Raging against reality

I occasionally find myself wondering if Dr. PZ Myers made his PhD out of crayons and an old newspaper. I mean, I know he's not actually stupid, but he so often puts his metaphorical pen to paper before stopping and thinking through what he's writing that he may as well be.

SMV? What’s that, you’re wondering. It stands for “Sexual Market Value”. It purports to show the worth of men and women over a range of ages. Hold off on your rage for just a moment, and let’s look at it objectively.

First, the SMV axis. What are the units? There aren’t any. Why? Because he doesn’t actually measure anything. Get that? All of the values in this chart are arbitrary inventions that he totally made up. The entire thing is a fiction.

Second, the whole concept of “Sexual Market Value”. What does that even mean? It’s dimensionless. He doesn’t have a way to look at any person and say, “Your market value is X”. It doesn’t even make sense to put this into a chart; my sexual appeal to my wife is huge, but negligible to everyone else. Scarlett Johansen may have a reputation as a very sexy woman, but her sexual “market value” to me is zero, and not only is it offensive to propose that her sex is purchasable for some imaginary sum of a million quatloos or whatever, it probably isn’t even a real commodity.

Except, and here’s the scientifically repugnant part, he has no way to assess the SMV of an individual, except to look them up on the chart. Which he made up. The circularity is so perfect, it’s practically Biblical.

And then in his post he chastises critics for their inferior understanding of statistics, and unironically titles his post “Sex, Lies and Statistics”. Gaaaaah. Let’s not even start on the ethics of judging people’s worth by the sole parameter of their sexual attractiveness. By that criterion, the author of that graph is a negative ten, and should be shoved in the hole beneath the outhouse and ignored for the rest of his days.

One last tip: don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments. In between totting up the scores on all the women they’ve had sex with, they’re laughing at the critics for not appreciating the science of the graph.

Actually, what we're laughing at is the fact that the critics, like PZ, have clearly failed to understand what they're looking at.  As one commenter noted of PZ and his commenters: "It reads like some sci-fi robot trying to process illogical statements. "What are the units? There aren’t any." "What does that even mean? It’s dimensionless." "It doesn’t even make sense to put this into a chart [Warning CPU overload]". 

Of course there are no units! It is a graphic representation of a variable! 10 does not represent, (as PZ somehow manages to erroneously theorize despite it being explained right in my post), one's actual SMV at any given age, but rather one's MAXIMAL SMV at any given age. And as for the idea that varying subjective values cannot be utilized by the market to produce an average net, well, this betrays an ignorance of basic economics that borders on the complete.

Having been overweight, lonely, and unattractive throughout his adolescence and young adulthood, PZ is entirely familiar with the concept of Sexual Market Value. What does it mean? It means why the pretty girls in high school and college never had any interest in him. And he knows that perfectly well, otherwise he wouldn't be complaining about the ethics of judging people's worth by something that is a meaningless fiction. No one cares about meaningless fictions, but most people care a great deal about how others judge their SMV.

As for the "scientific repugnance", PZ is remarkably unobservant if he is going to stand by his insistence that there is no way to assess the SMV of an individual except to look up their age on the chart. Does he truly find it hard to assess the changing SMV of the same individual pictured at 5, at 25, and at 85?  Does he really believe anyone needs a chart to determine which of the three individuals pictured has the lower SMV?

The fact of the matter is that PZ has no understanding whatsoever of Game. He is a fairly typical Gamma male, constantly trying to make sense of a universe that strikes him as unfair by viewing it through a reality-warping Gamma delusion filter.

All Rollo's chart is meant to be is a graphic representation of the observable and the obvious. The average woman's maximal SMV peaks at a younger age than the average man's and subsequently declines faster. This means that women are advised to make different decisions on a different timescale than men if they wish to take maximum advantage of their attractiveness to the opposite sex.

Posted in: trainwreck