81–90 of 148 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not that I'm the best to judge, but male porn actors seem to be mostly in pretty good shape.
these days they're all young and fit and well endowed. but the camera is never focused on them or their faces, like in the old days. the ron jeremy days are long gone.
I'm surprised there's no mention downsides to being an attractive man. I think they certainly exist, but perhaps the net is positive?
What downsides?
I would add, in all seriousness, that it can make dealing with women a problem.
I think it's widely accepted that some men are apt do all kinds of foolish, prideful things in response to working with a woman they find attractive.
Some women are hardly different.
I recently realized that this is embedded in our language. My 4-year was confused by the phrase "good-looking". She assumed that it meant people who look like they're good. By four, she's already internalized that attractive people are good and unattractive (by local standards) are bad. Scary.
There are many defining visual characteristics that are anthropomorphically indicators of "good" or "bad" people, that don't necessarily have to do with attractiveness.
Evolution wise, this is because people like in others, what they wish they had for themselves. Likewise, people hate in others what they dislike about themselves. We celebrate the beautiful because we wish we too could be beautiful. We mock the ugly/short/gay/fat/skinny/weak because those are qualities that we ourselves do not wish to have. If all of society punishes those with these traits, people with these traits…
I've read his post twice now and I can't for the life of me find the link, could anyone post it?
" America has no law preventing companies from using attractiveness as a hiring criteria, regardless of whether the job is exotic dancer, salesman, or software engineer. It’s pretty much okay from a legal standpoint to discriminate based on looks in America." My problem with this is beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So having laws preventing companies hiring based on looks is ridiculous. I mean, how would you kno…
It's only subjective to a point. There are many things that are almost uniformly considered attractive by the majority of the population. There was an AMA from somebody who did research on this on reddit a while back. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1cstrm/i_did_research_... It says in there that it's usually around 30-40% subjective.
The top answer in the reddit thread discusses this (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1689917/pdf/1038...) study. It says that women prefer the odor of more attractive men. The conclusions from that study are based on the odors of 6(!) different men.
And the t-shirt the men wore to capture the odor are washed, frozen, and then heated in a bottle. The women then smell the bottle and make their judgement. The study doesn't bother to explain why these actions don't change the odor of the t-shirt (which they might not, but that doesn't seem obvious to me).
There are other problems with the study, but I'll stop there.
I understand that all fields of science have to start somewhere, but this seems closer to phrenology than particle physics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course. "Stop being fat, it's easy, look at me how fit I am" is pretty much the same "Stop being poor, it's easy, look at how rich I am."
Not being fat also involves lifestyle choices that are easier to make when you are rich. E.g. want to go workout but you live in a sucky climate? No problem, just drive on over to the gym! Want to live in a better climate where you can bike to work every day? Sure, just move to the bay area. Want to work out before lunch? You have a high value job, your employer will be flexible. Then sometimes its just a matter of c…
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
Evolution wise, this is because people like in others, what they wish they had for themselves. Likewise, people hate in others what they dislike about themselves. We celebrate the beautiful because we wish we too could be beautiful. We mock the ugly/short/gay/fat/skinny/weak because those are qualities that we ourselves do not wish to have. If all of society punishes those with these traits, people with these traits…
As the article points out, judging people based on beauty is deeply ingrained in human nature, but I think we can all agree that it's a bad part of our human nature. It's also in our human nature to want to rape, steal, murder, etc. to get what we want, but we create laws and social structures to prevent those things and I'd like to think that we as a species are always trying to transcend these primitive urges and become a more sophisticated Vulcan-like human race that is "above" such things
Accordingly, I'm always perplexed as to why judging people based on their looks is still so widely accepted and tolerated in society. Companies aren't allowed to advertise a product by saying "So good you'd rape/kill/steal from your neighbor to get one" and yet they're allowed to promote the idea that becoming more beautiful makes you a better person. I think it's absurd and I think/hope that people 100 years from now will look back on our society and shake their heads in shame and/or amusement at all the shallow advertisements we allow on TV.
I refuse to accept that "That's just the way human beings are, man. We gotta reproduce." Forgive me for thinking that we could do much better as a society.
That's why I abhor companies like Zynga whose entire business model revolves around tapping into people's most basic, primitive instincts and making money off of it. I love video games with beautiful graphics, an epic story, and great gameplay, but Zynga games have none of those things. They are the equivalent of a crack dealer getting people hooked on low-quality games which add nothing to people's lives, and just because they grow quickly in a new space does not mean they should be lauded for doing so.
Last point - I don't like the argument that because babies and children also recognize similar standards of beauty that we should just accept that there's nothing we can do about it. Children also want to eat candy at every meal, steal stuff they want, and shit anywhere. Children need responsible adults to teach them that all those things are not good for themselves and society. And yet we fail to do the same for both children and adults when it comes to looks, which never fails to sadden me.
EDIT to add:
pg recently tweeted "Will ownership turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before they had the infrastructure to manage sharing properly?"
I'd like to pose the same question - Will makeup and cosmetic surgery turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before society got its shit together and collectively realized that we shouldn't be promoting beauty as a virtue?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course. "Stop being fat, it's easy, look at me how fit I am" is pretty much the same "Stop being poor, it's easy, look at how rich I am."
"Stop being fat, it's easy, look at me how fit I am" Which is very, very, very true. I was 240 pounds, went down to 155 - and hell yah, I will repeat it back to you - "Stop being fat, it's easy, look at me how fit I am". Gym, sweat and cry as I did. The first thing you'll notice too is how much less self-pity you have. And that's manly too.
I weighed slightly less than you (something like 105kg / 230lbs), dropped down to around 70kg (155lbs) mostly on diet changes, and am currently hovering around 75kg (165lbs) having been doing weight training for the last four months. Not done yet obviously (still some more body fat to get rid of), but I'm getting there.
It feels easy from here, certainly, because I'm used to it. Getting here required a lot of hard work (in my case, over a period of a couple of years), and a lot of persistence.
The problem is getting started - knowing what you need to do, getting on with it, and sticking to it. It's intimidating, and it requires quite a lot of commitment. The trick is that, once you've got going, it actually gets much easier. You just need to get going first.
I'll completely agree on this though: DO IT. Seriously, just do it. It's all going to be worth it in the end, because you'll feel so much better for it.