Why Are Smart People Usually Ugly?
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One explanation of the illusion is that if 10% of people are _really_ smart and 10% of people are _really_ good looking then only 1% of people will be both. Which makes it look like the two don't go together very often, when in fact they go together as often as you'd expect.
But seriously, surely looks are a very subjective thing?
How did that "should not" come about?
How about creatures with worse looks (less attractive to their species), cope up by being smarter to turn sexual selection in their favor?
The notion of "looks" has not just come about in the last century or so, it exists even in totally foreign species, like flowers (attractiveness to bees by features/colors/smell/etc).
And looks have been shown to correlate strongly to sexual selection (from big tits to body fat).
On a more anecdotal note, I don't think inheritance is a strong factor for bad looks over many generations (which would be necessary for the kind of adjustment you're describing). Ugly parents can have beautiful children. And stupid people can have smart children, too. There is a genetic predisposition, yes, but the simple mixing of genomes over a few generations seems to be enough to sufficiently randomize a child's outlook.
How the world treats a beautiful person and an ugly person is absolutely and totally drastic!
A well looking individual (especially a female) will be assumed to be an angle, will have every door opened, will have smiles given, will usually be considered above all others.
An ugly individual will be ignored completely; almost like that person does not exist.
When someone that's attractive speaks, every word is listened to. When the ugly person speaks, no one even hears them.
To get ahead, an ugly person must actually produce something or make something of him/herself. Work is required, and from that work experience is gained, and from that experience, good judgment and knowledge comes.
Subjective as in: "the beauty (or lack thereof) of a person X is not a law of nature, different people can have different opinions on the matter", yes.
But subjective as in: "statistically people don't tend to agree to what's beautiful/ugly", then no.
I could be finding person X beautiful, and you could find it ugly. But showing him to, say, 100,000 people, the opinions won't be 50-50 or close (=totally subjective). People tend to agree. Only if the person is rather bland looking the statistical results will be totally random and not skewed towards ugly/beautiful.
Consider an experiment of showing a picture Anjelica Jolie to 100,000 males to mark as ugly/beautiful. I bet I can predict the results.
Personally I find Jolie too extreme to be described as beautiful. But she certainly isn't ugly either, far from it.
Which is beside the point. The question was whether looks are subjective.
Well, in the aggregate statistical sense they aint.