Is a general analysis of the costs of shaving vs. beard possible, or is there so much individual variation that anyone who's interested in the question will just have to experiment?

Previous discussion of face shaving.

I only found this because I remembered it-- it don't show up in a google search, whether from the site or a general google search. It doesn't show up in yahoo, bing, or duckduckgo, either, though less wrong posts with less about shaving do show up.

It's a somewhat complex book, but part of her meaning is that the idea that there are people who are only sexually interested in members of the other sex, and that this is an important category, is recent.

I'm interested in any details you'd like to share.

That's something like my objection to CEV-- I currently believe that some fraction of important knowledge is gained by blundering around and (or?) that the universe is very much more complex than any possible theory about it.

This means that you can't fully know what your improved (by what standard?) self is going to be like.

I wonder whether people who've studied anthropology find that it's affected their choices.

If you want more on the subject of how people think about sexuality, try Straight by Hanne Blank. She tracks the invention of heterosexuality (a concept which she says is less than a century old) in the west.

If part of CEV is finding out how much of what we think is obviously true is just stuff that people made up, life could get very strange.

That they would fully understand that they have roughly 50% chance of getting the raw end of the deal, but still think that this deal would maximise their welfare overall?

A lot of oppression of women seems to be justified by claims that if women aren't second-class citizens, they won't choose to have children, or at least not enough children for replacement. This makes women's rights into an existential risk.

Even with a veil of ignorance, people won't make the same choices-- people fall in different places on the risk aversion/reward-seeking spectrum.

Is that true of all of Heinlein's books? I would say that most of them (including Starship Troopers) don't have superheroes.