I don’t see why SilasBarta could not have merely said “female romantic biases”. We don’t talk about “useful halo effects”, after all. The extra modifier only makes sense if you assume the audience wants to pick up women.
I wouldn’t have used ‘biases’ either. That framing gives the wrong implications about where the actual ‘bias’ lays, conveying the impression that for some reason female attraction ‘should’ conform to some other ideal. I am more inclined to look at the bias that propagates the ideal.
Good point also. “Bias” should be reserved for predictable deviations from accurate estimates, while the concept doesn’t carry over here neatly. There are certainly biases in the sense that “negging you is not evidence that he’s higher status”, but then, women are not more “correct” for wanting high-status men, nor is it quite accurate to say that women consciously pursue status, which is only as true as saying “men want to spread their genes”.
Rather, evolution formed women’s minds with preferences that are imperfect detectors of status. A woman may thus only want an “attractive man [that I have a bond with]”, even knowing that the attractiveness is just an artifact of long-invalid built-in heuristics. (Just as men may merely want an “attractive woman”, even though the judgment uses heuristics irrelevant to gene propagation in the present day).
I agree. I don’t accept “biased” as a meaningful modifier to female subjective perceptions of male attractiveness. At most, bias could be ascribed to female perception about facts about men that might influence their perceptions of male attractiveness.
Perhaps:
I don’t see why SilasBarta could not have merely said “female romantic biases”. We don’t talk about “useful halo effects”, after all. The extra modifier only makes sense if you assume the audience wants to pick up women.
Edit: The above is apparently mistaken—SilasBarta’s correction.
I wouldn’t have used ‘biases’ either. That framing gives the wrong implications about where the actual ‘bias’ lays, conveying the impression that for some reason female attraction ‘should’ conform to some other ideal. I am more inclined to look at the bias that propagates the ideal.
Good point also. “Bias” should be reserved for predictable deviations from accurate estimates, while the concept doesn’t carry over here neatly. There are certainly biases in the sense that “negging you is not evidence that he’s higher status”, but then, women are not more “correct” for wanting high-status men, nor is it quite accurate to say that women consciously pursue status, which is only as true as saying “men want to spread their genes”.
Rather, evolution formed women’s minds with preferences that are imperfect detectors of status. A woman may thus only want an “attractive man [that I have a bond with]”, even knowing that the attractiveness is just an artifact of long-invalid built-in heuristics. (Just as men may merely want an “attractive woman”, even though the judgment uses heuristics irrelevant to gene propagation in the present day).
I agree. I don’t accept “biased” as a meaningful modifier to female subjective perceptions of male attractiveness. At most, bias could be ascribed to female perception about facts about men that might influence their perceptions of male attractiveness.
Well said!