People that have used to be fat, and then lost a lot of weight, will know how brutally different people will treat you. Whereas you'd practically be a ghost before weight loss, random people will suddenly look you in your eyes, smile, even start conversations with you.
Some will of course argue that you losing weight will also make you more confident, and thus you become more approachable. I think there's a lot of bias against fat people, against "unattractive" people, etc.
This also shows in the classroom, work, etc.
Of course, actually being conventionally attractive will come with its own perks. People will go out of their way to help you, and to support you. Over time this could very well boost your ego to also become more confident and decisive.
> Whereas you'd practically be a ghost before weight loss, random people will suddenly look you in your eyes, smile, even start conversations with you.
I watched something like this happen in a friend, but as an outside observer I saw a different explanation: The period when he got into shape involved a lot of changes for the better in his life, including becoming more outgoing, motivated, and disciplined (necessary prerequisites for weight loss in the pre-medication era). He also bought a new wardrobe and replaced his old worn out logo T-shirts and cargo shorts with clothes more appropriate for an adult. He also started paying attention to his grooming and hair style instead of looking like he just woke up.
For a while he tried to explain it all by his weight loss alone, but over time he realized it was an overall change in everything about the way he carried himself and presented himself to the world.
I won’t deny that there is some stigma around being overweight from some people, but I’ve also rarely seen a person change only their weight. Now that GLP-1s are everywhere I do know a few people who slimmed down rapidly without changing anything else and expected things like their dating life to completely change but have been disappointed that little has changed socially for them. They do feel a lot better though!
> I won’t deny that there is some stigma around being overweight from some people, but I’ve also rarely seen a person change only their weight.
This feels like it could be a correlation vs causation thing. Its a lot easier to put effort in if you see it getting results. Is it that they suddenly put effort in triggering all this or js it the weighg loss made the investment of putting effort in return results where previously you'd need a much higher level of effort to see results making it only seem worth it after the weight loss.
Or is it the weight loss resulted in higher self confidence giving all sorts of knock on effects.
I think its really hard to tease apart cause and effect here.
A data point, though my situation is not even about weight: I used to be skinny fat in my mid-twenties until mid-thirties - so basically still kind of slim but some belly fat and not much muscles. Kind of average, unremarkable.
After a breakup I started being more active again, I went bouldering once a week and gradually got into shape and then really athletic after about 2 years when I started going twice a week. My total weight didn't change at all. I dress just as good as before and have the same overall style. Of course most clothes simply look better on me, now that I'm more in shape. Same good job that I still like. I do go out a bit more. But overall I would say I really didn't change anything except getting more attractive from putting on muscles and losing fat.
It made a hell of a difference for dating. Before I felt mostly invisible but since then got approached in bars all the time, which rarely happened before. After some time I got way more confident - but when this stated I sure wasn't yet. Some woman even told me into the face that I lacked confidence after they approached me and realized I don't have the personality and/or confidence matching my appearance. They certainly only approached me because of my appearance.
The people only loosing weight are probably held back by other things. If they changed everything but their weight they likely wouldn't have more success either. I would say I had most things figured out already before and It seems I was held back only by having an average build. Just getting fit absolutely made the difference for me.
I don’t think that’s particularly true. There’s a lot you can do with texture, colours and silhouettes, even within items that are “the same”. I do think most men are pretty unimaginative when it comes to dressing themselves though, and most can’t even do basic things like getting trousers hemmed to fit them properly.
The key point in his change was that he started looking like someone who cared enough to put some minimal effort into dressing himself.
It’s not about being uniform or bland. He went from old worn-out clothes he didn’t care about to wearing clothes that were appropriate for a business casual environment or a casual date. When you start dressing like you care, regardless of how unique and individualized, others notice.
It goes a little deeper than "does not care" though: worn out can also be a symptom of caring a lot. Caring in the way of having a strong desire to identify with the stuff worn, and newly bought stuff just not checking that box. Then any newly procured garb, no matter how carefully selected, perhaps even customized, will feel like being dressed up as someone else. It's like a trap, just not being wired for new clothes. I wonder if there's a connection to childhood dress-up play, as in kids who had good times masquerading as some archetype are less likely later in life to fall into that "that's-not-me" trap regarding new clothes.
For many years in large corporations, pretty much the only acceptable dress was white shirt, tie, dark suit, and dress shoes. We were still wearing something like that at trade shows into the 1990s before things started loosening up.
(Mildly funny story. One big, probably Unix show, the IBM estaff showed in logoed polos and suddenly everyone else is like If IBM doesn’t need suits we sure don’t.)
While I can kind of see what you are aiming at, a basic button down and clean pants go a long way. Keep it ironed and clean, and you go even further. No need for the anything that looks like a uniform.
Men's fashion is a little boring, but there's a lot you can play with in terms of fabric and accessories within it anyway. Men's wear blogs are kinda interesting
I guess it all depends on the type of women you're trying to attract. I'm married and have kids, so old worn out logo t-shirts and cargo shorts sound nice and comfortable to me, in most everyday situations. I'll dress appropriate for the circumstance.
I have a lot of respect for folks that successfully lose a great deal of weight. If I know someone did that, my estimation of them generally goes up, several notches. I'm no stranger to quitting stuff, but significant weight loss is still terrifying to me. I could benefit from losing 20-30 lbs, myself, and it's not been easy. Success has been ... elusive.
Maybe it's different, these days, with GLP-1 drugs (I have always called it "Gila Lizard Poison" in my head), but it takes serious discipline and grit to lose the weight, and keep it off.
That generally comes from massive personal change; both internal, and external. Quite difficult.
It's difficult if you think of it as big, but what if you break it down into smaller, manageable steps? Start by being consciously aware of what you eat in a day (or better yet, week); write it down, do some back of the napkin calorie calculations.
Then adjust. Change one habit; could be reducing portion size by a hundred grams, drinking less, switching to black coffee, I don't know what people have for habits.
Same with exercising, don't go all in at once, try going to the gym or for a long walk once a week. It takes six weeks to stop, change or start a habit, so it will take some self-discipline for that period. But if it's small, incremental change instead of a "change your life around" it's a lot more manageable.
