I think that a woman who rather spends the same amount of time in daily meditation sessions will get a higher return on her time investment.
I'm not so sure. Women who don't wear makeup are much less attractive, which significantly reduces their social status and their dating market value. These are things people greatly value.
If you are open about who you are, that will make you more confident than if you walk around all the time with a mask.
I think confidence depends mostly on practice and genetics and situational factors. If anything, I think the superficiality-confidence connection is the other way round - being confident makes people see you as more genuine, because of the halo effect, i.e. because everybody loves to hate low-status people. People without masks are weirdos, because what people call "being normal" is a learned behavior, a mask.
Women who don't wear makeup are much less attractive, which significantly reduces their social status and their dating market value. These are things people greatly value.
This is true for certain subcultures. It is NOT true for other subcultures. And this is, of course, before we go into individual differences -- some girls are very pretty with a freshly-scrubbed look.
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.