My friend, my original post is there for you to read carefully any time you should you find the need to do so :). Heck i’ll repost it.
Pertinent parts bolded for your reading pleasure.
Let me point out that i’m not playing the game of deeming all less attractive people to a life in misery. That would be bullshit; any individual can overcome the hardest obstacles. But i do think it is obvious that bad looks constitutes one big fat obstacle.
Now is the time you should pay attention to the “intuitive” qualifier in my post. I would be interested in reading that survey though, if you’ll find a link.
At some point in life? I remember quite a few from growing up.
No I’d agree that the extremely ugly are about as common as the extremely beautiful. But had you been born one, I’m sure you’d realise that the extremes count to. And from there on i’d suggest it’s a sliding scale in impact of happiness-likelihood.
Is that a fact now? I suppose they measured it with that fancy happiness-probing system you and I have heard so much about lately.
Either way, that information gets it’s anecdotal quality from the fact that we are suprised to hear that he died a happy man. And that is precisely because we intuitively feel that it is unlikely that he died a happy man.
If you were to chose now: would you rather grow up good-looking or ugly? Rather with a charming personality or a weirdo? Are you being honest now?
(Because I am in reality God, and I’m making it so… Now! ;))
OK then, allow me to rephrase it the way I understand your post:
“It is common sense that beautiful people have a better chance of being happy.”
Since you predicated “Intuitive fact” with “Higher statistical chance” then if the first is false, then too will the second.
It is not intuitive nor a fact that beautiful people become happy. It is a fact that they seem happy. They are afterall creatures of appearance. Beautiful people must keep up appearances, but all physical beauty is fleeting. So Beautiful people make great efforts to keep beautiful and they are fighting an ever losing battle. How can anyone have a higher statistical chance of being happy following that course of action?
Common sense isnt. neither is intuitive fact.
Oh. and we know for a fact that Joseph Carey Merrick died a happy man because he said so right before dying. That you were surprised by that fact makes your intuition wrong. Bill gates aint one of the handsomest man in the world, I can “intuitively” say that he dont give a damn about his looks. Albert Einstein, Stephan Hawkins, Edison…no contenders in any beauty contest. All happy with the work they do and their work is their life.
In other words, you hang too much emphasis on outward appearance. The fact that a person is happy doesnt depend on whether or not he or she is breautiful or ugly, its what they do that is more important.
Why don’t you not tell me how to act and stop being so sensitive. No one is insulting you.
But that is a value that does not directly benefit the company and is thus wasted unless it is a position where physical appearance is important. Let me give you an example: I am considering hiring a pretty engineer. According to your theory, she should be able to command a higher salary because she pretties up the office (much like a painting or plant). What tangible benefit will I receive from hiring this person over her troglodite equivalent? Is her “pretty premium” going to be offset by increased productivity of the team or would I be better off using that premium to hire a more experienced ugly engineer? In this case, being attractive is a not-critical attribute for this job, much like being an Olympic skier or a master painter. I’m not hiring someone to join the ski team, paint pictures or look pretty.
Also, how distracting is it to have a super-hot girl in the office? Maybe I don’t want to hire someone who is going to distract a bunch of date-starved guys from their work.
That is not to say that physical appearance is not important for some jobs. There are shallow people out there and sex sells. If hiring a pretty person will help sell those widgets, then whatever.
There’s a Zoolander or an Al Bundy joke in there somewhere but for now it escapes me.
YosemiteBabe, I have always felt the way you do: the “lookers” get all the breaks, have NO IDEA that they are getting breaks because of their looks, and often (not always–see Jack@ss above) are astounded when the perks stop coming as they pass 30, and become desperate to regain the blush of their youth.
Interestingly–I’m turning 40 soon, and have no problem with aging. Botox? Not a chance! As I have never experienced the “beauty perk,” I don’t have the deep regret about losing it that the aging beauties often have.
Now that’s something to think about–they have the perks in youth, sure, but we have a much more comfortable aging process, don’t we? And since the gorgeous ones start to freak about mid-thirties, we have a LOT more time to be happy and self-confident. Maybe it all works out after all!
I don’t see how “nobody is simply ‘beautiful’ objectively and in every way,” makes true the statement that “beauty is a function of…non-beautiful things.” Paige Davis has an incredible smile. It is not made more beautiful by the fact that she has bad hair.
