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Comment by whstl | Hacker News Reader

It's very strange that people are ok with people charming others "naturally" (while it's probably because they learned by imitation, often from parents) while "practicing it" is seen as bad and manipulative.

It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.

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You say ‘somehow’ like the reasoning isn’t obvious. Physical attractiveness is a signal of reproductive fitness when it’s genetic, and not otherwise.

This is a bullshit rationalization for horrible behavior.

The people doing the judging certainly aren't gonna reproduce with 99.99999% of the people being judged, and I'm being extremely generous here.

Sure, but why would they care? And why do you think it matters?

That's precisely my point. If you're not gonna reproduce with someone, their "reproductive fitness" is none of your business.

Once again this is just a rationalization for horrible behavior.

You could argue that they are ruining the value of the signal for everyone.

If it was about signal-to-noise, there would be no bullying of bald people, or short people.

Or it could still be, but have other explanation. E.g. you're called out if you ruin the signal to noise ration, but you're also called out if you genuinely give the unfit signal.

(Don't approve doing this or anything, just pointing the blind spot in your dichotomy, interested in the argument on a purely technical manner).

HN never ceases to surprise me with the rationalizations for any kind of behavior.

You keep using this word rationalization. I don't think it means what you think it means

Nope. I'm using it correctly. You might be in denial, though ;)

But this is the neurodivergent ‘just world’ blind spot.

The world isn’t just. People like people with good genetics, because being friendly with the strong gets you benefits more than it gets you costs. Especially if you’re able to influence (or even pathologically manipulate) them.

Most people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.

Also, most attractive people work to be attractive because it’s often mutually beneficial (assuming they can counter manipulate or influence appropriately). Having people attracted to you gives you the ability to use other people’s resources for your benefit.

Most attractive people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.

This is generally kept covert, because like most covert power, it attracts negative attention if brought to conscious awareness - as then it’s perceived as manipulation, not influence, or encourages more jealousy, etc. as it’s not fair.

But life isn’t fair, except where we make it, and making something fair requires power.

And acquiring and maintaining power is fundamentally unfair.

I'm not saying the word is just anywhere in my message.

I'm just saying I can call a spade a spade.

If anything, it's the rationalizations around certain behaviors that are claiming the world is perfect and just as is.

While I certainly agree that it is an example of poor judgment and perhaps weak character to be broadly judgy about cosmetic efforts in general, I can understand the theoretical plight of someone who might be taken in by a deceptive person in that regard.

If you steelman the argument you can see the point, but it’s also unreasonable to assume that a person is living the steelman version of life (and being a deceptive person) just because they had a facelift.

OTOH, if you are admiring people’s genetics using their appearance as a proxy, I can see why it might seem like “cheating”

But the problem is not admiring good looks if they're natural, or expecting someone to be truthful, or anything of the sort that might or might not theoretically happen.

The problem is clearly with the bullying. And the assumptions around character. And basically using "changing yourself" as a proxy for hallucinating all sorts of completely unrelated bad characteristics. And the rationalizing around it.

It's the same for behavior: people are fine with the behavior of "naturally charming" people but as soon as someone mentions "learning how to do it" people immediately jump to conclusions and call it manipulative.

Someone having one consciously developed ulterior motive… does increases the likelihood of them having other consciously developed ulterior motives that might be hidden away?

The linkage isn’t as strong for unconsciously or subconsciously developed ulterior motives. Hence the huge gap in how people behave towards that.

Calling it "ulterior motive" is already a judgement call.

Being better at socialization is virtually demanded by society. "Not looking good" is also punished. There is nothing ulterior about anything.

The fact that a certain chunk of society demands both perfection and authenticity already makes it necessary for people to not be transparent about such things.

By definition all discussion about opinions, perceptions, etc., are judgement calls…?

You might think that those people’s opinions don’t matter, but it turns out that ‘lots of other people value me highly’ is in itself a signal.

And yes, it is horrible, but if you want to solve a problem, you must first understand the problem, and ‘some people are just born with Evil in their hearts’ is not a very good sociological model.

The reductionist biological explanation might be obvious to you, but in the actual world, the reasoning and the moral condemnation of things like plastic surgery is never explicitly about giving false signals regarding one's reproductive fitness. Reasons "haters" cite are about vanity, narcissism, refusing to look your age, etc.

For me, motivation matters. If you want to learn social skills to make your life easier while not harming others, that's perfectly fine, admirable even, but if you learn it to damage others for your own profit, that's immoral.

Same for the motivation of surgeries. You might not be comfortable with yourself, and want to change something, and that's perfectly fine, but again to changing appearance signal something to benefit you and harm others with less effort, it's immoral again.

And, I believe, if you need to change how you behave or look to get acceptance from a circle, this means the circle is toxic and you'll be far happier elsewhere.

That too is pretty obvious from the same perspective: Admitting you only care about someone’s genes is itself considered shallow, so people make up other justifications based on other, more accepted values.

To me, a big factor that I subconsciously evaluate on is the "fakeness" of the appearance itself. Instances where plastic surgery results in the uncanny valley of "should be good but looks too perfect or messes up a critical aspect" disturb me. Plastic surgery isn't as powerful as Photoshop. Maybe that's more on the surgeon, and subjective criterion of attraction (such as mine), but it simply isn't the case that plastic surgery makes someone look good.

I guess that's totally fair. People are hard wired to pattern-match faces, and someone who deviates from the norm will attract attention.

I was more talking about judgement of people who did just to still look normal but better, similarly to the judgement of people who learn "social skills" like the TFA discusses.

> Physical attractiveness is a signal of reproductive fitness when it’s genetic, and not otherwise.

