Stupid Questions Open Thread

Costanza

This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.

Why are flowers beautiful? I can't think of any "just so" story why this should be true, so it's puzzled me. I don't think it's justification for a God or anything, just something I currently cannot explain.

I think one possible "just so" explanation is:

Humans find symmetry more beautiful than asymmetry. Flowers are symmetrical.

Standard caveats: There are more details, and that's not a complete explanation, but it might prove a good starting point to look into if you're curious about the explanation.

17Emile14y

Many flowers are optimized for being easily found by insects, who don't have particularly good eyesight. To stick out from their surroundings, they can use bright unnatural colors (i.e. not green or brown), unusual patterns (concentric circles is a popular one), have a large surface, etc. Also, flowers are often quite short-lived, and thus mostly undamaged; we find smoothness and symmetry attractive (for evolutionary reasons - they're signs of health in a human). In addition, humans select flowers that they themselves find pretty to place in gardens and the like, so when you think of "flowers", the pretty varieties are more likely to come to mind than the less attractive ones (like say that of the plane tree, or of many species of grass - many flowers are also prettier if you look at them in the UltraViolet.). If you take a walk in the woods, most plants you encounter won't have flowers you'll find that pretty; ugly or unremarkable flowers may not even register in your mind as "flowers".

1TheOtherDave14y

Is it flowers in particular that puzzle you? Or is it more generally the fact that humans are wired so as to find anything at all beautiful?

62

Stupid Questions Open Thread

62

62

62

Stupid Questions Open Thread

62

62