
## Goal

My goal with this article is to introduce a PUA concept — compliance — and then to offer some of my thoughts about PUA in general. More broadly, I wish to use this article among possibly-future others to become a more credible voice on the topic of PUA/game.

## Compliance

*Disclaimer: I am presenting the following information with a neutral scholarly interest.*

A fundamental feature of game is compliance. Compliance is about a man getting control over/getting submission from/dominating a woman, with the woman letting him do so and doing what he wants. Many aspects of game can be traced back down to compliance. 

The idea is that the man must:

1.	convince the woman to submit to his authority; then
2.	boldly exercise that authority and bend the woman to his will. 

### Example

For example, let’s say that the man is in the club. He looks tall, handsome, confident and well-dressed. He finds a woman with his gaze and starts approaching her. The woman watches the man as he approaches and obviously recognises that he’s a prize. She sips her drink in *that* way. The man notices this in turn, and when he reaches the woman, he immediately leads her, willingly, by the small of her back out of the crowd so that they can talk.

#### Breakdown 

To start with, the man demonstrates a high-value appearance and attitude, signalling: *this is a man who gets what he wants*. This makes the woman receptive, ready to bite — as per step 1, the woman is convinced that she should submit to the guy’s authority some. She signals this in the way she sips her drink. The man senses her receptiveness — and as per step 2, he exercises his authority. He assumes compliance and physically leads the girl away. He could have *asked* the woman if she would follow him, or *demanded* that she should. But instead he was bold. He boldly exercised his authority. He didn’t say anything and knew that the understanding was already in place. The man was in some sense maximally exercising his authority, making the biggest acceptable move for compliance. (If he didn’t do so, the woman might be put off. It would seem like the man is failing to seize an opportunity.)

### Sex

Game is about compliance, and compliance is about sex, in the sense that the final act of compliance is supposed to be sex (or some imitation). That is the ‘full submission’, the endpoint. It's the key thing that makes compliance so important. It should get to a point where the girl wants to fuck because the man wants to fuck, and the girl wants to do what the man wants. 

But sex is rarely first compliance act. It’s rarely the first time where the man is taking the lead. Typically, a sequence of successful acts of compliance are used as prelude to gradually escalate to sex. Compliance requires some element of focus basically throughout all stages of the game.

Building up lots of initial compliance in this way is effective and/or necessary due to a few things:

1. **Reputation**. Even if the woman is DTF from the first, she likely considers it on her reputation to maintain a standard of you winning her over in several intermediate steps. 

2. **Arousal**. Small acts of compliance are sexually attractive to the woman, because they mirror and anticipate compliance in the sexual act — they play the role of gradually getting the woman more so in the mood. 

3. **Conditioning**. More compliance establishes a habit in the woman of doing what the man says, so that she becomes psychologically more likely to accept whatever’s asked of her next; and from the man’s POV that’s a win.

4. **Investment**. This is also effective from the man’s POV because, by complying, the woman invests her trust in the man and becomes more committed to their relationship/interaction. She has given away a part of herself. That means that she would have a less graceful exit from the interaction, with more of a burden of explanation — avoiding that burden makes it more likely that she’ll continue to play along.

## General thoughts about PUA

PUA is generally worth learning, even if you’re not interested in picking up girls. It breaks down the dream-barrier[^1], behind which lurks an array of unconscious social rules, reasons for emotions, habits, and thinking patterns. It reveals to the critical eye of consciousness things which had been left to unconsciousness by often long-forgotten means. Learning PUA, you become far better able to understand yourself and the world around you. 

[^1]: I stole these words, used (somewhat differently) in Arthur Koestler’s 1944 essay [here](https://wethescreamers.com/#:~:text=protected%20by%20the-,dream%2Dbarrier,-which%20stifles%20all)

I respect PUAers. There are some bad apples and there is a lot of crappy or dark advice out there. For example, some of what I just said about why compliance is effective is sketchy and manipulative, and can definitely be abused. But in general, the idea of men coming to more deliberately consider their purposes, to be more calculated, to know what they are trying to accomplish with women, is a good thing — a *realistic, incremental* step towards them bettering themselves. It’s good to have men who are not just puppets of their unconscious ideas, watching on passively, deeply afraid to confront themselves and to take up the reins and to control their mind. 


