
What kind of girl do you think I am? - moraitakis
http://manylogue.com/what-kind-of-girl-do-you-think-i-am/
======
Confusion

      The million-dollar question is interesting *because it forces her to really 
      decide* what kind of girl she is.
    

The question actually isn't very interesting at all, because the it suggests
there is still a choice to be made. In reality, most people have made that
choice long ago and we know that they have their consequentialist price. The
price may be a million dollars, saving a hundred people's lives, getting
revenge or another non-monetary reward, but there is a price. Already before
the million-dollar question, we know that we may assume she definitely _is_
'that kind of girl'. Almost every girl, and every guy, is 'that kind of girl',
because they will trade their affections for what the other party offers. Be
it under the guise of love or not.

Going into a business negotiation thinking either you or them are
deontologists is selfdeception that will hinder you in your negotiations.

~~~
ErrantX
Agreed. Actually the question does still hold interest IMO because it forces
her to acknowledge _to herself_ that she may have a price.

You say:

 _In reality, most people have made that choice long ago and we know that they
have their consequentialist price._

And I agree; however I wonder how many people consciously know what their
"price" decision they have made.

I once actually conducted this experiment with a group of [volunteer] fellow
students (both male and female) with interesting results. I pitched the
question exactly as outlined here (a girlfriend asked the male members). The
aim was to force this self-realisation of their "price" and subsequently we
"bartered" for the real price they would accept.

I realised a couple of things; firstly in realistic terms 1 million pounds is
generally a lot lower than the "realistic price". When I followed up with the
question "would you _really_ sleep with me for a million" the answer was
usually "no". The reason the girl says "maybe" in the initial instance is
because she doesn't believe that I have a million pounds to offer.

When I substituted £100,000 for a million the response rate tipped much harder
towards "unlikely". To further test this theory I asked one of my more well of
friends (who looked stereotypically rich) to conduct a similar survey - but
this time to show them a cheque made of for £1 Million at the same time. Again
the responses tended towards "unlikely" (and there was, actually, a larger
amount of disgust at the idea).

Once I got past this stage we bartered on what the "price" might be;
invariably money was quickly removed from the table. Favours were preferred;
for example attending as a date to a wedding was one price. When I forced
conversations back to money the price went a _lot_ higher. £10 Million was the
minimum (this is possibly because 1 Million is not considered so much any
more, I don't know). My well off friend had even more dramatic rises; one girl
requested £5 Million a year for the next three years.

More sex was generally offered in return for more complex rewards; for example
in the above example (£5,000,0000/yr for 3 yrs) it was hashed out that a
number of sexual encounters and "weekend breaks" were on the cards.

For the men things were a lot simpler; they balked at any ides of being paid
full stop. Almost to the man they refused payment and offered to sleep with
the girl anyway. Out of interest I got a much plainer girl to ask the same
question; there was still a general refusal to take money (although one or two
"accepted" £100, preferring it to 1 Million) but also several outright
refusals. With the plainer girl men offered to sleep with her (for no money),
for my more attractive friend they offered to sleep with her _and_ take her
out to dinner.

In fact dinner featured a lot in negotiations; there was actually a general
aversion amongst the men (particularly, for some interesting reason, among the
"jock" types) to simply having sex, a big majority preferred to offer a more
complete "package". I have a partial theory that some were sidestepping the
issue of money by proposing that the girl paid for dinner (or whatever date
was agreed).

This was conducted on a group of about 100 people I randomly grabbed outside
our student union over a couple of afternoons :) there isn't a lot of
structure to what we did, we just followed our noses. But I think there was
some interesting stuff we discovered.

~~~
dkarl
_Actually the question does still hold interest IMO because it forces her to
acknowledge to herself that she may have a price._

This is ridiculous. The question does make her uncomfortable, but not because
of the question itself. _She_ knows she'll sleep with a guy for a million
dollars. She's thought about it. She may have even thought about her "price"
for letting a man fuck her. The problem is she knows the limits on what she's
supposed to say and how she's supposed to present herself, and here's this
clueless jerk trying to force her beyond them. She's playing the game,
navigating social rules, and he isn't even acknowledging the tight spot he's
put her in. In fact, he's simultaneously relishing her discomfort and
resenting her for feeling that way. What does she do? To get through the
situation as easily and harmlessly as possible, she either denies the
legitimacy of the argument or names absurdly large amounts of money.

