Why is beauty a productivity-enhancing attribute for males in non-quantitative subjects? Generally, it is difficult to disentangle the reasons behind why beauty improves productivity (Hamermesh and Parker, 2005). However, relative to other students, attractive men are more successful in peer influence, and are more persistent, a personality trait positively linked to academic outcomes (Dion and Stein, 1978, Alan et al., 2019). In addition, attractive individuals are more socially skilled, have more open social networks, and are more popular vis-à-vis physically unattractive peers (Feingold, 1992). Importantly, possession of these traits is significantly linked to creativity (Soda et al., 2021). In our setting, the tasks faced by students in non-quantitative subjects, for instance in marketing and supply chain management, are likely to be seen as more ”creative”, and significantly contrast the more traditional book-reading and problem-solving in mathematics and physics courses, the latter presumably perceived as more monotonous. Together with the large use of group assignments in non-quantitative courses, these theoretical results imply that socially skilled individuals are likely to have a comparative advantage in non-quantitative subjects.
> The results show that the heritability of IQ reaches an asymptote at about 0.80 at 18–20 years of age and continuing at that level well into adulthood.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-hu...
I'd trust social scientists less today than 20 years ago due to the effect of social media on them. Social media creates much stronger social pressure on people to conform, and that isn't a good thing for science.
Edit: Looked him up and he disagrees with you. "My sense is that heritability of IQ is in the range of 30-70% with very high confidence.", you said "It's likely somewhere between 15%-50%". There is a massive difference between 30-70 and 15-50, 30-70 sounds much more reasonable and matches most studies on the subject I have seen.
later
In other words, I deliberately cited someone on his side of the debate.
How much do I love that this person got promoted from woke social scientist to "authority figure" in the space of one Google query, though? Amazing.
You really don't need a censorship conspiracy to explain these things. I'd recommend you try to challenge your assumptions about IQ and heritability by downloading a few textbooks about the topics. Many many papers are freely available, and the textbooks are let's say easy to find. You could try textbooks about a more accessible area like developmental psychology as it is more easily accessible and still covers these topics quite well.
> attractive individuals are more socially skilled, have more open social networks
I'd say you need different evidence if you want to grind that axe.
Yes, crickets.
One gender still has to approach, the other gender still waits to be approached.
Women rely on beauty for success much more than men. It is not just in terms of "grades". Even in engineering jobs you can see it, a beautiful woman can get armies of male engineers to "help" her. I literally saw one female engineer get 2 male engineers to spend 3 weeks on a project for her just by virtue of the fact she's a woman.
And she's not even aware of this. Like she thinks people are just "nice". But men are not conditioned to ask other men for this kind of help and we can't expect 2 idiots to spend weeks on a "favor" for someone else.
We live in a world that tries to deny this reality with "gender equality" but these cultural ideas fly in the face of millions of years of biological evolution.
Now that being said. We very much expect that the grades of women should go down when not in person to a degree MUCH MUCH more than men. That is completely is expected. The question now is, why was there even a correlation of better grades and beauty among men in the first place? Why did that correlation exist when men do not rely on beauty? That is the anomaly here.
I think part of the answer is clear. Beautiful men do not rely on beauty for success. They never did hence why when you removed it as a factor the success rate did not change. What's going on I suspect is even more controversial: Beauty correlates with intelligence. This is not an insane notion. We already know that height correlates with intelligence, but it is likely beauty does too.
Edit: I looked it up, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
And it looks like my guess was true. This is indeed what's going on.
Oh us men also have a beauty industry - or, I should rather say, an attractiveness industry. We just get sold different, and arguably far more pricier, things... luxury watches and cars, tailor-made suits and shoes, grooming, gym memberships.
And similar to how women got anorexia through unhealthy beauty standards for decades, that comes back to bite us men this time with "looksmaxxers" [1]...
> Clavicular attributes his looks to, among other things, taking testosterone from the age of 14 and smashing his jawbone with a hammer to supposedly reshape his lower face - neither of which is recommended by health professionals.
The beauty industry for women is more superficial. Make up for example serves nothing for status and everything for youth and beauty.
Now there are things like expensive jewelry... but this stuff doesn't help women in terms of attractiveness. That is not to say that women don't wear symbols of power...Jewelry is more of a status symbol for women advertising their status to other women: "Look at what my man got me, look at the power and status of a man that is in love with my beauty."
That is not to say beauty doesn't help men. But it does to a much lesser degree than women. Also your citation is a news article documenting a phenomenon. You need numbers to answer the question: Is this phenomenon an anomaly?? Or is it common place?
I think the answer is obvious, I mean the stuff I talk about here isn't anything new. It's just hard to talk about it because our culture has conditioned us to look away from the truth and more at artificial ideals of equality and balance. Men and women in reality are not equal. And this inequality doesn't necessarily "balance" out like yin and yang.
Second, nothing will change. People will still behave based off of their instincts and underlying biology. Awareness of the underlying biology doesn't change anything. Men are very much always attracted to young women with nice curves even though they are well aware that this attraction is just an irrational biological instinct. Awareness does not change behavior, therefore, society will not collapse.
People still blindly put penises into vaginas and now more than ever women are blindly letting in more and more penises when in the past they were much more guarded.
Bold claim.
That is what is driving the population down.
Your sarcastic remark here in a vain attempt to expose me only exposes your own complete misunderstanding.
Social graces require that she play it off as people being "nice", but I guarantee you she knows precisely what's going on. Women aren't stupid.
She may have even deliberately cultivated this relationship, but that's not something a rando internet person like I can determine.
A lot of women live in this contradictory state where they know subconsciously but consciously they don't know at the same time. To help illustrate... It's the same type of human contradiction many software engineers face with AI, unable to admit that it's in the process replacing a skillset that upheld their identity. It's a form of lying to oneself... convincingly.
I would say off the seat of my pants if I were to give you very very estimated numbers.... like 45% know explicitly what they are doing, than 35% live in this contradictory state I described above, and a good 20% have no clue.
>She may have even deliberately cultivated this relationship
Oh many women do this. But they don't necessarily know that these relationships only exist because they are beautiful and that they are women. Again... many know... but not all know.
>Women aren't stupid.
This isn't true. Many women are really stupid. Many women are smart too.
Some half of women are below average intelligence.
Physical attractiveness is a social asset, and it's a more useful asset for a woman because men are affected by how women look more than the other way around - that's all fair enough ... but "the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty" is a bizarre framing.
Think about who goes hunting? Who builds the house. Who farms the farm? The man. A women does not have the strength to be the primary driver behind all these tasks. She can assist, but, again, she is not the primary driver simply because she does not have the intrinsic strength to do these things. The further you go into the past, technology becomes less relevant and physical strength becomes more of a requirement for survival.
In prehistoric times, a women's status lies primarily in what man she is able to "control" to take care of her because her strength and capabilities render her biologically much less capable in the prehistoric world.
Of course this also begs the question of what happens to a woman when she gets old and ugly? Where does she get her power from? She gets it from her man. In prehistoric times, women needed to secure a man when young and at the prime of her power... than she sires his children and through that is able to secure life time protection from that man well into old age when she loses her beauty. That's how it worked for millions of years and that is what is baked genetically into her biological instincts.
You're right it does sound bizarre in modern times. Also very taboo to frame things this way. But it's also the underlying reality. You need to think of things from this perspective rather than the perspective of what's "taboo". It's only bizarre because society has conditioned you to look away from the cold hard truth.
The key here that you need to realize is that women in power is very recent phenomenon. You see women CEO's, women going for the presidency, and women founding startups. This is all very recent and enabled mostly by technology. Historically, this is not how female power presented itself.
For example, I'm betting you're a male who likes women who's between the age of 20 and 45 and likely doesn't have children (I'm pretty sure on male between 20 and 45, but children could go either way).