Also be aware of the "survivorship bias", the "before / after" posts on social media, the "I changed my life in $period" - these make it look like it was an overnight lifestyle change, but that's not necessarily true, what you see is the end result and if you pay attention you'll notice that usually there's years between the before / after without any breakdown or in-between progress.
Losing weight is one of the prime examples of the difference between simple and easy. We've evolved over millions of years to try to gain weight; reversing that is hard.
Weight loss, debt recovery, and other habit changes are just that - changes to habit which are much more difficult if you don't admit that's what you're doing.
This has been discussed from time immemorial and confronting it as it is (that in the case of habits we are more animal than rational) is the beginning of change.
An example is that you can't just "cut it out" you have to replace it with something else.
>Some will of course argue that you losing weight will also make you more confident
Having been one of the people who experienced this (well the inverse, scarily skinny to lean and muscular), the confidence comes entirely from people in your life congratulating you, followed by strangers and new people just having a baseline positive glow towards you.
I don't know who came up with that line, it's repeated a lot, but I am almost certain it came from someone who never experienced the transition and soothed their ego by telling themselves it's all just a state of mind.
Height as a man is also a huge bonus, at least in the cultures to which I’ve been exposed. There are examples I can think of men not being conventionally attractive, but just in the top quintile of height, and receiving special attention in dating and leadership opportunities.
This is a benefit. Being healthy and fit is objectively great for you. That your peers subtly nudge you in that direction is great. And in contrast, I feel horrible about "body positivity" - making you feel good about an objective problem that's incapacitating and killing you is a huge problem.
The problem with this stance is that the alternative (making people feel bad) will exacerbate the problem by contributing to feelings of hopelessness and ostracism.
The first prerequisite for making difficult changes is a supportive environment - not a judgmental one.
My personal experience was that the shame I'd been made to feel throughout middle school for being overweight fueled the motivation to buckle down and lose weight when I was independent and mature enough to come up with a diet that I could sustain.
I'm also quite anti "body positivity" as it is usually espoused online, especially in relation to weight, which is by far the main focus of the movement. It feels quite self-destructive, you accept that your weight is unchangeable (even though I would say that in 75% of cases, and probably even more, it definitely isn't), and try to feel "proud" of it, even though there are piles upon piles of quite definitive research which proves that being overweight is horrible for your health, and you essentially start preventing your improvement, by choice this time. You start eating more because now you decide that you actually like being fat, now thinking that that's who you are and always will be, and you should feel proud of yourself (which is quite silly all in itself), and you just end up in a worse state than before. Body positivity will not help you get healthier.
But, we also shouldn't forget that the idea of body positivity didn't just pop up out of a vacuum, it's inherently a reaction to the culture. And here I disagree with you, if your peers and society in general just slightly nudges you to be healthy then that'd be okay, but that's not really what happens from my experience. I used to be quite overweight, especially while I was a teenager, and it was tough. People didn't really treat me like a peer, everyone avoided me, and made fun of me constantly for my weight. Random people would tell me how fat I am (by the way, I wasn't even that fat, far from obese). And in the end it fucked me up quite badly, I had no self-respect, no confidence, and I didn't really want to live at that point. I managed to turn it around, I stopped eating properly for days, often just snacking on a package of nuts for an entire day, I would start passing out when standing up, I would exercise so much until I couldn't walk anymore, and in the end it helped! I lost a ton of weight, people stopped tormenting me, and I started to be perceived as quite normal. I even had my first real boyfriend, nobody even looked at me before. But I was still miserable and felt way more unhealthy, at that point I was underweight and eating one portion of rice a day, maybe with some vegetables. No snacks or sweets of any kind. What was essentially bullying did help me to lose weight, but it did not make me healthy. That's just my personal anecdote, I bet there are people who used people making fun of them to start a journey of healthy self-improvement and honestly that's great, but I know most overweight people can't take it well. This is kind of the issue with using shame to get people to improve (though most people who hate on fat people definitely do not have that as their goal), as that shame often messes with your mental health, and makes progress way harder. Many overweight people straight up turn to food to try to feel good, just making the issue way worse. Or they get better in a self-destructive way like me. Ironically I was definitely not healthier when I was underweight, I felt physically awful most of the time, but because I looked quite normal people thought I was more healthy! Weight isn't a perfect metric for health itself, and we shame overweight people disproportionately more than underweight people (especially for women, though I bet for men it's different).
And I think a lot of people who try to follow body positivity have a similar experience to mine (at least I think so, I don't really have proof!). They have endured a ton of meanness for their weight, and often started to hate themselves because of it, and then they turn to body positivity as a sort of "Fuck you!" to the people who made them feel subhuman for their weight. And it's obviously also not productive, it's just a heavy swing in the opposite direction. It's caused directly by the shame society places upon being overweight. It's just the opposite side of the same coin, where I believe both sides suck.
- "Being fat is morally bad!"
- "No, being fat is morally good actually!"
It's kind of tough to find a good solution for this, I think we all agree that we should try to prevent as many people being an unhealthy weight as possible for the good of the people themselves and society as a whole. And I 100% don't think we should encourage people to be and stay obese just because it's easier, but making fun of people who are overweight does not actually help them either. I don't really have a solution for this. I personally try to stay "body neutral" in a way, I try to avoid putting a moral value on unhealthy weight, and I try to view it as any other health issue. But as a society, I think it makes more sense to avoid bullying fat people in the hopes that they take the bullying and turn it into nice and productive improvement, and just make being a healthy weight easier, make healthy food the easiest food to access, put value in sports and walking, and just make it easier to live a healthy life by default.
Sorry if this response kind of turned into a sob story, I thought it was important to try to offer what my own experience was like when I was experiencing the pressure to lose weight, as I know a few people who were or still are overweight who felt similarly, even if it's not universal! :)
I think being conventionally attractive gives you a lot more chance practice socialising and my observation is that, people who use that chance get so good at it, they remain very good at relationships even at old age.
I know a ~55ish year old lady who is beautiful, but looks 55. I see her adjusting to her new reality and its painful. I imagine she used to be able to get away with being mean and sarcastic because she was so hot.
Now it just causes office fights. "I wont work with X" is something Ive heard.