To really get a woman's price, she'd have to be assured of discretion. And her
price would, ultimately, be affected by her confidence in the assurances of
discretion offered. Her price for prostituting herself openly would be much
higher, though not as high as the price she's willing to admit to in the
original joke or the experiment you describe. After all, in the experiment,
she pays the price of advertising her willingness to have sex for money
without actually getting the money. A million pounds buys a lot of honesty --
what were _you_ offering? Even with the check, you haven't established a
credible offer. The woman would have a lot of doubts that would be difficult
to overcome. Is it a scam? Why me? Does this guy want to hurt me or humiliate
me? Is this a mean-spirited prank organized by one of my exes? From her point
of view, it's vanishingly unlikely to be a genuine offer. She's thinking, "If
I even give this guy a chance to prove his bona fides, I'll probably be
putting myself at risk." After all, even if he actually has a million pounds
in his checking account, he's still more likely to be a killer than a guy who
pays a million pounds for sex. Just sayin'. She's not stupid. And if the guy
is serious, the onus is on him to prove that he understands her reservations
and to think of some way to reassure her. Her initial response shouldn't deter
him.

Anyway, to depart from your experiment and get back to the conversation in the
joke as it's usually told -- no longer talking about your experiment -- it's a
typical conversation for socially incompetent young geeks who are frustrated
by all the social taboos, who suspect (partly correctly) that everyone around
them is screwing like rabbits, and who are so painfully frustrated about not
being able to talk about it that they make fools of themselves beating their
heads against the wall of taboo with rational arguments instead doing
something that might actually clear the way to frank conversation, such as
cultivating trust and intimacy. (Gosh, I just _might_ be speaking from
experience here.)

So the whole thing resolves to a guy making a girl uncomfortable and taking
her refusal to be outré for stupidity. That's pretty dickish. Especially when
the point is to make yourself look smart in comparison. I have NO idea why
Feynman liked this joke, except that maybe he used it as a racy line-crossing
move when chatting up women, in which case the logic itself is kind of beside
the point. I supposed he knew the right moment to push it. Or maybe he just
knew his audience. But that would make him a bit of a misogynist, since he
would know -- admit it -- that the chief delight of this story for most people
is not whipping it out Feynman-style at just the right moment when a woman is
ready to let down her barriers. The chief appeal for most is getting the last
laugh on a woman who wouldn't let you past her facade of propriety. Why would
he stoop to that kind of pandering?

Anyway, the original word game breaks down if you examine it _just_ a little.
If I'd bake a loaf of bread for a million dollars, am I a baker?

If I'd do your taxes for a million dollars, am I a tax accountant?

If I'd write a book for a million dollars, am I a writer?

If I'd change your oil for a million dollars, am I an auto mechanic?

If I'd teach a yoga class for a million dollars, am I a yoga instructor?

So is she a prostitute? Clearly not. Is she a whore? Well, yeah, quite often
she is, in the sense that the word "whore" in any language usually means a
woman whose sexual activity makes the speaker feel bad in some way.

But don't worry about this line of reasoning, or any other, being used against
you when you whip this gem out at a party, because the response will divide
between a couple of straight-up misogynists enthusiastically backing you up
and a majority who just distance themselves from you, possibly by scoring
points off you in some irrational way that is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the
point you're trying to make, because people are STUPID and more interested in
playing STUPID SOCIAL GAMES than actually THINKING. So your point is
unchallenged! Unrefuted! Whoohoo! (Sarcasm aimed at the original joke and at
my teenage self, not personally at you.)

~~~
ErrantX
_She knows she'll sleep with a guy for a million dollars. She's thought about
it._

A reasonable point; except you've asserted that and I'm not sure it's true.
_Do you have any data to back up the theory?_ Because one of the things that
became clear to me was people hadn't really and truly considered it; there was
a lot of thinking going on.

I realise the experiment was flawed; and we tested too few people to really
make any definite observations.

However the aim was not to present it as a serious offer; but as a thought
exercise. Once over the "wtf is this guy asking me" moment at the start we
spent quite a while with each person (in private) discussing his/her thoughts.
This made it a little more solid.

I agree with the idea that the joke is idiotic; clearly it is just misogynist
crap (or, very occasionally just a racy joke - I've pulled it out maybe once
to rescue a date :)).