Consider the assumptions present in: "Of course this also begs the question of what happens to a woman when she gets old and ugly? Where does she get her power from? She gets it from her man."
The assumption there being the only reason a man would protect a woman is because she's pretty and she's having sex with them, likely because the sexual relationship is the main way you're looking at women at this point in your life. Even if we assume women can only derive power from male proximity in nature, there's an obvious alternative answer to where she would derive power from: Her sons and grandsons. If she lives through her childbearing years, a woman in nature is far more likely to live to old age than her male mate: She has better resistance to famine, a better immune system, and if we assume the rigid gender role evo-psych of men = hunters and women = gatherers, she also engages in far less physically risky activities. Even if 'her man' is alive, the odds of him being crippled or simply unable to protect her from younger, fitter men are high. A 35 year old son or 18 year old grandson is far more valuable for protection, and far more stable: a man is always her son/grandson, whereas if we're assuming the red pillish evo-psych is true, 'her man' probably has wandering eyes and would like a younger woman and therefore should not be counted on to stick around once she dares to have wrinkles and saggy breasts. Additionally, a man who doesn't protect his mother is failing at one of the basic tests of belonging to a human tribe: Basic reciprocity. If a man won't give to the one person who took care of him when she gained nothing/he was at his most vulnerable, then how can his fellow hunters (who he's less attached to) trust that he'll reciprocate when they help him? This assumption also outright dismisses the bonds between say, a brother and a sister. Do you think most men wouldn't protect their sisters because they're not sex objects?
Older women are also far more able to keep contributing to the tribe than older men if we adhere to this strictly gendered idea of primitive humans. They can care for children while women in their prime gather, they can rear children whose mothers have died (and this is common due to the fatality rate of childbirth), they can take care of the sick, etc. A man who can't keep up with his male duties is far less useful - a man who is over 60 and has 60-80% of the speed and strength of his fellows, or a bad limb, or sensory impairments, is far less able to hunt than a woman over 60 is to caretake. They're more likely to live longer and therefore a better repository of historical knowledge.
Idk, I just always find it interesting which physiological and psychological aspects of humanity are ignored or unmentioned whenever someone is making some kind of argument about primal gender roles.
Men primarily drived survival in prehistoric times. Without a man a women could not survive. That doesn’t mean she couldn’t contribute it means she was not the primary driver. Women contribute a lot, but that contribution is in the end supplementary because it is not critical for survival and this definitely shapes evolved behavior. It means for survival a man is required for her, this is asymmetric for a man and you can see this in how women and men select mates. Men select based off of superficial markers for fertility. Women select more on practical markers for capability. This is because a women’s survival is dependent on the man’s capability while a man’s survival is not as much dependent on this.
Additionally please don’t make the argument personal. If you disagree attack the argument don’t attack or make assumptions about my character. Thank you.
I wasn't speaking of the modern day either; I was only addressing prehistoric times - specifically the time before agriculture since we're discussing humanity at its earliest points. Prehistoric =/= tribal, incidentally.
I brought up your identity because it's relevant to the assumptions that you're making, and specifically it's causing you to miss very wide aspects of the human experience that are very relevant to the discussion you want to have. I see this a lot in these discussions (and before you get upset, that includes from women: the bad feminist argument that prehistoric people were completely gender egalitarian or matriarchal is just as much wishcrafting). In this case, you're assuming that every single prehistoric human being approached power acquisition and gender relations the way you do.
I find these discussions intellectually dishonest: You very clearly have a point of view regarding male superiority and want to convey that using objective language to prove your rationality. I didn't make assumptions about your character, I made assumptions about your age and sex. I also did attack your argument, because it's a weak argument, and you didn't address my points at all. You're being evasive on purpose and attempting to pass yourself off as rational person making an objective argument, but you're completely ignoring extremely relevant facts and data and spewing things that are completely false.
It's adorable that you think men can survive without women (condescension fully intended). This is pre agriculture. No domesticated animals. Every single one of those men spent at least a year completely dependent on a woman: birth to 12 months. No breast milk? No men. Older men are also going to be reliant on women for caretaking, as are sick men. What you mean when you say 'men can survive without women' is 'healthy men aged 15 to 50 can survive without women on a daily basis'. Yes, men can take care of the ill, but women can also build houses. To call women's contributions supplementary when nobody would reach the age of 3 without them is fantastic. Thank you for that. It's hilarious, and it makes it so clear what your informational sources are. Infants living aren't crucial for survival? You also ignore the social ties of early humans, which is ridiculous given we're a social species. The main dangers to early human women that weren't faced by early human men are childbirth and early human men. It's likely true that a woman benefited from male protection from other men, but it's untrue that this protection is only afforded via giving sexual access. A man will protect his mother. A man will protect his sister. Hell, you even said yourself that a woman got protection by bearing him children: Did you mean only sons? Do you think early human fathers would just shrug if someone tried to hurt their daughters because they weren't having sex with her? Women and men needed each other to survive, but that is a different argument from 'the only way a woman can receive male protection is by being young, hot, and giving it up.' Likewise, a sister will tend to her brother, a daughter will care for her aging father, and a mother will help her son with his children if his wife dies. Human bonds and gender relations go far beyond sexual relationships, even if they're important, and you just are completely ignoring that so that you can feel good. That's what this argument is actually about, and that's why I think it's intellectually dishonest.
And this is still granting you the foundations of the argument, which are also bad. Yes, it's very likely that gender roles have existed since homo sapiens sapiens evolved. It's also pretty likely those roles had at least some flexibility, since complete specialization requires a certain population density and nature is cruel and full of terrors. If your entire hunting party ends up TPKed, you want at least a few women who can hunt so they can teach the oldest boys left in the tribe and the knowledge isn't lost. Likewise, you want some of the men able to perform 'feminine' duties in case something happens to the women who know those things: If the men want their culture to continue and most of their women die, they're going to want the women they kidnap to be able to do things like know what plants are edible in their particular territory, etc. Humans are adaptable before we are anything else. Being overly rigid with roles when you live in groups of ~150 in a world where you have no writing, no domesticated plants or animals, and only basic stone tools isn't going to serve you. Efficiency and resilience are trade offs, and when you have very little margin for error and replacing members of the tribe is costly, it makes more sense to spread out knowledge and tasks so that there are fewer single points of failure. You probably want your medical experts teaching multiple students so that if one dies of a fever or in a hunting accident there are other options. You probably want more than one midwife, so your tribe isn't fucked if she dies. And so on.
> You need to think of things from this perspective rather than the perspective of what's "taboo". It's only bizarre because society has conditioned you to look away from the cold hard truth.
Haha good lord. Of course you have access to the cold hard truth that I'm too foolish to see! Your fixation on "power" (whatever that means) is incredibly reductive, and I expect your knowledge of human behaviour is rather limited
Please keep the debate impersonal. If you disagree and believe my arguments are without merit please attack the arguments rather than my character. Thank you.
American system feels more unfair when you're given points for extracurriculars like playing instruments or sports, like that's not going to hold poorer children even more (also how's that related to academic performance at all? Unis should not care about unrelated things)
US universities do care about extracurriculars and GPA and other things because they aren’t optimizing for raw academic performance, they’re optimizing for various other things like an interesting student body (that attracts donors, professors, and future students), real-world networks, and so on.
I probably agree with that, but also acknowledge there's no good way to make that completely objective.
Even worse, rich kids have far more means to engage in extracurriculars than poor kids.
The large campus-style uni is fairly recent creation - many came out of the land grant system during/after the Civil War. And even as newer unis have been created, they've followed that general design (even though they aren't land grant institutions).
I would expect wealthy to always be well represented.
It's easy to think this but its not true. There is just a ton of privilege involved in life. There are groups in India who purely tutor slum kids to the top IITs(the JEE exams in India are very hard).
