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Comment by maxklein | Hacker News Reader

Is this not blazingly obvious? There is no such thing as inherent beauty in the world - there is just the human perception of beauty. And we find other humans beautiful, not for some random reason, but because they will make better and fitter mates. That's what beauty in human beings is.

And being more intelligent is indeed a part of being better and fitter.

Beauty is a way for your body to broadcast its fitness. And there is no reason to think that it would broadcast only physical fitness, and totally ignore any form of mental fitness, even though it's mental fitness that has been responsible for most societal advances in recent years, AND personal advances.

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Or it's a social effect of the educational process. IIRC teachers, coaches, mentors -- all have long been shown to give disproportionate attention, encouragement and preference to good-looking students.

It would be surprising to me if all that extra attention wasn't having a positive effect on all aspects of their lives.

This can't be the case in this study, since the effect was only pronounced in the youngest group that was tested.

So young that social factors can be discounted?

What age group is that, that is old enough for meaningful cognitive tests, yet too young for social effects?

Except beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I like women with nice boobs / ass and don't mind them having a couple of pounds extra; but the media / teens today prefer anorexics. I also know a couple of women that prefer skinny / waxed males (metrosexuals), although the stereotype for attractive males has included for centuries muscles and a reasonable amount of body hair.

You're focusing on too narrow a definition of beauty. There's lots more in there: skin texture, facial structure, proportions of various features, proportions of sizes of body parts, yadda yadda.

I'm perfectly OK with assuming for now that there are subtle cues that I'm not conscious of, but some instinctive things are tweaking my more overt reactions.

I agree with your first line.

I'm sceptical as to how scientific this study can be, when as you say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". A measure of beauty changes over time and from culture to culture. I'm sure, if you selected a different data set of beautiful people you could prove the exact opposite.

if you selected a different data set of beautiful people you could prove the exact opposite.

Sure, but if you selected your data set, it wouldn't be the least bit valid.

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