~~~
dkarl
It doesn't matter how many people you test, because you can't establish a
credible offer of that much money. Can you describe a situation that you could
actually set up in which a woman would think she was more likely to get a
million pounds than to get dragged into a basement, tortured, raped, and
murdered? Of course both of those scenarios would be far outside chances
compared to the chances that somebody was just trying to play a humiliating
joke on her or steal her identity.

The question a woman's brain is really engaged with in these scenarios is,
"What's the safest way to deal with this situation?" That applies even if she
actually knows you and is a modern liberal woman, because she's got to walk a
line between seeming prudish or dishonest and triggering the insecurity thats
lurk in every male breast.

[Edit: sorry for all the unacknowledged edits; since HN has no "preview"
button I just post and edit.]

~~~
ErrantX
_because you can't establish a credible offer of that much money_

Of course you can; that is pretty easy to do. (also you might note we tried a
lot more credible monetary amounts as well).

 _Can you describe a situation that you could actually set up in which a woman
would think she was more likely to get a million pounds than to get dragged
into a basement, tortured, raped, and murdered?_

This is something of a strawman... because clearly it all depends on the
individual and how they perceive a situation. But it seems reasonable to
suppose you can ask the person (as I did) to visualise a situation where they
were receiving a serious offer (a lot of phsyc testing uses this premise).

 _"What's the safest way to deal with this situation?"_

When I said bartering I should point out it wasn't actively bartering over the
idea of sex; it was a discussion about the ideas and this concept of a
"price". Or in opther words it was explained what the point was. Most said it
was an interesting thought experiment.

So where your seeing this as the individuals thinking "oh crap, this crazy
person is saying really weird/scary things" that was not the situation. We
used the opening line as a gambit to provoke this idea of a "price".

I'm actually most interested in your currently undefended assertion that
people _have_ thought about their "price". It's the most interesting part of
this for me.

EDIT: it's worth pointing out this is less about establishing what cash amount
people want for having sex with you than about getting people to discuss a
social idea that is almost certainly frowned upon, but which could make them
rich via minimum effort/skill. We could have tried something like.. would you
kill for £1 Million - but there were strong reasons against that (sex itself
is not frowned on (just paid-for), where murder is. Sex is more interesting
because there is a divide between how men and women react to it).

~~~
dkarl
If you say that the whole point was to provoke people to think, and not to
glean any information about what they would actually do, I'm fine with that.
However, I'm skeptical that women would devote much thought to the imaginary
situation that will never happen when they were in a real situation where they
were being asked to discuss their sexuality. It's kind of like you've never
seen or heard a goat before, so you walk up to someone with your pet tiger on
a leash and ask them to do an impression of a goat. You're going to get an
impression calculated not to excite the tiger, without much thought to what a
goat looks and sounds like.

 _I'm actually most interested in your currently undefended assertion that
people have thought about their "price". It's the most interesting part of
this for me._

As a kid I had multiple conversations in different groups of guys where the
question of having sex with another guy for money came up, so I think I can
vouch for guys. Even in groups of guys who weren't particularly intimate and
didn't trust each other, you'd get exchanges like, "Dude, you are so in love
with that guy you would suck his duck." "Fuck you, I'm not sucking anybody's
dick." "So you wouldn't even for a million dollars?" "You saying you wouldn't?
What are you trying to hide?"