And at a certain point the argument about equal access is entirely hypothetical. For example can’t redo early childhood. So if that impacts your ability then it’s been impacted.
Everywhere? Both in rich and poor households.
> For example can’t redo early childhood. So if that impacts your ability then it’s been impacted.
Ah I thought the argument was more about genes(aka born smart) and not something like nutrition.
I think a good thought experiment is Formula 1. Most top F1 racers come from super rich backgrounds. Does that mean that more money == better driver? Its mostly a accessibility problem.
1. Financial and career success are correlated with good test skills.
2. Good test skills are strongly influenced by genetics or early childhood.
If you agree with both then you expect some correlation between wealth and test performance.
It's mostly privilege. And just being born in America is one of the biggest privileges wrt career and wealth.
From your conclusion you’re telling me wealth is completely random or the capabilities of children is completely random. Neither of those holds up to any scrutiny.
I don’t know what being born in the US has to do with the conversation.
We should perhaps recognize that and try to compensate for it, and it's not a value judgement on the person so afflicted, but pretending it doesn't exist just confuses matters.
> just because unintelligent people fail to do well financially doesn't mean that their children are doomed to the same fate.
Correct, my statement is about expectation of averages. Not a claim that we should exclude an individual because of who their parents are.
My understanding is that there is some genetic correlation but it's not a certainty; smart/rich parents can have dumbass kids and vice versa.
It's hard to quantify because a direct "IQ" measurement is fraught with issues and trying to measure by "success" has its own issues. If you've not met a lawyer/doctor/PhD that you'd put in the "dumbass" category, you probably haven't met many.
The US also has the best universities in the world, by and large, (even if the regular education system is lacking), so I am pretty skeptical of the idea that raw test scores as the sole criterion would lead to better outcomes.
Why glaze China so much when you can be impressed by the west instead.
All these zoomers grow up on a China propaganda app.
I mean from a moral and "care about me" perspective.
Yes Trump bad but USA has done more for EU than China.
The SAT or ACT are technically the only ones "required" for college, but most of the elite schools expect AP or IB (which tends to give the students a year or two of calculus, a fourth year of foreign language, and some deeper dives into other sciences or social studies).
But, because it's split across so many tests, there's no single "score poorly and your life is ruined" exam.
Back home in Spain we follow the same style of a single national-level exam that you mentioned though.
That's not true.
After all, if you flipped the script and the US used standardized tests and you were then told that China uses a committee of experts that will certify incoming applicants' stated political positions, race, and cultural background in order to "craft a class" (as an admissions officer calls it in SAT Wars) with a carve-out for the children of those who have already attended, you would be informed of the need for meritocracy, the tendency towards nepotism, and the obvious racial biases that will affect individuals in such a system.
Likewise, you would doubtless be informed that the East's more holistic look at the total student is a superior form of student selection since it is driven by a Confucian focus on the gestalt human rather than on the reductive metrics of the West.
What is interesting to me is to hear from those who have succeeded in some system but nonetheless wish it were different.
That’s what happens in the US with the SAT/ACT.
I think you’d need free, universal SAT tutoring available to everyone in order to be more meritocratic.
Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring doesn't necessarily make their score higher, and there's also diminishing returns. Someone poor who do not afford private tutoring can also receive good score due to their natural talent and/or hard work in self-teaching/practicing.
> universal SAT tutoring available to everyone in order to be more meritocratic.
and that is now called school isnt it? Everybody gets at least some minimal standard of schooling.
The fact is, meritocratic is meant to describe the opposite of nepotistic (or sometimes hereditary/aristocratic). Under a nepotistic system, no matter what you do, you cannot succeed without becoming the in-group somehow.
If these are outliers it isn't really meritocratic. If there 100 desired spots that are allocated by the exam, and 1000 students, and wealth (tutors/extra time etc) moves the needle enough to make a meaningful difference, it's basically nepotistic just the in-group is who's parents can afford it. Depending on where you are this can compound each generation.
i very much beg to differ. A poor but high aptitude student today is able to escape the "caste" they're born into. Under a true nepotistic system, this cannot happen no matter how much aptitude he/she possesses.
Merit is about demonstrated ability, not how much effort, time, or money was put into getting the ability.
As long as you convert money into ability and ability into results, that's merit. Nepotism is when you convert money directly into results, buying a score.
Poor people typically have none of those extra resources. Some poor people with extreme talent will be able to overcome the challenges of relative poverty, but others with equal talent won't.
It's extremely hard to create a true meritocratic system, and Gaokao certainly isn't it.
This would mean that says Musk's kids would need to get sufficiently higher scores than children of someone with no wealth.
It’s unfair. But nonetheless true that students who were better able to prepare due to superior resources are nonetheless better prepared.
I don't think you can have a truly meritocratic system unless everyone starts on a level playing field with the same access to resources. That is not a system that exists anywhere on this planet.
only if you twist what you mean by meritocracy to mean equality.
Why don't you apply that exact same argument but to sports and athletics? People born with superior genes do perform better (ala, tall people in basketball).
Merit doesn't mean everyone starts at the same spot. Merit means your outcome is determined by how good you are at it - no matter how you get to become that good.
Starting in 2020 when I was a new professor, I was contacted by a company that works with Chinese families to tutor their students directly. I would be paid $400 an hour to teach them online remotely.
Originally I thought it was because of COVID lockdowns and that may be part of it.
But the opportunities have continued since then. I stopped doing it as my career has become more involved but I still get solicitations from time to time, so it must be because of what you say.
Colleges in the US that removed standardized testing from their applications, in the pursuit of trying to be more meritocratic, found that fewer students from underrepresented backgrounds got in, not more. In hindsight (and to some in foresight) this makes sense because now schools leaned more heavily on grades and extracurriculars, both of which can be gamed by wealthy families far more easily than a standardized test.
How do you figure? Many things in life are meritocratic. Apply for a job welding, they'll ask you to weld some coupons. If you can do it, you get the job, if you can't then you can't. If your father was a welder or a banker makes no difference, merit is about being able to do the work, not whether life was fair to get you to that skill level.
Is it not free anymore?
It turns out that often it being easy to describe in broad strokes how to do something doesn't make it easy to do in practise.
Considering I would be classified as a member of this group, let me ask:
> but otherwise it, and doing optional assignments, are a choice
If attention is a choice, then how reliably can you control your attention based your choice?
For the sake of analogy, is being able to control one's attention like controlling one's breathe? As in, one can consciously be aware of and control their breathing to some degree, but without a conscious choice, breathing will still operate in the background. Or is attention something like a voluntary muscle movement which requires explicit intention?
I am asking because I have/had little to no control over my ability to focus. Thus, I am curious what it is like for others.
I always find it slightly ironic how mother nature gets so much reverence from ostensibly communal types, despite her being the most shamelessly power hungry entity ever conceived.
Not "more intelligent", just "unusual in some way". People can be wealthier than average for all sorts of reasons unrelated to intelligence (as defined by IQ). Here's a sampling of them:
Being social and good at sales. Most successful real estate agents I've met don't strike me as particularly brilliant.
Working a boring job, living modestly, and investing in index funds for 20 years.
Winning the lottery (either literally, or by accidentally buying something cheaply that turned out to be worth a lot)
Marrying rich and divorcing.
Inheriting wealth.
Being a successful athlete or entertainer.
So a lot of the time, it's not "being smart" that carries you to wealth, its avoiding the "disastrously stupid things" that stops you from being poor.
If we're talking about IQ, then there isn't strong evidence for this.
But thankfully, most crime in the aggregate is done by unintelligent people.
> most crime in the aggregate is done by unintelligent people.
