That’s a good question. I am hard pressed to think of any nerd females I’ve known well enough to observe them in any detail, who I would actually consider non-pretty. So to rephrase the test: If you go to nerd parties and male nerds who don’t already know you seem to gravitate in your direction and then continue to be there despite not having an obvious personal stake in the ongoing conversation, this is because you are pretty.
Also, short of actually having half your face burned off a la Two-Face in the Batman series, being visibly smart and funny will boost your apparent prettiness by quite a lot.
I am hard pressed to think of any nerd females I’ve known well enough to observe them in any detail, who I would actually consider non-pretty.
I’m torn about saying this because this kind of message probably good for everyone’s self-esteem and I think nerdy girls on average should be more confident, but… what’s with all these pretty nerds? Is your standard for pretty relatively low or are you just really lucky? In my experience and in common stereotype nerds of both genders are, on average, less physically attractive than the rest of the population, once you control for socio-economic conditions that influence things like diet, hygiene and exercise. Good looking people tend to end up on anti-nerd life paths earlier in life, less good looking people have less of their time taken up by socializing leaving them with more time for nerdy activities and more incentive to develop other aspects of themselves (since they can’t coast on physical attractiveness). I’ve consistently found that less physically attractive people are more intellectually interesting.
This doesn’t mean your advice is bad- nerdy girls are awesome and totally are capable of getting together with lots of nerdy guys. But I don’t think we need to mythologize the nerdy female this way and it seems a bit patronizing to pretend the self-assessment of nerdy women has no grounding in reality. Just like how not everyone gets to be smart, not everyone gets to be physically attractive.
Your standards are probably higher than mine? As far as I can tell, most women are attractive. I can think of ones who aren’t but they seem like exceptions. You can kinda see why it would work that way.
I accept your correction, albeit not literally “fertile age” (many over-40s are attractive, I admit not over-80s). I also note that I personally do not seem much sexually attracted to some younger female rationalists that seem to attract other males in the community—my “too young” threshold for sexual attraction seems set to a higher age than average. (Note which I should not have to include: This is not the same as not liking said women! You can like somebody without wanting to sleep with them.)
Young female rationalists, plural? There’s more than one of us? :P
In seriousness, I suspect that the definition of “attractive” is being used quite widely here. When someone talks about a woman being pretty to look at, they’re probably talking about something mildly different from her being aesthetically pleasing—which is, again, different from said woman being conventionally attractive—and all of these are in totally different ballparks from a woman being happy and pleasant and that doing halo-effect things to her prettiness.
ETA: using the word “attractive” to refer to all these things feels like it could lead to a “My subjective experience is realer than yours” argument (‘Parsley is delicious!’ ‘No it’s not!’), or a signalling war (‘I have good standards!’ ‘Well, I have realistic ones!’)
my “too young” threshold for sexual attraction seems set to a higher age than average
Mine too (at least if “average” is meant among males my age, i.e. in their middle twenties), but I’d also say that there’s more variance among older women than younger women: I find almost all 18-year-olds pretty-but-not-extraordinary, whereas I find lots of 30-year-olds either gorgeous or ugly.
I’d agree with your observations, except: is it wise to control for socio-economic conditions? “Well, [he/she] is gorgeous, brilliant and kind, but that’s probably all because of being born within a family with positive attitudes toward physical and mental fitness, being given the free time and economic wherewithal to self-improve, and being placed in peer groups that would encourage such improvement, so I guess it doesn’t really count.”
Life doesn’t work like a D&D stat Point Buy system—although you’re right that it’s sometimes similarly possible to trade INT for CHA or vice versa, that doesn’t make them inversely correlated. Some people are lucky enough to have more of both to begin with, and many people are lucky enough to grow up with influences that increase both.
On the other hand, even physical beauty is partially subjective. Maybe Eliezer’s perceptions of it are subject to some sort of halo effect? The “known well enough to observe them in any detail” caveat seems to suggest a factor in that direction. Aside from effects of fashion, lighting, etc., real physical beauty is a superficial thing that you can judge with a glance, not something that only becomes apparent after the more important characteristics have shown themselves.
Weirdly enough, I know someone who had their face seriously damaged (albeit not to the ludicrous extent shown by Two-Face) and he reported that it actually made him much more sexually successful, since it gave him an instant conversation starter with just about anyone and the story of how he got it painted him in a very good light.
I think that even in the current cultural context one should still expect the impact of “battle scars” on physical attractiveness to depend strongly on the gender of the person displaying them.
A good point; that said, a surprisingly large number of heterosexual or bisexual males I know are very much attracted to signs of “toughness” in females, including scars, fighting ability, etc.
I always counsel young males with still-healing injuries that will leave scars to think of good stories. As for females, most straight men I know are attracted to signs of toughness that don’t otherwise confound the usual health-and-fertility signs (skin and hair), so scars might not always work. But anecdotes from LW commenters are not likely to be representative of the general conversation. Many women I know in SoCal that have impressive degrees from awesome schools hide their credentials for fear of scaring off men, and are surprise than I am surprised. That’s still the world we live in.
