Tag: game theory

As per my comment yesterday, I’m pleased to announce that Susan Walsh, the intrepid hostess of Hooking Up Smart, is one of the contributors to Alpha Game.  As with all rules, the maxim of never listening to what a woman says about what women want has its exceptions, and Susan’s insights on male-female relations are always worth taking into account.  She kicked things off with an excellent inaugural post at Alpha Game today:

From Urban Dictionary:  NAWALT: acronym for ‘not all women are like that.’

Repeated endlessly by women to men in hopes that if men hear NAWALT frequently enough, they’ll believe it.  The reality is that all women ARE like that (manipulative, abusive, sociopathic, destructive, drama-oriented, liars).

The acronym NAWALT has its origin in the belief that women as a collective are complicit in the implementation of injustices against men during the last 40 years. As you can see from the more commonly used meaning above, it’s come to signify the degenerate nature of all women, on all fronts.

The fact is that all women are not created equal any more than men are, and all women don’t behave indentically any more than alphas behave like omegas. This doesn’t render the insights of Game any less legitimate, it merely means that the application of those insights needs to be more intelligent and judicious than some of the more xtreme literalists at the Chateau tend to believe.

In which I explain the difference between a sexual hierarchy and a socio-sexual one:

There appears to be an amount of confusion relating to the difference between Roissy’s binary hierarchy and my more graduated hierarchy. However, it’s not difficult to distinguish between the two hierarchies, nor is there any contradiction between them. Roissy’s hierarchy is solely sexual in nature, whereas mine is socio-sexual. Therefore, his two categories are supersets of my seven categories.

I was a little surprised to learn that it was necessary to spell this out, as it isn’t hard to observe and it is a natural consequence of the connection between social status and sexual options. It’s hardly rocket science. But as you muse over the matter, keep in mind that snowflaking is no means of assessing the validity of anything, much less categories that encompass hundreds of millions of people.

Today also featured the first-ever guest post at Alpha Game, a piece on economic signaling theory contributed by Le Cygne Gris. I’m not at all averse to guest posts, just keep in mind that they should be longer than the average post and concern things that the regular contributors are unlikely to cover.

And finally, I’m pleased to announce a popular Game blogger will be contributing to Alpha Game on a regular basis.

A further glimpse into the programmed mind of the gamma:

The fascinating thing about the gamma mindset is the way in which it causes the gamma to stubbornly cling to his preconceptions in the face of his own observations. There are several clear gamma signs on display here. The first is the extreme level of the interior white-knighting. While deltas and to a lesser extent betas are also prone to placing women on pedestals and acting as their rescuers and champions, only the gamma is going to fantasize about killing another man for nothing more than the crime of being mildly impolite to his own girlfriend. The gamma doesn’t even know this girl, he has just met her, and he’s already dreaming of challenging his own cousin to a duel over her nonexistent honor.

The obvious question is this. Is the gamma mindset the result of internal or external programming? I strongly suspect the latter, as I can recall finding it difficult to reconcile the differences between what I was being told about male-female relations and what I was observing at a very young age. Regardless, NiceGuy once more provides us with a clear and razor-sharp microscope into the thought processes of the gamma.

Meanwhile, one of Alpha Game’s resident deltas describes an interesting method for systematically hunting down and eradicating his own delta instincts.

While I tend to roll my eyes at alphas and their burning need to have their social superiority recognized, I don’t see fit to falsely denigrate them. They may not be the brightest collection of men on the planet, but neither are they orcs. They don’t have green skin and they certainly don’t ride warpigs. This is why I never cease to find it amusing how men who are new to the theory of Game and don’t know the first thing about it are so prone to triumphantly declaring themselves an alpha… or even “a natural alpha“.

Also, DJ has contributed his first post to Alpha Game, which is an intriguing application of Game to his workplace.

UPDATE: RM has contributed his first post as well. He is an omega, and I defy any man to read his story without feeling some sense of empathy or admitting that Game is more than a cheap trick for pick-up artists to use on barsluts. In some cases it has the potential, in a very literal and material sense, to be a lifesaver.