## Conclusion

I have gained some credibility. Now I have a one-article-level track record of speaking coherently about PUA. There are definitely omissions which would feature in a higher effort version of the article. I acknowledge those omissions, such as:

- examples of emergent concepts in game that can be reduced to compliance
- more compliance examples and breakdowns
- an example of an escalating sequence of compliance
- data, in-field experiments which consolidate a point

## Feedback

Contribution towards those higher-effort features would be appreciated. I can introduce them in an edit (with attribution) below this section. 

Otherwise, I’m not a complete PUA expert, so they’re might be some inaccuracies in the compliance summary, and I’d be interested to hear of any of those.



Compliance & PUA

## Method

i deposit the thing into unconscious

i deposit an associated feeling to cycle about conscious

while the feeling’s around, i know there’s a thing

some time passes, i do some tasks. huh. there’s still a feeling

hmm…what was the thing?

i do inscrutable search of unconscious

got it! that’s the thing! that thing destroys feeling like an enzyme

## Commentary

it’s something, right? it’s better than nothing. i can definitely remember a bunch of stuff with it. notice how i can’t really be very specific about the method though. i can't tell how reliable it is, and i know from experience that it's hardly 100%! even on method bits i do identify, i’m being a bit speculative that that’s actually what’s going on. generally, better to just write the thing down


A Way of Remembering

 you can be ‘successful’ and get a lot of money and status while still being a really bad person. 

people want to get out of a 9-5. they want to be their own boss. they want big income streams. when they accomplish this, it’s a success. they’re revered. nevermind the cost.

let’s say Bob escapes his office job and gets that sweet bag. 

ok, cool. what did he do instead? uh … don’t worry too much about that. did he make an honest way of an alternative? erm … try looking over there. what kind of person is he now? ffs fine … he sacrificed morality and started and funded scams, he tricked people into doing stuff against their interests, he made people see value where there was none, and took advantage of people’s flaws. but he was wilful about it ok? and he got all this money. mmm, money. 

well all that money is stained. it’s a kind of ‘blood money’. you can’t let means be corrupted by an end. *you have to be a good person too*. 


Success

 i cannot just be a same old pattern. so much repetition in reality, you see it? people playing out the same old patterns — patterns which end in death. the song on repeat, the same fucking thing  — what sick mockery! what a sick joke! i cannot just be a same old pattern. i must be something new

Something New

## Goal

My goal with this article is to reframe meditation in my own terms. I will outline a version of meditation which solves a problem and which I can agree is worthwhile. 

I will also use this article to set some kind of miniature, incomplete example. I will model for the wider community a more acceptable standard of introduction to meditation practice which is rational and explanatory, not woo-woo, vague, confusing or mysterious. 

## Context

### History meditating

I used to meditate ~everyday. I was interested in meditations about:
- focusing on some aspect of sensation (e.g. breathing);
- being an 'open container' for experiences to wash over me; and
- not 'identifying' with experiences local to the head (i.e. seeing through the 'self').

This lasted for a couple of years, before about three years ago, when I *stopped*[^1]. 

I don't have a perfect model for why I stopped. I'm putting pieces together a bit, and I might be misremembering, but I think it goes something like this:

[^1]: Stopped consistently meditating at least. I sporadically returned to meditation, but never for long or with any seriousness.

### Why I stopped meditating

I needed to break free. Meditation was a big source of coercion in my life. Meditation was a thing which I rarely really wanted to do, but which I beat myself into doing anyway because it was 'good for me'. It was 'good for me', because after meditating, *Executive Adam* could come in and take control and impose his values. 

At the time, parts of myself which were pushing for expression -- who wanted to be impulsive, loose, fun, pleasure-seeking, casual, sleepy, easy-going, and so on -- would just be ignored and told to shut up. Those parts wouldn't have their concerns addressed, be treated seriously, and be party to terms of mutual benefit. It was a time where Executive Adam was in charge, and he would use meditation to establish his power and threat over the others. I needed to break out of this little prison I'd created for myself.

That meant ultimately -- why I stopped meditating -- there was a kind of internal rebellion. I chose to abandon tyranny and to leave the dictator meditator behind. 

### Why I'm back

Assuming that the picture I've just painted is somewhat accurate, it definitely made some sense for me to run away, to get as far from meditation as possible. The internal arrangement was irrational, and felt bad, like a pit in my stomach. 

But it wasn't until recently that I've thought about gracefully retreading old ground and trying to recover the good in what was lost.  As in: *Is there a reason still to meditate? How should I think about meditation? And in what ways might I still wholeheartedly benefit?* It's only recently that I've felt I've developed the thinking tools, and the awareness, to approach meditation practice without any kind of conflict or silliness. 