Even if you do have half your face burned off a la Two-Face in the Batman series, being visibly smart and funny will boost your apparent prettiness by quite a lot.
I find that most people have some things attractive about them. If they are interesting and kindly disposed toward me, it is not hard to focus on the attractive features, and blur out the less attractive features. It works very much like the affective death spiral, but with no real negative consequences.
Once you find enough things attractive about someone, you enter the spiral, and you begin to notice the very attractive square line of Harvey’s non-burned jaw, and just don’t even notice the scary skeletor burn face anymore, or you might even find little parts of it that start to look interesting to you.
Well, this all assumes a counter-fictional Harvey that doesn’t go fully dark-side, or recovers at some point to something like his former moral and mental self.
In my experience, women generally much more naturally focus on good features and ignore average ones, though men do too. That said, I dated a hand model with a lazy eye...never saw nicer hands in my life! The eye was a bad feature from pretty much any human perspective, it’s not logically impossible for a person to have all their features be such features.
Also, I think rats are adorable. Any other rat lovers out there?
There’s possibly even someone out there who likes “<X” as a favicon more than “Lw”. Outlandish, I know, but there’s probably one person out there.
And now there is a favicon that is worse than all favicons that have come before. Clearly we are approaching the capability to have a recursively self-worsening favicon. Huzzah!
Rat lover here. They’re adorable little creatures, and have distinct personalities and quirks. The only shortcoming of rats is that they don’t live that long, so you’re having to deal with the death of your cherished little friends every 2 or 3 years or so.
For anybody who likes rats or is just curious to learn more about them, I highly recommend the most awesome ratbehavior.org
Seconding this from direct experience—and I would also add that what people find attractive is much more subjective than is commonly taken for granted.
That’s a good question. I am hard pressed to think of any nerd females I’ve known well enough to observe them in any detail, who I would actually consider non-pretty. So to rephrase the test: If you go to nerd parties and male nerds who don’t already know you seem to gravitate in your direction and then continue to be there despite not having an obvious personal stake in the ongoing conversation, this is because you are pretty.
Also, short of actually having half your face burned off a la Two-Face in the Batman series, being visibly smart and funny will boost your apparent prettiness by quite a lot.
I’m torn about saying this because this kind of message probably good for everyone’s self-esteem and I think nerdy girls on average should be more confident, but… what’s with all these pretty nerds? Is your standard for pretty relatively low or are you just really lucky? In my experience and in common stereotype nerds of both genders are, on average, less physically attractive than the rest of the population, once you control for socio-economic conditions that influence things like diet, hygiene and exercise. Good looking people tend to end up on anti-nerd life paths earlier in life, less good looking people have less of their time taken up by socializing leaving them with more time for nerdy activities and more incentive to develop other aspects of themselves (since they can’t coast on physical attractiveness). I’ve consistently found that less physically attractive people are more intellectually interesting.
This doesn’t mean your advice is bad- nerdy girls are awesome and totally are capable of getting together with lots of nerdy guys. But I don’t think we need to mythologize the nerdy female this way and it seems a bit patronizing to pretend the self-assessment of nerdy women has no grounding in reality. Just like how not everyone gets to be smart, not everyone gets to be physically attractive.
Your standards are probably higher than mine? As far as I can tell, most women are attractive. I can think of ones who aren’t but they seem like exceptions. You can kinda see why it would work that way.
Did you actually mean ‘most women’, rather than (say) ‘most women of fertile age’?
I accept your correction, albeit not literally “fertile age” (many over-40s are attractive, I admit not over-80s). I also note that I personally do not seem much sexually attracted to some younger female rationalists that seem to attract other males in the community—my “too young” threshold for sexual attraction seems set to a higher age than average. (Note which I should not have to include: This is not the same as not liking said women! You can like somebody without wanting to sleep with them.)
Young female rationalists, plural? There’s more than one of us? :P
In seriousness, I suspect that the definition of “attractive” is being used quite widely here. When someone talks about a woman being pretty to look at, they’re probably talking about something mildly different from her being aesthetically pleasing—which is, again, different from said woman being conventionally attractive—and all of these are in totally different ballparks from a woman being happy and pleasant and that doing halo-effect things to her prettiness.
ETA: using the word “attractive” to refer to all these things feels like it could lead to a “My subjective experience is realer than yours” argument (‘Parsley is delicious!’ ‘No it’s not!’), or a signalling war (‘I have good standards!’ ‘Well, I have realistic ones!’)
Mine too (at least if “average” is meant among males my age, i.e. in their middle twenties), but I’d also say that there’s more variance among older women than younger women: I find almost all 18-year-olds pretty-but-not-extraordinary, whereas I find lots of 30-year-olds either gorgeous or ugly.
