OK, this might turn out to be a long one because there is a lot of ground to cover.

I’ve noticed a general assumption around here that is clearly very invalid and seems to be a root cause of about 50% of the arguments between blue and red, and men and women in particular.

I’ll try and Steelman the assumption as…

Men and Women choose who they are attracted to. Certainly, the reasons why a human is attracted to another human are well known within the conscious mind of the person feeling the attraction. They know why they are attracted, and so long as they describe their rational motivations for being attracted honestly and do not lie everyone should accept these are the real reasons they are attracted

Sounds reasonable ? Good.

It’s wrong. Wrong, wrongy, wrongy, wrong. Wrongmunchtiously wrong. It couldn’t be more wrong if stated by “Wrong" Jack McWrong winner of this years “Wrongest Man Ever” competition.

This is largely a matter of scientific fact. But I’m going to talk you through why this is wrong rationally… I’ll only try to use scientific conclusions to back this up where necessary in comments....

Now I’ll try and Steelman the right case.

Men and Women have instincts that make them feel attracted. These instincts are not under conscious control, just like all other instincts and emotions in all other animals and also in humans. These instincts and emotions are caused by sub-conscious processes you cannot examine introspectively, and which you do not understand, and which never show you their workings out. They take in sensory input, they process it using ‘programs’ you did not design that are largely genetic in origin, these programs decide what the conscious mind should feel. The programs then push this feeling into your conscious mind as an instinct or emotion with no conscious decision making whatsoever. It comes unbidden and unasked for. Finally, when the conscious mind is challenged to explain the source of this instinct or emotion it cannot do so, as it has no access to the programs nor knows how they calculate whether to send emotions, and instead the conscious mind makes up a reason it deems plausible (which may or may not be anything close to the real reason for the emotion) and explains the emotion with this fictional construction which may be only very loosely, or not related, to the real truth of the matter.

Phew. That was a long paragraph. This process describes the source of ALL human emotion, not just attraction, but it’s generally attraction we are interested in round here.

Its worth pointing out before we start that what humans call instincts in other animals, are what we call emotions in humans.

The "attraction" a human feels for a good looking human of the right sex... is no different at all to the "attraction" a chimp, or a cat, or any other mammal feels for a "good looking" opposite sex member of their species. I'll leave the insects and lizards out for now. But attraction is the evolutionary conserved module that at least all mammals share. The following description is just as true of chimps or zebras as it is of humans...

So… to use the Steelman above in a male context where I won’t get all the girls backs up (as the males will be “Big Boys” about it but women/bloops will take this as “An assault on their rationality and strong, independent, sentient being” status)…

How the Human Brain "decides" to make you attracted to someone

  • Your subconscious mind takes in sensory input about a woman.

  • It feeds this through a subconscious program you have no control over and never consciously set-up in any way, largely genetically imprinted/created. This program assesses the input.

  • This program assesses things like her Waist Hip Ratio (WHR), facial symmetry, skin smoothness, hair colour, general fitness, whether she is smiling or frowning, presence of other males in her group, Major Histocompatibility Complex (if you can smell her), hair condition, presence of blemishes, status signals given by clothing and styling... As well as possibly another 100 things science hasn't discovered yet (the list above is only what they've proven, not an exhaustive list).

  • It gives each of these something like a number between 1-10 and with a weighted algorithm you neither know nor can alter decides an “overall attractiveness” score.

  • Based upon this it decides to send to send one of the following signals to your conscious brain of “Yuck, just NO”, “Don’t be attracted”, “Maybe, I suppose”, “you are attracted”, “you are really attracted”, “you are extremely attracted” and “Phwoarrr. Bloody Hell. She’s amazing”.

  • It does NOT share the algorithm, or the working out, or the score. Just the “feeling” it decided to send based on that.

You have no control over this process. In fact. This happened in the few milliseconds whilst your conscious brain even formed the thought “There is an […….…] girl over there”. Such that by the point you got to “There is an…” part of that thought it could already fill in her attractiveness level into the rest of that conscious verbal sentence you were thinking, so your conscious mind actually thought .“There is an attractive girl over there” or “There is an ugly girl over there” without for a second thinking rationally about it first.