I'm back, because I'm smarter, and because of the legitimate thought behind this article which suggests that there is something still to gain. The idea will be that I am starting over in completely my own words, and that I'm making sure that my arguments stay convincing.

## Freshly introducing meditation

### The problem

Assume that you have some idea about *how you want to live*; and assume that there's no conflict or controversy about it. No matter your mood, no matter how tired you are, etc., whenever you think about that idea, you're like *yeah, that's a pretty good way to live*. Start with something really simple and easy. For the sake of example, imagine that you have the idea *I should be kind to the doorman to my building*. 

Any such idea should entail that you follow some kind of principle or goal. It's not just like a list of object-level things to do which you already know about in advance; it's not clear what all the details are. You'll have to figure it out some and to reserve some attention for the idea to make sure that you're doing it right when it's needed. If you see the doorman at the door, in the lobby area, or in the local supermarket, you'll need to invent some way of interacting with him, something to say or do which you can't necessarily anticipate. 

For a second ingredient, assume that there is some way in which you can get distracted from your idea. For example, you're passing the doorman on the way to work, but you're distracted from saying "Good morning" because someone is calling you, or because you're thinking about an argument you just had with your spouse, or because you're playing a new level on an app on your phone, or some such. Assume that there's something which can take up your attention and means that you'll forget the greeting; which means that you'll fail to live consistently with your principle or goal.

Now, you don't really *want* to get distracted. You would prefer to be without the distraction and to be freely living your best life. By hypothesis, when you see the doorman, you *want* to remember to be kind, because you're already confident that you want to be that sort of person. 

But ... you do get distracted anyway. It's not entirely voluntary, and it's pretty realistic that it happens pretty often -- typically by force of habit. We're assuming that this is something that you have to factor in and deal with. We're assuming that you are going to *get* distracted, and that introduces a problem. But there is one obvious thing which still remains in your control -- and that is whether or not you *stay* distracted.

### About a solution

So what can a person fall back on, that they might exit their distraction? Because just keeping up some external source of reminder is problematic. 

Suppose that you have some reminder of what your goal is which without loss of generality regularly puts out a notification on your phone. And suppose that you had that going off frequently enough to interrupt a distraction at every point prior to an event in which the goal is relevant. 

Then that reminder would have to be going off all the time! It would be incredibly suffocating and annoying! And before long you would become desensitised to it. Besides, who wants to be skidding between distraction and focus by means of some dumb reminder? That's not what you would naively imagine as the right kind of solution to our problem. In the right kind of solution, you should be able to trust *yourself* to return to focus. 

So, is there a way, in which you can better trust *yourself* to exit your distractions, to remember such things as a "Good morning" to the doorman, and not to rely on external influence? Can you fall back on your *own mind*, your *own intentions*, and focus on what you say you value?

Well ... maybe. But if you really want to be able to focus -- if you really want to be able to always say "Good morning" to the doorman by yourself -- you require the relevant skill. And you don't just *necessarily*, *automatically* already have that. That doesn't just come for free. You need to have developed that skill, to have practiced it over and over, to be confident that you can use it. Enter:

### Focus Meditation

Focus meditation is about practicing your focus. It's about making you better at breaking through your distractions, and devoting your mental resources to the right things. And for the gist, it's best to just jump right into a basic how-to[^2]:

[^2]: This is an innovation on/variation of Sam Harris' [instructions](https://www.samharris.org/blog/how-to-meditate#:~:text=Meditation%20Instructions%3A).

- First, you pick a really simple thing to focus on.
   - Don't pick anything offensive, complicated, provocative, harsh or painful.  
    - Don't pick anything super inherently interesting -- you should pick out the sort of thing that you expect to get distracted from a bit.
    - Pick something where there is an obvious distinction between you focusing on it and you not. 

  Typically people choose the breath. Try different objects of focus though! You don't want to become too dependent on just using the breath. 
- Second, notice when you get distracted from the object of focus. Make a literal note of it. I would advise at least tallying it on some notepaper. But occasionally also write down specifically what you were distracted by -- what were you thinking or feeling or sensing. To be concrete, you could have a repeating interval of 5 minutes, and at the end of that interval, that's when you stop and actually write something down. Say, you write down the *last thing* you were distracted by. 
- Third, try and focus on the object again. If you get distracted, go back to the second step.  
- Fourth, when you've been doing that for long enough, say 10-20 minutes, reflect on:
    - how often you were distracted, and why;
    - what you were distracted by, and why. 
 