That is a tough one. For I believe there is more to reality than what data can currently capture. While I do agree that most violent crime is carried out by unintelligent people, there is an untold amount of crimes being committed by individuals that are average to beyond intelligent. So, I would argue the unintelligent ones get caught more frequently and that skews the perception that they commit more crime.
Luckily that is no longer needed, as in capitalism such a person can provide good value to society just via greed. He shouldn't be a leader, but a greedy engineer isn't an issue.
Being good at selling to people absolutely requires intelligence. So do many entertainment fields, and athletic achievement more than you might expect.
Investing consistently in an index fund over 20 years requires a bit of intelligence and a lot of grit.
Grit is basically conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is not correlated to intelligence. [1] This is why the stereotype of the dim but methodical plodder exists.
Sales ability is obviously a thing, since there are successful and unsuccessful people. But being able to connect with people (EQ) is crucial to be good at sales. Likeable people make more sales than unlikeable people. Being likeable is orthogonal to IQ.
I'm not denigrating successful entertainers' and athletes' cognitive abilities. They are brilliant in their fields. That's not the necessarily same thing as IQ. I'd expect the IQ distribution among that population be the same as the general population. That means some of them are high-IQ individuals in addition to being world-class singers or swimmers or actors, but most are average IQ.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10416...
Yeah, it flies in the face of Hollywood's jock/nerd dichotomy, but in my experience there's an awful lot of correlation between honors students and athletic participation. I think the root of it might be good genetics and early life nutrition contributing heavily to both.
What the actual.... This is on HN? How low have we sunk here?
Effect of tutoring is greatly overstated.
Of course candidates that study more have an advantage. But that doesn't make it non-meritocratic. That'd be like saying a marathon isn't meritocratic because some people spend more time training and conditioning.
Of course candidates that study more have an advantage. But that doesn't make it non-meritocratic. That'd be like saying a marathon isn't meritocratic because some people spend more time training.
That’s just like with sports: anyone can learn how to train himself, and anyone can improve with training, but in the end, some people will end up faster, and some people will end up slower.
But of course, in addition to that, there is always also a genetic component, as in sports.
Everyone is well familiar with the downsides of standardized tests, but so far, nobody has proposed any alternative that better. Learning to the test is not great, but what’s the alternative? It’s not like anyone knows how to teach things that results in more actual knowledge and skills being attained despite lower test results.
And academic performance is measured how? With standardized tests?
So the question is, how much do these tests actually test skills in the subject matter and how much do they test "meta skills"?
It's not difficult to find first-hand accounts of this; go browse social media posts by teachers in mainland China if you're curious.
There are similar problems of "teaching to the test" in other contexts, too.
I'm not categorically opposed to standardized testing and I never said I was.
Feynman made such an observation while in Brazil:
https://enlightenedidiot.net/random/feynman-on-brazilian-edu...
My take away is the assessment method must force the student to actually apply understanding and application of the material, and not simply look y regurgitate it.
What you are describing, or the lack thereof, is how the majority of my public education in a Southern US state felt. Ironically, my county had the highest test scores in the state too. Then again, perhaps that isn't ironic after all...
The road to hell is built on good intentions.
This site is turning into Reddit
Your country has very black-and-white politics. Anything <entity I don't like> does / says is bad.
There may be some good things about the Gaokao but having spoken to some (Chinese) teachers in China, it's also a limiting factor for education prior to university in a lot of ways, limiting the freedom of teachers and driving up risk aversion in parents.
(It's also effectively graded on a regional curve, which might be a good thing but isn't meritocratic in the straightforward way you suggest.)
Scope of gaokao = teaching the test is just teaching everything a well rounded student should know. it's not sats where you can cram a few test tactic sessions and get a few 100 extra points. At the end of the day, gaokao is there to beat knowledge floor/foundation into kids, and one would argue knowledge floor is very deep if you want to generate most bodies that can transition into technical tertiary. Like... if one want human capita pool to be launchpad for innovation, you don't make calculus optional to athletics or other extra curricular.
IMO useful perspective is PRC diaspora, who readily acknowledges they don't want their kids going through gaokao not because it's ineffective but because it's tough, and half the reason they immigrate is because their statistically mediocre kids can't hack it under gaokao, but with some east asian education rigour/pressure will still be top 5% students under western education.
It makes sense, if the SAT starts asking you do calculate epicycles, schools are going to add Ptolemy to the study, or look worse than those that did.
However I've never met anyone from these countries who have a high opinion of their systems. Personally I do think our standardized exams cause massive 'overfitting' issue (borrowed from machine learning). The exam is not as brutal as Korean one though.
YMMV.
Ultimately, the only "fair" outcome is an abundance of opportunity. The vast majority of people are worth something to their community and society. And even then, as long as there's enough food and shelter to go around, no one should have to justify their mere existence.
My wife, upper middle class, took entire weeks of courses and scored higher than me on everything. But I am better than her at math for sure.
I wonder how much of this is less about attraction and more about social skills. Granted, higher attraction affords more opportunity to develop those skills, but I have met plenty of charming people who were not conventionally attractive.
But that's orthogonal to the question. It's probably true that Zuck's kids will do better than mine (though that also depends on how you measure things) but that doesn't change whether they'd do better if they looked better.
Attractive people have advantage even without the social skills. We have all observed it. Don't cope.
I think this is largely a distraction from the direct effect. For any level of social skill, good-looking people at that level are perceived much more positively than others at the same level.
The question of the causal effect between physical attractiveness and social skill is interesting, though. There are plausible stories both ways, imo: your version, and the contrary one saying that pretty people coast on their looks and the rest of us have to try harder to be interesting or appealing in other ways.
(It's also hard to fully separate the skills from the looks, because the same behaviours that work for a good-looking person might backfire terribly for someone at the other end of the scale. Do we say those two people are equally socially skilled, or the pretty person is more skilled because they chose a strategy that works in their context and the other person didn't?)
This was summed up well in the "Hello, Human Resources?" cartoon[1]
1: https://www.threads.com/@smiling__sisyphus/post/DN56r2hkRXs/...
The simplest explanation is often the right one.
if that mismatch increased more for women than men, the estimated “beauty premium” for women could fall even without any change in teachers’ discriminatory behavior. The paper just assumes the attractiveness stayed constant during the period, but seems to have had no data to verify this.
I'm sure that attractiveness does play a role for grades, it's just not nearly as simple as the paper puts it.
There are a lot of potential explanations, which is why these kinds of studies are unfortunately not that helpful and often cause questionable media coverage.
In the past they would stare in pure awe at my guaranteed impeccable looks.
Now they ask me damned question to calculate the speed of fluids in different pipes through the Bernoulli's principle. And ChatGPT only helps so much here ...
Also, I think there must be a pretty big difference between female and male, because even if a male student is attract, if I am a male teacher and interested in females, would I wish to prioritize on looks, if the underlying grading is instead done on e. g. testing knowledge and skills? Why would looks even factor in here? Such a system would be flawed from the get go.
The company went on to grow quite successfully until it was acquired 6 years later. I feel that zoom and video conferencing allows some of that "appearance" factor back in. Based on my experience though, if I had my way, job interviews would be exclusively audio only.
For research studies, we slowly revert to on premise physical interviews at work. If we want the ChatGPT answers, we don’t need another human in the loop.
This varies with country/company, with Euros usually being appearance focused, but in US companies, it's dudes in crumpled T-shirts all the way to the top (in engineering).
Seriously, it's so entertaining to sit in on an important meeting with a US vendor which looks like a college dorm party with an impeccably dressed guy or lady (from sales and/or management) who sticks out like a sore thumb.
(Incidentally, the best boss I ever had was barely 5 feet.)
Zuck is like 5’11”, Satya Nadella is a giant.
Actually it accounts for more than the difference, controlled for height men are discriminated against for leadership positions since there are barely any short male leaders and there are plenty of tall female leaders.
Now that I think of it, the inflight magazines still have those ...