Thats how fast it already decided for you. It set her attractiveness. Not “you” (i.e. your conscious reasoning brain). The process set it for you.

What the conscious/rational part of your brain can do

This is NOT to say there is nothing the conscious brain CAN do… But what it CAN do regarding attractiveness is extremely limited. It can only do 3 things…

  1. Decide to gather more input.

By approaching the girl you can gain extra information. Whether she is educated. Whether she has a speech impediment. Whether she is smart or dumb. Whether she is fun or boring. Whether she is crazy AF or seems relatively sane. And, for males, whether she seems promiscuous or likely to have fidelity to a mate.

However, what it cannot do is decide “for" the subconscious process how it will use that information to change the attraction. It can only pass the input. The subconscious process decides if that lessens or intensifies the attraction.

So, maybe she’s Dumb. Rationally you may think it would be annoying to have a Dumb girlfriend. That doesn’t matter. The brain process assesses her attractiveness not your conscious/rational brain. If being dumb does not reduce her attractiveness level within that process ? You still feel attracted. Maybe it even increases the attractiveness, much to your conscious minds consternation.

Maybe you think you like Fun girls. So you approach the ugly girl, who turns out to be fun with it. That gets passed to the process. If it decides thats not enough, even though you think you should like fun girls more, you stay unattracted.

Maybe you think "Fat Girls are Women Too" and men should try their best to like and be attracted to Fat girls as much as slim girls. Whatever you rationally/consciously think your process will assess the attractiveness of fat/thin girls exactly as it did before. Maybe your process DID already ignore weight. But if it did not do so, and you always found thin girls attractive, you will still feel attraction to thin girls and not attracted to fat girls. Now you may choose to overcome this lack of instinctive attraction which brings us to our next point...

The other thing the rational/conscious brain can do is...

  1. Decide to ignore the feeling. Not make it go away (she is still attractive) but it can decide NOT to act on that. “I am married so I won’t approach that attractive girl” (for example). or for the unattractive girl “Even though I am not attracted, I will still approach that ugly girl”. It just can’t decide to be attracted. Only to act or not act on the feeling.

This is where you can decide to ask the fat girl out anyway, even though you are not attracted. You can kiss her. You can even have sex with her. But you will only feel attracted when the process decides it's seen something to be attracted to, and not when you made the conscious decision to "date her anyway".

Many women discover this when they date the "rationally great accountant" who they are just not attracted to... hoping that attraction will develop because rationally he's such a great catch. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. The process, not the rational conscious girl, decides. (and BTW, the odds aren't good it will change it's mind ladies).

In another emotional context (fear) this is even more obvious. You cannot Decide not to be afraid no matter how much you rationally reason you should not be afraid of that noise in the dark. You can decide to ignore it and continue anyway rationally. Just not to remove the fear. When humans ignore fear and act against that irreducible impulse, that is the activity we humans know as “Being Courageous” ignoring your fear to do what needs to be done anyway.

Anyway, back to attraction…..What the conscious brain cannot do is “properly analyse how and why you are attracted or not”. Not even mine, with all this knowledge in place, can effectively do so. All it can do is…

  1. Analyse trends the conscious brain has noted in your behaviour and hypothesise that this forms part of the process. So it can notice “Hey, the last 10 girls I was attracted to were Blonde. Maybe my process gives girls a boost for being Blonde”… or…. “Hey the last 10 guys I was attracted to were Tall. Maybe my process gives guys a boost for being Tall”. It just can’t tell whether that correct or not, except by rough approximation, and there are some things it just doesn’t notice the pattern on because those things are not obvious…. “Hey the last 10 girls all had MHC complex 37ahR, maybe my process likes 37ahR girls?” …. or “The last 5 guys I fancied all were standing near smiling attractive women when I first saw them, maybe my process likes guys associated with smiling attractive women”.

This means these guesses are approximations at best, and often very misleading at worst.