That's the basic formula, but don't expect to reap a bunch of rewards of expert focus in one go. The practice works by repetition. You want to do it regularly, like once a day. 

The practice is about automating the internal 'recognition' software which is checking, generally, whether or not you are focused on a goal (for example, following the breath) -- so that eventually the recognition should become easy and unconscious[^3]. It's also about gradually strengthening your 'focusing muscle'[^4], which performs the mental action which takes you from a state of distraction to non-distraction. 

[^3]: See Critical Fallibilism for more on the role of practice in learning. Good accumulation point with links to other articles [here](https://criticalfallibilism.com/practice-and-mastery/).

[^4]: I first heard this kind of phrasing from Dan Harris. 

I include the information-gathering step of step four so that you can customise that recognition software, and make it more powerful. You can group together typical types of distractions *for you*, typical causes for distractions, preconditions for distractions, and so on. For example, *I am typically distracted by the urge to reply to a text*. Then you can start noticing things as repeat or as in categories. You can name them and you can simplify your mental models some. Continuing the example, you can call that urge *neediness*, where you need to send the reply *right now* when you could actually more appropriately do that later. 

### What you get and what you don't

Focus meditation helps you to develop your focusing faculty. The idea is that, over time, you should become increasingly able to focus on ... whatever you want to focus on. And since a pre-decided, non-controversially-good way-of-living -- like being kind to the doorman -- should be one of those things, you should become increasingly able to solve our earlier problem. 

You should be able to exercise this focus without finding yourself in a situation like of Executive Adam. We're assuming that you've already been cautious about what you really think is in your interest to focus on. You've picked out easy examples of goals for your life; you're confident in them; and no parts of yourself are gonna throw up their hands in anguish and object when it actually comes down to putting away your phone and remarking "Good morning". 

Which is ... great. But is that all? Is there anything *else* that focus meditation can help with? 

Meditation is popularly presented in a *bunch* of different forms, and purported to serve a bunch of different purposes, so I also consider it appropriate to state some of the things which focus meditation does *not* help you with, or at least is not designed to help with:

1. anxiety 
2. stress
3. sleep
4. 'love'/kindness/compassion
5. 'seeing reality as it is'/breaking illusions
6. understanding the nature of consciousness

## Conclusion

I have approached meditation in a partially novel and fairly organised way; and so I think that the article serves its purpose for now. 

I could certainly add more dimensions and variations to the practice in the future. But I think that it's good to start off with something minimal, and to make sure that I get that right. Also, going beyond what I have described in a responsible manner, escalating to less well-understood forms of practice, would have to involve much more discussion of hazards, risks, bad experiences, ambiguities, possible misinterpretations, prerequisites, and other such rational stuff, to help avoid those practices going awry; and I think I'm long from being qualified to do that right now.

## Feedback

The actual scheme for focus meditation can be considered in beta. I think that there is a lot more room for optimising these things than is typically made out, and for approaching them with an engineering mindset. So it would be great to hear from readers of any appropriate modifications or additions.


Meditation

What is the ideal male physique? Let’s assume the standard of what attracts the most women. 

Well it has to be big and muscly. You have to be strong, imposing, amd dominant; you certainly can’t be weak. 

But here’s another factor ... Your physique should also be *resistant to small variations*, in the sense that it should look about the same/be adapted to the same purposes, even if you de-tone it a bit, put on some fat, gain or lose some muscle. You should still have the same kind of body ripe for chopping wood or whatever. Meaning that there shouldn’t be some kind of delicate balance of harmony in your physique. It shouldn’t be set on a knife’s edge of perfect or refined. 

In general, being unaffected by stuff, being unreactive and immovable, is a masculine idea. That applies to your body. People will subconsciously extrapolate from how that feature applies to your body to how it applies to other things. The thing shouldn't get all screwy just because you mess with it a little bit. Unreactiveness means, by association, someone who is robust in difficult circumstances, who doesn’t panic, who acts rationally and knows what to do, someone who can protect you and who you can rely on.

The ideal physique is probably like Henry Cavill’s [in Man of Steel](https://youtu.be/mvIctgWb22U). Or *an* ideal physique is like that. There is like an acceptable area, a range of ideal physiques which has fuzzy edges, and Henry’s is just one example. You can see that there are some minor ‘flaws’ with his physique, in a conventional bodybuilding sense. He’s not like a sculpture like peak Arnold. And yet those bugs are actually features. Having some minor uncaring chub/roughness/edge/misproportions in your physique actually makes you look more robust. You're not trying to preserve some tentative aesthetic optimum. 