Amusingly enough the best CEO and best salesman I ever knew (two different people) were below average height.
I've heard the latter theory at least a couple times about US Navy SEALs.
The first time, it was a retired SEAL I knew (well over 6', and a brick wall) who one day out of the blue said something like, "You shouldn't feel bad about being short. The best SEAL I knew was a short guy, and he could kick my ass."
Later, I heard a similar anecdote in a speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxBQLFLei70&t=440s
I've heard a number of times that you want to be worried about the guy who looks out of place because he's there through pure grit, skill, and determination.
I wonder if this reflects on organizational culture, with firms being led by 'alpha males' being more authoritarian, and prone to these personality cults, where the boss has this aura of ineffable leader.
I have worked at these places, and there's no wonder nerds hate these. Since nerds tend to be on the less assertive, more thoughtful side (even if physically speaking they wouldn't need to be), and they're the only ones who can figure out hard problems, the ones behaving assertively, as well as being invested in politics and status games tend to come out on top.
Which makes technical work be seen as an inherently 'low status' thing, where the 'beta' works and the 'alpha' swoops in to claim the prize. This attitude alienates nerds, as they feel rightly exploited and unrewarded, and they move on to somewhere else, and suddenly these domineering people find themselves without anyone competent to do the actual work.
Which usually sets these orgs on a path to slow decline, which can go on forever. I feel like most orgs are like this.
Considering many orgs understand this on a deep level, they try to prevent technical folks being sidelined, by oversized egos, which, while good in intent, often lead to these same alphas use these new tools they're given, and hide behind doublespeak, and process, democratic gerrymandering, shutting down nerds complaining about tech debt by accusing them of 'not being team players' or quietly turning the less invested, but politically savvy members of the team against the nerd arguing for a good solution, by accusing him of going against group consensus to feed his own ego.
The problem just shifts. People with attractive voices would then have an advantage.
And you could argue having a clear easy to understand voice is a job skill for most positions, I think.
Unfortunately, cheating is becoming rampant in remote interviews, especially for early career roles right now. I think companies are moving toward having final interview rounds in person because it’s such an effective tactic to discourage interview cheating.
can't prove where or what -- could be lazy devs in Alabama, or North Koreans -- but it's happened enough that it's notable
Like a 21st century Office Space.
Add in a remote only office romance to give it a romcom vibe.
When candidates know the final interview will be in person they give up on cheating. No point in wasting time on cheating through the screens if you’re just going to bomb in person without ChatGPT showing the answers.
Though I have heard some stories of candidates desperately trying every excuse they can think of to avoid coming on site for the final interview (Getting COVID is the first-line excuse 90% of the time). When you explain you can delay and reschedule they give up.
Have fun. If you do it in volume, you'll get scammed pretty badly. Both by luck of the draw, and scammers actively targeting you.
Have fun. If you do it in volume, you'll get scammed pretty badly. Both by luck of the draw, and scammers who will actively target you.
Some will of course argue that you losing weight will also make you more confident, and thus you become more approachable. I think there's a lot of bias against fat people, against "unattractive" people, etc.
This also shows in the classroom, work, etc.
Of course, actually being conventionally attractive will come with its own perks. People will go out of their way to help you, and to support you. Over time this could very well boost your ego to also become more confident and decisive.
Outside of a couple of women asking me for help at the grocery store with some heavy produce, it barely made any difference to how people treated me.
Being fit is just 1 aspect. These days you also have to look like you're a top 20% in a bunch of other categories as well.
I'm 6'4" so not freakishly tall, but tall enough that people notice and for it to be a problem.
1. Im ever ones human ladder. About once a month someone will ask me to get something off a high shelf.
2. Shopping sucks. Wookie sized pants, Wookie sized shoes, Wookie sized shirts. It's a pain in the ass, I dont ever have anything trendy, and I pay more if they have it in my size.
3. Cars: There are some cars I just cant drive. For years I could walk into a Volvo dealer and NO ONE would talk to me. Why? Heigh notches at the doors and they just knew on my way in that I was never going to be able to be comfortable. And sports cars: forget it. In my youth a friend of mine got her father's Porsche: not a fun car to even sit in.
4. Little things, like flying, taking a nap on a couch, or laying in any sort of medical "bed" becomes a comedy sketch.
5. There are just a litany of things that arent fun that one would not think of: from wacking my head on every low hanging thing that jumps in front of me, to being "too big" for a lot of activities that I would otherwise enjoy (smaller sail boats as an example).
Would I trade height in for short, and the social stigma it comes with. Nope, you do have it worse in that regard. But the world isnt built for people outside the average...
Sincerely, Fellow Tall Person
I know a ~55ish year old lady who is beautiful, but looks 55. I see her adjusting to her new reality and its painful. I imagine she used to be able to get away with being mean and sarcastic because she was so hot.
Now it just causes office fights. "I wont work with X" is something Ive heard.
The interesting part is that I originally only worked with her on the phone, so I always thought she was mean... Then I saw her in person and everything clicked.
Some pretty people are mean because they can get away with it and never learned that it's often counterproductive in the long term.
This is just some people, others act differently.
I don't think it would be evenly distributed, but it goes something like that. You can choose to behave confidently up to a point, but people reject such behavior from an ugly person. Ignoring this social feedback can get you into a lot of trouble.
>I've always found the physically-unattractive-but-socially-attractive especially interesting because they've succeeded, often along with a very cool peer group.
Some of these are brutal too. I've known some real busted dudes who got attractive girls to like or marry them somehow. I assume it's often money, connections, and/or encountering the right person who is a sucker for your particular characteristics. Imagine being the ugly brother or nephew of a solid 10 (guy or girl), or being a multi-millionaire. You'd easily get many times more opportunities in all areas of life.
People aren’t much more sophisticated than our ape brethren at the end of the day.
There’s a decent anime exploring this on Netflix right now. “Lookism” https://m.imdb.com/title/tt22297722/
I watched something like this happen in a friend, but as an outside observer I saw a different explanation: The period when he got into shape involved a lot of changes for the better in his life, including becoming more outgoing, motivated, and disciplined (necessary prerequisites for weight loss in the pre-medication era). He also bought a new wardrobe and replaced his old worn out logo T-shirts and cargo shorts with clothes more appropriate for an adult. He also started paying attention to his grooming and hair style instead of looking like he just woke up.
For a while he tried to explain it all by his weight loss alone, but over time he realized it was an overall change in everything about the way he carried himself and presented himself to the world.
I won’t deny that there is some stigma around being overweight from some people, but I’ve also rarely seen a person change only their weight. Now that GLP-1s are everywhere I do know a few people who slimmed down rapidly without changing anything else and expected things like their dating life to completely change but have been disappointed that little has changed socially for them. They do feel a lot better though!
Maybe it's different, these days, with GLP-1 drugs (I have always called it "Gila Lizard Poison" in my head), but it takes serious discipline and grit to lose the weight, and keep it off.
That generally comes from massive personal change; both internal, and external. Quite difficult.
This has been discussed from time immemorial and confronting it as it is (that in the case of habits we are more animal than rational) is the beginning of change.
An example is that you can't just "cut it out" you have to replace it with something else.
Then adjust. Change one habit; could be reducing portion size by a hundred grams, drinking less, switching to black coffee, I don't know what people have for habits.
Same with exercising, don't go all in at once, try going to the gym or for a long walk once a week. It takes six weeks to stop, change or start a habit, so it will take some self-discipline for that period. But if it's small, incremental change instead of a "change your life around" it's a lot more manageable.
Also be aware of the "survivorship bias", the "before / after" posts on social media, the "I changed my life in $period" - these make it look like it was an overnight lifestyle change, but that's not necessarily true, what you see is the end result and if you pay attention you'll notice that usually there's years between the before / after without any breakdown or in-between progress.