This is about as flawless a portrait of a Gamma Male that anyone could possibly paint. It includes a description of the demon that lurks inside the twisted, affection-starved heart of every Gamma, a demon that can only be exorcised by the powerful ritual of a pretty woman’s unsolicited smile.

UPDATE: In related news, I have invited JY to fill one of the Delta roles at Alpha Game. He is young, Christian, and engaged, which should help put to rest the notion that Game is only for Pick-Up Artists. His first post, Stumbling toward Alpha, is now up.

In their rush to declare themselves alphas, before whom men cower and women tremble with anticipation, what is often forgotten by perfectly normal deltas and gammas is that socio-sexual status very often comes at a price.

Although the econ blog concept didn’t end up working out quite as well as I’d envisioned, I think Twitter is actually a better vehicle for that. However, I have noticed there is a good deal of continuing interest in Game theory, in fact, more than I can reasonably bring myself to devote to it on this blog. Since I’m presently working on a Game-related project, I think the time has come to set up a separate blog devoted entirely to the subject. My idea is to have seven bloggers, of which I will be one, each presenting the perspective of the one of the categories I have described in the socio-sexual hierarchy: Alpha, Sigma, Beta, Delta, Gamma, and Omega… plus one ♀. I’m open to bloggers who already have blogs, there are two or three few people I’d very much like to participate, but in general I’m more interested in those who aren’t already blogging regularly.

If you’re interested, please mention it here, then email me a sample post along with your age, marital status, religious faith, and which perspective you think you could accurately represent. I would prefer a mix of married and single, religious and irreligious, older and younger. Note that I’m not interested in exercises in self-justification, such as explaining why you’re really a “stealth alpha” even though your last date was with a transsexual streetwalker in Las Vegas five years ago nor do I want Tucker Max fiction cribbed from old editions of Penthouse Forum. Roissy already has the “I am Alpha, hear me roar” aspect of the subject well-covered, so what I’d like this new blog to bring to the table is both the painful stories of the past and the accounts of transformation, both successful and unsuccessful, from the present.

I’m still going to discuss the subject here as I have been doing, but I will also post there several times per week. Please don’t volunteer unless you can reasonably commit to posting three times per week since a good blog should average around three posts per day. I don’t know if anyone will be interested in blogging, or for that matter, reading such a blog, but I figured it doesn’t hurt to throw the idea out there to you all.

In tangentially related news, it’s time to clean up the blogroll. So many are now defunct that my plan is to nuke them all and only keep those bloggers who tell me they are still active. Let me know if you want to stay on the blogroll or be added to it in the comments here with a) the blog name and b) the URL.

Roissy attempts to explain Game, very slowly, to the uninitiated mainstream:

First, everyone needs to stop throwing around the word douchebag so lazily and haphazardly. Douchebags aren’t hopeless with women. Just the opposite. Douchebags are pricks and assholes — usually gauche and lower class — who inexplicably do well with women. (Well, inexplicable to anyone who isn’t a reader of the Chateau. We here know the reason why chicks dig jerks.) Think of hotchickswithdouchebags.com, or some of the cast of Jersey Shore.

Most douchebags are naturals with women, probably because they aren’t smart enough to question their unwavering self-confidence. In fact, the best naturals with women mostly occupy the left hand side of the bell curve. The truly dangerous skirt chasers are the naturals with smarts. There aren’t many of them, but they do exist. They are unstoppable forces of nature, owing partly to their concomitant suite of dark triad traits.

I found this part to not only be succinct, but exceedingly amusing, as it happened to come on right on the heels of Spacebunny informing me that I am “a very bad man”. Note, however, that Roissy specifically denies the idea that Game is tool with just one application, which should be completely obvious given this description of its essence.

