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.

ChristianKl comments on LINK: In favor of niceness, community, and civilisation - Less Wrong Discussion

26 Post author: Solvent 24 February 2014 04:13AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (137)

Comments (137)

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

Comment author: ChristianKl 26 February 2014 04:03:35PM 0 points [-]

That said, I do think there is a big difference, especially if by "makeup" you mean what everyone else means by "makeup". Men are not respected more if they wear eyeliner and blusher every day.

The kind of makeup that male actors on TV use isn't about wearing eyeliner.

There are women who use makeup to look artificial and there are women who go for a "natural look". I don't think that a women who goes for an artificial look will get more status in a Yoga class than a women who uses less makeup. The benefits of looking artificial for women depend on the social circle in which the woman moves.

While Angela Merkel does use makeup, she didn't get in a position of political power by being good looking. Using makeup to make her look very feminine wouldn't help her.

I do think that men would benefit from optimizing their personal appearance, eg by getting rid of acne, whitening teeth, dressing better, wearing heel lifts, etc.

A lot of men have acne because of hormonal issues. If I try to avoid to show emotions on my face, it gets tense. That reduces blood flow in my face. Less bloodflow means that it's more difficult for my immune system to clear my face of bacteria that cause acne.

I don't think it's an accident that you see acne more often in asocial nerds than you see it when you look bodybuilders. The difference also isn't that the bodybuilder went to more dermatologists.

Then again, you'll be more confident wearing a mask the more practice you have with it.

Your brain will always know that you are afraid to be open if you wear a mask for the sake of impressing other people. I don't have an issue with a woman putting on makeup because she enjoys putting on makeup and don't think that will reduce confidence.

Re Steve Jobs: Giving one outlier as a counterexample does not undermine the general principle.

I'm talking about making strategic choices. Steve Job is someone who went to Buddhist meditation retreats before he was famous. That distinguishes him. As a result he wasn't obsessed about optimizing his appearance on the makeup level.

It's not a choice that in the cards for someone who did that level of deep internal work, to put on makeup to impress other people. Yes, there are women who are on that level who put on makeup because they like the activity but it comes from a very different place than putting on makeup to make people like them.

Comment author: D_Malik 05 March 2014 09:36:40AM *  1 point [-]

If I try to avoid to show emotions on my face, it gets tense. That reduces blood flow in my face. Less bloodflow means that it's more difficult for my immune system to clear my face of bacteria that cause acne.

This is very interesting; is this a significant cause of acne, and if so how do you know? If this were true, we would expect that other things that decrease blood flow in the face (such as cold weather, maybe?) would also increase acne.

Here are other hypotheses on acne, not sure whether they're true:

  • Acne is a defense mechanism employed when the body detects that one is low-status. That is, it's a way of making yourself less threatening to the rest of the tribe so that they won't slaughter you. If true, this could be mediated by status hormones like testosterone and cortisol.
  • Sunlight and/or shortage of vitamin D causes acne. (I have anecdotal evidence that tanning reduces acne.)
  • Acne is caused by weird foods, such as dairy or sugar.
  • Acne is caused by excessive face-washing, which screws up homeostatic processes controlling the amount of oil and water on the face.
  • Acne is due to evolutionary inertia: after our ancestors became hairless, they didn't have enough time or enough evolutionary pressure to evolve to excrete less oil on overly oily areas.

Several of these would also explain the nerd-acne connection. Or, that connection could go the other way round, because acne could cause people to stay inside, have lower status, etc.

Comment author: ChristianKl 05 March 2014 11:22:31AM 0 points [-]

If this were true, we would expect that other things that decrease blood flow in the face (such as cold weather, maybe?) would also increase acne.

Cold weather might reduce your blood flow for a few hours but it will come back to normal once you are again in a warm environment.

If I would run an experiment I would attempt to measure how tense the muscles in the face happen to be and how warm the skin happens to be and see whether those ratings correlates with the amount of acne.

This is very interesting; is this a significant cause of acne, and if so how do you know?

It's a working theory of myself at the moment.

The background is there are techniques in the hypnosis realm for resolving "trapped emotions" which often work to help solve physical alignments.

My perception of the bodies of other people is also getting better and I get better at perceiving when a certain part of the person I'm interacting with is colder and tenser than it should be.

Acne is caused by excessive face-washing, which screws up homeostatic processes controlling the amount of oil and water on the face.

As far as self reports go, some people improve their acne by washing their faces less and others by washing it more.

Acne is a defense mechanism employed when the body detects that one is low-status. That is, it's a way of making yourself less threatening to the rest of the tribe so that they won't slaughter you. If true, this could be mediated by status hormones like testosterone and cortisol.

Hunter gatherer tribes have nearly no acne. I would be wary with an explanation that focuses on the utility of getting acne in a hunter gather tribe to explain the acne we have in Western civilisation.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit