Pretty gets money a lot faster with a lot less effort.
But yes, how ugly and how dumb matters.
Shagnasty This is the first time I have spit coffee over my monitor, well done sir.
Derrr! Brains over beauty, because with brains you can become financially successful and buy beauty via plastic surgery if you decide you want it that badly.
CanvasShoes, did you mean to say this:
Beauty over brains, because with beauty you can become financially successful and buy brains via education if you decide you want it that badly.
My answer to the OP: you need to quantify your measurements.
e.g. would you prefer to have an IQ of 115 with a hotornot score of 3 or an IQ of 85 with a hotornot score of 8?
(IQ normal curve Intelligence quotient - Wikipedia
hotornot: http://www.hotornot.com )
I would prefer the lower IQ and the better hotornot score. This is assuming that I would keep my hotornot high score over time.
P.S. I am out of touch. I just realized that hotornot has changed into a dating service.
We’ve seen your Doper pics and you’re not somewhere in the middle. Beauty and brains, the best of both worlds for you!
Smart and ugly.
I don’t want the world on a silver platter. I’m already an ugly girl, and the people who love me already love me for who I am, and I love them right back. I like where I am today, and I didn’t get here by being pretty. If I need to be pretty to impress somebody, then I really don’t want them in my life. Period. They’re too damned fickle. When I was young and pretty, once upon a time, the people I met were deeply unsatisfying and boring to deal with, and I desperately wanted to be away from them.
I got away, got married, grew fat and ugly, and am… happy! 
I’ve made better friends and forged stronger bonds with people who only know me as I am today. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
My vote is pretty and odd.
Smart and ugly.
Pretty doesn’t last forever but stupidity never dies.
It is hard being smart and ugly. Very few things are challenging enough to keep my attention for any sustained amount of time. TV programs quickly bore me. Hot chicks never check me out or are interested in hearing me tell them about physics, engineering or what ever it is that is on my mind at the moment.
Dumb and Hot would be a pleasant change of pace. Daytime television could hold my attention for hours. I would be amazed at the complexity TV game shows. Hot chicks would pay attention to me while I was telling them all about that time I read a book.
You mean, which do I give up? No way I’m giving up any of the mind that amuses me so much. I guess I lose some looks.
Now, I’ve already donated a chunk of brain matter to science, why didn’t it make me prettier?
Money can also buy plastic surgery.
I had this posed to me years ago as, “Smart, rich, or pretty?” I went with smart; if you’re smart you can get rich, and when you’re rich, you can buy pretty.
Smart has made my life easier than pretty has; I’d give up my looks before my brains.
In my younger years I thought of myself as smart and ugly (well, maybe not ugly, but not very attractive anyway). As I grew older I discovered I’m probably not as smart as I thought and probably better looking than I thought.
All in all, I’m happy with that.
In the OP, schoolkids were asked:"“If you could choose, would you prefer to be brilliant and ugly, or beautiful w/ a mental deficiency?” (Paraphrased, but that was the main point of the question)"
I notice here that a couple of the responses centered on “Choose” as choosing another person’s traits, rather than the “to prefer to be” as asked. Interesting.
I’d choose brilliant and ugly,now, from the point of middle age, being neither in reality. But, now I see my somewhat decent looks fading and shifting, and , femme, it’s something to deal with. “Ah, that bastard Gravity… Titties, I hardly knew ya…”
Because, well, that life of the mind is such great sustenance. If I hadn’t read and read and explored things when younger, I’d be left with this body shift with nothing to fall back on. I have an Aunt in So. Californisa to give a good example of how Not to Be. She was gorgeous, looked like Elizabeth Taylor; did all the right things for a gal at the time, Tri Delt at UCLA, married well, money, Vice President of Universal Studios. Then the mid life divorce, and, a whole barrage of plastic surgeries to keep the looks. Now, she looks awful, her face stretched to the max capacity, lips absurdly puffed, hair bleached, and extended, super skinny and trying to wear miniskirts into her 60’s.
Enough! It’s led to a litany of health problems. All she talks about is the problems of that once beautiful body, and how it’s now failing her. While using up money to recreate “youth” with surgery. Incredibly sad to me. Yep, she was beautiful, but not too smart.
A good mind can carry you on past the aging body to a nice state of wisdom before kicking the inevitable bucket. As a femme, I’d rather have the bucket full of thoughts and experience, instead of mirrored apparitions.
Smart and ugly. I’d probably be willing to take it to the very extreme as well–just a brain in a jar (and an ugly jar at that) that is smart enough to know the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
In my opinion, I think it would be easier to be dumb but pretty, as it seems to me, when your dumb, you tend to be clueless to the fact that you are unhappy. Smart, intelligent people seem to have the whole ‘tortured soul’ thing going on a lot more.
So, personally, I would much rather be in the dumb but pretty category, as I think I would be a much happier individual.
Although, reading this back, I may be making some unfair assumptions. So I hope this doesn’t make me a bad person to think this.
42 That was the easy part, the real trick is to figure out the question.
I’m already smart and ugly. Now all I need is to get rich so I can buy beauty for myself.
Well, I AM pretty and while I’m nowhere near dumb, I do tend to be ditzy sometimes. While I would LOVE to be a brainiac, I know very well that my looks and charm have fared me well in life and I wouldn’t change that. Something interesting: I loooovveee smart men, always have. The smarter and geekier, the better. Weird, huh?