Ideal Physique

## Goal

My goal with this policy is to place some light, functional constraints on my blog writing. I'm going to pre-arrange some things so that I can't just make stuff up as I go along and fit it to my biases. (Edit: I consider this a small and limited version of a [rationality policy](https://criticalfallibilism.com/rationality-policies).)

## Constraints

I can write one of two types of blogs: 
- a casual blog; or
- a serious one

A **casual blog**:
- Must bear a 'casual' tag (appear in the 'Casual' category);
- Must not purport to be any kind of big, important, impactful, refined, or deep contribution to human knowledge;
- Is otherwise free-form and unconstrained.

A **serious blog**:

- Must bear a 'serious' tag (appear in the 'Serious' category);
- Must include a statement of the goal of the blog at the beginning;
- Must include a conclusion, which makes reference to the goal of the blog;
- Must not include any jokes or irony or satire; 
- Must include at least one suggestion of what would constitute 
valuable feedback for the blog.

I can update the policy by making the changes explicit below this line. 

## Conclusion

Labelling blogs as one thing or another stops me from hiding in ambiguities about what a blog really is and what purpose it serves. The structure imposed on a serious blog stops me from being lazy and assuming that I have stated things clearly enough or followed sufficiently good practices. So the policy does help me to reduce bias some. 

## Feedback

I'm not starting with that many constraints. I'm a bit cautious about going gung-ho and adding a bunch, since I don't want to get trapped and lose expressive power. But is there anything else which is reasonable that you can think of to add?

Blog Writing Policy

Here are a few ideas for funny short-form videos like on TikTok or YouTube shorts. 

- **I have a condition...**
   - “Police! You’re surrounded. Put your hands up!”
   - Man at the end of a hallway is coughing. 
   - “Sorry"&#8212;more coughing and covering his mouth&#8212;“I&#8212;I have a condition.”
   - Police hesitate and give each other confused glances. "Huh?"
   - Camera rapidly pans back to hallway man. 
   - He pulls out guns akimbo style.
   - “*If* you run now, *then* I’ll let you leave with your lives.” 

- **Video games in movies be like…**
   - Close up shot of someone madly mashing a controller.
   - Quick zoom out. The player guy is sitting in a pile of controllers.
   - “Hey, I need some more controllers over here.”
   - Shot of people loading controllers into a washing machine. The foreman shouts back “We’re trying damn it", then to the workers “Get moving boys!”
   - Back to the player guy. He bears a concerned expression while scanning his surroundings. “No, this is all wrong. We’re missing…we’re missing…” 
   - Player guy does a double take of a ‘sexy’ controller on the corner of his couch that has a bit of nacho cheese on it.
   - Shot of romancing the controller on a date.
   - Shot of unpacking in a new apartment with the controller.
   - Shot of arguing with the controller and the controller slamming the door on the player guy. Player guy clenches his fist.
   - Shot of player guy being a sergeant raising an army of controllers.
   - Shot of a controller dying emotionally on the battle field in player guy's arms.
  
- **TikTok be like...**
   - Shot of girl sighing at laptop.
   - Shot of Google search “how to deal with a break up”.
   - Shot of an old-skool webpage for girl-bosses giving advice about how to channel your inner queen.
   - "Hmm..."
   - Cut to daydream of girl confidently walking, the music playing *I’ve got to move on and be who I am*.
   - Cut to girl back in her living room, who looks at the camera like 'Nahhh'.
   - Shot of Google search “how to deal with a break up"..."in calories”.
   - Cut to twerking and crying while eating ice cream. 

- **When there’s a bit of shell in ur egg...**
   - Shot of guy bringing some scrambled egg to his mouth with a spoon.
   - Shot of him peaceably chewing.
   -  Sudden exaggerated crunching noise. Face of panic.
   - Rush of shots of grimacing, dramatic gulping of water, putting head under the tap, fainting with hand to forehead.
   - Voiceover as this is going on: “All life is suffering. Death is preferable to life. I should never have been born.”

- **Doctor Who be like…**
  - Shot of Amy walking into a room and Matt, noticing, throwing up his hands to halt her. 
  - “Amy...I’m going to need you to stand still." He moves towards her, keeping up his hands. "I'm going to need you to stand very, very still&#8212;stiller than you’ve ever stood before. Just *don’t move* Amy. Don’t...do...*anything*.”

Edit: Added a 'casual' tag as per the new [policy](/blog/blog-writing-policy).


adam does blog