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wanderingsoul comments on Optimizing for attractiveness - Less Wrong
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A couple others have mentioned warnings on doing something only to become attractive (e.g. You will tire of it or become resentful). Something like general fitness with multiple benefits likely isn't a problem, but there's also an alternate perspective that has worked really well for me. Instead of optimizing for attractiveness, consider optimizing for awesomeness. Being awesome will tend to make people attracted to you, but it has the added bonus of improving your self-confidence (which again increases attractiveness) and life-satisfaction.
As far as how to do this, I wouldn't mind tips myself, but the general gist of what I do is just keep that drive to be more awesome at the back of my mind when making decisions (in LW parlance, adopt awesomeness as an instrumental value). Anyone else have ideas?
I wish I had said this. All other considerations are secondary. Indeed, it's likely that all other metrics (weight/physical shape, fashion/clothing, flirting/conversation) are merely indicators that people use to try to gauge your actual awesomeness. Optimizing for the source rather than the signals is a great move, I'd upvote your comment multiple times if I could.
I used to optimise for awesomeness. My guiding principle was that if handed an object, I should be able to impress someone with it.
If your friends were also optimizing for awesomeness and your guiding principle was widely known, this ought to lead to the unanticipated appearance of some very interesting objects in the vicinity.
Why do you no longer do that?
There is no limit to the amount of time you can throw at developing some arbitrary impressive talent. At the moment I'm optimising for linear algebra and statistics instead. Personally, I think this is a different kind of awesome, but fewer people want to hear about the pros and cons of a given econometric model.
Consider looking for people with different awe receptors, and hang out with them if you can find them. ;-)
Awesome for who? I've found that things that are awesome for me may be pretty irrelevant for others.
I have strongly opposing beliefs. I tend to think that people who are attracted to you rationalize this also by believing that you're awesome. But I've not seen many examples of awesome and attractive (to women) guy who weren't from fiction.
A helpful tool to become awesome could be to know an awesome person (real or imaginary) and ask yourself what would that person do. I guess this helps to turn off your "identity" for a moment. (While thinking about what the other person would do, you remove the "but I don't typically act this way" filter, at least partially.)
The next step is optimizing your environment, to spend more time with awesome people. For example, for me it means two things: spending less time on websites with low quality discussion (almost all of them), visiting free lectures of awesome people (together with my girlfriend, and then we discuss it together).
Essentially it means manipulating availability bias to work in your favor. If you let television or newspapers filter your inputs, you will be surrounded by misfortune, anger, frustration. If you filter your inputs by spending more time with awesome people, you will be surrounded by awesomeness. After some time your brain will start accepting "being awesome" as a custom of your tribe.