I think the problem many __men__ have with that is that an "appropriate" wardrobe looks more uniform and less individualized, basically boring.
I wouldn’t say that’s the takeaway, even with a simple navy suit you have a lot of options.
What that article does do though is highlight just how low the bar is for men to dress.
With even a tiny bit of belly fat, ime it is better to just wear a t-shirt and not wear it in your pants.
Depending on your shape, a simple undershirt might be slimming enough, or adding shirt stays or shirt garters might help. Worst case you will have to get it tailored. A tshirt is obviously cheaper and easier though, but that signals something.
Both of those choices express a lot.
It’s not about being uniform or bland. He went from old worn-out clothes he didn’t care about to wearing clothes that were appropriate for a business casual environment or a casual date. When you start dressing like you care, regardless of how unique and individualized, others notice.
Otherwise "Thats not me" will be describing things like "successful career" and "romantic relationships".
So they then project themselves onto women, and are then surprised that expectations are different.
You mean like that guy giving keynote presentations in a turtleneck and jeans?
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.
How so?
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.)
By the way, in academia dressing like a salesman is often considered a no-no.
(Mildly funny story. One big, probably Unix, show the IBM staff showed in logoed polos and suddenly everyone else is like If IBM doesn’t need suits we sure don’t.)
Of course, that never happened for months, years until the one day I went in wearing cargo pants and a gothy synth band shirt and was greeted by a delegation of executives from out of town engaging everyone in small talk…
Those who want to stand out will define what is appropriate for themselves.
I mean if you want to go beyond that and have a more distinctive look go for it!
After a breakup I started being more active again, I went bouldering once a week and gradually got into shape and then really athletic after about 2 years when I started going twice a week. My total weight didn't change at all. I dress just as good as before and have the same overall style. Of course most clothes simply look better on me, now that I'm more in shape. Same good job that I still like. I do go out a bit more. But overall I would say I really didn't change anything except getting more attractive from putting on muscles and losing fat.
It made a hell of a difference for dating. Before I felt mostly invisible but since then got approached in bars all the time, which rarely happened before. After some time I got way more confident - but when this stated I sure wasn't yet. Some woman even told me into the face that I lacked confidence after they approached me and realized I don't have the personality and/or confidence matching my appearance. They certainly only approached me because of my appearance.
The people only loosing weight are probably held back by other things. If they changed everything but their weight they likely wouldn't have more success either. I would say I had most things figured out already before and It seems I was held back only by having an average build. Just getting fit absolutely made the difference for me.
Edit: no idea why downvoted but it refers to staying roughly the same weight while building muscle and reducing fat. And having tried it, it’s hard! I stand by my “well done”
It’s hard - you have to eat around maintenance level calories but you also need to make a high percentage of them protein and also keep enough carbs that you don’t bonk if you’re doing any cardio (I like jump rope myself). Just cutting or bulking gives a little more flexibility.
Was it the changes or the breakup itself? Most men don't get "good" at dating until they become a certain amount of jaded. Hence the stereotypical freshly divorced man mopping the floor with the dating pool. The changes sure wouldn't have hurt, but still.
If anything I thought it was the opposite.
> If anything I thought it was the opposite.
Think of it in another context, who do you think have an easier time getting a job, a guy with 10 years of experience that currently doesn't have a job or a guy that never had a job? It is possible the guy with 10 years of experience got fired for a good reason, but on average most people want the guy with experience.
Men don't evaluate women for the same things, so it can be a bit hard to understand, but it makes perfect sense once you understand it. Rather it is weird that men don't value women with experience the way women do with men.
Physical attractiveness is extremely relevant in the context of cold approaches in a dating environment. I won’t disagree with you there.
However getting approached at bars is very different than working with someone in an office setting or having your papers graded in a university setting.
>getting approached at bars is very different than working with someone in an office setting or having your papers graded in a university setting.
I wonder if thats changed, too. School is probably similar, but there's an increasing notion of "don't shit where you eat" that makes office romance difficult. I'm sure people will notice, but they may not want to approach otherwise.
You can also list your job, that matters a lot more than your profile picture if you are a man, doctors easily get dates etc.
I'd have better luck pretending to be an artist, despite my modeling skills being barely above "Hello World".
This feels like it could be a correlation vs causation thing. Its a lot easier to put effort in if you see it getting results. Is it that they suddenly put effort in triggering all this or is it the weighg loss made the investment of putting effort in return results where previously you'd need a much higher level of effort to see results making it only seem worth it after the weight loss?
Or is it the weight loss resulted in higher self confidence giving all sorts of knock on effects.
I think its really hard to tease apart cause and effect here. Would the same changes be possible without the weight loss or have the same results is kind of a hard question to answer.
All of what you're saying is just looks. Clothes, posture, etc. all matter and we all know some exceptions to the rule, but people make clothes look good and not so much the other way around.
>Now that GLP-1s are everywhere I do know a few people who slimmed down rapidly without changing anything else and expected things like their dating life to completely change but have been disappointed that little has changed socially for them.
Not everyone looks better if they slim down. And if you do it the wrong way, or don't update your clothes to not be baggy, or just plain have excessive expectations, it's going to be disappointing. Losing weight just gets you to the baseline of where you might not make people want to look away or find reasons to not like you. If you're short, then you'll still be short after losing weight. If you're ugly in the face, you'll still be ugly, if not more ugly. I know you're talking about men because even overweight women have lots of options. Dating is also nearly impossible for average men now. You shouldn't assume that weight doesn't make a huge difference based on a few examples of guys who can't get dates. Think of it more like not being fat is to make others not immediately blow you off for that one reason.
I'm not going to get into how stats are on my side, the dismal outcomes on dating apps are a reflection on the state of the overall market, etc. But these are far worse than most people expect.
I lost 100lbs very rapidly. The difference in attention and little social things was noticeable almost immediately. Same style of dress, moderately kept hair, but otherwise decent personal care on both sides of the weight loss.
What is interesting though to me is that I hit my goal weight right around the time some major life events happened and I pretty much was operating at the lowest self confidence levels I ever had in my life. I was less social and much more withdrawn than before.
I still would notice the “second glances” from folks I never got before, and even friendly greetings etc that were a bit weird at first to me.
I don’t think you can really translate these changes into dating success or whatnot without other life changes though. They just Lower the difficulty level - you still need to put the work in.
Having been one of the people who experienced this (well the inverse, scarily skinny to lean and muscular), the confidence comes entirely from people in your life congratulating you, followed by strangers and new people just having a baseline positive glow towards you.
I don't know who came up with that line, it's repeated a lot, but I am almost certain it came from someone who never experienced the transition and soothed their ego by telling themselves it's all just a state of mind.
The first prerequisite for making difficult changes is a supportive environment - not a judgmental one.
The actual alternative is to tell the fat people that they really need to fix their serious health problem!
Politely watching them die before you is maybe comfortable, but pretty messed up.
> Politely watching them die before you is maybe comfortable, but pretty messed up.
I disagree. It’s their choice, and they should be free to do what they want and not be criticized. In fact it’s not comfortable and sometimes I do want to say something but that’s not very kind.
This includes criticizing others!
My family constantly says I’m on the bigger side - but does it help? Absolutely not. Does it hurt? A little bit, at least. Then they shame you for “going on a diet”, but also asks why you don’t eat. I don’t need others to pile their opinions on top of it.
