Review Detail
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"It just Did Not Shake up my View of the World"
Overall rating
7.9
Effectiveness
8.0
Ease of Implementation
8.0
Innovativeness
7.0
Packaging/ Customer Service
8.0
Value for Money
8.0
Reviewed by PhilosopherKing
March 28, 2007
March 28, 2007
The Good
Now for intermediate to advanced guys, OTOH, I think this book fills in some very important specific knowledge gaps. I look at VAH as analogous to presenting the fundamental axioms of, say, Quantum Mechanics, and the MB as working out, and experimentally verifying, the most important applications of the model. The section on phone game is a great example of this. What exactly do you when you hit her voice mail anyway? The great Tyler Durden himself said that phone game was hard just starting from first principles. In MB we can see that a ton of work has gone into FT'ing and presenting solid phone game strategy.
Other chapters with great specific advice were the comfort, dating, seduction, and relationship chapters. Just by looking at the number of pages devoted to these subjects in VAH, you can see that not enough was specifically known about these subjects at the time. Needless to say, given how obviously critical these subjects are, MB makes a great contribution by filling in our knowledge there.
Also, the discussion on flaking was excellent. It nice summarizes what it took me forever to learn by raw experimentation: If she flakes, do nothing about it. MB presents a solid model of why to do nothing: Namely because she just did not care enough about the whole matter to big with. Proof: if she did care she won't have flaked! This is typical of great specific, practical, and concise advise that the book is made of.
The Bad
For newbies, I think the problem here is that there just isn't the right tone, emphasis, or information to shake them out of their AFC ways. The book does not go into much detail about why "nice guy" does not work. It does not mention "shit tests", frame control, negs, IODs and, other subects potentially unsavory to the mainstream in much detail. I think AFCs really need to be shocked and awed, and they need to have a better model of why what they are doing is not working if they are to change their behavior. MB is not the book to provide that.
I also do not think it is a good idea to shun routines for newbies. Here the author might have forgotten that some of us newbies, were, literally completely terrified to talk to women back in our AFC days and were completely clueless as to what to talk to them about. Just surviving 1 minutes in a set was a big accomplishment in those days!
I finished reading Magic Bullets (MB) last night.
Overall, MB is a very good follow up to the VAH: IF you have already read the VAH and your game is at an intermediate to advanced level. However, I do not think MB is the best book for newbies to start with. By contrast, for intermediate to advanced players, I think that although MB is very good it is not revolutionary.
MB fills in some knowledge gaps, often in very important areas, it gives you an aha or two, but, at the same time, it will not fundamentally alter your perception of the world, the way that, something like Attraction Isn't a Choice, VAH, or The Art of Seduction does the first time you read it. MB did not leave me with the same oddly disturbed feeling that most works of genius do. The only thing that distrubed me was the fear that perhaps there are no profound theoretical breakthroughs to come in this domain of knowledge.
Now, although the specific information contained in the book is excellent, given the very high price tag ($68!) I guess I was hoping for some truly profound theoretical breakthroughs:
New deep psychological insights, or, perhaps, even a completely new model. This book does not contain those. Now, maybe that's just because there really aren't any magic bullets, and at this point, for us guys who have been in the community a year or two, the future is just about ironing out specific practical problems. Maybe. But I am skeptical. My instincts tell me that there are still new deep magical insights waiting to be discovered (remember the magic of the "neg"?) and new powerful models waiting to be created.
For me the book just did not shake up my view of the world and was not daring enough with new ideas to make it to my life changing list. Nevertheless, I still consider it a must have for all specific practical problems it provides answers too. Thus, I will give this product an 8 out of 10.
Overall, MB is a very good follow up to the VAH: IF you have already read the VAH and your game is at an intermediate to advanced level. However, I do not think MB is the best book for newbies to start with. By contrast, for intermediate to advanced players, I think that although MB is very good it is not revolutionary.
MB fills in some knowledge gaps, often in very important areas, it gives you an aha or two, but, at the same time, it will not fundamentally alter your perception of the world, the way that, something like Attraction Isn't a Choice, VAH, or The Art of Seduction does the first time you read it. MB did not leave me with the same oddly disturbed feeling that most works of genius do. The only thing that distrubed me was the fear that perhaps there are no profound theoretical breakthroughs to come in this domain of knowledge.
Now, although the specific information contained in the book is excellent, given the very high price tag ($68!) I guess I was hoping for some truly profound theoretical breakthroughs:
New deep psychological insights, or, perhaps, even a completely new model. This book does not contain those. Now, maybe that's just because there really aren't any magic bullets, and at this point, for us guys who have been in the community a year or two, the future is just about ironing out specific practical problems. Maybe. But I am skeptical. My instincts tell me that there are still new deep magical insights waiting to be discovered (remember the magic of the "neg"?) and new powerful models waiting to be created.
For me the book just did not shake up my view of the world and was not daring enough with new ideas to make it to my life changing list. Nevertheless, I still consider it a must have for all specific practical problems it provides answers too. Thus, I will give this product an 8 out of 10.
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