You can get personal attractiveness through different ways.
I went in three years from being told that I never smile while dancing to being asked why I smile while dancing without being able to give a reason.
It's not because I specifically worked on my smile but because I did emotional work on a deep level.
At a family event yesterday someone told me that I look taller then when we last meet a while ago and I probably do appear taller than I was a year ago because my body language changed as a result of deeper work.
If you become a more happy person who doesn't get anxiety because of all sorts of things that are happening around you, you will appear to be more attractive in any face to face encounter and even on photos.
If I want to connect with another person I care about perceiving the reactions that the words that I speak have on the other person. If the women with whom I'm talking doesn't show any facial reactions because she's on botox that makes it a lot harder for me to connect with her.
A good quote in the CBT book "The feeling good handbook" is "You can never be loved for your successes-only for your vulnerabilities. People may be attracted to you and may admire you if you are a great success. They may also resent and envy you. But they can never love you for your success."
Being vulnerable is useful. If all of your bodylanguage is fake and further signals are hidden by makeup than you aren't vunerable and you make it hard for other people to love you.
gwern in my you in my mind one of the few individuals who usually walks his talk. Do you think it's useful to use makeup? Do you use it yourself? Especially if you cite a paper that gender isn't very important when it comes to the effects of beauty,
Given the nature of the subject it might be hard to speak openly*, but do you do other black hat stuff to manipulate the people you interacts with into finding you more attractive?
*While I do promote openness I'm also willing to treat information that's marked as private privately and my commitment to openness, doesn't mean that I have a problem of protecting the secrets of other people.
gwern in my you in my mind one of the few individuals who usually walks his talk. Do you think it's useful to use makeup? Do you use it yourself? Especially if you cite a paper that gender isn't very important when it comes to the effects of beauty
I don't use makeup at the moment, but I have two main reasons for this: I interact with few people so I expect my gains to be less than average, and I am revolted by the very idea of using cosmetics or working on my appearance. (I think it's a mix of dislike of deception, laziness, and gender norms.)
The former...
Scott, known on LessWrong as Yvain, recently wrote a post complaining about an inaccurate rape statistic.
Arthur Chu, who is notable for winning money on Jeopardy recently, argued against Scott's stance that we should be honest in arguments in a comment thread on Jeff Kaufman's Facebook profile, which can be read here.
Scott just responded here, with a number of points relevant to the topic of rationalist communities.
I am interested in what LW thinks of this.
Obviously, at some point being polite in our arguments is silly. I'd be interested in people's opinions of how dire the real world consequences have to be before it's worthwhile debating dishonestly.