But, we also shouldn't forget that the idea of body positivity didn't just pop up out of a vacuum, it's inherently a reaction to the culture. And here I disagree with you, if your peers and society in general just slightly nudges you to be healthy then that'd be okay, but that's not really what happens from my experience. I used to be quite overweight, especially while I was a teenager, and it was tough. People didn't really treat me like a peer, everyone avoided me, and made fun of me constantly for my weight. Random people would tell me how fat I am (by the way, I wasn't even that fat, far from obese). And in the end it fucked me up quite badly, I had no self-respect, no confidence, and I didn't really want to live at that point. I managed to turn it around, I stopped eating properly for days, often just snacking on a package of nuts for an entire day, I would start passing out when standing up, I would exercise so much until I couldn't walk anymore, and in the end it helped! I lost a ton of weight, people stopped tormenting me, and I started to be perceived as quite normal. I even had my first real boyfriend, nobody even looked at me before. But I was still miserable and felt way more unhealthy, at that point I was underweight and eating one portion of rice a day, maybe with some vegetables. No snacks or sweets of any kind. What was essentially bullying did help me to lose weight, but it did not make me healthy. That's just my personal anecdote, I bet there are people who used people making fun of them to start a journey of healthy self-improvement and honestly that's great, but I know most overweight people can't take it well. This is kind of the issue with using shame to get people to improve (though most people who hate on fat people definitely do not have that as their goal), as that shame often messes with your mental health, and makes progress way harder. Many overweight people straight up turn to food to try to feel good, just making the issue way worse. Or they get better in a self-destructive way like me. Ironically I was definitely not healthier when I was underweight, I felt physically awful most of the time, but because I looked quite normal people thought I was more healthy! Weight isn't a perfect metric for health itself, and we shame overweight people disproportionately more than underweight people (especially for women, though I bet for men it's different).
And I think a lot of people who try to follow body positivity have a similar experience to mine (at least I think so, I don't really have proof!). They have endured a ton of meanness for their weight, and often started to hate themselves because of it, and then they turn to body positivity as a sort of "Fuck you!" to the people who made them feel subhuman for their weight. And it's obviously also not productive, it's just a heavy swing in the opposite direction. It's caused directly by the shame society places upon being overweight. It's just the opposite side of the same coin, where I believe both sides suck.
- "Being fat is morally bad!"
- "No, being fat is morally good actually!"
It's kind of tough to find a good solution for this, I think we all agree that we should try to prevent as many people being an unhealthy weight as possible for the good of the people themselves and society as a whole. And I 100% don't think we should encourage people to be and stay obese just because it's easier, but making fun of people who are overweight does not actually help them either. I don't really have a solution for this. I personally try to stay "body neutral" in a way, I try to avoid putting a moral value on unhealthy weight, and I try to view it as any other health issue. But as a society, I think it makes more sense to avoid bullying fat people in the hopes that they take the bullying and turn it into nice and productive improvement, and just make being a healthy weight easier, make healthy food the easiest food to access, put value in sports and walking, and just make it easier to live a healthy life by default.
Sorry if this response kind of turned into a sob story, I thought it was important to try to offer what my own experience was like when I was experiencing the pressure to lose weight, as I know a few people who were or still are overweight who felt similarly, even if it's not universal! :)
Obviously, if you feel that your whole life you're being bullied, then it's definitely right to be empowered someway to get someone to stop bullying you that way.
But we seem to have gone way beyond stopping body shaming and to promoting body positivity, which I think is dangerous. We shouldn't be teaching kids that it's OK to be fat and that's just a personal choice and not to change.
The simple fact is that being overweight leads to a lot of health issues. I'm fortunate that my body still tolerates being able to run, but at my BMI that's by no means a guarantee long term. I know that realistically, I need to drop 1/3 of my body weight ASAP and keep it off, or the chances of me living another 20 years is actually quite low.
I know exactly the issues with weight loss and how hard it is. At least 3 times in my life, I've lost 25% of my body weight through dieting, but it's always a constant struggle to keep that off if I ease off even a little bit. Most of the times I've regressed, it's been a combination of factors - an injury so I can't go out running for a few months, maybe winter so it's cold and wet and I'm also avoiding my daily lunchtime walk, and maybe my work is really boring so I'm comfort eating a bit more than I need each day, and suddenly before you even realise it, all the weight has suddenly re-appeared, and each time it's harder than the last to get rid of it and keep it off for good.
But definitely, we want a bit of that stigma to remain. Knowing that I'm fat and that most girls don't even look twice at me, or knowing that the health risks are very real and every day I stay fat, it's doing even more damage to my body... it all sucks in the moment, but it's all helping the motivation that something needs to change. It's not OK to just do nothing.
I think the issue with stigma is it's so hard to keep in balance, I want people to care of their health, and that'll take knowing that being a healthy weight is in fact good, but doing so in a non damaging way is super hard. In my mind I kind of see smoking at an okay "shame-level" (though you can correct me, maybe I'm straight up wrong on this). Nowadays everyone knows that smoking sucks (let's avoid the whole vape thing for now), it destroys your lungs, and eventually it kills you. But the stigma I saw in relation to smoking just seems more normal and proportional, people generally don't really like being around cigarettes, which is fair, and some people silently judge you, some will tell you to stop smoking, but... there's just not this need to denigrate people for their smoking habit the way it is for being overweight. Now, in the end you'll still feel miserable when you'll start trying to quit/lose weight, but there's nothing really to be done about that, that's just nature.
Honestly I think the underlying cause for this is some of the innate human behavior we still have as a species. We often view being unattractive (which being overweight usually is for most people) as a big moral fault, which gives you a pass to punch down on the person for this transgression. I think we kind of view overweight people in the same lens as someone who did something disgusting, and this might happen completely outside of our conscious comprehension. It then takes conscious effort not to feel that way by default. Honestly this might not be fixable, and maybe there is no way to fix shaming of overweight people on the societal level. All I know is if we help as many people as possible to lose weight, the amount of people shamed will go down that way, too.
It’s also a huge problem when people shame you for being fat. Some of it might be their fault but some of it not. Either way, I think it’s better to accept the body for what it is and work towards improving it and that’s what the “positivity” is. Shaming or judging someone is not a solution, it makes things worse. Yeah it can fuel motivation for some, and be quite detrimental to others - either way it’s nobody else’s business.
All the slim ghosts might think different here.
The baseline level of basic respect you receive from strangers such as simply making eye contact, holding doors, or initiating small talk changes almost overnight. It is a very bitter reality to wake up to when you realize you were basically invisible before.
Without changing at all, the difference of how people treat you when you are accompanied by a very beautiful woman is staggering. People are more nice and polite even dare I say subservient. People low key treat you like you are some sort of important person.
Beauty, and proximity to it, was is and will be a social status symbol.
My pet theory is that it is a term in the objective function to limit the mutation rate; hence the theories that claim that beautiful faces are the "averaged" faces of a race/ethnic group
Perhaps we are evolutionarily programmed to avoid people with impulse control issues?
I understand that it's not that simple, and someone's physical ability has nothing to do with intelligence in the real world. Unfortunately we're all subject to making split second judgements when interacting with strangers and as a result people don't think deeply about how that impacts those they deal with (or don't care).
If we are wired to detect something doesn’t mean it has to be a first order attribute. Isn’t fat now versus fat then.
Gambling, addiction, setting fires, fighting, chronic lying, etc… some of those are first ordered detectable and some maybe aren’t.
Women in every single culture have much thinner waist hip ratios than the male counterparts, suggesting that men like them thin.
i am not fat, infact very fit, athlectic and in shape. This never happens to me. maybe if you are a woman, this happens.
Maybe that’s in a different article.
some people report not being talked over in office settings
honestly you could benefit from talking to someone professionally if this is still confusing to you by now. Its not uncommon for this to be confusing, you could just accelerate your understanding by having someone deconstruct why it is still confusing for you
and that of a man as a trans man. there is a lot less fanfare, media, and discernment on this compared to trans women, while being more common than people think
Once things have "improved", the filter remains and I'd argue those solid friends/colleagues/etc are proven gold.
In my books, there's nothing worse than being rich, beautiful, attractive off the bat as you might never know if those close to you are hangers on or the real deal.
