Comment by dustedcodes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dustedcodes | Hacker News Reader

It's probably controversial to say, because we _want_ to be better than just animals, but the hard truth is that we are still animalistic in every sense and physical appearance plays a fundamental role in absolutely everything in life.

Being good looking, tall and physically fit is the biggest privilege in life. You don't need to be Jeff Bezos rich, if you look good you can pick and choose partners as and when you wish. You can live out some of your craziest fantasies because women/men will do things which they wouldn't do in normal circumstances. Married people will cheat because they want a taste of you, people will be extremely inviting to you even they don't know you, people will give you the benefit of trust, they will be extra friendly, at Christmas parties people will seek conversations with you which will increase your social score at work and help with promotions because popular people are more likely to get given extra opportunities and responsibilities and so forth. In short, if you are good looking you will be able to experience things in life which so many people will never even dream of. Things that you'd think only happen to filthy rich people or in movies will all of a sudden happen to you even when you didn't look for it. Doors just open and you will be able to either say yes or no to those chances in life.

I am not saying it is good, as mentioned, we try to be better than this, but the facts speak against it.

This was posted on HN a while ago and I really enjoyed this read:

https://medium.com/@sfard/the-greatest-privilege-we-hardly-t...

"Tall" is something that comes out of the genetic roulette, and there's little you can do (see the recent article about men going through painful leg bone extension procedures).

However, "being physically fit" is under your control (for the vast majority of people) and you can tip the scales quite a bit on "being good looking" if you make the effort.

This is such a defeatist attitude of "oh pretty people are just different and they get all these things they don't deserve" that comes up on these threads constantly. Especially if you exclude students, the vast majority of folks reading this have more than enough time and money to eat well, work out 5 or 6 times a week, and buy nice-fitting, well-made clothes. From a professional standpoint, that's all you need to do.

Very, very few people are incapable of doing the above on software engineer salaries. People that make a lot less and have less free time manage to do it, you can too. Height and bone structure are about the only two "attractiveness" things not within your control, so control them. I am not conventionally attractive, I wasn't popular in high school, I had a beer belly in my 20's and rarely had dates. Eventually I got my head out of my ass and started eating right, started working out, spent a little bit of money on my clothes and just all around gave a damn. The difference was staggering, both personally and professionally. It's amazing the different a good haircut, a fresh shave (or maintained beard), and a reasonable body fat percentage can make.

In my own experience, confidence and charisma are more useful. Of all the men I've met who were preternaturally talented at attracting women, they all had that in common but only one of them had the looks and height to match what you'd expect.

Being male can sometimes be dispiriting in that you have to constantly justify your worth, but the silver lining is that there are multiple avenues through which you can do so. By contrast, the world is cruel and unforgiving towards women who do not or no longer meet the beauty standard and there's only so much that can be done.

In any case, adopting the 'blackpill' mindset isn't helpful in the slightest, even in a scenario where it accurately describes reality, which isn't the case. All that you describe exists in some form but it's not nearly as dramatic or immutable. Nor are other privileges all that impotent and fair either. There's never been a better era to be born smart in a developed country, for instance.

>dustedcodes says:< Being good looking, tall and physically fit is the biggest privilege in life.

It is good up to a point. Much of your list consists of sexual behaviors. So being good looking also implies that you will have sex earlier with more people who have STDs and pass these STDs on to others possibly for the remainder of your life, try risky behaviors earlier, fall under the sexual tutelage of mentors, elders, peers etc.

Being good looking can especially be a curse for women. Most of the very attractive women I've questioned revealed they were molested or assaulted at early ages. Many were severely damaged mentally (from depression to full-blown schizophrenia).

Putting on my philosophical hat for a minute, I would say that while humans have put in lot of social structures to counter evolutionary tendencies, they still slip through in all our interactions with other humans.

Incredible how in this threads the comment to such fundamental truths are dismissive. People really want to be more than animals to the point of lying to themselves.

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