Nay, artificial physical attractiveness is also a signal of reproductive fitness. It isn't a given. It's the subject's genes that made a brain that was able to design (and to arrange to pay for!) the improved attractiveness.

It's not qualitatively different from brushing hair.

Yes, technically, having spare resources to devote to your own appearance is considered a positive signal, but it is an unreliable one, and often one not as valued by the people making the judgement. If there are many ways to signal wealth, a signal that has some intrinsic downside will lose its value if lots of people are sending the other wealth-signals.

Playing the hand you were dealt is fine. Pulling an ace out of your sleeve is cheating.

I'm talking about real life, not a card game.

I am sure you are familiar with the concept of a metaphor.

Of course, but just because you can throw a metaphor around doesn't make it true.

There is no "rule" in life that says that people have to be judgmental assholes to each other. Using a card game to justify the behavior is just a rationalization.

And yet, it’s how it is.

Yes, people who judge others like this are anti-social assholes.

Of course that's not as bad as people who try to rationalize bad behavior behind a veil of pseudo-intellectuality.

Once again: rationalizations don't make something true.

>Yes, people who judge others like this are anti-social assholes

On the contrary, since many (if not most) people do it, they're on the social side.

>Once again: rationalizations don't make something true

When it comes to social truths, what most people do make them so.

If most people think X bad, X is bad is a social truth. Doens't matter if you think X is "not bad in reality". Reality doesn't care about good or bad anyway, it doesn't have a morality.

Nope. Actions that harm social bonds, judging that shames, excludes, or hurts is antisocial even if many people do it.

Also this post has the classic logical error of assuming that because something is a certain way, it should be that way.

> Reality doesn't care about good or bad

Likewise: What you call "social truths" are real in that they shape behavior and consequences, but they’re conventions, not objective moral facts, and they can be unjust or oppressive.

>judging that shames, excludes, or hurts is antisocial even if many people do it.

That's a modern dellusion.

Sociology (and common wisdom) tells us that judgment "that shames, excludes, or hurts" is necessary for the development of morality, social cohesion, and cooperation.

Note: not any random judgment "that shames, excludes, or hurts" has this possitive role, but plenty of judgements that "shame, exclude, or hurt", meaning that judgement that "shames, excludes, or hurts" is a useful social tool.

And there is nothing positive or productive about the kind of judgement I'm talking about.

What kind are you talking about?

Refusing to be an asshole to someone being an asshole just enables them being an asshole.

Refusing to judge if someone is being an asshole, ensures that someone being an asshole will see no consequences for being an asshole.

I'm criticizing being an asshole to people who are not naturally the way society expects and had to work their way through.

But to be fair I'm mostly criticizing useless HN post-hoc rationalization.

> Refusing to be an asshole to someone being an asshole just enables them being an asshole.

I have nothing to do with this.

> Refusing to judge if someone is being an asshole, ensures that someone being an asshole will see no consequences for being an asshole.

I also have nothing to do with this.

How is someone supposed to know that the person acting like an asshole is doing it because of some ‘good’ reason, or because they are just a jerk?

Says the person trying to rationalize away obviously common human behavior as not existing because it is bad?

Or do you think anti-social assholes do not exist or are not common? Or that any system of identification of people should not attempt to understand them?

I'm not saying anywhere that those behaviors don't exist.

I'm just saying that there is no game anywhere, except in the head of people who are pretending to play a game.

Huh?

Isn’t that…. Every game?

>There is no "rule" in life that says that people have to be judgmental assholes to each other.

Apparently there is, which is why this judgement you speak of happens.

It just happens to be a social rule, and you don't like it, but it's a rule nonetheless. Doesn't have to be an official rule, agreed upon, and signed by each participant, or some physical law.

Hence, the card game metaphor has some merit. Like people think you shouldn't cheat in a card game, many people also think you shouldn't cheat with cosmetic surgery.

I 100% disagree. It is a minority making the noise and turning everything into life as a game.

Most people don't care, and I'm willing to bet that the ones rationalizing the behavior here don't go out of their way to care or talk about any of this.

Being judgmental assholes to each other isn't a social rule. It's in no way the expectation of behavior.

Cheating in whose game? We make our own luck.

You might not play it, but others do play the game and take it rather seriously.

>It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.

We also tend to hide how hard we work to make our success look natural, but we reveal how hard we work on the extremes of success. For example, if I work hard and take a score of 17 out of 20 in a test people will say "I barely read last evening, phew", but if you're consistently scoring 19-20/20 people may even approach you to learn your studying methods and for tips, because they assume there are important takeaways that they can adopt.

It's my pet peeve with how society recognizes that someone is talented, which is blatantly flawed because all you can do is see what they're capable of doing. Someone may be talented yet unable (or unwilling?) to tap into their talent, but since we recognize talent by the output you can't really tell the existence of talent unless it's at the extremes of success, like the 8 year old who can solve mathematics that are a grade or more above the current grade.

I see talent like a genetic predisposition that can be appropriately cultivated to attain success. It's not much different than my height, because I didn't choose it, yet I can guess that there are men out there who hate the fact that I have their desirable height yet I never hit the gym, cultivate my social skills, or take advantage the fact that I look younger than I am. I am willing to bet everything that I met at least one person who thought of all of these things the first moments they looked at me.

But at least genetic predispositions like height are visible to the naked eye and no one can dispute the differences. When it comes to differences in the brain it's where we ignorantly proclaim that things are obscure therefore they can violate the very facts of observable nature.

In sort, not only I fully agree with you, but I also agree with the obvious double standards in society around it. If I take ADHD medication and that helps with my focus to improve my performance in school or work then I deserve that success as much as someone who naturally had no problems with ADHD. Why is this different for looks (like hair transplants, etc.) is beyond me.

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