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MixedNuts comments on What do bad clothes signal about you? - Less Wrong
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Meh, fashion is largely arbitrary. What's wrong with wearing a toga as opposed to a tie, and would the ancient Greeks agree?
But still - sandals are supposed to show your feet (possibly signalling something about accepting some discomfort), and you're defeating that. Also, you shouldn't show your socks much. (Formal suits have long, rigid pant legs that entirely hide the part not hidden by the shoe.)
It occurs to me that there are likely many more fashion relativists than moral relativists in this community.
Are you implying there's an objectively (not written in the stars, but deductible from human brains) optimal way to dress? That strikes me as strange; I'm pretty sure the optimal world would contain a bunch of different cultures, and I can't see why they'd share clothing styles more than any other characteristic; also, implementations of human minds that can wear clothes in the first place don't strike me as particularly good.
I don't know. I hadn't thought about it before. Objective morals strike me as strange, too.
What's strange about being a fashion relativist, then? (Well, not a complete relativist - accepting there are objectively ugly ways to dress, but anything beyond that is culture-dependent or arbitrary.)
Note that the flavor of objective morals I'm referring to is not "There's a magic stone tablet in the fabric of the universe, which humans can't access (so if an AI finds it and it says 'Kill all humans' then I want the AI to do so).", more like "Considerations (that move me to accept considerations (that move me to accept considerations (...))) that move me, in a chain of changing my values according my meta-values, not by external accident".
I just thought that if you took some of the posts here, and did a find-replace on "moral" to "fashionable", they might make just as much sense.
Example:
That's the "non-relativism" bit. So you claim that if cosmic rays suddenly struck everyone in the world, making them believe that wearing colanders on one's head was the most beautiful thing ever (with since aesthetic appreciation and all that), colanders would still be ugly in some real sense, and it would be a sad thing that knowledge of their ugliness was lost?
Also, nitpick:
That one doesn't work, you lose the recursion. Changing your wardrobe doesn't change the aesthetics that will change your wardrobe later on. Does it?
I claim nothing. I just thought it was an interesting line of thought, one that helped me see the meta-morality debate in a new light. Discussing a vantage point, so to speak. Sorry for bringing it up; I doubt we'll be making any progress on meta-aesthetics, if such a thing existed.
EDIT Downvoted for disagreement it was. The key point in my argument was that morality needs to be objective because it leads to objective sanctions: someone is either imprisoned or not. There is no such parallel with fashion.
I didn't downvote you.
What?
Why Objectivism?
At first glance, morality looks as though it should work objectively. The mere fact that we praise and condemn people's moral behaviour indicates that we think a common set of rules is applicable both to us and to them. We can say that something is good-to-Mary but evil-to-John, but we cannot act on that basis, because someone is either in jail or they are not. To put it another way, if ethics were strongly subjective anyone could get off the hook by devising a system of personal morality in which whatever they felt like doing was permissible. It would be hard to see the difference between such a state of affairs and having no morality at all. The subtler sort of subjectivist (or relativist) tries to ameliorate this problem by claiming that moral principles are defined at the societal level. Although this constrains individuals to societal norms (as do legal systems), similar problems the get-out-of-jail objection re-occurs at the societal level; a society (such as the Thuggees or Assassins) could declare that murder is OK with them.
The foregoing assumes a rational or explicable relationship between the doing of right and wrong, and the subsequent allocation of praise and blame, reward and punishment. It could be argued that we can do without this, and just punish arbitrarily, and not bother reasoning things out. Since are not all in agreement on a single objective morality, that is to some extent the case. In democracies, punishment and reward are decided by an averaging out of opinion, and in other societies by the whim of the powerful. However, this is no a desirable state of affairs even if it is an inevitable one. It is desirable that people behave well based on their own understanding. rather than threats, and it is desirable that justice should be explicable and not arbitrary. That neither standard can be completely fullfilled is not justfication for abandoning them; some reasoning-based ethics is better than none.
These considerations are of course an appeal to how morality seems to work as a 'language game' and as such do not by themselves put ethics on a firm foundation. They make a prima facie case for the objectivity of morality, but the "language game" could be groundless. The epistemology and metaphysics of the issue need to be considered as well.
I was afraid of this: getting into a morality debate when all I wanted to do was identify a quick and simple parallel. The reason I was afraid of it is that I don't have the answers, I don't like standard philosophical terminology (objectivism, relativism, etc.) since I can't translate it, and I'm not very good at arguing in-depth through time-delayed text.
I'm sorry; I don't have any answers for you.
Downvoted for disagreement, I presume
I read once that men should generally avoid showing their feet, because said feet are likely to be uglier than socks or shoes. (Or even Vibram Fivefingers).
I see. For me, sandals are light, let my feet breathe, and minimally confine my toes - while socks protect against rubbing and abrasion. Comfort and functionalism trump fashion rules, here.
When you say function, you mean, "it protects my feet from broken glass and concrete, is easy to put on and take off, and feels good." You've defined 'functionalism' to mean the effects of the item on you rather than including its effects on others. The functional uses of fashion (being attractive, being liked, being approachable, raising the aesthetic average) are very powerful in any location with people around.
Some fashionable alternatives to sandals with socks: boat shoes such as Sperry Top-Siders, loafers, or generic slip-on shoes such as Vans, potentially combined with no-show socks or flesh colored ankle socks.
Note that fit requirements are important for shoes as well - many people don't realize that their feet require more or less width than is found on a normal shoe. If your toes are constrained, you could try different half-sizes and widths.
Rain said:
Excellent point. The notion that the "function" of fashion is merely one's own comfort is incredibly strange. This kind of thinking may be the consequence of all the public fictions about status (e.g. "it's what's on the inside, not the outside, that counts", "clothing is shallow, intellectual pursuits are deep").
Thanks to these public fictions, lots of intelligent, technical people just want to opt out of clothing as a communication channel. Actually, I think it's more "shallow" to want people to use less channels of social communication. Including the clothing channel allows a greater depth of signaling.
Is this a gender thing or something? I don't think I've ever been told that I should avoid wearing socks if I have on a skirt that doesn't fall to ankle length.
The way I've heard it phrased:
Note that failing to wear socks can cause damage to the skin around your feet and ankles, depending on the style of shoe or boot, and that wearing thick pants in hot weather can cause dehydration and heat stroke. Physical comfort is near the bottom of the list for fashion. Any use of the word 'comfortable' is only to define a stance or personality. There are 'no-show' or 'ankle' socks which are often used to protect the feet when a sockless look is desired, and lightweight pants to match weather requirements.
You're right, I hadn't noticed.