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Comment by throwaway173738 | Hacker News Reader

Part of what you signal with your wardrobe isn’t just that you care for yourself. You’re signaling to others that you care about how you appear to them. We can’t expect other people to ignore that signal because showing that you care about how other people see you is a proxy signal for caring about other people.

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I was going to comment something similar to this. To an extent, dressing and grooming well is a sign of respect you show to other people as well as to yourself. If you can't clear that relatively low bar, don't be surprised when people aren't super excited about what you might add to their lives.

> If you can't clear that relatively low bar, don't be surprised when people aren't super excited about what you might add to their lives.

You mean like that guy giving keynote presentations in a turtleneck and jeans?

Yes, Jobs is kind of an exception to my general point, but I think it's a bad idea to live your life assuming you can be the exception.

I'm also not talking about having a great fashion sense though, and it's okay to prefer a more casual look. Just pay a little attention to how you dress and care for yourself.

Jobs looked put together.

> showing that you care about how other people see you is a proxy signal for caring about other people.

It's a very bad proxy for that—its somewhere between uncorrelated and anti-correlated to thing it is taken as a signal for (at least, if “caring about” is meant as having a positive concern for the feelings of rather than a desire to manipulate to extract value)—though (which makes caring about that signal itself a kind of signal.)

I wish the people who thought that was true would give me money instead of buying a suit.

By the way, in academia dressing like a salesman is often considered a no-no.

> showing that you care about how other people see you is a proxy signal for caring about other people

How so?

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