Excellent point! You’ve placed yourself squarely in the mainstream which cannot believe that looks are not important. How could they not be important since everybody is making so much buzz about it!?!
Many people can not let go of their fear of being seen as losers for dating an ugly woman. (Sorry for the stark, emotional term “ugly”, but this is about emotion, after all.)
Those who can get over it, win.
Not “win” as in being seen as heros, but “win” as in knowing they’re doing the right thing and putting themselves in a happier and safer spot as those whose self-esteem depends on their mates’ looks.
PS: “I doubt very much that [you actually don’t care what people look like]” sounds a bit like Generalizing from one example ;-)
I’d like to point out that romantic and/or sexual relationships do tend to work better if the people are attracted to each other. Appearance plays a role in many peoples’ attractiveness functions. It’s difficult or perhaps impossible to intentionally change one’s attractiveness function, so this doesn’t indicate a personality flaw or moral failure. Optimizing for attractive appearance at the expense of other things might be a mistake*, but most people would do best if they at least satisfice for it.
I’m sure some people do weight appearance for signaling value when choosing a partner, but I don’t think it could be the only reason. Most people I have talked to about this say that appearances influence how attractive they find someone, and they don’t all agree on what they find attractive, even within the same social circles.
*I know that the chemical things that happen in the brain when a person is in love can make them like things about the other person that they would ordinarily be bothered by. I remember several times when I started finding a person much more visually attractive than I had when I’d first met them when other things changed (getting to know them better, etc.), and also finding strangers who looked like them slightly attractive. My attraction function is really weird, though, so this isn’t very strong evidence unless I see other people reporting the same experience.
more like generalizing from the example of every study I’ve ever read on appearance and how people treat and react to you. Why should I be immune to the biases everyone else has in regards to preferring to spend time and talk to people who are attractive?
You guys are treating “important” as a one-place word. It is perfectly possible that looks matter to drethelin (and to the supermajority of the population) but they don’t matter to RobertChange.
Excellent point! You’ve placed yourself squarely in the mainstream which cannot believe that looks are not important. How could they not be important since everybody is making so much buzz about it!?!
Many people can not let go of their fear of being seen as losers for dating an ugly woman. (Sorry for the stark, emotional term “ugly”, but this is about emotion, after all.)
Those who can get over it, win.
Not “win” as in being seen as heros, but “win” as in knowing they’re doing the right thing and putting themselves in a happier and safer spot as those whose self-esteem depends on their mates’ looks.
PS: “I doubt very much that [you actually don’t care what people look like]” sounds a bit like Generalizing from one example ;-)
I’d like to point out that romantic and/or sexual relationships do tend to work better if the people are attracted to each other. Appearance plays a role in many peoples’ attractiveness functions. It’s difficult or perhaps impossible to intentionally change one’s attractiveness function, so this doesn’t indicate a personality flaw or moral failure. Optimizing for attractive appearance at the expense of other things might be a mistake*, but most people would do best if they at least satisfice for it.
I’m sure some people do weight appearance for signaling value when choosing a partner, but I don’t think it could be the only reason. Most people I have talked to about this say that appearances influence how attractive they find someone, and they don’t all agree on what they find attractive, even within the same social circles.
*I know that the chemical things that happen in the brain when a person is in love can make them like things about the other person that they would ordinarily be bothered by. I remember several times when I started finding a person much more visually attractive than I had when I’d first met them when other things changed (getting to know them better, etc.), and also finding strangers who looked like them slightly attractive. My attraction function is really weird, though, so this isn’t very strong evidence unless I see other people reporting the same experience.
Data point: your final paragraph is an accurate description of my expercience as well.
Same here.
more like generalizing from the example of every study I’ve ever read on appearance and how people treat and react to you. Why should I be immune to the biases everyone else has in regards to preferring to spend time and talk to people who are attractive?
You guys are treating “important” as a one-place word. It is perfectly possible that looks matter to drethelin (and to the supermajority of the population) but they don’t matter to RobertChange.