Related to: Humans are not automatically strategic, Rationalists should win
Fashion isn't prioritized in many hyper-analytical circles. Many in these communities write it off as frill and unnecessary. They say they "just dress comfortably" and leave it at that.
To me, that seems like a huge blind spot. It misses a fundamental point -
A piece of clothing is fundamentally a tool.
Definitions are important so everyone is on the same page. I feel like Wikipedia's first sentence on "tool" accurately describes it -
A tool is a device that can be used to produce an item or achieve a task, but that is not consumed in the process.
Clothing clearly fits that definition of a tool.
Appropriately chosen clothing can keep you from freezing in the winter, from getting sunburnt in the summer, and can keep you dry in a rainstorm.
It can also help you achieve things involving other people. I think it's fair to draw a distinction between "clothing" and "fashion" based on whether your objectives involve interpersonal skills. If you're wearing clothing in relation to the environment and without other people, that's using clothing as a tool.
But clothing clearly can affect other people's opinions of you, willingness to accept your arguments, willing to hire or contract you, even their desire to associate with you. All of that is changed by clothing - or more specifically, your "fashion."
While most rationalists would happily and quickly plan out the best hiking boots to wear to not get blisters on a hike, or research the best shoes for bicycling or swimsuit for swimming, anecdotally many seem hesitant or even hostile to the idea of using fashion as a tool to achieve their objectives.
That's possibly a mistake.
The thing fashion can do best and most fundamentally is affect a person's initial first impression of you. Fashion is less important if you're in a context where you're guaranteed to get to know someone over a longer period of time, and is more important if you're going to get filtered quickly.
I propose that the most rational usage of fashion is this -
1. Ask yourself what your goals are in the situation you're about to go into.
2. Ask yourself what first impression would help you reach your goals.
3. Pick out and wear clothing that helps communicate that first impression.
The process is important. In isolation, there's no "good fashion" - it depends on your objectives.
In some circles, people more or less won't care how you're dressed. But even then, there's likely some clothing that will perform better than others. If you can afford the time or money to find clothing to fit your objectives, then there's no reason not to utilize this advantage.
I say "time or money" because you can deploy either - if money isn't an issue, there's stores where the majority of things look good, and the people there are professionals who will spend time giving you good feedback. Any high end department store like Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, or a high end tailor fits this category.
Alternatively, you can deploy time. To do that, survey the people that most effectively communicate the first impression you want to convey. Take actual notes and look for common trends. Then, go find pieces that look similar. You won't be perfect right away, but like any other skill, with practice you'll rapidly improve. Incidentally, the marginal cost to produce clothing is incredibly cheap, so most fashion lines over-produce clothing and have to liquidate it at super-discount sale prices periodically. There tends to be a major "Summer Sale" and "Winter Sale" once per year that have high end clothing that 70% to 90% off, making the cost comprable to the mid-tier.
There's also "Sample Sales" where over-produced items are liquidated or when a designer wants to see the buying public's reaction to their new pieces. Again, ultra-high-end clothing can be purchased at discount rates at these environments. You can get basically any semi-standard piece of high end clothing for not very much money if you put in the time. My strategy in the past has been to wait until finding a great opportunity like that, and then buying 1-2 years worth of clothing in one swoop. It doesn't take much supplementing after that.
It takes very little cognitive energy to begin this process. Next time you see someone who strikes a very good impression, stop and analyze a little bit. Note what they're wearing. If you want to strike that same first impression, go get something comprable. Your fashion will be working for you at that point, and your interpersonal dealings will become easier.
Thanks for your comments, and for clarifying your ideas. I think I can further address some of your points now.
Good to know you think my writing is usually clear, even if not in this case. I agree that there should have been more background added to the first post to make the statements clearer. I will try to improve this in the future, since one of my goals for my writing is for it to be clear to those reading it. Therefore, I have tried to be as clear as I can in this post, although I suspect that it could be optimized more for brevity...