The interesting part is that I originally only worked with her on the phone, so I always thought she was mean... Then I saw her in person and everything clicked.
They often have "other reasons" people put up with it - even just being the office attack dog you sic on annoying customers will make you a valuable team member.
Having been overweight my entire life until recently, this is accurate. The "it's just your newfound confidence" argument misses the mark completely.
The baseline level of basic respect you receive from strangers such as simply making eye contact, holding doors, or initiating small talk changes almost overnight. It is a very bitter reality to wake up to when you realize you were basically invisible before.
I dress like a hobo so that everyone fucks off and nobody wants anything from me. Sometimes I go somewhere and people walk away, giving me personal space. It's amazing.
When I was on antidepressants I noticed people were much more likely to approach me and start up a conversation. I think so might have been more at ease a confident an also more likely to smile and make eye contact with strangers myself. So I think self confidence and general openness play a big part too.
> Whereas you'd practically be a ghost before weight loss, random people will suddenly look you in your eyes, smile, even start conversations with you.
I feel this as a guy trying to lose weight very seriously this year. On one hand, I can lose weight but I will forever be short unless a miracle occurs lol. I’ve made my peace with being unattractive for the most part, the attempt to lose weight is primarily for health reasons.
I went from being a scrawny guy in my teens, to a chubby/fat gamer in my late teens/early 20s, and then a fit athlete in my mid 20s. While I had envisioned much more interest from the ladies, my biggest surprise was how much nicer, kinder, and helpful random people were. And in a professional setting, co-workers and leaders just treated you more seriously - especially when it came to handing out leadership roles on projects etc.
I lost 100 pounds and as amazing as it was that everyone (not just potential mates but literally EVERYONE, even family) no longer thought I was lazy and was just… nicer to me - was honestly kind of depressing. And I was an active fat person! I often did 50+ mile bike rides when I weighed 280.
People aren’t much more sophisticated than our ape brethren at the end of the day.
It is the same with being accompanied by a very beautiful woman.
Without changing at all, the difference of how people treat you when you are accompanied by a very beautiful woman is staggering. People are more nice and polite even dare I say subservient. People low key treat you like you are some sort of important person.
Beauty, and proximity to it, was is and will be a social status symbol.
My pet theory is that it is a term in the objective function to limit the mutation rate; hence the theories that claim that beautiful faces are the "averaged" faces of a race/ethnic group
On the flip side, there's nothing more valuable than being able to walk around as a "fat" and/or "unattractive" person to really hone your filter ...
Once things have "improved", the filter remains and I'd argue those solid friends/colleagues/etc are proven gold.
In my books, there's nothing worse than being rich, beautiful, attractive off the bat as you might never know if those close to you are hangers on or the real deal.
Lots of ""'s here to be respectful that my opinions on the matter may differ from others.
Among all the other reasons that people have explained that this isn’t exactly correct a probably isn’t entirely attributed to just weight… I’ll make an opposite proposition.
Perhaps we are evolutionarily programmed to avoid people with impulse control issues?
I think there might be something here. I believe people flock to bigger, stronger and healthier people as some sort of evolutionary strategy for survival. If we were in a crisis and had to revert to tribes requiring everyone to pitch in to save humanity would you rather have the person who can resist impulses and keep a strict schedule (fit/healthy) or the person who looks like they lay around eating everything in sight. Using looks alone someone may assume the more healthy and fit person would be better to keep in their circle and thus prioritize being in their good graces.
I understand that it's not that simple, and someone's physical ability has nothing to do with intelligence in the real world. Unfortunately we're all subject to making split second judgements when interacting with strangers and as a result people don't think deeply about how that impacts those they deal with (or don't care).
Alot of discussions from trans people have been very validating of gendered experiences as they get to objectively experience both and see the difference
Do you believe that they get an unadulterated perspective of both experiences? That they would be getting the experience of a woman rather than that of a trans woman?
It is hard to believe research like this means anything while research in real science fields tends to be so nuanced and hard to make conclusions about.
This only serves as a tool for people who are trying to find a basis for their beliefs.
My first job during and out of college back in 2003, we were entirely remote. We hired exclusively over the phone which resulted in a mix of people that were completely diverse in their backgrounds and at the same time truly qualified to do the work.
The company went on to grow quite successfully until it was acquired 6 years later. I feel that zoom and video conferencing allows some of that "appearance" factor back in. Based on my experience though, if I had my way, job interviews would be exclusively audio only.
I think most 'attractive' people put effort into their appearances, which might appeal to management types who evaluate work performance. Also, imo the best way to get a management position in my experience isn't to work hard, or be knowledgeable, but to be the least objectionable pick.
This varies with country/company, with Euros usually being appearance focused, but in US companies, it's dudes in crumpled T-shirts all the way to the top (in engineering).
Seriously, it's so entertaining to sit in on an important meeting with a US vendor which looks like a college dorm party with an impeccably dressed guy or lady (from sales and/or management) who sticks out like a sore thumb.
Best way to get a manager position is to be a few inches taller than everybody else. It doesn't make a lick of sense, but pay attention to how often the boss is taller than everybody else on the team. Not always, but far more often than random chance can account for.
(Incidentally, the best boss I ever had was barely 5 feet.)
That is far less common outside of tech. Even within tech, I did throw on a blazer and tie when I interviewed for my last job. Totally unnecessary but any company for which that’s actually a problem it’s a red flag. I did start dressing down a bit for most of the developer-oriented conferences I attend for the reason you say.
> if I had my way, job interviews would be exclusively audio only.
Unfortunately, cheating is becoming rampant in remote interviews, especially for early career roles right now. I think companies are moving toward having final interview rounds in person because it’s such an effective tactic to discourage interview cheating.
Screens were voice calls for a long time. I’m a big fan of what’s normally the day of interviews be in person even if you take AI cheating out of the picture. I realize not everyone agrees. Zoom interviewing is mostly a COVID outcome.
Audio interviews are currently broken. People can use AI and many will do. Not necessarily for speech generation but to know what to say.
For research studies, we slowly revert to on premise physical interviews at work. If we want the ChatGPT answers, we don’t need another human in the loop.
HR loves video interviews for precisely this reason. They understand their role in the company to use their social expertise to suss out bad vibes, and it turns into something like Mean Girls.