That women’s behavior can be so analyzed means that women’s actions can be predicted, and subsequently that men with this knowledge can tailor their behavior to get the most out of their interactions with women. Knowledge is a powerful thing, and knowing what’s up does, in fact, shift the balance of sexual power in men’s direction by removing the inscrutability and whimsy that has been the prerogative of women since time immemorial. Game means that it is no longer simply a matter of dumb luck when men get sex and love.

Game is no more limited to use by pick-up artists in night clubs than a screwdriver is limited to use by murderers in stabbing someone to death. Unless you seriously wish to deny that a) female behavior falls into patterns and is predictable to some degree, or b) knowledge of those patterns can be useful to men in a variety of applications, logic dictates that Game will be of use to nearly every man on the planet.

I agree with the sentiment, if not the specifics:

The “game” stuff pretty much is for douchebags, or at least the otherwise hopeless. It involves taking the sophisticated approach that someone with actual interpersonal skills might employ, and boiling it down to a set of simplified rules that produce a sort of cartoon version — much as you might boil down social interactions into rules for an autistic person; the result is better than nothing, but not the real thing. But although it’s a cartoon — and focused largely on picking up women in bars, a fairly limited and artificial environment to begin with — the simplification process does reveal things that might otherwise be obscured or ignored. And it’s interesting to see some of these insights going mainstream. (The other thing you learn from perusing some of these sites is just how much some men need the help. And I’m not sorry to see them get it.)

Glenn has it exactly right. As I describe it, it is the articulation and emulation of successful natural behavior for the benefit of those who do not possess it. So, there’s no reason that it should be limited to male-female relations, much less douchebags seeking to score with club sluts. And he’s right, most men badly need it today because they have no idea how the rules have changed since 1950.

Consider the following female strategy for obtaining free drinks:

6. Befriend an older man at the bar. Um, hello… old fashioned manners. He’ll have to offer. And you will graciously accept.

Notice that the entire strategy is designed around the female assumption that an older man will not view her as a predator out to use him for his financial resources. The mere articulation of this thought process demonstrates the need most men have for Game today. As it happens, I never offered to buy a woman a drink at a bar in any situation that I would not have done so for a man. Certainly not as an icebreaker, still less in response to a request from a stranger. And somehow, that didn’t prevent me from meeting Spacebunny. Given that many women are overt cheapskates attempting to cadge free alcohol from suckers and that not offering free drinks is no handicap to meeting beautiful women, I think it is safe to say that one should not ever buy drinks for women in the hopes of ingratiating oneself to them.

Keep in mind that as a general rule, female gratitude takes its philosophical cue from Charles de Gaulle.

And a good riddance to it. Guy Ritchie is an early nominee for Man of the Year.

When a man sees a woman in trouble it is usually polite to help her out but for one English gent his manners seemed to have failed him last night. As Guy Ritchie was leaving Claridges hotel a woman stumbled on a plant pot and tumbled to the ground, but the director did little but smile at her plight. In fact, although the woman fell directly in front of him, he failed to help her out and merely pointed towards her with a grin before walking around her and carrying on his way home.

Chivalry in the modern sense presumes that women are of intrinsically more value to men. This was true when most Western women were serious about fulfilling their primary role as propagators of mankind. But since women have by and large abandoned that role and given priority to their self-esteem, education, and occupation instead, there is no longer any justification for chivalric behavior applied broadly to the female sex in general. Each woman must be judged worthy or unworthy of such treatment on her own merits, and in the absence of any information, the assumption must be that she is unworthy.

My habit is to treat women as they wish to be treated. If a woman insists that she is equal to me, then I will show her no more favor or mercy than I would show a man. Pay for yourself, defend yourself, and get your own damn door. If, on the other hand, a woman indicates that she subscribes to traditional and unequal standards, I am pleased to show her with all the conventional courtesy that was previously provided to all the members of the erstwhile “fair sex”. Barring any indications to the contrary, I assume that a woman I don’t know is an equalitarian and treat her accordingly.

In the days of yore, the correct response to a woman in minor distress was to go to her assistance. These days, the proper response is to simply proceed with the mission. With a snort of amused contempt, of course, if you feel so moved.