It’s almost certain that whilst you may have identified 2, 3 or 4 factors common in “Guys or Gals that are my type” you are unaware of the other 96, 97 or 98 factors that go into that process to make the attraction decision.

Like I said, I know all this stuff backwards. Fucked if I know how my process works. It seems to like “Short Blondes” as a group, and prefers “Young and Pretty” thats just about as far as I’m prepared to say. I’m definitely NOT prepared to rule out things and say it doesn’t consider THAT at all. If I said that, it would be pure bullshit because I just can’t know what it does not consider, only take weak guesses at what it does. Who knows if some corner of it is not considering shoe size, or nostril width ? I don't.

I certainly would NOT say it cannot be considering something scientific research says it almost certainly IS considering (like WHR in my/males cases, or in the girls case pre-selection /u/sublimemongrel)

Why this causes arguments round here

Basically, people often seem to think of this the wrong way round.

Not “I have noticed what I am instinctively attracted to” but “I have made a conscious choice to be attracted to X because it makes sense”.

Thats wrong. I can quote the scientific articles if you like.

What is happening here is either have noticed a trend in the choices your instincts make, that you had no control over them making, and are misattributing that to a conscious choice.

OR

You have either confabulated a reason why that “makes sense rationally” to explain a process you don't understand in the best way you can work out how, but which genuinely does not understand how that process works.

These mistakes are what causes all the arguments round here.

Where RP says “girls like muscles” and girls say “But that’d be silly. Why would I make a rational choice to like muscles ?”. The answer is, you don’t. The process does. You just “feel attracted” when it tells you to, and for most girls (but not all) muscles are a heavily weighted factor in the process. As is pre-selection (a guy being around attractive girls). As is assessment of his status. As is more traditionally understood factors like Facial Symmetry.

And, to keep this all fair and equal and show we’re not saints either, RP guys make the same mistake the other way.

Take status. They say “Those girls are making a rational decision to go after high status men those gold digging WHORES”. Thats not true. They are not rationally deciding to be attracted to status. The process just heavily weights status in women, and they just feel more “naturally attracted” to the doctor than to his burger-flipping twin. They’re no more making a conscious decision over it than a male is to prefer a 0.7 WHR over a 0.8 WHR. It’s as instinctive and natural in them as that is in you.

Why this is Critical to RP

What RP properly understood is saying is morally neutral (both ways... they're not hypergamous whores... we're not unfaithful dogs).

It says simply that

  • Males and females are instinctively attracted in different ways

  • Those ways are common by sex, and vary a lot less than the huge variations in human rational brains, because they are genetically set. This means that whilst every female may have only a 90% chance of instinctively liking this, if you have 30 such traits the odds are excellent you are attractive across 27 of them for ALL women (just a different 27 in each woman).

  • So there are ways to become instinctively attractive in ways that those instinctive sub-conscious processes the other sex have will not ignore and almost all women will feel the same way (attracted) across the 27 of 30 they personally have.

  • So if you appeal to all 30 of those common factors, she WILL find you attractive instinctively (whatever her rational brain says about wanting to act on that instinct).

  • If she does not instinctively fancy you your chances are 0% or close to 0% even if she rationally likes you. If her instincts are saying "Yuck, no way" she won't want to overcome that.

  • If she does instinctive fancy you. If her brain is sending he's very attractive signals your chances are very good, even if rationally you're not someone she thinks is a good idea, because most humans go with what instinctively feel right rather than whats rationally a good idea. Whatever your chances are if she finds you instinctively attractive they're better than the 0% if she doesn't.

  • Here is how you make yourself instinctively attractive to women ~RP Alpha Traits List which is 30 items long~

  • Oh and, for the incels, about 2/3rds of those 30 traits are ones you can improve that compensate for and overcome inherent characteristics like height. Most, (in females but not in males) are psychological.

TL:DR; Humans Instincts/Emotions are not under conscious control. The assumptions that both sides make that they are drives a lot of unnecessary arguments around here. This view is so completely and utterly unsupported in the literature that a good case for it simply cannot be made.

Now this time I’ll try not to slam you all with big long replies to your comments, although there may well be scientific articles quoted and linked.