Anonymizing grading wherever posible seems like the obvious policy response here. The fact that many universities still haven't standardized blind grading for written work — even after decades of evidence on evaluator bias — says a lot about institutional inertia.
An alternative story could be that the women’s presented appearance online may have changed more than men’s and that real appearance changes could weaken the correlation between the paper’s stored photo-based beauty score and what instructors actually saw live. Maybe woman changed grooming effort more than men, or the effects of fashion trends that explicitly drove the woman towards less attractive styles etc.
if that mismatch increased more for women than men, the estimated “beauty premium” for women could fall even without any change in teachers’ discriminatory behavior. The paper just assumes the attractiveness stayed constant during the period, but seems to have had no data to verify this.
> When education is in-person, attractive students receive higher grades in non-quantitative subjects, in which teachers tend to interact more with students compared to quantitative courses.
I wonder how much of this is less about attraction and more about social skills. Granted, higher attraction affords more opportunity to develop those skills, but I have met plenty of charming people who were not conventionally attractive.
> Granted, higher attraction affords more opportunity to develop those skills
I think this is largely a distraction from the direct effect. For any level of social skill, good-looking people at that level are perceived much more positively than others at the same level.
The question of the causal effect between physical attractiveness and social skill is interesting, though. There are plausible stories both ways, imo: your version, and the contrary one saying that pretty people coast on their looks and the rest of us have to try harder to be interesting or appealing in other ways.
(It's also hard to fully separate the skills from the looks, because the same behaviours that work for a good-looking person might backfire terribly for someone at the other end of the scale. Do we say those two people are equally socially skilled, or the pretty person is more skilled because they chose a strategy that works in their context and the other person didn't?)
In many instances, attractiveness is tantamount to having social skills. It's not even a matter of developing a more sophisticated skillset; attractive people (and all the people who are subject to affinity bias) are just given the benefit-of-the-doubt more, and more consistently. This is where advice like, "Be yourself," and, "Don't fear rejection," and the idea that, "the only thing stopping someone from connection is their willingness to dare to try," come from: people whose attractiveness has preempted the requirement to really change or consider how they approach interactions.
Good point. Good looking people may have different social skills. Some may have horrible social skills; others may be great. That whole focus on looks is very strange.
A larger role for grading University students? Certainly not where I studied in central Europe. In which country do university tutors know the parents of their students?
I remember in college there were always small groups of students chatting with professors after class or going to office hours. Many profs would drop pretty big hints about upcoming exams. I guess it was a mix of enjoying the attention, pitying weaker students, and wanting to reward "participation". Always felt a bit unfair to me.
Every professor has their own style, most of the ones I had were very open that office hours were a pretty great way to get help/more targeted hints on what to study. This isn’t in my opinion, a problem. Their goal is to educate you as best as possible in theory, via classes, homework, and office hours. Students who take the time and effort to attend office hours clearly want to at least pretend to be putting in extra effort, so why wouldn’t they out more effort into helping them learn? I doubt that they are directly giving away test answers.
It's always said that a lot of success and opportunities are attributed to being in the right place at the right time (aka "luck"), but in a lot of cases, those folks had the tenacity to be in the right place ALL the time; when opportunities arise, they typically go to whoever's present and available.
Chatting with professors after class or attending office hours might be a grift, but it's not necessarily unfair. Specific circumstances aside, anybody can do it to get some leverage.
While engineering school was hard, I did think quite a bit of it was pure participation testing.
I used to think this was wrong, until I got into engineering.. Sure there is the rare math problem, but most of the difficult part was: "Are you willing to fly to mexico and be awake at 3am when the parts are made?"
I might be downplaying though... I did calc 1 at a job.
I think there is an expectation that it should not matter, and there is a reality that it does matter, and there is lots of discussion because the expectations and the reality do not match.
Why is there an expectation that it should not matter? Is it just childrens shows? In many countries you have to put a headshot on your resume, that seems very overt that attractiveness / looks does matter. In the west there is a large idealism over practicality sometimes.
One thing I like about China's education system is the Gaokao entrance exams for universities. It doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, ugly, or beautiful. All it matters is how you score. It's as meritocratic as education can be.
At the very least, it's complicated. I went to an appallingly bad, fundamentalist religious high school (not my choice) that didn't offer extracurriculars, honors classes (never mind AP!) etc. and if I hadn't been able to do exceedingly well on standardized tests I could not have gotten in to the colleges I did. My parents did not pay for any test prep. I did learn and practice on my own though, which is how I know that evolution does not, in fact, teach that you can grow wings if you want them badly enough.
Khan Academy was free and used to obtain 99th percentile SAT scores. Academic resources for success are abundantly available, but they require discipline, time, and effort.
China has made for-profit extracurricular tutoring illegal since 2021. [1] Of course there can be under the table operations and discussion to be had about regionally biased gaokao difficulty, but I think it's worth recognizing gaokao being a real chance for upward class mobility, hence why it is so competitive.
Starting in 2020 when I was a new professor, I was contacted by a company that works with Chinese families to tutor their students directly. I would be paid $400 an hour to teach them online remotely.
Originally I thought it was because of COVID lockdowns and that may be part of it.
But the opportunities have continued since then. I stopped doing it as my career has become more involved but I still get solicitations from time to time, so it must be because of what you say.
Tutors barely move exam scores, particularly if they're only hired for test prep. You can crush tests without cramming, tutors or any of that if you just pay attention in class and do all optional homework.
The actual problem is that we are not blank slates, and wealthy parents tend to be wealthy because they are more intelligent, and likewise give birth to predisposed-to-be-intelligent babies.
I always find it slightly ironic how mother nature gets so much reverence from ostensibly communal types, despite her being the most shamelessly power hungry entity ever conceived.
> wealthy parents tend to be wealthy because they are more intelligent
Not "more intelligent", just "unusual in some way". People can be wealthier than average for all sorts of reasons unrelated to intelligence (as defined by IQ). Here's a sampling of them:
Being social and good at sales. Most successful real estate agents I've met don't strike me as particularly brilliant.
Working a boring job, living modestly, and investing in index funds for 20 years.
