Is being fashionable optimal? When it comes to fashion, it seems apparent that the main goal is to make an impression on others, so it seems reasonable to conform ones fashion to what other people call fashionable. However, we also know that there are plenty of examples of cases where people’s expressed preferences do not match their actual preferences. Is there a compelling reason to think that expressed fashion preferences are actually those that give the best impression? Does anyone know of studies on this? Does anyone have any anecdotes one way or the other?
(Here I always mean ‘fashionable’ with respect to the intended audience, not with respect to some ‘high art’ sophisticates.)
This question obviously generalizes to a wide variety of status-motivated choices. Does reading ‘fashionable’ books actually make a better impression on someone than reading, say, a well-loved and popular but ‘childish’ book that the audience is likely to have fond memories of? Does driving a nice car give a better impression than driving a car similar to the Jones’s?
fashionable isn’t a two-place word http://lesswrong.com/lw/ro/2place_and_1place_words/ but you can treat it like one if you instead of “fashionable” you use the word “appealing to”. Things that are fashionable are appealing to more people on average but once you realize that you’re optimizing for being appealing to someone you can tune things to whoever that is.
Unless I misunderstand you, then this is what I meant to address with my parenthetical statement. Of course we must take the audience into account. The question is whether the audience’s expressed preferences (ie. ‘fashionable’ meaning doing what’s popular to that audience, not meaning what is most effective wrt that audience) matches what actually gives the best impression.
In the past, I had implicitly assumed that these two coincided (after all, if you want someone to prefer something you should do what they think they prefer, right?) but I just noticed that I the case isn’t closed, so to speak.
Is being fashionable optimal? When it comes to fashion, it seems apparent that the main goal is to make an impression on others, so it seems reasonable to conform ones fashion to what other people call fashionable. However, we also know that there are plenty of examples of cases where people’s expressed preferences do not match their actual preferences. Is there a compelling reason to think that expressed fashion preferences are actually those that give the best impression? Does anyone know of studies on this? Does anyone have any anecdotes one way or the other?
(Here I always mean ‘fashionable’ with respect to the intended audience, not with respect to some ‘high art’ sophisticates.)
This question obviously generalizes to a wide variety of status-motivated choices. Does reading ‘fashionable’ books actually make a better impression on someone than reading, say, a well-loved and popular but ‘childish’ book that the audience is likely to have fond memories of? Does driving a nice car give a better impression than driving a car similar to the Jones’s?
fashionable isn’t a two-place word http://lesswrong.com/lw/ro/2place_and_1place_words/ but you can treat it like one if you instead of “fashionable” you use the word “appealing to”. Things that are fashionable are appealing to more people on average but once you realize that you’re optimizing for being appealing to someone you can tune things to whoever that is.
Unless I misunderstand you, then this is what I meant to address with my parenthetical statement. Of course we must take the audience into account. The question is whether the audience’s expressed preferences (ie. ‘fashionable’ meaning doing what’s popular to that audience, not meaning what is most effective wrt that audience) matches what actually gives the best impression.
In the past, I had implicitly assumed that these two coincided (after all, if you want someone to prefer something you should do what they think they prefer, right?) but I just noticed that I the case isn’t closed, so to speak.