30 Dec 2014

Timid Guys Finish Last

Great Depression 16 Comments

Bryan Caplan linked to a tour de force from Scott Alexander (not his real name) on a topic that should ring true to many lonely libertarian male readers. Here’s how Alexander opens his post:

I recently had a patient, a black guy from the worst part of Detroit, let’s call him Dan, who was telling me of his woes. He came from a really crappy family with a lot of problems, but he was trying really hard to make good. He was working two full-time minimum wage jobs, living off cheap noodles so he could save some money in the bank, trying to scrape a little bit of cash together. Unfortunately, he’d had a breakdown (see: him being in a psychiatric hospital), he was probably going to lose his jobs, and everything was coming tumbling down around him.

And he was getting a little philosophical about it, and he asked – I’m paraphrasing here – why haven’t things worked out for me? I’m hard-working, I’ve never missed a day of work until now, I’ve always given a hundred and ten percent. And meanwhile, I see all these rich white guys (“no offense, doctor,” he added, clearly overestimating the salary of a medical resident) who kind of coast through school, coast into college, end up with 9 – 4 desk jobs working for a friend of their father’s with excellent salaries and benefits, and if they need to miss a couple of days of work, whether it’s for a hospitalization or just to go on a cruise, nobody questions it one way or the other. I’m a harder worker than they are, he said – and I believed him – so how is that fair?

And of course, like most of the people I deal with at my job, there’s no good answer except maybe restructuring society from the ground up, so I gave him some platitudes about how it’s not his fault, told him about all the social services available to him, and gave him a pill to treat a biochemical condition almost completely orthogonal to his real problem.

And I’m still not sure what a good response to his question would have been. But later that night I was browsing the Internet and I was reminded of what the worse response humanly possible. It would go something like:

You keep whining about how “unfair” it is that you can’t get a good job. “But I’m such a hard worker.” No, actual hard workers don’t feel like they’re entitled to other people’s money just because they ask nicely.

“Why do rich white kids who got legacy admissions to Yale receive cushy sinecures, but I have to work two grueling minimum wage jobs just to keep a roof over my head?” By even asking that question, you prove that you think of bosses as giant bags of money, rather than as individual human beings who are allowed to make their own choices. No one “owes” you money just because you say you “work hard”, and by complaining about this you’re proving you’re not really a hard worker at all. I’ve seen a lot of Hard Workers (TM) like you, and scratch their entitled surface and you find someone who thinks just because they punched a time card once everyone needs to bow down and worship them.

If you complain about “rich white kids who get legacy admissions to Yale,” you’re raising a huge red flag that you’re the kind of person who steals from their employer, and companies are exactly right to give you a wide berth.

Such a response would be so antisocial and unjust that it could only possibly come from the social justice movement.

If you’ve delved at all into the issue of Self-Proclaimed Nice Guys versus Online Feminists, you know exactly what Alexander is doing with the above, fictional, story. In his mind, he’s just demonstrated how awful women are who mock and demonize men when they complain that they can’t get a date whereas every a-hole in the bar has no problem taking a woman home.

If you’re into this type of thing, by all means read Alexander’s post. As usual, he has a lot of interesting thoughts and he links to all kinds of examples for his claims. I have only three points I wish to make:

==> Even though Alexander thought he was shaming the merciless feminists with that analogy, he actually convinced me that they are right (though still obnoxious and arguably horrible human beings). For if indeed there were an able-bodied man with average intelligence, complaining to me that after years of effort he was unable to get a job better than minimum wage, I would tell him he had to be doing something wrong. If he kept going through life blaming society at large, or racism, for his condition, then he would never get to the underlying problem.

