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Pixels don’t care

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Re: Pixels don’t care

#131

Post by robotresearcher »

eru wrote: post #95
robotresearcher wrote: post #55

"For the first time in human history, it’s possible to be represented (almost) solely through the merits of your work." I enjoyed the piece, but this is overstated. Represented by an agent that protects anonymity, or just working by correspondence only, writers have enjoyed this ability for a long time. George Eliot and J.K. Rowling obscured their gender and let the work speak for itself.

Nitpick: `J.K. Rowling' might be obscuring gender, but `George Eliot' isn't just obfuscation.

Yes it is. Mary Ann Eliot using George as a pen name obscured her gender. She didn't claim to be a man: she hid the fact that she wasn't. George isn't a uniquely masculine name and was more frequent for women in the past than it is now.

http://www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/0/George

Re: Pixels don’t care

#132

Post by B-Con »

alabut wrote: post #4

Reminds me of the Malcolm Gladwell anecdote about how orchestra auditions are usually biased unless they hide the musicians behind a screen, so that the music is judged free from distraction. You can see the same principle at work on a new TV show called The Taste, where contestants cook up and serve a single bite of food that the judges eat without knowing who the contestants are. So far the home cooks have been not…

The reality TV show "The Voice" is similar. The on-TV auditions are done such that the judges cannot see the performer and must select them for their season-long team based purely on their voice. It's worked well.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#133

Post by corporalagumbo »

mnicole wrote: post #128
corporalagumbo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps instead of trying to fight their age to project a defensive false equivalence with older workers, these kids are embracing and flaunting their age as a virtue - their precocity, enthusiasm, even naivety. You said it yourself - you look kindly on young kids with the balls to show off something cool they've made on HN. It's natural as an older person to feel charitable towards earnest kids, so what's wrong w…

My issue isn't with their passion or desire; that's great. But I'm hiring people based on talent, not age or even enthusiasm, and I question the intent/presumption in citing that attribute alone before even seeing their work. It's the same argument about the worth of college [in certain fields]; does it really matter in the context of the role? I've also seen 25 year olds use it to describe themselves, so at what poi…

Sounds like you worked for idiots. Better employees would have noticed your seriousness and helped you develop your interest in the work I think.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#134

Post by mvleming »

corporalagumbo wrote: post #129
mvleming wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the duckface is an aesthetic quality we've evolved to have a taste for?

What? No. I think the aesthetic features which most accurately signal good health, strength and fertility, which humans throughout history have consistently opted for in mate selection, are what we have evolved tastes for. I.e. we have evolved aesthetic preferences which have consistently construed reproductive benefits.

I agree with you. I've read about how a curvy figure (a high hip-to-waist ratio) is more attractive to males because it means offspring are more likely to survive when they pop out of the woman (small hips and big brains don't go well together).

The point I was trying to make though is there are some aesthetic qualities we like that are not evolutionary products, the example I gave was the duckface. Another example is women in China bind their feet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding), or yet another is Kayan women elongate their necks (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ak1yxTngxW4/Tnen0_FXpgI/AAAAAAAAAW...).

I believe what aesthetic qualities we like are the result of our nature and our nurture, and it is in this way I believe society does create a perfect image.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#135

Post by corporalagumbo »

mvleming wrote: post #134
corporalagumbo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No. I think the aesthetic features which most accurately signal good health, strength and fertility, which humans throughout history have consistently opted for in mate selection, are what we have evolved tastes for. I.e. we have evolved aesthetic preferences which have consistently construed reproductive benefits.

I agree with you. I've read about how a curvy figure (a high hip-to-waist ratio) is more attractive to males because it means offspring are more likely to survive when they pop out of the woman (small hips and big brains don't go well together). The point I was trying to make though is there are some aesthetic qualities we like that are not evolutionary products, the example I gave was the duckface. Another example i…

The point I was making is, and the reason I dislike SCT, is that there is a very strong and relatively stable genetically-determined set of aesthetic preferences found in all cultures. There are no cultures where diseased and ulcerated skin on the face is considered sexy. "But of course" you might say - but that's the point, we take the real commonalities for granted.

And then, yes, on top of those there is a whole conflicting mess of different desirable appearances which depend upon the period, culture, and person, driven by all the complexities of interacting human beings. But those factors can be boiled down to some fairly simple drives which have all emerged for one reason: to maximise reproductive success.

Which is all what you would expect from the result of selection pressures acting across tens of thousands of successful generations of descendants of ancient DNA-replicating machines.

Another way to say this is that it is in our nature to be highly responsive to environmental conditions, i.e. nurture. Nature builds the platform and tools needed for nurture to occur - but just because we are plastic in the face of nurture does not mean nurture negates or transcends the principles of nature (at least not so far, I believe.) If individuals had arisen in which this was so, they would have been selected against. You should read The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker makes this point about people who try and argue that the brain is effectively infinitely plastic and comes with no built-in "software" for processing and generating language.

(PS The main complication in trying to read human behaviour for evolutionary logic is that selection principles do not act upon individuals solely, because humans are all integrated into often multiple kin and common-identity networks of greater or lesser complexity. Evolutionary logic resolves at the level of these more-complicated networks.)

(PPS I believe that the head size-hip ratio theory is erroneous. Read http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/hominids/2012/08/timing-of-c...)