As for girls, girlfriends have told me about giggly conversations they had
with their friends when they were thirteen. The question naturally arises from
the question of whether you would marry a gross old guy who had billions of
dollars -- and that's something that all young girls talk about. It's an
irresistible mixture of horror and fantasy. Start altering that story and
you're only two or three steps from outright prostitution. (Amusingly, in the
one story I remember pretty well, the question posed was, "Would you have sex
with a guy for a million dollars, _even if you didn't love him?_ " I guess to
thirteen-year-old girls, love is the factor that makes everything okay or not
okay, even prostitution.)

Another reason is how people reacted to the movie _Indecent Proposal_ with
Robert Redford, Demi Moore, and Woody Harrelson. It wasn't an alien idea for
most people. Anytime people talked about it, they seemed to be picking up the
threads of conversations from a long time ago. Of course, people are a lot
less likely to talk about it with people they don't trust, especially when the
intent seems to be hostile or transgressive.

~~~
ErrantX
I suspect what you're talking about is something entirely different... because
they are just jokey/giggly conversations with no real meaning (there are all
sorts of social pressures that set your price, for example).

Have you, as an adult, considered your price? My suggestion is few people
have.

~~~
dkarl
I've thought about it enough to know that I don't have a single price. The
price depends on attraction, how much I like and trust a person, assurances of
discretion and safety, etc. My "ideal" price is zero; I sleep with people for
free all the time. Above that, it gets complicated. For example, I can think
of a certain girl who's extremely unattractive, abrasive, not very bright,
always hard up, and likes me a lot. I definitely wouldn't do her for free;
I've been tested on that extensively. $500 would be enough. However, she's in
debt, she's a friend of some friends, and she can't keep her mouth shut.
Everybody would despise me for taking that much money from this girl who's
struggling personally and financially. There's no good price for that example,
but it's the most likely example I could come up with in real life. If I
imagined she was better-off, $500 would be plenty for ninety minutes of work
(including drive time, chit-chat, etc.)

~~~
ErrantX
This is an interesting, and IMO uncommon, response. Thanks for the honesty! :)

You're right social constraints are going to modify each condition; many
people sleep with others in sympathy, for example.

 _If I imagined she was better-off, $500 would be plenty for ninety minutes of
work (including drive time, chit-chat, etc.)_

That's an interesting figure; because it is roughly how much a prostitute
would be paid (I use that example only because it is the most readily
available price for sex we have). So, possibly, there is an inherent social
value for non-free sex we subscribe too.

 _My "ideal" price is zero; I sleep with people for free all the time_

This syncs almost exactly with the response most men gave in our survey

------
diN0bot
(it's not worth noting but i'm going to do so anyway: we know what kind of guy
he is before we know what kind of girl she is, but no one even points that
out. we focus on her because she's indecisive?)

~~~
dejb
I have a problem voting for a comment that is entirely in brackets. Feels it
could cause a divide by zero problem if the bracketed part doesn't count thus
rending the comment to be of infinite value per character.

------
davidu
In business you are rarely forced to murder or whore yourself out. You are,
however, constantly faced with changing your direction, compromising your
vision or similar, all for some potential upside and downside. That's the
nature of business, and trying to tie it to moral questions doesn't do justice
to the line of reasoning one should employ.

Of course you should be moral, but most business questions aren't a question
of morality, but of direction and the most appropriate path to achieve your
objectives.

~~~
Confusion
I'm sure the managers at BP that choose to forego certain safety measures
completely recognize themselves in this line of reasoning. Which immediately
illustrates how dangerously false it is.

 _Companies_ are amoral (not to be confused with immoral) entities that will
not necessarily act in the people's best behavior. If companies act in a
morally acceptable way, it is because of the individual employees that
together make morally acceptable choices. Every business question is a
question of morality, because you can always choose to commit fraud, cheat
someone or act in an otherwise immoral fashion. Sometimes you won't do that
for fear of customer or supplier retribution. Often you won't do that for fear
of the law. But sometimes, you just shouldn't do it, because it has possible
consequences you should never risk.

No one at BP is individually responsible for the current calamity. The more
responsibility is spread over multiple layers of decision making, the less
responsible individuals feel and the less moral their behavior will be. Not
because they are immoral, but because the pressure to act as is best _for the
company_ is strong enough to suppress moral qualms. No 'evil' individual made
_the_ immoral decision that lead to the accident. It was a large number of
people that each made slightly immoral decisions, the cumulative result of
which is now the largest ecological disaster in US history.

This is the essence of the problem of libertarianism and complete free market
capitalism. This is why we need a government to regulate capitalism.