I’m not a libertarian, so this sort of market complacency doesn’t sit well with me. Additionally, it seems that society has already worked out that payment problem by means of lookism. Maybe I should be a libertarian after all. :smack:
I think it is an interesting idea. Unfortunately I only have so much energy and had to pare down the scope of the argument as it naturally expands. I’m taking it as given that human beauty is a net benefit, though it is theoretically possible that it is a net loss. I just googled for “beauty productivity” and got this absract: NBER Working Paper No. w5366* which notes that the authors can’t “determine whether this [male attorneys’ probability of attaining partnership being greater with greater beauty] is because clients discriminate or because better-looking lawyers are able to obtain greater pecuniary gains for their clients.” Ha! Not very decisive at all. Regardless, it is a good question, but one that I just don’t have the energy to address.
Your breathing creates an externality that is of benefit for the farmer. Inasmuch as your exhalations create a net increase in human welfare, you do have a debatable claim to enjoy some of the external benefits of your respiration. In this case, you may have an even greater claim since the farmer is benefitting commercially from your largesse. You know the bit about whose apple is it if A’s apple tree drops apples on to B’s lawn? Of course, his plants create O[sub]2[/sub], which you benefit from, so maybe those cancel out.
Regardless, if we avoid BlackKnight’s question about whether beauty is a net gain, the state of being beautiful creates a positive externality. It is a benefit that does not accrue to the one creating it. It is reasonable to ask if this is fair, if something should be done about it, and if the crude but extant solution isn’t a closer approximation to fairness than would obtain absent that solution.
Is beauty that easy to obtain? Using Paige Davis from above as an example, her body is amazing. She works out for an hour and a half per day, and evidently she absolutely hates it. “But you’ve go to do it if you want any kind of body at all.” Even though olympic atheletes work their butts off, it is still true that if they had different genes or different upbringings all that work wouldn’t mean anything. An olympic ski champion once said, “90% of your muscle is in your head.” And even though a beautiful person has much to thank in her genes or upbringing, it is still true that keeping in shape and taking care of one’s self requires effort and self-discipline. Your co-worker may not work as hard as an olympic athelete to have that nice butt, but she’s not winning any gold medals either.
You are so right! I guess it all balances out. I don’t feel that desperate, “What’s going on?!?!” astonishment that some aging beauties do. It’s actually gotten better for me as I age. When I was 18 I had bad skin. It’s a lot clearer now. I do want to lose weight, but at least now I have a less horrible attitude about my weight. (When I was 18, I bought into the “I’m fat so I must be worthless” myth.)
I do and don’t feel sorry for the aging beauties who are just now understanding what the rest of us learned a long time ago.
I do feel sorry for them because on one level, it’s hard not to. It must be a shock. I don’t feel sorry for them on another level because they’d have to be pretty damned oblivious to not realize sooner that there’s more to life than looks, and that the world really isn’t obligated to bend over backwards for them. (And that one day soon, as they age more, the world will officially stop bending over backwards for them. Oh. Boo hoo hoo. The world is no longer their oyster. Sucks to be them.)
Oh, indeed. The beauties who also have cultivated other interests and hobbies (one of my sisters is kinda like this) will have a better time of it. This sister has lamented that the admiring whistles and looks from men have decreased lately (and I’m sure all of you can feel the sympathy oozing from every pore of me about that ;)) but she’s pretty well grounded, with many interests, hobbies, and is not too vain (she had her bad skin and “fat” phase too). But for the other beauties, who never quite cultivated a rich set of interests and personality traits? They indeed must worry now.
Me, I just look forward to more time with my art, pottery, and photography as I age. Nobody cares how old or ugly you are if you do art, pottery or photography!
I personally find the very idea that some people deserve better things in life, based on looks, to be on the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. I also find it funny, that in our society, there are a lot of people out there who’s bodies are not completely natural so, that would to say that if you screw around with the way you look, you could be one of the popular ones? What is this, high school? If you have any inch of intelligence, you should understand that looks are not the most important thing about a person. I don’t even understand how this idea could even come up, oh wait a minute, yes I can. We live in a world, where looks are placed above things like intelligence, personality, and the like. What a sad, sad time this is.
msmith: A lot of good-looking people are not necessarily vain, and have other skills. My sister is one of them.
