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gwern comments on Link: Toward Non-Stupid, Non-Blank-Slatey Polyandry - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (32)
I have a similar feeling about the cliched 'Hollywood transformation scene' or Beautiful All Along.
On the one hand, it's pretty absurd to show 'geekette into goddess' since the actress was selected for goddess-potential in the first place - on the other hand, it is empirically demonstrating that the same physical girl* can look geekette vs goddess, and while the average girl does not have the same potential nor access to movie facilities, illustrates that there can be a substantial difference**.
* An assumption that grows less true as time passes, I suppose...
** One does wonder how many girls underinvest in attractiveness, given how common a desire it is, and what the real-world gap is.
That seems like a biased way to formulate the implicit question. Might it not be the case that many people overinvest in attractiveness?
No idea why your comment got downvoted, you raise a valid point. And apart from the issue of over- or underinvesting, for some people the ROI doesn't seem high or even positive.
I never said the number had to be positive. It's a complex topic, though, so I couldn't say with tremendous confidence that the number is negative - it's not a pure positional game, but has elements of positive, zero, and negative-sum games.
I would expect that the number of women (and men) who overinvest in attractiveness is positive. Ditto the number who underinvest. Both questions are interesting, imho.