==> For a dozen years I too had been bamboozled by the theories that “women love a-holes” and “nice guys don’t get laid.” (There was even a book that seemed to lay it all out for me, which someone showed me in college.) But these aren’t correct. It’s not true that women love a-holes. Rather, a much more precise statement is that insecure women are attracted to a-holes. This is very noticeable, however, because often the most insecure women are drop dead gorgeous, as they starve themselves and spend 3 hours getting ready to go out. If you’re a dateless guy in a whiny mood, you simply overlook the dozens of examples of perfectly nice guys dating perfectly cool and pretty girls staring you in the face. Furthermore, it’s not that nice guys finish last, but rather timid guys who do. There is an overlap between guys who are confident and guys who are a-holes, and between guys who are nice and guys who are timid. If you feel horrible about life because you’ve fallen for one of these (false) theories, think about my nuances and re-evaluate your own observations.

==> In his post, Alexander says how he went through life with very little dating success, and seems to think he just got lucky by meeting the right girl (his girlfriend as of the time he wrote the post back in August). She chimed in in the comments, saying how great he was, and that she bets he was great before she met him. I don’t know Alexander, of course, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that he had no idea how to recognize when a woman was interested in him.

Think of it this way: If you are a shy, lonely guy, and you get a crush on a girl, what do you do? Do you walk up to her and say, “Hi, I am very attracted to you, I was thinking we could go to a movie and maybe make out?” Of course not. Indeed, you take great pains to hide the fact that you like her. But, if she’s really attractive and has all kinds of guys developing crushes on her–and that’s just the kind of unattainable girl you like to pine after, isn’t it, you self-destructive idiot?–you expect her to “read the signs” and know that you say moronic things around her because she makes you nervous.

OK great, but now imagine that there are women in your past who had crushes on you. You think, “They don’t exist, women at best think I’m their big brother who is always there for them when their boyfriend cheats on them,” but remember, when someone really likes someone else, the first move is to hide it. So just because you don’t recall any women walking up to you and saying, “Hi, I’m really attracted to you, I was thinking we could go to a movie and make out?” that doesn’t mean no one has ever been interested, does it?

The reason I had such epiphanies is that I first saw it in other people. For example, a guy I hung out with in grad school one time was pseudo-flirting with a girl working at the reference desk at the NYU library. The first few minutes, I thought she was miserable and wanted us to leave, and as time passed my shock at my buddy’s rudeness escalated. But then suddenly she relaxed and was laughing at his jokes etc., and I realized she had really liked him and was super nervous in the beginning. In my own adventures through near celibacy, I would never have gotten to that stage; at the first sign of discomfort I would have run for the hills, thinking I needed to work on my comedic intro.

So in conclusion, I’m saying that one of the biggest differences between “nice guys” and those who are “good with girls” is that the latter can tell when a girl is interested, whereas the former literally don’t even know what it feels like to be making progress.

Last thing: I have absolutely no idea how to categorize this blog post. I will pick “Great Depression” in homage to my grad school days.

16 Responses to “Timid Guys Finish Last”

  1. Raja says:

    Wow! Only if I had known earlier how awesome casual-realist deductive reasoning could be. Murphy is beginning to sound like that John Nash guy from the movie.

  2. E. Harding says:

    Indeed, Bob, I had the same reaction as you to Scott’s opening example. I know unemployment in Wayne County is 7.9%, and that there certainly aren’t enough jobs for everyone here, but “antisocial and unjust” or “worse response humanly possible” would be nowhere near my first description of that response Scott wrote up. I thought it tough, but fair.
    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=MIWAYN3URN

    • E. Harding says:

      I read Scott’s post about a month before you did, Bob.

    • Andrew_FL says:

      That number probably way understates the degree to which people can’t find work. Or, at any rate, can’t find work that pays better for their time than the government does.

      Not that it’s relevant I just say this whenever people take the unemployment rate at face value.

      • E. Harding says:

        On the contrary, Andrew, that unemployment rate may well overstate the difficulty of finding work. There is a large, mostly Black, unemployable class in Wayne County which would be unemployable in any place it went. Wayne County is about 40% Black, much higher than the nationwide average. Outside recessions, Blacks typically have an unemployment rate twice or more that of Whites. I think more detailed unemployment and other labor market data will confirm that Wayne County in the Year 2000 was way beyond the full-employment level of employment. Finding work was certainly not generally impossible for smart people with no college degree or criminal record in Wayne County in the aftermath of the 2001 recession, when unemployment was just a bit below that today. However, you are probably right in that the similarity in the unemployment rate between Wayne County 2006 and Wayne County today masks greater labor market slack today.

