> You are studying dating like it’s some sort of academic discipline.

Yep. It works for me. It works well.

> I think it’s mostly an emotional and even carnal physical thing.

This is covered by one of my cornerstones: meditation. Mindfulness meditation increases the insula. The insula maps emotional responses to body sensations. That was what I knew going into it. Then I did 43 days of 10 hour meditation. Going out of it, I understood equanimity, sensitivity to body sensations, craving, aversion, thought formation in response to sensations (and observing/experiencing having no free will), intellectual knowledge, behavioral knowledge, intuitive/emotional/tacit knowledge, the difference between ethics on an intellectual level vs knowing it on an emotional level (an ethical decision on an emotional level manifests as a form of pain). I learned a lot with meditation, much more than I'm describing. Combined with my own literature review on when intuition is reliable for giving accurate/correct ideas I also knew when/how to feel and trust my intuition. So the training guidelines were intellectual, the actual training was a strong experience in emotional growth. And that's how the intellect while being completely in the dark with emotions can help one to train their own emotions. It also gives a strong use-case for treating this as an academic discipline. The intellect gives the map, the emotional journey is walking through the territory.

It's the same like going to the gym. You do a pushup, you feel stuff. But you're also recording yourself for your form, and in that recording you give yourself intellectual critique. You try it again, in the recording you notice that you're making the same mistake. Now the intellect is noticing that despite your best effort, you made the same mistake. You try and try again. After the 5th try, you're not making that specific mistake in form anymore. Did the intellect help? No, it helped at the first and second try, the other few tries was you and your body just trying things out until you got to a different state that you gave you some solid footing. There's nothing intellectual about that, yet it sounds intellectual describing it in language like this. Make no mistake though, it isn't. Same with meditation and applying it to dating.

Because of meditation, I gained a lot of emotional/intuitive knowledge, I integrated it with my intellect to make the map way sharper.

Playfulness: also an emotional journey.

Studying positive psychology: an intellectual journey.

Practicing elements of positive psychology: an emotional journey. I am a pessimist by nature and trained myself to become an optimist since it's the empirical choice to make if you want to be happier in life (and have no job that is related to security in any way shape or form). Making that training choice? That's intellectual. Seeing that life is full of possibilities and experiencing that? Goosebumps over my body. Radiating that to people around me including my dates? That's just pure magic as they're feeding it back to you.

Travel: my biggest reason to travel is due to a sense in curiosity. My curiosity is both intellectual and emotional. But from a dating strategic standpoint it's mostly an intellectual decision.

> You mostly need to get out of your head and in touch with your body and emotions.

Meditation works. I'd change this to: you need to know when to be out of your head and in touch with your body and emotions. You also need to know when to be in your head and think strategically. Personally, when I'm alone: strategic thinking. When I'm with someone: mostly in my body/emotions and let the thinking go (mostly) - connecting with someone is indeed an inherently emotional experience.

> IMO pick up artists are mostly super awkward and non authentic seeming.

Yep

> The confidence is a thin veneer that falls short once the script runs out.

I wrote that I don't use scripts. Also read into that that not all pick up artists use scripts. Hell, I even told my entire method to my dates just after their date and told them why it works. I always got back: yep, makes sense, and it worked! By having a method that works even when you tell them (afterwards but upfront should also be possible) how it works and it still works then it's easy to be authentic. Being able to improv makes it easy to not run out of things to say.

The community runs deep into different sub-branches, most of which are unknown to the public eye. Using just standard media (or standard forums even) runs the risk of stereotyping pickup artists just as easily as one stereotypes a hacker as a criminal or a feminist as a man hating person - all these stereotypes are a mischaracterization of the complexity that these subcultures have. I should know, I've been deep into all 3 of them. Also, for clarification: I'm not a pickup artist and never was one. I am however a feminist (in the gender equality sense of the word) and am definitely a hacker (in the curious about tech/the world sense of the word and sometimes breaking things to see how they work).

> I do what my instincts and body tell me to do with a partner, but was afraid and culturally conditioned not to do.

The women compatible with me are - like me - high in imagination and capable of holding their own intellectually.