Winning the lottery (either literally, or by accidentally buying something cheaply that turned out to be worth a lot)
Intelligence correlates highly with not having anti-social behaviors.
So a lot of the time, it's not "being smart" that carries you to wealth, its avoiding the "disastrously stupid things" that prevents you from being poor.
Yes, behavioral genetics is the climate science of the left. If there are PhDs and university departments studying it, I'm not gonna be someone who sticks there head in the sand for the sake of their flavor of political identity.
merit doesn't mean equal wealth spending to obtain a result. And it's not black and white.
Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring doesn't necessarily make their score higher, and there's also diminishing returns. Someone poor who do not afford private tutoring can also receive good score due to their natural talent and/or hard work in self-teaching/practicing.
> universal SAT tutoring available to everyone in order to be more meritocratic.
and that is now called school isnt it? Everybody gets at least some minimal standard of schooling.
The fact is, meritocratic is meant to describe the opposite of nepotistic (or sometimes hereditary/aristocratic). Under a nepotistic system, no matter what you do, you cannot succeed without becoming the in-group somehow.
Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring will make their score higher if they have any kind of aptitude. Likewise if they have easy access to books, extra study resources, a quiet space for study, no family distractions or challenges, and so on.
Poor people typically have none of those extra resources. Some poor people with extreme talent will be able to overcome the challenges of relative poverty, but others with equal talent won't.
It's extremely hard to create a true meritocratic system, and Gaokao certainly isn't it.
So wouldn't it then be fairest to punish kids with high income or high wealth parents? Say set median household income. If parents make double this the score is automatically halved. If they make half it is doubled. Same on gross wealth. More wealth there is bigger the cut.
This would mean that says Musk's kids would need to get sufficiently higher scores than children of someone with no wealth.
If you had that system, and I was Elon Musk's kids, I would feel entirely justified in paying half the taxes society expects me to pay. Let's see if that logic works both ways.
> Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring doesn't necessarily make their score higher, and there's also diminishing returns. Someone poor who do not afford private tutoring can also receive good score due to their natural talent and/or hard work in self-teaching/practicing.
If these are outliers it isn't really meritocratic. If there 100 desired spots that are allocated by the exam, and 1000 students, and wealth (tutors/extra time etc) moves the needle enough to make a meaningful difference, it's basically nepotistic just the in-group is who's parents can afford it. Depending on where you are this can compound each generation.
Tutoring can provide some advantage to the richer, but at least in my anecdotal experience I have never seen the advantage provided by tutors being able to match what really motivated poorer students could achieve by self study, at least not in the countries where in the past there was good access to public libraries, or today there may exist cheap Internet access.
> If these are outliers it isn't really meritocratic.
Merit is about demonstrated ability, not how much effort, time, or money was put into getting the ability.
As long as you convert money into ability and ability into results, that's merit. Nepotism is when you convert money directly into results, buying a score.
That it tends to become a caste system with extra steps (which steps provide a defense of the system as “fair”) is one of the chief criticisms of meritocracy (and criticism of the idea is where we got the term itself)
I think the point is that some start with an advantage when it comes to earning merit because by luck of birth they were born to parents with a lot of wealth.
I don't think you can have a truly meritocratic system unless everyone starts on a level playing field with the same access to resources. That is not a system that exists anywhere on this planet.
Sure, but tutoring involves learning and improving the skills at hand. Meritocracy doesn't mean equal opportunity, it means candidates are evaluated equally without regard to superficial characteristics like appearance.
Of course candidates that study more have an advantage. But that doesn't make it non-meritocratic. That'd be like saying a marathon isn't meritocratic because some people spend more time training and conditioning.
Well nothing is truly meritocratic - even with free tutoring, kids will still have different genetics, different home environments, different upbringings etc..
Colleges in the US that removed standardized testing from their applications, in the pursuit of trying to be more meritocratic, found that fewer students from underrepresented backgrounds got in, not more. In hindsight (and to some in foresight) this makes sense because now schools leaned more heavily on grades and extracurriculars, both of which can be gamed by wealthy families far more easily than a standardized test.
To me grades sound like easiest thing to tutor for. Especially if homework is involved. Even basic editing and feedback before submissions could make absolutely massive difference.
I strongly disagree. I've gone through a similar education system and it's soul crushing to not perform well in those singular events that define your career and identity.
I don't know this specific exam, but most of these can be gamed in the sense of learning to the test. So depending on what training resources someone has available (e.g. rich parents who can afford tutors), I'd consider them only partially meritocratic.
If this is the case, then why doesn’t everyone get the top a score? The answer is, of course, that it’s not so simple, and you can’t just learn to the test.
That’s just like with sports: anyone can learn how to train himself, and anyone can improve with training, but in the end, some people will end up faster, and some people will end up slower.
My point was exactly that the chances are NOT the same for everyone. A kid from an affluent family might have both better tutoring as well as fewer troubles in life that could deter from learning.
But of course, in addition to that, there is always also a genetic component, as in sports.
The question is what you're measuring. You can have a test that gives you whatever distribution of scores you like. But is the thing it measures competency in the subjects it tests, general intellectual ability, familiarity with the test format, etc.? The worst negative outcome is usually subordination of learning itself to preparing for the exam, which can happen even when the gatekeeping function of an exam still works perfectly.
China also bans test tutoring as a commercial service. Without a doubt people will still be able to find tutors if they're sufficiently capable, but the scale of this problem should be vastly altered by that action.
Chinese education is also extremely constrained by the practice of "teaching to the test" to the point that the Gaokao indirectly stands in the way of innovation and reform in education. Schools doing interesting things to improve the quality of education are historically not very competitive on the Gaokao anyway (e.g., some unusual rural schools where students historically have bad prospects anyway and parents are overburdened or indifferent) or explicitly trying to carve something out outside the college track (e.g., private tech/entrepreneurship schools created by big tech companies).
There may be some good things about the Gaokao but having spoken to some (Chinese) teachers in China, it's also a limiting factor for education prior to university in a lot of ways, limiting the freedom of teachers and driving up risk aversion in parents.
(It's also effectively graded on a regional curve, which might be a good thing but isn't meritocratic in the straightforward way you suggest.)