Lots of ""'s here to be respectful that my opinions on the matter may differ from others.
step 2 don't be unattractive
Evolution made us this way for survival reasons, and it's mostly pushing us towards being healthy. And whatever your opinion, it will not change.
But there is another side to the coin. If you are attractive, a lot of the nastier people out there will try to manipulate you and gaslight you just to be closer to you all the time. Some people will be cruel and nasty to you just because they know you will sexually reject them. Some teachers will be mean or passive aggressive towards you because they are attracted to you and they know they can never be with you.
It is actually very dangerous to be attractive but not to have the social skills to handle the way people react to it. Many attractive people grow up with these social skills because they grown up as attractive children and they get used to it, but for some people that suddenly become attractive because they lose weight or another reason it can be very challenging. Similarly for people that are just born introverts and don't have the social skills.
This was my first thought about why the move to online works for men but not women. When I was attractive, people intuitively thought I was competent as well. I could speak with authority on topics not knowing more than the average and people would believe me.
Fo women this might sometimes even be the other way around - more beauty is associated with less intelligence.
Its sad, but it is what it is. And why its sad? Because this uneven treatment is sometimes cause of big evil in the world.
I’ve known a few very attractive people close up, and their lives are difficult. One example: you are presented with so many partners it can be very difficult to choose, and hard to discern who actually likes you as a person vs is just attracted to you. How can you pick a partner who is going to be a good match and faithful? And when you’re in a relationship, it’s harder to stay faithful when other people are throwing themselves at you and you suffer FOMO.
I could go on, but you get my point.
The phd student who conducted it trawled through students' Facebook pages and took their profile photos (without consent). Then he had a jury of 74 teenagers rate the photos on a scale from 1 to 10. Then he tried to correlate beauty with grades for distance or in-class education. De-anonymizing the data was trivial so everyone could pretty much see how the jury had rated each profile photo. And research data is public.
It was a seriously weak study with questionable methodology and a too low effect-size to draw any conclusions anyway. So no reason to get alarmed if you are ugly. :)
I used to think this was wrong, until I got into engineering.. Sure there is the rare math problem, but most of the difficult part was: "Are you willing to fly to mexico and be awake at 3am when the parts are made?"
I might be downplaying though... I did calc 1 at a job.
Chatting with professors after class or attending office hours might be a grift, but it's not necessarily unfair. Specific circumstances aside, anybody can do it to get some leverage.
put another way, they showed up and asked questions and got info -- and you didn't. that's not privilege, that's effort
To answer your question, I don't recall ever going to "office hours", as I was generally a top student with minimal effort and an autodidact, but I learned about it through friends. Having parents who are both professors also gave me a front-row seat to how common this was.
I think once they start having homework in kindergarten "doing all the class work during class" is a goal that won't be reached.
Many of the professors I have worked with that I respect have different methods for helping these students- for example sending them an email after class, offering explicit direct help & advice. Or connecting them with a better job, or a research position.
Not specific hints or answers, that’s obvious favoritism
It probably wasn't intentional, just 'I have x minutes a day with the students to teach them the day's lesson. I have more than x minutes worth of content to convey. If you willingly spend more time with me, you may get information that was lower in importance and was missed during the day's classes.'
For deeper courses they may help them pick topics to write about and sources to read.
Having that context for the ongoing feedback from grading and mentoring is valuable. Depending on the work it simply might not be possible to do anything blind.
Even without names, handwriting and writing styles are obvious. Even in an office setting I can always tell who wrote something as small as a sign or a note by handwriting or word choice alone.
1. This should have a 2022 tag
2. This is ripe "red pill" fodder and many of the comments here are "red pill" coded.
The documentary was an interesting if somewhat unsettling thing to watch.
Most of the documentarians from the BBC even some of the better ones like Adam Curtis, tend to distort things.
The "Red Pill" thing was stolen by these guys back in ~2018 from smaller political communities online that used it to just mean "I've been sold on an idea" usually people who were agorists / libertarians / ancaps.
But as with anything, being a bit skeptic is a good thing.
The most infamous one he did was The Jimmy Saville Weird Weekends. I am 90% certain that Louis knew he was Paedophile at the time. He even made sure to include a scene where one Jimmy's friends visited. The guy looked like a old stereotype of a paedophile. My friends and I burst out laughing while watching it. It was almost like it was something from Brass Eye.
The Tate Brothers are just conmen and are criminals. I am from the UK and met people like Andrew Tate IRL. You can find them in every pub back in the late 90s/early 2000s.
As for the other manosphere guys. I am familiar with many of these guys, as they typically do the rounds at some point on the podcast circuit on YouTube and various other sites. I like listening to long streams as I am frequently driving from one end of the country to another. I used to listen the dumpster fire stuff like Legion of Skanks, Drunken Peasants, The CuntStream etc. A lot of these dudes used to turn up on these sorts of shows, which were basically someone streaming Google Hangouts while they got drunk and high.
A lot of the the Manosphere guys are normally involved with other grifters such as Laura Loomer, Nick Fuentes etc. and have a lot of cross over with loads of niche Z-tier E-celeb sub-cultures such as "The Dabbleverse" and "Da Sektur".
The manosphere has its own distinct jargon.[31] A central tenet of the manosphere is the concept of the red pill, a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix. It concerns awakening men to the supposed reality that men are the oppressed gender in a society dominated by feminism
( From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere#Jargon, I landed there from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_(disambiguation) )
So what? We should act like attractiveness is not a huge privilege because of that? As with other privileges, I think it's important that we are aware of that.
Outside of social media these people effectively have very little if any influence and aren't worth worrying about.
It suggests to me that good-looking men are socially valued for several reasons that are robust to distance education, but good-looking women are socially valued for their bodies if they are in proximity, the same way we value objects. Very limiting and frustrating.
If anyone in the red pill camp is looking to reexamine their perspectives in good-faith, "You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in Conversation" (Tannen) is a good start.
Maybe the advantages are natural and our species is selecting for it.
Cats spread all over the world from the desert because of advantages.
Advantages mean you survive and procreate.
I have huge doubts about the study. In cinema, theatre, sure, you need physical presence, but engineering... I don't believe Von Newman would have needed presence to impress other people.
Another very important thing is that there are very important differences between sexes. The most physically attractive man in the world without the proper attitude and without leadership and success is nobody.
I am what is called a sigma male. I was never interested in power, dominating others, being the boss. Women prefer ugly and short people if they are leaders to tall and beautiful man that are not social.
In fact, if you get uglier as you age but get more successful, you will receive way more attention. If you command a group of people, run a company or are a big boss, women will get in love.
Also, if you are tall and beautiful, men will get envious of you.
Tell that to the "hot felon". Because of his mug shot from stealing cars got a modeling deal and married a billionaire heiress
This only serves as a tool for people who are trying to find a basis for their beliefs.
> On the contrary, for male students, there was still a significant beauty premium even after the introduction of online teaching.
So the submission title’s claim that attractive students no longer receive better results when teachers can see their face isn’t true. The result was only detected for female students.
The fact that there is a discrepancy doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in the results. When you can only find a significant change after you start subdividing the group into different sub-groups it’s getting a little too close to p-hacking for my comfort. That’s not to say there isn’t a gender effect here, but the fact that males rating high on the beauty scores also got higher grades should suggest that this isn’t as simple as teachers biasing their grades based on what the students looked like.
Surely you mean biologically
"We rated 307 Swedish industrial design students by facial attractiveness and after controlling for socieconomic factors found that males with attractive faces retained a statistically significant grade advantage before and during COVID remote learning whereas females with attractive faces lost their pre-pandemic grade advantage. The beauty premium is only visible in qualitative subjects, not quantitative ones. We don't quantify the extent of the beauty premium in this report."
