You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

JoshuaZ comments on Noticing something completely absurd about yourself - Less Wrong Discussion

19 Post author: diegocaleiro 26 November 2013 07:24PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (24)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 26 November 2013 09:08:41PM *  7 points [-]

Long hair is a reasonably common fetish, with a good evolutionary justification (if someone has long, healthy hair you can be assured they've been healthy for a while).

It does seem to be commonly fetishized, and at least one major fantasy novelist transparently has such a fetish based on his writing which may have also made it more common among geeks. But the health explanation seems like a bit of a just-so story. Plausible, but very hard to test. And we don't really have any evidence that this trait is genetic. Meanwhile, it is just as plausible that the fetishization occurs the same way many objects, clothings or the like become fetishized even when those things did not exist in our ancestral environment. No need to posit multiple mechanisms.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 27 November 2013 01:35:45AM 3 points [-]

I thought the fantasy novelist was going to be Laurell Hamilton.