Taiwan and Korea have even "fairer" systems. In China different provinces got different test problems. Especially students from Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin get completely different ones. In Taiwan/Korea everyone takes the exact same test.
However I've never met anyone from these countries who have a high opinion of their systems. Personally I do think our standardized exams cause massive 'overfitting' issue (borrowed from machine learning). The exam is not as brutal as Korean one though.
The problem is the high stress generated by the one-shot approach. There has to be a balance between the objectivity of a single test and practical concerns (like choking because you were sick or got bad sleep the night before).
Ultimately, the only "fair" outcome is an abundance of opportunity. The vast majority of people are worth something to their community and society. And even then, as long as there's enough food and shelter to go around, no one should have to justify their mere existence.
As the other user posted, practicing for tests are extremely important. I grew up middle class, got an average score on my tests (but I did really well in math)
My wife, upper middle class, took entire weeks of courses and scored higher than me on everything. But I am better than her at math for sure.
And a side note from me as a Pole - online I see many Americans speaking about how cruel Gaokao is, but... It's America that's outlier. I had the same style of exam in Poland to get to uni, and it's the same in the entire EU, and rest of the world. So I have no idea why Gaokao is singled out.
The US has plenty of exams, starting in early primary school. All states have Standards of Learning (SOL) exams every few years on the main subjects. Then, starting in high school, you have a combination of Advanced Placement (AP) subject exams (college level, often granting college credit) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exams, Scholastic Aptitude (SAT) or American College Test (ACT), SAT2 subject exams, and probably a few I've forgotten.
The SAT or ACT are technically the only ones "required" for college, but most of the elite schools expect AP or IB (which tends to give the students a year or two of calculus, a fourth year of foreign language, and some deeper dives into other sciences or social studies).
But, because it's split across so many tests, there's no single "score poorly and your life is ruined" exam.
True, I only listed it because, at least where I live, high schools often do one program or the other. If it's an IB school, you end up taking the APs on your own (ie, there isn't a class focused on that content, though the IB curriculum should, in theory, end up covering the same stuff, at least for the major subjects).
Your single exam performance doesn't forever assign you to a class of people, you still have an opportunity to redo the exam next year or to be successful even without a degree. That's not possible in China nor Korea. Even in Germany flunking a class might ban you from ever retaking it at any other German university.
I am currently living in Japan, and it seems that they follow the American style exams. I don't know if it is a result of the post-war occupation, or it was already like that before WW2.
Back home in Spain we follow the same style of a single national-level exam that you mentioned though.
I don't know how this exam is in China and Poland, but from what I've seen about the south Korean one it is much harsher on the students than the french one, even in my time
We have the SAT and ACT, and those are objective. The wealthy still pass disproportionately due to better tutoring specifically oriented to those tests. It’s Goodhart’s law.
> potentially more intelligent than the poorest group
It's easy to think this but its not true. There is just a ton of privilege involved in life. There are groups in India who purely tutor slum kids to the top IITs(the JEE exams in India are very hard).
That's fair, but... What's the alternative? Obviously someone's going to have better academic performance if you have tutors, there's no way around. Still, if you have good academic performance - you have it.
American system feels more unfair when you're given points for extracurriculars like playing instruments or sports, like that's not going to hold poorer children even more (also how's that related to academic performance at all? Unis should not care about unrelated things)
The university will argue that a well-rounded student body improves the experience for everybody. IE, a college that's 100% "nerds" won't be as good as college that's 80% "nerds", 10% "smart jocks", and 10% "band geeks" (or whatever other categories you want).
I probably agree with that, but also acknowledge there's no good way to make that completely objective.
In Europe, university is treated as education for adults, not your entire life. Most universities are not campus resorts like in the US, but just buildings in the city itself, students live a normal life in the city, they rent a apartment or live in a dorm, take public transit to get to places, do sport at a sport place independent of the university, etc. You can live a well rounded life that way. The university is there so you learn your specialization. Of course people make friends there, but it doesn't have to be your entire life, and the university administrators job is not to meddle with people's social lives to make them "interesting", but to allow learning.
Our oldest unis are generally "downtown" or similar - Harvard, Princeton, UVA (sort of - Charlottesville is a really small city), etc. Though most do still have their own dormitory housing, at least for underclassmen.
The large campus-style uni is fairly recent creation - many came out of the land grant system during/after the Civil War. And even as newer unis have been created, they've followed that general design (even though they aren't land grant institutions).
Universities in the US and other countries are not the same, and comparing them is not really fruitful.
US universities do care about extracurriculars and GPA and other things because they aren’t optimizing for raw academic performance, they’re optimizing for various other things like an interesting student body (that attracts donors, professors, and future students), real-world networks, and so on.
And after graduation they can grind leetcode, and after that they can practice social cues to get in the management class. It's gamed tests all the way down.
Everyone has a tendency to support the system they went through. I've done it numerous times for standardized tests and I went through them. I think the information value of a person who was certified capable by system X recommending system X is probably low.
After all, if you flipped the script and the US used standardized tests and you were then told that China uses a committee of experts that will certify incoming applicants' stated political positions, race, and cultural background in order to "craft a class" (as an admissions officer calls it in SAT Wars) with a carve-out for the children of those who have already attended, you would be informed of the need for meritocracy, the tendency towards nepotism, and the obvious racial biases that will affect individuals in such a system.
Likewise, you would doubtless be informed that the East's more holistic look at the total student is a superior form of student selection since it is driven by a Confucian focus on the gestalt human rather than on the reductive metrics of the West.
What is interesting to me is to hear from those who have succeeded in some system but nonetheless wish it were different.
Yeah, I definitely didn't do any kind of entrance exam to get into University so unless there have been more recent changes to it it's not needed for all subjects. And its also not needed if you can just filter out bad students via normal exams in the first semesters.
Because they want to say that China is bad. When, as you say, US is the outlier in inventing strange ways to admit kids to college. I'm from Brazil and the entrance is exam is similar to China, there is a single exam and the note is used to determine which college you can go.
I don’t really find it strange, if anything a slavish obsession to test scores strikes me as strange. School is just an artificial institution like any other, it’s not as if getting good grades is equivalent real-world success or “true” intelligence.
