"Nice Guys of OK Cupid" Website

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And as crystallinegreen already mentioned, the nice guys vs jerks/douchebags et al is a false dichotomy

If it worked as well as you say, the resentful and passive-aggressive "nice guy" would not be a phenomenon, and we would not be having this conversation.



They could, but these "nice guys" have mistaken "niceness" for "goodness," and therein lies the problem.
Nietzsche said it better than I ever will:
"Of all evil I deem you capable. Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws."

That's my favorite Nietzsche quote!

Nice quote. ^^

Deserved, entitled, semantics really. This isn't a very substantive point. Whether or not the nice guys deserve to get the girl or whether or not they're entitled to the girl, it really doesn't change the nature of the debate much.



Simplicity, my dear. It's like a thought experiment: In them, you often lower the number of variables in order to make exploring an issue easier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

Once again, you haven't really made that substantive of a point. And neither has Meems yet. And you're both doing a fantastic job of dodging my main point: Positive actions are to be rewarded, negative actions are to be punished. It's that simple.



You haven't murdered anyone today, have you? It works exceedingly well, but of course it isn't perfect.



They very frequently coincide.

[edit] I've gotta go, so any replies might come quite a bit later.

Has this been posted yet?

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/

Shau, saying our points aren't substantiative(dismissing them without really responding) and then simply repeating yourself in different words(you're on about semantics, I assume you understand the concept)doesn't strengthen your point, and re-wording ours does not weaken our points.

Positive actions are not to be rewarded, no one owes anything to anyone in terms of romance.

If you want to stop going in circles, maybe this conversation can go somewhere. What do you say, can we have a real conversation or is this all that's going to happen?

To correct myself : positive actions may or may not be rewarded and negative actions may or may not be punished.

There are no guarantees in life other than death, positive actions may increase your chances of being rewarded but no one is entitled to a reward for their positive actions, especially from another person.

Believing positive actions entitle you to positive rewards is an entitled attitude, and will probably leave a lot of people disappointed a lot of the time.

It really depends what debate you think you're having.



My point was that "nice guys" and "douchebags" would seem to be similarly maladjusted and unsuccessful in their approach, ergo it might be more pertinent to compare the "nice guy" solution with a different "variable".



Is that an order?

Oh.. right, classical conditioning. ^^ I assume you intended to relate this point to the formation of such men's expectations, and yes, I'm sure it has a lot to do with it - I'm sure the reason any of us ever attempt anything that looks like hard work is that we've basically come to associate it with reward. We all have reasoning abilities and the capacity for self-control, though, as displayed by the vast majority of people who don't resort to rage when they fail to attract the partner they desire.

I said, that the point you were making doesn't really change the nature of the argument. Would you like me to elaborate? I'm more than happy to.



Debates do sometimes go around in circles, especially as each side comes to understand what the other was trying to say better and better. If you're tired of the ride you can feel free to agree to disagree and move on, I won't consider it a victory on my part or anything. Not everyone is always in the mood for a long, drawn-out debate.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory#Biology

Read this, they probably explain what I'm trying to say far better than I do. From a biological, evolutionary standpoint, rewarding positive actions and punishing negative action is a very successful strategy. EXPECTING the good and punishing the bad doesn't always work out. The only reason you shouldn't reward positive actions is when logistic-like reasons don't permit it (IE limited resources).



It's entirely irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it's entitled or not. Nature has no sense of entitlement, and that's the mistake you're making. Nature only sees what works great, what sorta works, and what doesn't work at all. You're applying very human-like thinking to something that comes down to cold logic.



Not sure what you mean by this, dunno how to respond.



Bear in mind that when I say "nice guy", I don't mean "maladjusted, self-entitled, secretly woman-hating prick" like they tend to be defined as. I mean an actual nice guy. And unfortunately, such people fare little better than the "fake" nice guys.



Now we're onto something. You are correct that classical conditioning doesn't dictate 100% of everything humans do, because humans are not 100% logical. Human thought IS capable of defying what Nature "wants" (Do note the quotes there, Nature cannot actually want anything), this is why suicide occurs. From a biological standpoint non-altruistic suicide is a big no-no. Nature has a way of weeding out that kind of stuff, however.

Which is why reward tends to be one of the biggest drivers of human action. Thing is? We're not special, unique, magically-driven things with "souls" and stuff. We don't have free will. We are nothing more than constructs based on the rules of chemistry and physics, much like everything else is. There's a rhyme and reason to everything in the universe, everything you do and everything you've ever done and ever will is simply the product of your biological programming. Nature programmed us to, for the most part, follow a reward-based pathway because it works. The reason why a mother does nice things for her child? Is because she's programmed via a complex network of emotions and thoughts that arose in Nature because it is, from a reproductive-based evolutionary standpoint, a very successful strategy. You help the child, and all that work you put into conceiving it pays off. That's it. That's all it comes down to. Anything else is a romanticized version of reality that just doesn't hold water in the wake of what science is coming to understand about us humans and why we behave the way we do.

I'm applying human-like thinking to human interactions. I haven't said nature feels entitled, I've said if some guy is feeling punished because his behavior isn't being rewarded with attention from a member of the opposite sex, he obviously feels entitled. He needs to take a look at himself and see what he's doing wrong if this situation is recurring. Maybe it's the specific women he's pursuing, maybe it's that he's not pursuing at all etc.

Showing up to help a female move or do house repairs or just listen to her cry, that's all positive action, but all he's showing is that he's a reliable friend.

Also, I don't think of casual debates on message boards as a battle meant to lead up to a victor. So. Yeah.

edit: double post.

ALSO that cracked article is fantastic

Last edited by meems on 03 Jan 2013, 1:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

oh man i started crying half way through the first example its hilairious

I came to his exact conclusion myself like 2 months ago, i wish he wrote that in 2008....

Then I suppose feeling entitled works out. Is there reason NOT to reward such behavior if resources permit? Think about it in terms of game theory. Why on earth would you EVER want to help a friend unless they were going to, in some form or another, reciprocate later on down the road?

I once found a friend in a near suicidal state, splitting up with gf ect he was distraught, i took him out for a few beers ect chatted with him made him feel better. however afterwards i was troubled, i couldn't work out whether i had done it through altruism, or by wanting to make myself feel good, by doing a good deed, i would like to say the former, but i genuinely believe i did it for the latter.