Agreed. Also notable is that at least my mind conflates “funny/intelligent/interesting” with “attractive”, entirely involuntarily.
[comment deleted]
I’d agree with your observations, except: is it wise to control for socio-economic conditions? “Well, [he/she] is gorgeous, brilliant and kind, but that’s probably all because of being born within a family with positive attitudes toward physical and mental fitness, being given the free time and economic wherewithal to self-improve, and being placed in peer groups that would encourage such improvement, so I guess it doesn’t really count.”
Life doesn’t work like a D&D stat Point Buy system—although you’re right that it’s sometimes similarly possible to trade INT for CHA or vice versa, that doesn’t make them inversely correlated. Some people are lucky enough to have more of both to begin with, and many people are lucky enough to grow up with influences that increase both.
On the other hand, even physical beauty is partially subjective. Maybe Eliezer’s perceptions of it are subject to some sort of halo effect? The “known well enough to observe them in any detail” caveat seems to suggest a factor in that direction. Aside from effects of fashion, lighting, etc., real physical beauty is a superficial thing that you can judge with a glance, not something that only becomes apparent after the more important characteristics have shown themselves.
I see another, rather obvious interpretation given the clause “well enough to observe them in any detail”.
Pretty is an intensely halo-ed trait, and people find those they know well more attractive than strangers.
Weirdly enough, I know someone who had their face seriously damaged (albeit not to the ludicrous extent shown by Two-Face) and he reported that it actually made him much more sexually successful, since it gave him an instant conversation starter with just about anyone and the story of how he got it painted him in a very good light.
I think that even in the current cultural context one should still expect the impact of “battle scars” on physical attractiveness to depend strongly on the gender of the person displaying them.
A good point; that said, a surprisingly large number of heterosexual or bisexual males I know are very much attracted to signs of “toughness” in females, including scars, fighting ability, etc.
I always counsel young males with still-healing injuries that will leave scars to think of good stories. As for females, most straight men I know are attracted to signs of toughness that don’t otherwise confound the usual health-and-fertility signs (skin and hair), so scars might not always work. But anecdotes from LW commenters are not likely to be representative of the general conversation. Many women I know in SoCal that have impressive degrees from awesome schools hide their credentials for fear of scaring off men, and are surprise than I am surprised. That’s still the world we live in.
If I were feeling super snarky I’d say “That’s SoCal”. But your point is well-taken.
Even if you do have half your face burned off a la Two-Face in the Batman series, being visibly smart and funny will boost your apparent prettiness by quite a lot.
I find that most people have some things attractive about them. If they are interesting and kindly disposed toward me, it is not hard to focus on the attractive features, and blur out the less attractive features. It works very much like the affective death spiral, but with no real negative consequences.
Once you find enough things attractive about someone, you enter the spiral, and you begin to notice the very attractive square line of Harvey’s non-burned jaw, and just don’t even notice the scary skeletor burn face anymore, or you might even find little parts of it that start to look interesting to you.
Well, this all assumes a counter-fictional Harvey that doesn’t go fully dark-side, or recovers at some point to something like his former moral and mental self.
And no matter who you are, there’s someone out there who thinks you’re hot.
(while talking about the Harry Potter movies, before she’d started on MoR)
Erin: …I did like the fluffy things, though.
Me: Fluffy things?
Erin: I forget what they’re called.
Me: (thinks for a bit...)
Me: Dementors? The flying corpses in shrouds?
Erin: Yeah! Dementors are cute.
Me: Puppies are cute. Dementors are not cute.
Erin: Puppies are food.
Me: Help me, I’ve been shipped to Bellatrix.
Are there any paperclip-maximizer-lovers? How about paperclip-maximizer’s-humanoid-robot-lovers?
In my experience, women generally much more naturally focus on good features and ignore average ones, though men do too. That said, I dated a hand model with a lazy eye...never saw nicer hands in my life! The eye was a bad feature from pretty much any human perspective, it’s not logically impossible for a person to have all their features be such features.
Also, I think rats are adorable. Any other rat lovers out there?
There’s possibly even someone out there who likes “<X” as a favicon more than “Lw”. Outlandish, I know, but there’s probably one person out there.
I find this hard to believe.
I do exist!
And now there is a favicon that is worse than all favicons that have come before. Clearly we are approaching the capability to have a recursively self-worsening favicon. Huzzah!
Rat lover here. They’re adorable little creatures, and have distinct personalities and quirks. The only shortcoming of rats is that they don’t live that long, so you’re having to deal with the death of your cherished little friends every 2 or 3 years or so.
For anybody who likes rats or is just curious to learn more about them, I highly recommend the most awesome ratbehavior.org
Rats are adorable. Disregarding fur texture, I’d be hard pressed to choose between a rat and a guinea pig, for cuteness.
Seconding this from direct experience—and I would also add that what people find attractive is much more subjective than is commonly taken for granted.