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Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?"

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Re: Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?"

#101

Post by demallien »

foldr wrote: post #68
sp332 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "obvious evidence to the contrary" was the math gender gap, which was very real at the time. If you actually read the story, it's quite clear that Feynman is telling the story at his own expense (showing how wrong he had been about girls + math). There's no question he was sexist, but see _debug_ and blackguardx's tandem quote to see that he regarded them as equals mentally: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11…

I did read the whole article, but did not get the impression that it was meant to be a joke at his expense. That's just not supported by the text. The most he's willing to say is that "if it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it [the female mind]." Hardly a U-turn. Also, the quote you referenced does absolutely nothing to show that RF regarded women as his mental equals. It just shows t…

Although, in Feynman's defence, practically no-one that he met in his life was his intellectual equal, man or woman... I think it's just that he was more willing to actually say that for women, whereas he obviously felt a social need to keep that thought to himself when it concerned men.

Re: Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?"

#102

Post by potatolicious »

jonny_noog wrote: post #62
froo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a Welsh guy named Ed (very short guy) who never leaves a pub without a girl on his arm. I always wondered how he did it so I asked him and he told me his pickup line. He said: "I go up to a girl and I start off with saying hi, introducing myself as Ed, I then say to them this line" "Look, girls are into honesty right? Well the truth is I have a big d!&k and want to put it in you" He told me that the secret to…

What was the quality of the women who responded favorably to this line? :P I think it's also worthy to note that the origin makes a huge difference. If you e.g. have an underwear model trying that line on a woman, it will no doubt succeed more often than if a stereotypical truck driver delivered it in exactly the same way.

I wouldn't be so sure about that - the greatest womanizer I've ever known is a lanky, almost scrawny nerd with curly hair. What he lacks in looks he more than makes up in his personality - he's the life of the party, knows everything about everyone, a master socializer... etc.

He's a shoot first ask questions later sort of guy - will never betray a moment of doubt, I think that's what makes him successful at both life and women.

Re: Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?"

#103

Post by blasdel »

powauth wrote: post #67
nostrademons wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was also before mass production of penicillin. Venereal diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea were a much bigger deal back then.

Agreed. For the record, it is very hard to contract HIV from vaginal sex. (< 1/10000 per-instance chance)

That's exaggerating quite a bit; but more importantly leaving off the other half of the equation — it's a lot easier for a woman to contract it from a man.

Re: Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?"

#105

Post by _debug_ »

nandemo wrote: post #89
_debug_ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I do not want his charm to detract from the rest of it. (charisma > sexism) == wrong. Also, in my opinion, it is actually a bit sad that the lady says, "oh well, it's ok to be treated that way because he's a good teacher". This is exactly the kind of compromise that victims make too often. Bill Clinton was not even being sexist and he got tasered big time. I'm not sure why Feynman should get a pass.

Because I do not want his charm to detract from the rest of it. (charisma > sexism) == wrong. I'd say that the type of (charisma > sexism) is boolean -- maybe fuzzy boolean given the fuzzy quality of the operands -- not right|wrong. In any case you're entitled to your opinion; the problem is that you did some blatantly unfair editing there. If someone says "Steve is an asshole, but I have to admit he's a great CEO",…

> you did some blatantly unfair editing there

You don't get it. You are treating the original article like a Bible. In my opinion, the original article is the one which did the blatantly unfair editing; it bended over backwards to make the man look good by sandwiching the sexism carefully between the praises.

What I did could be constituted as wrong only if I was quoting Feynman and then cut off the last part, for example.

Re: Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?"

#106

Post by branden »

glhaynes wrote: post #97
Estragon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principle is to minimize the reward from spam.

So shouldn't we just downvote the ones that are spammy -- those that make the conversation worse instead of better?

Shouldn't making the conversation better be its own incentive?

Re: Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?"