But to the ones who never saw the need to develop other skills, and who have enjoyed the perks of their beauty as if it was an entitlement—well, no sympathy for them when the perks taper off.
I know this is a bit OT Yosemitebabe but what does your Seattle friend do for a living and why does he have to be around such superficial assholes who belittle him just because his appearance is less-than-godlike?
I’m sorry to be rude, but please take your opinions here. This is for argumentation, which means looking into the premises and seeing if the conclusions follow. I know lookism seems stupid, that’s why I opened this thread: to pull a counterintuitive conclusion from reasonable assumptions and see if it can stand the test of the attacks. I’d love for you to pick apart my argument. Just coming in and saying that it’s stupid without any reason or explanation just tells me that I must be right. (Which is a scary thought.)
How do you know that? More importantly, how can you separate her desired self-image from the culture in which she lives? Who knows how much of her desired self-image is a result of cultural pressures? What we know for sure is that she works really hard for her body and that she probably gets lookist rewards for that effort.
You really had me set up for an epiphany. Unfortunately I don’t find it very compelling. First, I’m not that convinced that beauty is a function of mood. Second, I’m not convinced that mood is a function non-beauty. Third, if those really are functions, I’m not so sure that they’re very significant is affecting the beauty perception. This is important since your original claim was:
But if that is true, then how beautiful Jacquetta Wheeler is will be a function of how attractive the other women in the show are. Indeed, she should look downright plain when on the runway during a fashion show. But she’s not – she’s amazing. I’ve watched several episodes of Fashiontrance on Style and she has knocked my socks off whether she follows a beautiful model or an ugly one. Would she be more beautiful if she were surrounded by a bunch of really average people? I simply can’t think of any situation where something was made more beautiful by virtue of being juxtaposed against something ugly.
Another problem that I know from experience is that if you take multiple functions like that and put them together, it is often not obvious whether the outcome moves one way or the other – and that’s even if they are specified! Looking at it intuitively, would Jacquetta be more beautiful if she were surrounded by beautiful things or ugly things? On the one hand, she suffers by comparison if she’s standing next to the Grand Canyon as opposed to a cess pool. So proximate beauty should maker her less lovely. However, looking at the Grand Canyon might put one in a more receptive mood than a cess pool. Hence, proximate beauty should make her more lovely. Which one do we choose? Is there anyway to quantify this and crank through the math for a result? If not, then perhaps the contradictory intuitions are analogous to Galileo’s critique of Aristotle’s analysis of falling bodies.
I’ve been reading the various posts in this thread, in a particularly free moment, and all I have to say is PLEASE. Before you all embark on your freewheeling love affair with mediocrity, Imagine what your average, day to day existence would be without competence, brilliance and beauty. Beauty isn’t solely about the physical form— it’s in anything done extremely well. Would you want to live in a building constructed by mediocre plumbers and electricians? Would you want to… Agh, as I’m typing this I realize that the day to day experience of mediocrity must be maddening and is sure to cause a lot of suffering… And that’s where the evil part comes in… beauty, whether it be physical, mental, or otherwise is not a guarantee against a life of suffering, but my instincts lead me to hope, if not believe, that the possession of it in any form goes towards not only relieving it’s bearer of some of the potential weight of life, but also potentially, go towards relieving the suffering of mankind in general. Beauty, no matter how rare, points towards the possibility or potentiality of a better existence. Any person who begrudged this is simply admitting their own inability to wish for something more than their own personal happiness. I am a beautiful woman, and trust me, the world is a difficult place to live in for the beautiful. That is why we congregate in groups, certain cities. That is why we can be cold and distant. what people want to. “do” for a beautiful person often is simply what they want the beautiful person to do for THEM… somehow make up for the inevitable differences we all experience. And finally, if you can not find it in your heart to appreciate beauty, then perhaps you should consider leaving the planet earth— which without the ugliness of people has always been incomprehensibly, outlandishly even profanely, beautiful.
Quite to the contrary. I improve every day, and am far more handsome and charming now than I was seven years ago. But I recognize that I am an outlier.
I do want to lose weight, but at least now I have a less horrible attitude about my weight. (When I was 18, I bought into the “I’m fat so I must be worthless” myth.)