~~~
by
I think it is unlikely it is the "largest ecological disaster in US history".
We could compare it to the Dust Bowl <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl>
, or the logging of old growth forest
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_growth_forest#Logging> or the draining of
the Everglades
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draining_and_development_of_the...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draining_and_development_of_the_Everglades)
and it might not be as large. Consider also the introduction of invasive
species such as Chestnut blight <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_blight>
or red fire ants
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Ecologica...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Ecological_impact)
to put it into perspective. It seems too convenient, a collective self-
deception, to point at a non-US company and say they have caused the worst
ecological destruction in the US.

~~~
count
None of those happened within the last 2 years, so they don't count.

------
Tycho
It is the characterisation of moral systems as _either_ 'deontological' _or_
'teleological' which I find invalid, thus undermining the usefulness of this
here debate.

In the articles terms, you could be moral according to the category of your
actions, or according to the consequences of your actions. The first one
ignores reality ('whatever happens, don't lie'), and the second one negates
judgement ('the right action depends on the consequences, and the consequences
of the consequences, and the consequences of... _ad infinitum_ ' an endless,
useless subjectivism). They can be sidestepped by applying judgement according
to reality _and_ a measurable standard of value, eg. self-interest. You could
call this contextual or objective morality.

~~~
MichaelSalib
Consequentialism encompasses all value systems that incorporate consequences
to any degree at all. So your "applying judgement according to reality and a
measurable standard of value" system is actually consequentialist.

------
derefr
A thought: if someone offered me a trillion dollars to kill a person, I would
get trillion-dollar loan, invent brain-uploading and emulation technology with
it, copy the person into the machine, and then kill them.

To put that more simply: past a certain point, the idea of marginal value in a
cost/benefit analysis breaks down, because the benefit "changes the game."
(That is, creates a discontinuity in the valuation curve.) A million dollars
"changes the game" of your life. $100 doesn't.

~~~
cduan
It's never clear to me why people answer thought experiments like this in this
manner. The point of the question "would you kill someone for a trillion
dollars" is to tease out an answer to an underlying philosophical question,
such as, "is the act of killing as we know it a moral absolute wrong, or is it
merely an act with great negative utility that can be compensated by
sufficient positive utility?"

Yes, there are always creative ways to avoid really answering the question
(such as doing a brain upload, as suggested), but these answers do nothing to
answer the underlying question, which is what the thought experiment is really
trying to get at.

~~~
derefr
And I've always ignored that sort of question—there's no such thing as morals
or utility, really, only what animals are programmed to think in their animal
brains. Robotic arms don't care when other robotic arms die—and neither do we.
Paperclips don't care about increasing in number, even if someone is trying to
make it so. What we have to ask is not "what does the universe say about right
and wrong?" (because the answer is "nothing") but rather "what do _our minds_
say about right and wrong?"—that is, "what is the human utility function?"

The problem with that, of course, is that even within our species, we have
many different (and mutually-exclusive!) utility functions; sociopaths, for
example, calculate theirs noticeably differently. So, it still ends up turned
into a problem of cultural meta-ethics. That is, it's no longer a matter of
"who do we shun and revile?" but "how do we get along?" or perhaps "do we
_want_ to get along?" (Which brings me to this:
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/>)

~~~
cduan
That's not really a reason to avoid answering the question either. Regardless
of the mechanism by which your mind arrives at the answer (be it animal
instincts, brain chemistry, whatever), you are indeed capable of coming up
with an answer, and even if you believe the answer says nothing about the
universe in general, it still says something about you and your own mind. And
I'm fairly interested in knowing what your mind--and the minds of other people
--have to say about these sorts of questions.

To be a little more clear, your answer (yes or no) is of little value to me.
What I really want to know is _why_ you answer yes or no--is it because of
some general principle you're applying, because of a gut instinct, because
someone told you to say that, or something else?

EDIT: Based on the reply below, I'm not being clear. There are lots of reasons
I'd like to know your reasoning process, beyond trying to generalize it to
people in general. Among other things, I'd like to know whether I should be
worried about going to dinner with you (particularly if your answer is "Sure,
I'd kill for even just a dollar").