The US also has the best universities in the world, by and large, (even if the regular education system is lacking), so I am pretty skeptical of the idea that raw test scores as the sole criterion would lead to better outcomes.
Raw test scores are a good idea in many countries because it reduces scope for corruption + gives even the poorest kids a chance. Though I would argue there needs to be multiple chances a year and not just 1.
Wow! So advanced! Does the rest of the world do the same with jobs (a single exam to determine if you get hired to any company), or does it invent strange ways to interview and hire applicants well?
The manosphere has its own distinct jargon.[31] A central tenet of the manosphere is the concept of the red pill, a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix. It concerns awakening men to the supposed reality that men are the oppressed gender in a society dominated by feminism
They stole it from other groups online that simply used it to mean "I can see through the bullshit now". It got nothing particularly to do with the manosphere and the grifters in it.
Only recently learned about the 'red pill' thing by watching the 'manosphere' documentary by Louis Theroux. For others unaware how it relates to the above comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere.
The documentary was an interesting if somewhat unsettling thing to watch.
Almost all of the people in the Manosphere are grifters (moreoever almost any influencer online). If there was a study that said the complete opposite of what the study found, they would twist it to suit their agenda also.
Outside of social media these people effectively have very little if any influence and aren't worth worrying about.
So what? We should act like attractiveness is not a huge privilege because of that? As with other privileges, I think it's important that we are aware of that.
I was wondering about the year. Are schools still doing online course work and exams now? I would think ai concerns would drive even more in person oral test / notebook testing stuff?
> Being attractive gets you all sorts of unwarranted hatred, targets on your back etc. for doing nothing.
I'm not aware of what fantasy land exists where attractive people are hated and being fat is the new style trend. Certainly not there one where GLP-1s become the hottest new pharmaceutical.
I remember this study! It caused huge controversy in Sweden.
The phd student who conducted it trawled through students' Facebook pages and took their profile photos (without consent). Then he had a jury of 74 teenagers rate the photos on a scale from 1 to 10. Then he tried to correlate beauty with grades for distance or in-class education. De-anonymizing the data was trivial so everyone could pretty much see how the jury had rated each profile photo. And research data is public.
It was a seriously weak study with questionable methodology and a too low effect-size to draw any conclusions anyway. So no reason to get alarmed if you are ugly. :)
When you complain about having to interact with AI when applying for a job, remember that AI could be the most fair and unbiased recruiter...as long as companies want to...
In the past they would stare in pure awe at my guaranteed impeccable looks.
Now they ask me damned question to calculate the speed of fluids
in different pipes through the Bernoulli's principle. And ChatGPT
only helps so much here ...
Also, I think there must be a pretty big difference between female and
male, because even if a male student is attract, if I am a male teacher
and interested in females, would I wish to prioritize on looks, if the
underlying grading is instead done on e. g. testing knowledge and skills?
Why would looks even factor in here? Such a system would be flawed from
the get go.
It's easy. For women the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty. They are judged by it and the core of their power stems from it. That is why there is a beauty industry that centers around women and none for men. That is why women "care" about beauty much more than men. They know that beauty = power.
Women rely on beauty for success much more than men. It is not just in terms of "grades". Even in engineering jobs you can see it, a beautiful woman can get armies of male engineers to "help" her. I literally saw one female engineer get 2 male engineers to spend 3 weeks on a project for her just by virtue of the fact she's a woman.
And she's not even aware of this. Like she thinks people are just "nice". But men are not conditioned to ask other men for this kind of help and we can't expect 2 idiots to spend weeks on a "favor" for someone else.
We live in a world that tries to deny this reality with "gender equality" but these cultural ideas fly in the face of millions of years of biological evolution.
Now that being said. We very much expect that the grades of women should go down when not in person to a degree MUCH MUCH more than men. That is completely is expected. The question now is, why was there even a correlation of better grades and beauty among men in the first place? Why did that correlation exist when men do not rely on beauty? That is the anomaly here.
I think part of the answer is clear. Beautiful men do not rely on beauty for success. They never did hence why when you removed it as a factor the success rate did not change. What's going on I suspect is even more controversial: Beauty correlates with intelligence. This is not an insane notion. We already know that height correlates with intelligence, but it is likely beauty does too.
> For women the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty
Physical attractiveness is a social asset, and it's a more useful asset for a woman because men are affected by how women look more than the other way around - that's all fair enough ... but "the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty" is a bizarre framing.
It's not bizarre. It's truth that's hard to accept in modern times. Also you need to look at this from the perspective of prehistoric times that made up most of human evolution. Modern culture and technology has made it so that a women on their own could in theory gain as much power and capability as a man so the dynamics are more equal now in terms of opportunities but they are still unequal in terms of biology and genetic behavior/instincts.
Think about who goes hunting? Who builds the house. Who farms the farm? The man. A women does not have the strength to be the primary driver behind all these tasks. She can assist, but, again, she is not the primary driver simply because she does not have the intrinsic strength to do these things. The further you go into the past, technology becomes less relevant and physical strength becomes more of a requirement for survival.
In prehistoric times, a women's status lies primarily in what man she is able to "control" to take care of her because her strength and capabilities render her biologically much less capable in the prehistoric world.
Of course this also begs the question of what happens to a woman when she gets old and ugly? Where does she get her power from? She gets it from her man. In prehistoric times, women needed to secure a man when young and at the prime of her power... than she sires his children and through that is able to secure life time protection from that man well into old age when she loses her beauty. That's how it worked for millions of years and that is what is baked genetically into her biological instincts.
You're right it does sound bizarre in modern times. Also very taboo to frame things this way. But it's also the underlying reality. You need to think of things from this perspective rather than the perspective of what's "taboo". It's only bizarre because society has conditioned you to look away from the cold hard truth.
The key here that you need to realize is that women in power is very recent phenomenon. You see women CEO's, women going for the presidency, and women founding startups. This is all very recent and enabled mostly by technology. Historically, this is not how female power presented itself.
You're right. Many women know what's going on. But many actually don't.
A lot of women live in this contradictory state where they know subconsciously but consciously they don't know at the same time. To help illustrate... It's the same type of human contradiction many software engineers face with AI, unable to admit that it's in the process replacing a skillset that upheld their identity. It's a form of lying to oneself... convincingly.