Thanks for clarifying this. However, I am still confused by this sentence. Now the first part seems to be saying that if someone believes that certain external factors motivate their clothing choices and others don't, they could be wrong or right. But isn't it always the case that certain external factors motivate people and others don't? If I wear rainproof clothing on a rainy day, isn't it rational to suppose that I did so because it was raining and not because the grass was green? The second part of your sentence says that someone claiming that no such external factors are hugely influential isn't right. I agree with that, but I'm uncertain if it was intended to disagree with my assertion that I choose clothing to please myself. If so, I think that my second post addresses that what satisfies me is based on external factors, especially those external factors that produce the comfort and functionality of the clothes (such as their size and the material they are made of). Could you perhaps give a specific example of where someone's beliefs satisfies the statement you made and one where it does not?
Also, I feel that internal mental states, as they are affected by external factors, are what is actually being discussed here, and it is important to make this distinction. If the causes for our actions were 100% external from our brain, it follows that we wouldn't need one to act in the ways that we do. But in fact we have external inputs that are processed in some way by our brain, producing an internal state (with possibly both unconscious and conscious outputs) that results in some specific action.
Yes, articulated reasons are not necessarily complete, but I think that unarticulated reasons are much more difficult to evaluate than articulated ones. For example, let's say that I choose to buy a certain wide-brimmed hat. The reason I give you is that I want to keep the sun out of my eyes and because I like the color. This is my articulated reason. The first part can be examined in terms of whether the given item is likely to fulfill the stated function. The second part must be taken at face value. Let's say that I have an unarticulated reason for buying the hat—or actually, lets say I have several unarticulated reasons for buying the hat. Now, let's take a look at what these might be. Trivially, I might have unarticulated reasons that I am conscious of, but do not choose to share. However, I think you were thinking more along the lines of unconscious reasons. And here is where I become suspicious, because while it could be quite useful to know what these actually are, I think that only a good deal of reading on psychology and neuroscience can even begin to scratch the surface of these reasons.
And I am wary of intuitive conscious narratives given for unconscious reasons people have for how they choose what they wear (or for why they do anything, really). I will give much more weight to reasons where I can examine the evidence and the logical chain of reasoning behind them, whether they are conscious or unconscious. In the case of unconscious reasons, a researcher might come up with a hypothesis for how unconscious behavior works, and formalize it through experimentation. While there can be plenty of valid reasons for your position, it might help to explain specifically what you don't trust about conscious narratives. Lack of completeness isn't necessarily a fatal flaw—if a person's conscious reasoning effectively predicts their future actions (especially if they can generalize this over many future actions), then there is a good reason to make use of that reasoning. However, if a person's conscious reasoning is not a good predictor of their actions, then the time and effort required to look for unconscious ones may be justified.
This hypothesis is interesting, but it doesn't tell me much about what you would predict for this behavior. For example, if people all choose clothing for largely the same reasons, does that mean they all wear largely the same things? Does it mean that Phil's stated desire to choose more fashionable clothing and my stated desire to choose practical and comfortable clothing are not relevant in satisfying our actual desires in this area? How would you use this idea to predict people's behavior or to give them useful recommendations to increase their satisfaction with their clothing choices? Could you clarify your ideas on this?
In summary, I would be interested to hear a more detailed explanation of your position that addresses what specific beliefs you think are correct and incorrect about clothing choices, and what predictions you would make about human behavior based on your position.
Edit: I did correctly interpret the second half of your sentence, but had an unfortunate typo in exactly the wrong place. I have corrected it above (the fix is the italicized 'isn't'). Sorry about that. Please read the remainder of that paragraph with the fix in mind.
I see now how my sentence was ambiguous. I meant: "people who believe that certain specific external things motivate their dress and other things don't may be wrong or may be right about each of those things, instead of "people who believe that certain specific external things motivate their dress and other things don't may be wrong or may be right that some things influence them and some things do not.
"Because" isn't really enough, for each explanatory factor you have to tell me how close to be... (read more)