Yeah sure. I learned lots of things about showing interest in people without faking interest, connecting with people (e.g. finding something of mutual interest), giving the right level of eye contact, ways to make people feel more relaxed and willing to open up etc.
The techniques don’t have names, but I never claimed they did.
They’ve been very useful to me in all kinds of situation, and crucially, I don’t feel like a guy trying techniques any more. I’m just me being myself but with more awareness of social cues and how best to present myself.
RSD is not a book, it’s just a set of ideas / advice. Yes the primary selling point of the course is that it will make participants have more success in dating. Obviously I need to pick a PUA example to try to refute the claim that PUA is all about cynical manipulation.
But much of the bulk of the course is just standard conversational skills advice.
This won’t speak directly to his habits or attitudes specifically regarding sleeping with women, but it’s worth noting Feynman’s sexist attitudes more broadly. One description that’s stuck with me:
[I agree with Half Man Half Wit that “product of the times” is no reason to dismiss discussion of anyone’s flaws. Especially, in this case, since many people still seem to look at Feynman’s way with women as part of what makes him so great…]
I’ve read both Feynman’s books and the Glieck biography. The only specific reference I recall from the Glieck bio is that Feynman was notorious for sleeping with the wives of his colleagues. There was no suggestion that these trysts were anything other than consensual. Clearly, he was no respecter of the institution of marriage.
He sounds like a creep. “Bar girls” vs. “nice ordinary Southern girls”? Yuck. Anyone who believes that buying a drink for someone should automatically lead to sex has a very screwed-up view of human relationships.
But from the descriptions on this thread, I wouldn’t call him a sexual predator. That sort of inflated rhetoric is prevalent these days, and it only serves to trivialize serious issues.
You’re still looking at him through the prism of 2016. In the late '40s and into the '50s, women who went into those bars mostly went for the purpose of sex. HER expectation, every bit as much as his, was that he was going to buy some drinks and then they were going back to her place or his place. Women didn’t go to meet Mr. Right; they went to get laid. When both sides of the relationship have the same understanding of the purpose of the evening, the fact that you don’t approve doesn’t necessarily make it screwed-up. The dichotomy between nice ordinary Southern girls and bar girls seems yucky now because it’s a dichotomy that largely no longer exists, but back in the day it was very real.
THEODOTUS: Caesar: you are a stranger here, and not conversant with our laws. The kings and queens of Egypt may not marry except with their own royal blood. Ptolemy and Cleopatra are born king and consort just as they are born brother and sister.
BRITANNUS (shocked): Caesar: this is not proper.
THEODOTUS (outraged): How!
CAESAR (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
Not really. Not with Feynmann. I believe he used the word frequently to describe things that were impressive but not necessarily good. Things like the Atomic Bomb explosion, or reading about the backwardness of Tannu Tuva.
Not as far as I can tell. It’s obviously completely fine to have consensual sex with any and as many partners as one pleases. But, it’s just as obviously (one would have hoped) not fine to objectify, degrade, and disrespect people to goad them into having sex with you. I’m somewhat shocked and disturbed that this needs any further explanation.
And anyway, what the hell was the argument here supposed to be anyway? Kipnis liked to have sex with lots of professors, therefore the ‘bar girls’ must have, too? Hence, Feynman really did them a favor by treating them as worthless bitches?
Except, of course, that’s not what happened: they refused to hold up their end of the bargain, which is what got Feynman all riled up. So evidently, it wasn’t their expectation to exchange drinks for sex—that was due to Feynman.
And still, even if that had been the deal, this doesn’t justify Feynman considering them to be ‘worthless bitches’, or calling them ‘worse than a whore’.
Yes, and I suppose when Feynman used the words ‘worthless’ and ‘bitch’, he really meant ‘nice young lady’, and ‘you’re worse than a whore’ is just his way of saying ‘that was a nice evening, let’s do it again sometime!’.
Look, I can understand having reverence for the man. He was a great physicist, and nothing in this thread challenges this. But by his own account, he was also quite capable of degrading and disrespecting women in order to get them to have sex with him. There’s just nothing there that justifies your reading, except your wish to read it a certain way.
I haven’t seen anybody make that argument, though. And the logic here is again skewed: just because Kipnis wasn’t a victim in this kind of situation, doesn’t mean that it’s a-OK in all cases. (Obviously, that’s not to say that such behavior is necessarily predatory, either.)
I did, and I’m honestly not seeing it? Certainly, the second paragraph implies that Feynman was a sexual predator, but the reasons given are not his sleeping with college-age women, but his using deception, degradation, and humiliation to get these women to sleep with him.
And, in an update, responding to a defense of Feynman on another site:
That’s three direct statements describing Feynman as a sexual predator, in an article that clocks in at a little over 2000 words, footnotes included. I’m not sure how the author could have made her intent any clearer.
Half Man Half Wit’s point was that, yes, the article describes Feynman as a sexual predator, but not simply for sleeping with college-age women. Rather, the article describes Feynman as a sexual predator for using deception, degradation, and humiliation to get these women to sleep with him. I am just repeating the words Half Man Half Wit wrote, but as they seem to have gone unread the first time, perhaps this is of some use.