around. I remember talking to some dating coaches who strongly disagree with me but they view women too much as women and men too much as men, whereas my view is that we’re humans first and our sex/gender second.
Viewing things in such a gendered way was a factor for misogyny.
Back in the day, I coached a woman to be better at dating. I taught her what I knew and she took her own spin on it and had tons of fun.
Just some examples as to what is interchangeable:
1. Being playful
2. Emotional intelligence
3. Good style
4. Cold approaching
5. Disqualification technique (e.g. what work do you do? I’m a hermit in the woods and sing to birds all day - when you are clearly not)
6. Open body language, and the concept of tonality, body language and non-verbal communication in general
7. Good logistics such as having a place of your own, moving a date to a second or nth location etc. (this just requires planning)
8. Being able to signal intent at the right time (I do it 10 to 60 minutes after when the playful vibe is clearly established)
Women can do these things too, and it works. This is just from the top of my dome. There are many more examples. Such as being optimistic, adventurous and genuinely yourself (I know sounds contradictory, it’s a long topic but yeah works for women who want to seduce men too).
I wouldn’t be surprised if all of this also works for gay/lesbian people but I never thought about that.
The funny thing is that a while after having spent time reading up on it but not really tried many of those techniques, I ran into a woman in a club who started running "textbook game" on me, and in that context reciprocating and trying out even techniques I'd never feel comfortable with on someone who didn't know what was going on was fun because I could tell she also immediately recognised it. It ended up being a fun dance of back and forth. The biggest problem with a lot of those techniques is when one side isn't aware - and of course that is often why they were being thought. But, yeah, the part you list are all definitely interchangeable.
Or more like playful banter? Those vibes are super fun, even though I am not much of a banter guy.
> The biggest problem with a lot of those techniques is when one side isn't aware - and of course that is often why they were being thought.
Seducing someone on pure technique, while possible, screws with many things. One of them is one’s self worth, as someone like that is now dependent on being a certain way that isn’t them.
> But, yeah, the part you list are all definitely interchangeable.
She started off with a lot of push-pull and trying to move me around the venue, and it was very blatant. Like taking me along to talk to her friend, and then brusquely dismissing me only to come to dance with me minutes later. If I'd not immediately recognised what was going on it would've messed with my head. Because I did, it was fun. It was also a very good demonstration of how fucked up those techniques can be - she was good at it.
Sounds like a whirlwind of an experience! It really becomes a game when you’re both doing it.
Push pull came up naturally through playfulness so I never consciously thought about it. Sometimes it came through spontaneous ballroom dancing. There were a few times where I taught a woman the latin swing. It feels as push pull but as a dance.
> It was also a very good demonstration of how fucked up those techniques can be - she was good at it.
Yea, can relate. I’m still a fan of women that have a similar style to my game. My game is wholesome. Women have mentioned as much. My wife’s style is similar. The first exchange on Tinder was awesome, I immediately yelled “she gets it!” in front of my computer screen :’)
She ran the printing press and picked the camera lenses and stacked the books by the cash register and booked her own press interviews? Also who taught all the kids to read?
Why does she have to control the entire vertical process to earn a billion dollars? She sold her work and got paid a billion dollars for it. Who did she exploit? In what way were her earnings unearned?
That’s just back to my original point. Which was that every billion dollar enterprise is a collective or team effort and the only argument is about how the results get allocated.
Which is, as I pointed out, inarguable. No one is spawned alone in the woods to start their adventure independently of the society they are in.
PG says this in his post though. He says the people working for the startup whose founder he talked to are being compensated fairly and properly. To claim his post is a misreading you have to claim every billionaire wouldnt be a billionaire if resources were allocated correctly.
He takes that as a given but this is, in fact, the argument and you can't wave it away.
By doing so he's being disingenuous. The argument here is about who gets what. And the startup founder and its employees are not the only participants in the economy.
The revenue flowing in to his hypothetical startup is exogenous to the startup so you have to talk about where it's coming from, who's affected, and how that fits in with policy goals.
For an extreme but accurate thought experiment, imagine concluding your analysis of FTX by noting that their employees were "fairly and properly" paid and then moving on.
Let me give you a hint: the concept of DEI statement to apply for a position exists
reply