  3. Toby says:

    “So in conclusion, I’m saying that one of the biggest differences between “nice guys” and those who are “good with girls” is that the latter can tell when a girl is interested, whereas the former literally don’t even know what it feels like to be making progress.”

    I see one or several lessons here about profit & loss and entrepreneurship, but that might just be me.

    Your realization at the NYU library sounds very familiar to me. I had similar realizations when I started doing economics and I had to solve for models such as the cournot-duopoly. Funnily enough, it was economics in the end that gave me a language through which to understand other individuals better (costs & constraints) and emphatize more with them as well. I don’t know if it was the same for you?

  4. Major.Freedom says:

    “Such a response would be so antisocial and unjust that it could only possibly come from the social justice movement.”

    See that is just an argument designed to prey on the reader’s emotions, sufficiently crass so as lead the reader into thinking one of two things:

    Reject it as the writer intended and thus be compelled to accept the opposite implications, which is the theory that individuals are not responsible or their actions, but are subject to “structural” oppression and that is supposed to explain it. Well hello Marx good to see you again.

    Accept it as the writer did not intend and thus be compelled to reject the opposite implications, which is the notion that we cannot be classy and polite in explaining to the man that he is responsible for his own actions, that we have to insinuate the guy’s prone to theft, has a sense of entitlement, and all other sorts of character flaws beyond being unproductive and earning little money.

    Excuse me, but that argument is unjust, if justice calls for avoidence of false dichotomies and hyperbole strategically placed so as to mislead the reader into accepting the theory of “structural” oppression. Why not just be honest about it? Justice might also rewuire not being accusatory and crass to people when explaining or talking about a theory that clearly discomforts this “Alexander”.

    I can pick and choose in that crass response some parts, and reject all the rest as spoiling the well. I can think and accept that the guy is responsible for his own actions, that it would be an insult to take away from others who started out like he did but ended up making something of themselves if I said otherwise, and that it is “structural” oppression or favoritism, a social wheel of fortune if you will, is all that differentiates him and the other initially poor and psychologically distraught guy.

    Why does this “Alexander” feel compelled to present the methodological individualist theory from the mouth of an a$$hole, whereas the structural oppression theory is presented from the mouth of the nice, reasonable person who wags his finger at the individualists and suggests they are meanies?

    How does “Alexander” explain the other guy who started out poor and distraught, but became well off?

  5. khodge says:

    Geez, Murphy…stick with religion. I’ve no desire to relive my all too many single/celibate years when I couldn’t even say yes to the crush who asked me out.

  6. David W says:

    I didn’t read Scott as saying that the feminist position was wrong. His argument is more that their debating tactics won’t produce the result they’re looking for. Just as yelling ‘get a job’ at someone isn’t going to convince them of libertarianism.

  7. Lars P says:

    I think Alexander is playing a larger game than you give him credit for.

    By showing how two situations that SJWs judge completely opposite are really the same, he pushes them to abandon one of those judgements. The obvious one is to have the same sympathy for the lonely nerd that they have for the poor black man. But there is also the path you choose, with vastly more ease than they would, to say they are both doing it wrong. Either way their bias has been challenged.

  8. Edward says:

    “Rather, a much more precise statement is that insecure women are attracted to a-holes. This is very noticeable, however, because often the most insecure women are drop dead gorgeous, as they starve themselves and spend 3 hours getting ready to go out. If you’re a dateless guy in a whiny mood, you simply overlook the dozens of examples of perfectly nice guys dating perfectly cool and pretty girls staring you in the face. Furthermore, it’s not that nice guys finish last, but rather timid guys who do. There is an overlap between guys who are confident and guys who are a-holes, and between guys who are nice and guys who are timid.”

