Perhaps one of the most frequent and annoying criticisms made of game is that it has not been verified by science. Usually a claim made by pseudo-intellectuals who have a difficult time swallowing the red pill, these confused individuals insist that since there is no “peer-reviewed research” confirming the tenets of game, game should not be believed or practiced. Game, therefore, is akin to a religion, or cult, worshiped by followers who blindly believe what their chosen game guru tells them.
These same pseudo-intellectual game-haters will then use this line of criticism in front of unbiased observers in an effort to steer them away from game, so that their blue-pill beliefs about women will be protected. It then leaves the man who preaches the good word of game on the defensive position, since if he disagrees with the game denialist, he will be labeled as “anti-science” and portrayed as an idiot.
A typical example of this exchange…
An experienced man with women will tell you that women are emotional creatures who act based on their feelings and then rationalize their behavior afterwards.
A game-denialist will then come along and say,
“Men also have rationalization hamsters. How do you know women are worse than men? Where’s your peer-reviewed research supporting that claim?”
An experienced man will tell you that any woman will have sex on the same day she meets the right man in the right circumstances. If the right man with the right game comes along in her path, she will bang him regardless of her age or relationship status.
The game denialist:
“Has there been any controlled experiments done to prove this? How do you know all women are the same?”
The experienced man says all women are the same, and that they follow their hypergamous instincts as obediently as a dog follows his nose.
The game denialist:
“Where’s the study that proves women will behave like animals? You’re just talking out of your ass.”
By attacking game along epistemological fault lines, the game denialist hopes to sow confusion amongst the ranks of both players and uninterested observers. Science is treated as an all-mighty authority in Western culture, having long since replaced the church, and the average democratic citizen believes that while God might not save them, technology can. Without the backing of science, who can trust game?
These arguments take advantage of the public’s general ignorance regarding the nature of science, and sophistically use the lack of scientific research on game as evidence that the current beliefs surrounding game are bullshit.
Let us discuss what science is, how scientists actually practice it, and then we’ll discuss why game doesn’t need science (although it is helpful).
The first and most common misconception about science is that it can “prove” things. Science has never proven anything, nor can it. On a deep enough epistemological level, nothing can be proven.
In sixteenth century Europe, had you looked up the classification of what a swan was, you would see that scientists had listed these animals as white birds who lived in lake regions. But as Australia was colonized in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, men discovered black swans.
And just like that, old science had been overturned and replaced with the new; classifying swans no longer referred to their color since if black swans exist, who is to say there are not purple swans out there in the universe, somewhere?
The same process of new science replacing the old is not an extraordinary phenomenon. Particularly notable examples include the Copernican revolution, where the Earth was no longer held at the center of the universe, the Newtonian revolution, where Aristotilean physics was replaced by Newton’s Laws, and the Einsteinian revolution, where the General Theory of relativity replaced Newtonian Laws of physics.
The reason new science constantly replaces the old is because science can only disprove theories, but never prove them. Science is merely an effort at clarification, and nothing more.
Think of how vast our universe is. In order for a scientific theory to be proven with absolute certainty it would have to be tested in every corner of the universe to prove that the theory in question is true. How could such rigorous testing even be possible?
For example, the proposition, “All men are mortal.” How do we know for sure that there isn’t some planet in the universe where men would never die while living on it?
We do not for sure, and we cannot know for sure, but that does not mean the statement “all men are mortal” is not approximately true or useful. Science is thus based on a pragmatic approach, whereby all beliefs are nothing more than approximations of what we believe to be true, and the role of science is to try and disprove old theories, so that they can be replaced with an updated theory that presents a better description of reality.
For example, when Galileo questioned Aristotelian physics, he went after the proposition that “heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones.” Galileo dropped two balls of different weight from a tower and showed that both fell at the same speed. And Aristotle was shown to be wrong. Someone then challenged Galileo and showed that a feather fell slower than the ball did, and Galileo responded that if there was no air pressure, both would fall at the same speed.
Of course there was no way for Galileo to test that statement about air pressure affecting the feather, so Galileo’s statement was unscientific. Unless something can be tested, it is not scientific. However, did it make Galileo’s refutation any less true or useful?
Although Galileo could not test his statement when he made it, it was true. Thus we must ask ourselves: how useful is science, really, if science cannot prove anything true but merely disprove it?
Because ultimately that is all science is, and ever will be – a tool to disprove statements. So when it comes to evaluating game with science, there is not too great a need to do so, since at most science would clarify core game concepts, such as whether or not it is more effective to approach women in the daytime or nighttime when it comes to casual sex.
Moreover, if science failed to find anything false with current game tenets, it would mean that the practitioners of game were right all along, and never needed science to begin with.
And this brings us to the final aspect of science – how useful, exactly, is science anyways? Since the great men of history have always created their theories and then tested them after the fact, we can conclude that science is only there to help coerce the masses into understanding what great men intuitively figure out on their own.
The average person is weak, feeble, and lacking in any sort of conviction, so he needs science to make conclusions for him. Being too afraid to search for the truth on his own he instead works to cloud the judgement of others by shrouding all claims in obscurity and skepticism, in order to bring others down to his level.
In short, science is mostly for haters.
Game, being at once a collective and individual pursuit, will necessarily have non-scientific claims. And that is okay. Not everyone can run experiments to prove that wearing a certain shirt to a certain bar will get him laid more often, even though the man who does get laid knows which shirts work best on him. Likewise a man who can help men generate conversations with women may not have produced a reliable experiment and control to isolate all possible variables, but he can offer reasonable suggestions after helping a few dozen men make approaches.
There is no need for the hysteria of having science to “validate” game, as Heartiste so often does, because while it is cool to see science be unable to disprove core game concepts, it does not mean that there is not yet some discovery that will completely redefine how men approach and interact women. As an evolving concept, game relies on artistic and philosophical modes of thought to make real progress, while science merely sorts through the trash theories to show who was right all along.
And if you’re the guy sitting on knowledge of where the best spots in town to bang 18-year old chicks are, do you need science to make sure you can pursue them?
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