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Lumifer comments on Interpersonal Entanglement - Less Wrong
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Thought: Something we could do (eventually) to make the world a better place is to use technology to upgrade every man's body. Make most men taller, more muscular, leaner, etc. Men who currently have relatively less attractive bodies will get a larger upgrade than men who have relatively more attractive bodies to make it fair. But make sure there is still variety in what men's bodies look like.
Do this until the average man is as sexually attractive to the average women as the average woman is to the average man. That would solve a lot of problems. And I don't think either gender would be uncomfortable with that scenario.
Edit: We could also upgrade things like smell and voice timbre.
Edit2: The gym is not nearly as powerful as the technology I'm talking about. I'm talking about some kind of biotechnology or transhuman technology
"The other girl is a Brandy. Her date is a Clint. Brandy and Clint are both popular, off-the-shelf models. When white.trash high school girls are going on a date in the Metaverse, they invariably run down to the computer-games section of the local Wal-Mart and buy a copy of Brandy. The user can select three breast sizes: improbable, impossible, and ludicrous. Brandy has a limited repertoire of facial expressions: cute and pouty; cute and sultry; perky and interested; smiling and receptive; cute and spacy ... Clint is just the male counterpart of Brandy. He is craggy and handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial expressions." -- Neal Stephenson, Snowcrash
Are you suggesting that my scenario would make men look fake or make them all look the same? Because if you can't imagine what I suggested without that happening it implies at least one of two things: 1. I described it poorly. 2. You need a better imagination.
First, I would like to suggest that "using technology to upgrade every man's body" is available right now. People usually call it "going to the gym".
As to whether I need a better imagination, let me quote you Eric Hoffer: When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
The gym is not nearly as powerful as the technology I'm talking about. I'm talking about biotechnology / transhuman technology. Men given the genetic short end of the stick can't reasonably expect to look fit no matter how much they work out, unless they don't have a job or any time consuming responsibilities. And no I'm not a jealous fat guy. I'm not athlete, but I'm in decent shape.
And what I'm talking about here is upgrading the average man's attractiveness so that it's on par with the average woman's attractiveness. Nobody complains that all women look the same. In fact women look very diverse. I'm talking about a scenario where men look as diverse as women do.
Also due to supply and demand, there would be an incentive for men to look diverse to match the diversity of women's desires. A higher supply of Ryan Gosling clones than there is demand for Ryan Gosling clones would create incentives for men to look different from Ryan Gosling.
Yes, but the gym has a decisive advantage: it's real and the transhuman technology is imaginary.
That's flat out false. Men given the genetic short end of the stick cannot be expected to win the Olympics. But just looking fit a very low bar. By the way, the ripped look is mostly a function of low (<10%) body fat, not of how much you lift.
Which aren't all that diverse if you're talking about looks.
The transhuman technology is a tentative speculation of what could happen in the future.
Remember this is a forum where people regularly talk about terraforming mars and building dyson spheres, I think speculating about transhumanism is appropriate in that context.
I'm unsure about this. My taste in looks for mating partners is very diverse, and I'm only one individual. But then again I'm likely to be an outlier and it would be silly to assume other people are like me. But even if it's true that women don't have diverse tastes, I don't think that means we should throw male individuals under the bus by denying them bodily upgrades just for the sake of "diversity". Imagine going up to Joe Wilson of Boston and saying: "sorry bro, but we're going to keep you fat so we can have diversity."
Sure. Since we're imagining things, technology can give you any body you want and it doesn't even have to be human. But that's pretty obvious, so I'm wondering what's the point that you want to make.
There are a whole lot of background assumptions here, beyond assuming that body upgrades are available. You are assuming that somebody can allow or deny them. You are assuming that this somebody cares about diversity of body types (in which case they might incentivise you to grow a couple of extra limbs or switch to a radial-symmetry body plan instead of staying fat and flabby, by the way). You are assuming these upgrades are a sufficiently big deal so that you don't want to do one each time you get bored or your girlfriend changes. Etc., etc.
In the context of the comment thread about a sci-fi story that's not terribly relevant, though.
Huh, for some reason I was under the impression that this was the comment thread to this other post.