~~~
derefr
But that's a question for neuropsychology, isn't it? The question of _what is
good_ for an individual person won't be solved by conversation and
introspection, because people are, on average, very bad at understanding
themselves and the reasons for doing the things they do (they indeed have
reasons to give, but these reasons rarely stand up as falsifiable hypotheses
for predicting _future_ actions, so they're mere rationalizations and should
be discarded.)

Instead, the question of what an individual cares about will be solved by
coming up with a technique to look at a person's brain and _tell them_ ,
definitively, what values they care about at that moment in time. Anything
said about individual ethical belief until then is just sophistry.

~~~
ntoshev
The answer may come from other places than neuropsychology. We as carriers of
values live and evolve in an ecosystem where the values of those around us and
how they fit with ours matters. Maybe we can derive some evolutionary stable
strategies representing moral laws from a swarm of agents constantly playing
Prisoner's dillema and games with other rewards against each other.

~~~
derefr
But the mechanisms by which we play those games will be evident in the brain,
and the games themselves will be evident in our expectation-program memory.
(I'm assuming here that sufficiently-advanced neuropsychology will be able to
analyze the "software" running on each brain, not just the firmware, but even
if that field ends up with a different name, that's what I'm talking about
here.)

We may be able to model some sort of "objectively-good" cooperative-
evolutionary game-players using mathematics, but those models would not
necessarily represent _us_ ; there's nothing that says we're even
evolutionarily stable as a species over the long term ;)

------
Shorel
I think that what's wrong is the idea that a single decision, specially one
involving sex and money, can determine 'the kind of person' you are. Extremely
simplistic and unrealistic point of view.

------
tome
Here is a collection of supposed attributions for that quotation:

[http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/what...](http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/what_kind_of_woman_do_you_take_me_for_madam_weve_already_established_that_c/)

It seems rather hard to pin down the original source!

------
noamsml
I feel like the problem with this is that sleeping with someone for money is
not inherently unethical, i.e. it hurts no one. Certainly, if you were to
replace it with "kill a person", the spread of answers would change
significantly.

------
reitzensteinm
Is it just me or is there someone going on a downvoting spree here? I've seen
at least 8 comments at 0, and I only checked the thread twice. It's kind of
weird, since there's quite a high karma threshold for downvoting.

~~~
Herring
You guys really don't see how misogynistic these articles are, do you?

~~~
jules
Is that a good reason for downvoting all comments?

The example may be misogynistic, but the idea that the example is an example
of is not.

Also, suppose that the genders were removed:

    
    
        X: “If I gave you a million dollars, would you sleep with me?”
        Y: “A million dollars is a lot of money, and you don’t look that bad, so I guess I would consider it”
        X: “Ok, since I don’t have a million dollars, would you sleep with me for $100?”
        Y: (outraged) “What kind of person do you think I am?”
        X: “We’ve already established the answer to that question. Now we’re just negotiating the price”
    

Now who is shown in a less negative light, X or Y? I'd say Y. Of course Y is
also shown in a negative light.

~~~
Herring
> _Is that a good reason for downvoting all comments?_

If you think karma is the least bit important, I suggest you close your
browser for a few weeks.

------
willz
The guy's main point is that you should decide which girl you are: the
"Consequentialist" (relativist), or the "Categoricalist" (absolutist).

He said: "... I find it helpful, before I consider a dilemma, to at least
debate whether I’m in that girl’s situation, and what kind of girl I’m going
to be for this particular question..."

This shows that he is the "Consequentialist" girl.