Re: Pixels don’t care

#136

Post by mvleming »

corporalagumbo wrote: post #135
mvleming wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. I've read about how a curvy figure (a high hip-to-waist ratio) is more attractive to males because it means offspring are more likely to survive when they pop out of the woman (small hips and big brains don't go well together). The point I was trying to make though is there are some aesthetic qualities we like that are not evolutionary products, the example I gave was the duckface. Another example i…

The point I was making is, and the reason I dislike SCT, is that there is a very strong and relatively stable genetically-determined set of aesthetic preferences found in all cultures. There are no cultures where diseased and ulcerated skin on the face is considered sexy. "But of course" you might say - but that's the point, we take the real commonalities for granted. And then, yes, on top of those there is a whole c…

I haven't read about SCT, but in the wikipedia article about social constructionism I read: "When we say that something is socially constructed, we are focusing on its dependence on contingent variables of our social selves rather than any inherent quality that it possesses in itself." You said: "on top of those there is a whole conflicting mess of different desirable appearances which depend upon the period, culture, and person, driven by all the complexities of interacting human beings." At first I thought are "the period, culture, and person" not "contingent variables of our social selves"? But you went on to say "those factors can be boiled down to some fairly simple drives which have all emerged for one reason: to maximise reproductive success." In other words, you're saying those factors can be boiled down to something that is an inherent quality that we possess in ourselves, which is we maximise reproductive success.

Does this make sense? I dislike SCT too now but I wasn't trying to imply the perfect image society creates is socially constructed when I said "personifying what society has deemed as the perfect image." I meant regardless of whether society is socially constructed or not, this system that I'm referring to as "society" creates an ideal image of what a human being should look like. If society is not socially constructed, and is in fact defined by our biology, then that would mean this ideal image also originates from our biology. Regardless of all this, there is a perfect image we strive for.

I feel like we're on the same page, and I totally relate to your view that, and I'm going to paraphrase you: "it is in our nature to be highly responsive to our nurture." Our nurture is not an individual entity from the system, our nurture is grounded by our biology.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#137

Post by corporalagumbo »

mvleming wrote: post #136
corporalagumbo wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point I was making is, and the reason I dislike SCT, is that there is a very strong and relatively stable genetically-determined set of aesthetic preferences found in all cultures. There are no cultures where diseased and ulcerated skin on the face is considered sexy. "But of course" you might say - but that's the point, we take the real commonalities for granted. And then, yes, on top of those there is a whole c…

I haven't read about SCT, but in the wikipedia article about social constructionism I read: "When we say that something is socially constructed, we are focusing on its dependence on contingent variables of our social selves rather than any inherent quality that it possesses in itself." You said: "on top of those there is a whole conflicting mess of different desirable appearances which depend upon the period, culture…

1) I just called it "SCT" as shorthand, not to imply that it's a coherent theory. I don't think it's particularly coherent - from what I know it's one of the many parts of modern cultural theory, stemming from sociology, anthropology, and history, among others, which in modern times have become extremely theoretical and disconnected from reality, and tend to say very little with a lot of very complicated words.

2) Ultimately everything, including human behaviour, boils down to the principles of fundamental physics. Human behaviour is just the most complex expresion of these principles of which we are aware.

3) I mostly jumped on the hint of social constructionism because I absolutely hate it when people try to argue that beauty and aesthetic standards are purely constructed and hence artifical or arbitrary, which is patently not true. It's driven by a misguided desire to defend ugly people or something, I don't know, anyone it's stupid. Again I recommend Steven Pinker, his book The Blank Slate also touches on this I believe.

4) Mostly though I wanted to offer some logical reasons why people on online games might tend to wish to present themselves as, for men, muscular, strong, dominant figures, and for women, attractive, assertive, desirable figures.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#138

Post by eru »

robotresearcher wrote: post #131
eru wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick: `J.K. Rowling' might be obscuring gender, but `George Eliot' isn't just obfuscation.

Yes it is. Mary Ann Eliot using George as a pen name obscured her gender. She didn't claim to be a man: she hid the fact that she wasn't. George isn't a uniquely masculine name and was more frequent for women in the past than it is now. http://www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/0/George

Thanks!

Re: Pixels don’t care

#139

Post by [deleted] »

kstenerud wrote: post #61
kneath wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a great argument if my peers had formal education or experience with big clients. None of them did. There is no "point" to be made by my post, rather a description of two vastly different ways I was treated for the same work I was doing during the same point in my life — one online, one in person.

All the same, you should be careful about using deductive reasoning in this way. You're assuming that the only criteria upon which you were measured were formal education and experience with big clients, but what about how you struck them emotionally? Did you have that trustworthy/hardworking/whatever air about you that perhaps some of your colleagues had? Did your mode of dress impress them as much as for other cand…

[deleted]

Re: Pixels don’t care

#140

Post by mnicole »

corporalagumbo wrote: post #133
mnicole wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue isn't with their passion or desire; that's great. But I'm hiring people based on talent, not age or even enthusiasm, and I question the intent/presumption in citing that attribute alone before even seeing their work. It's the same argument about the worth of college [in certain fields]; does it really matter in the context of the role? I've also seen 25 year olds use it to describe themselves, so at what poi…

Sounds like you worked for idiots. Better employees would have noticed your seriousness and helped you develop your interest in the work I think.

These idiots are widespread throughout business. And with younger employees, it is often assumed they will not stick around (no family to support, incentives to travel) so how much of your time do you want to devote to building them up if they're just going to take that knowledge elsewhere?
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