#107

Post by powauth »

blasdel wrote: post #103
powauth wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. For the record, it is very hard to contract HIV from vaginal sex. (< 1/10000 per-instance chance)

That's exaggerating quite a bit; but more importantly leaving off the other half of the equation — it's a lot easier for a woman to contract it from a man.

True, women are more likely to get it from a man than vice-versa, but my number (1 in 10k) is not exaggerating all that much.

http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/insite?page=ask-05-10-11

"Two large studies in California and Europe found a per-contact risk (meaning the risk of a man becoming infected from each instance of penile-vaginal sex) of 0.0001 (1 in 10,000) and 0.0003 (1 in 3,000)"

Re: Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?"

#108

Post by ErrantX »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #12
dwwoelfel wrote: post #6

This probably only works if you're Richard Feynman.

Not in the slightest. At the risk of destroying my chances of ever getting into YC (hi JL, PG, RTM et al!) I had astonishingly great luck with asking attractive women if they wanted to make out with me last Spring. Seriously: "hey, let's make out!" or "would it unduly offend you if I asked you to make out with me?" You're probably better off asking this sort of thing after conversing with them for a bit so you don't…

Bear in mind though your asking them to make out; which is fine, something they probably already planned to do.

(as an aside your first line is bad in terms of a "shock and awe" opener. The second line is better not because of the "unduly offended" (that waters it down) but the "would you")

If you asked them to sleep with you then success rate would shoot down (guaranteed; I tried it for a while just to see)

Re: Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?"

#109

Post by ErrantX »

char wrote: post #9

The entire book (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman) is amazing and hilarious. I highly recommend it for the HN crowd.

It's a wonderful anecdote, but where to begin..

I was pretty hopeless at the whole dating game till I read The Game and started to try it out; it was a brilliant read. But the bare truth of it is that it doesn't actually work all that well. Oh yeh sure you can be a PUA and grab some fairly shallow girls - but it's a bit boring to be honest (and your success rate is fairly low - you "win" by asking lots of women). The only thing The Game gives you is confidence; which is 90% of the trick.

Indeed the best advice in this article is twofold.

- Confidence (subtly suggested) is a big factor. She's talking to you - if your not confident she'll only stay out of sympathy

- Dont pay for everything/anything; the best advice you will ever learn. I had plenty of crap dates spending loads of money in the hope of getting laid and it invariably went nowhere (a kiss on the cheek usually, bah). Till one date the girl randomly said "I'm not going to sleep with you tonight, can we just have a nice time" - so with no real investment in the evening we had an awesome fun just spending time together.

Now when I go on a date the first thing I'll say is "so do you want to get the first round or the second?". It's subtle but works brilliantly; usually we share the rounds and have a great time (and maybe sleep together, but I find that a less important conclusion now)

Against all the odds Im a pretty good dater. So when my friends ask for advice or help I usually say:

- go on a date just to have a good time with a girl, not just to sleep with her

- share the costs

- dont be gentlemanly at the end of the night. She's a person too and if she's not interested in getting laid she'll just say no

- be confident. She's on a date with you already!!

:)

Re: Richard Feynman on getting laid: "You Just Ask Them?"

#110

Post by mwexler »

Out of 101 comments, no one mentions that this site is hosting an illegal copy of an artist's work? I mean, sure, the whole book is great... but shouldn't we be having a bit of respect for someone's intellectual property and not linking to it?

If Gorgorat.com has permission to print the book, or it's now in public domain, then I'm the first to say link to that pup... but I didn't see anything on the site to say this.

I'm a bit surprised that folks who make their living creating intellectual property are so blase about this. There were more comments about the inappropriate affiliate link than the fact that the book is still in press and under copyright.

Let's not devolve into "information wants to be free" and "the world is open source", but stick to the fact that the book is not free and open source in the US legal system at this point, AFAIK. Would we be linking to a hosted full copy of PG's excellent book Hackers etc. (http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html) to highlight one of his points? Probably not.

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