World Works Differently for the Most Beautiful | Hacker News Reader

World Works Differently for the Most Beautiful

psychologytoday.com

36 pointslota-putty11 comments

I imagine that to be a stunningly beautiful young woman is similar to the experience of being a Hollywood celebrity. And not manifest sour grapes, but to slowly lose that beauty over time must be difficult.

They "lose beauty" in the eyes of the static, 20 year old beholder. But to peers / in their age cohort, they will always be more beautiful than average. That can continue to help.

There's an age-centered / age-pass filter in most people's eyes anyway. Just about everyone older than, say, 40 is invisible (not a person) to an avg 20 year old. (Source: Was once 20, am now 40)

After high school, no one cares much about age cohort. There's no 40-50yr-old bracket at my job or in a political campaign or at a car dealership.

This just isn't true. Nobody cares, but everyone is probably closest to people their age.

Most my friends at work are about my age (or at least how old I look). This is obvious because of our career stage, which advances steadily with age.

99% of my personal friends and professional network are my age +/- 5 years, thanks to research / conference experience and career cohort effects.

When I look ahead to those jobs I hope to have, most of them are 45-55 and have peers in that age range as well.

"It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness." - Lav Tolstoy

the interesting follow up question would be: Are beautiful people more moral?

There certainly can be a reinforcement effect: If the world is nice to you, you are nice to the world. However, if you notice that the world is nice to you for no good reason (like your looks), you might abuse this, e.g. you take things for granted (e.g. people doing stuff for you) that you should not. However, I'd bet most studies that would try to find out if beautiful people are more or less moral, couldn't be reproduced since there are way too many things that might affect this.

You're conflating niceness with morality.

I always had to work more to impress people in interviews than some of my better looking friends. Doubly so for dating, this should be no surprise people are biased towards genetic fitness as are all animals

The author of the article clearly doesn't get it. They say "8- to 12-year-old children evaluate harms more severely when they are directed toward more attractive animals." and then tries to explain that with "beauty is pleasurable". Sorry, it has nothing to do with that.

We are genetically conditioned to be attracted to beauty, to equal beauty with health, and good genes. We choose beautiful mates in effort to maximize our children's chances of survival. The fact that we also like pretty animals, and everything else described in the article, is just a side effect of that.

This comment is like saying to somebody explaining the increased rate of car crashes with people talking on phones as a consequence of divided attention as saying that has nothing to do with that and it's because we're genetically conditioned to only focus our conscious attention on one task.

Mechanics and second order effects matter. Reductionism is a useful conceptual tool but it isn't a good representation of wider reality because things are more than the sum of their parts.

You seem to be missing the fact that genetics are simply encoding the proteins and it is the biological feedback systems mediated by dopamine that are actually driving our actions.

Cutetilitarianism -- the philosophy of maximizing the world's total cuteness. The most ardent follower might be my ex girlfriend.

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