    Bingo! You are so right! (For once, when you are NOT talking about Austrian theory)

  9. Some guy says:

    Good post Bob.

    As a guy in my mid-twenties with virtually no success with girls (read into that what you will) I have only recently started to look back over the last few years and realise girls have been interested in me and dropped hints, without me realising at the time. It might be different in the States where people are more outgoing, but here in the UK it’s very rare for a girl to ask out a guy. I think being a ‘nice guy’ is harder here, and it must be very difficult for shy men in more traditional cultures (think of the stereotypical lonely men in Japan).

    I think you might be underplaying the significance of male confidence re romantic success in your second point, however. In my view, that is the most important factor for men in finding partners, even more than looks (all right, maybe money, but I haven’t noticed anything like that personally yet).

  10. Some guy says:

    Sorry, to be a bit clearer, the part of your second point I disagree with is where you say that insecure women are more attracted to a-holes. Speaking purely from personal observation, whether a woman is insecure or not makes no difference to whether they like a-holes.

  11. Tel says:

    A bunch of points. For starters, Bob, you probably don’t want to be stomping around on Captain Capitalism turf… not that he is afraid of competition, but it’s no place for a nice guy (seriously).

    Next point is that a lot of what gets written on blogs is click-bait intended to sound a lot more controversial than it really is. Blogs get popular by being noticed, and they get noticed by doing outrageous things. Bob relentlessly shows up Krugman as a hypocrite, and that gains a bit of attention, which is fine because very few people feel sorry for Krugman. Relationship blogs and feminist propaganda are especially likely to go the path of being outrageous for the sake of it.

    Scott Alexander (not his real name) has skilfully selected a bunch of the more outrageous postings in order to show up the hypocrisy of the so called “social justice” crowd, and that’s also fine, if you accept that this is all intended as entertainment and not philosophy. The basic rule is that people who are deeply contented with their relationships DO NOT write about it, and if they did write about it they would say, “Had sex again, we get on great, I think she’s awesome, gonna settle down and have a baby next year…” and no one is every going to fill up blog post after blog post with something dead boring.

    So both the lonely guy banging on about how being nice doesn’t get you anywhere and the angry righteous feminist running around calling everyone a douche this and douche that, both of them are the ones with the serious relationship problems, or a certain percentage just invent bogus relationship issues so they have something to write about (or both, they have issues, and they also invent ways to make those issue sound big and important).

    This brings me to the next point, don’t underestimate how much total bullshit is out there. It’s all about making a sale. When you go for a job, or you go out for a date, or you write a blog, you are trying to sell yourself. It’s no different to working for a company and being on the road selling a product, or getting on the phone and making deals. Every successful salesperson I’ve ever met has been a little bit of a bullshit artist. It’s a fine line, because people get caught out but the fact is that there’s an expectation with the customer that a product always gets oversold. No one believes you if you say, “I’m a nice guy.” They immediately presume it’s a ruse.

    There’s one skill which is being good at what you do (be that in a job, or in a relationship, or whatever) and there’s another skill in being able to sell that convincingly.

    Finally, the notion of “fairness” is also one of those bullshit things that people use to get other people to do stuff for them. You get a gob and do nothing but keep your head down and work hard; of course the boss is going to tell you this is the key to advancement, he’s hardly going to tell you, “Hey son, you should push harder for more pay”.

    Every company tells you at the interview that they have a fully worked out system of advancement with regular reviews and meaningful interviews. Every one of them says that, even the ones where you can go five years and no mention of a review. Of course people exploit each other’s weaknesses where possible and take advantage, what else would you expect? Part of life is being able to recognize that and defend yourself. If all you do is behave like a sucker, and as a consequence everyone treats you like a sucker, then you probably are a sucker, and people are going to presume you are happy that way.

  12. gienon says:

    Having read the title and the “Great Depression” tag, I thought the post would be about Andrew Mellon and how history by and large forgot about him…

    At least the last line explained it all for me.

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