pnrjulius comments on The Halo Effect - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 November 2007 12:58AM

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Comment author: pnrjulius 21 April 2012 02:37:01PM 0 points [-]

I think it's more this effect: The people doing the hiring WANT you to be pretty, but they also want you to be brilliant.

If you are pretty enough, you can get in without being too brilliant; or if you are brilliant enough, you can get in without being too pretty.

Ideally, you would be both (i.e. you would be Richard Feynman); but you've got to have one or the other, or nobody will hire you.

Hence, our sample will consist of A: Pretty people who aren't that brilliant P(P&~B) B: Brilliant people who are not pretty P(~P&B) C: Pretty people who are also brilliant P(P&B)

If we presume merely that prettiness isn't strongly correlated with brilliance and both are relatively rare, then we will find exactly what we see: The brilliant ones who get hired are also mostly not pretty.