I would say off the seat of my pants if I were to give you very very estimated numbers.... like 45% know explicitly what they are doing, than 35% live in this contradictory state I described above, and a good 20% have no clue.
>She may have even deliberately cultivated this relationship
Oh many women do this. But they don't necessarily know that these relationships only exist because they are beautiful and that they are women. Again... many know... but not all know.
>Women aren't stupid.
This isn't true. Many women are really stupid. Many women are smart too.
> That is why there is a beauty industry that centers around women and none for men.
Oh us men also have a beauty industry - or, I should rather say, an attractiveness industry. We just get sold different, and arguably far more pricier, things... luxury watches and cars, tailor-made suits and shoes, grooming, gym memberships.
And similar to how women got anorexia through unhealthy beauty standards for decades, that comes back to bite us men this time with "looksmaxxers" [1]...
> Clavicular attributes his looks to, among other things, taking testosterone from the age of 14 and smashing his jawbone with a hammer to supposedly reshape his lower face - neither of which is recommended by health professionals.
No. These aren't beauty. It's status symbols. They are symbols of power, capability and utility. Men are judged by raw power and capability. The industry for beauty for men is more of a way for men to advertise raw capability. It is not "beauty" for "beauties" sake.
The beauty industry for women is more superficial. Make up for example serves nothing for status and everything for youth and beauty.
Now there are things like expensive jewelry... but this stuff doesn't help women in terms of attractiveness. That is not to say that women don't wear symbols of power...Jewelry is more of a status symbol for women advertising their status to other women: "Look at what my man got me, look at the power and status of a man that is in love with my beauty."
That is not to say beauty doesn't help men. But it does to a much lesser degree than women. Also your citation is a news article documenting a phenomenon. You need numbers to answer the question: Is this phenomenon an anomaly?? Or is it common place?
I think the answer is obvious, I mean the stuff I talk about here isn't anything new. It's just hard to talk about it because our culture has conditioned us to look away from the truth and more at artificial ideals of equality and balance. Men and women in reality are not equal. And this inequality doesn't necessarily "balance" out like yin and yang.
First, it's very unlikely all people will become aware of it. Our culture has made it taboo to even think in this direction.
Second, nothing will change. People will still behave based off of their instincts and underlying biology. Awareness of the underlying biology doesn't change anything. Men are very much always attracted to young women with nice curves even though they are well aware that this attraction is just an irrational biological instinct. Awareness does not change behavior, therefore, society will not collapse.
Why is beauty a productivity-enhancing attribute for males in non-quantitative subjects? Generally, it is difficult to disentangle the reasons behind why beauty improves productivity (Hamermesh and Parker, 2005). However, relative to other students, attractive men are more successful in peer influence, and are more persistent, a personality trait positively linked to academic outcomes (Dion and Stein, 1978, Alan et al., 2019). In addition, attractive individuals are more socially skilled, have more open social networks, and are more popular vis-à-vis physically unattractive peers (Feingold, 1992). Importantly, possession of these traits is significantly linked to creativity (Soda et al., 2021). In our setting, the tasks faced by students in non-quantitative subjects, for instance in marketing and supply chain management, are likely to be seen as more ”creative”, and significantly contrast the more traditional book-reading and problem-solving in mathematics and physics courses, the latter presumably perceived as more monotonous. Together with the large use of group assignments in non-quantitative courses, these theoretical results imply that socially skilled individuals are likely to have a comparative advantage in non-quantitative subjects.
"possession of these traits is significantly linked to creativity (Soda et al., 2021)" - This might be a hint that male attractiveness is correlated with IQ. Explicitly mentioning associations with IQ is taboo in academia.
As an attractive person myself that studied engineering in several countries of Europe and some years in the US I don't believe there are many opportunities for you to take advantage of your attractiveness. Most examinations were in written form.
I have huge doubts about the study. In cinema, theatre, sure, you need physical presence, but engineering... I don't believe Von Newman would have needed presence to impress other people.
Another very important thing is that there are very important differences between sexes. The most physically attractive man in the world without the proper attitude and without leadership and success is nobody.
I am what is called a sigma male. I was never interested in power, dominating others, being the boss. Women prefer ugly and short people if they are leaders to tall and beautiful man that are not social.
In fact, if you get uglier as you age but get more successful, you will receive way more attention. If you command a group of people, run a company or are a big boss, women will get in love.
Also, if you are tall and beautiful, men will get envious of you.
I'm not sure what or why you use AI for this text (translation?) but even in foreign language universities, it is "von Neumann" - wouldn't be translated as your AI did.
Billy Bob Thornton dating Angelina Jolie is the quintessential example of this. He had presence and charisma but was very average lookswise. Claviculars head would explode if he saw a picture of them together.
People that have used to be fat, and then lost a lot of weight, will know how brutally different people will treat you. Whereas you'd practically be a ghost before weight loss, random people will suddenly look you in your eyes, smile, even start conversations with you.
Some will of course argue that you losing weight will also make you more confident, and thus you become more approachable. I think there's a lot of bias against fat people, against "unattractive" people, etc.
This also shows in the classroom, work, etc.
Of course, actually being conventionally attractive will come with its own perks. People will go out of their way to help you, and to support you. Over time this could very well boost your ego to also become more confident and decisive.
> Whereas you'd practically be a ghost before weight loss, random people will suddenly look you in your eyes, smile, even start conversations with you.
I watched something like this happen in a friend, but as an outside observer I saw a different explanation: The period when he got into shape involved a lot of changes for the better in his life, including becoming more outgoing, motivated, and disciplined (necessary prerequisites for weight loss in the pre-medication era). He also bought a new wardrobe and replaced his old worn out logo T-shirts and cargo shorts with clothes more appropriate for an adult. He also started paying attention to his grooming and hair style instead of looking like he just woke up.
For a while he tried to explain it all by his weight loss alone, but over time he realized it was an overall change in everything about the way he carried himself and presented himself to the world.
I won’t deny that there is some stigma around being overweight from some people, but I’ve also rarely seen a person change only their weight. Now that GLP-1s are everywhere I do know a few people who slimmed down rapidly without changing anything else and expected things like their dating life to completely change but have been disappointed that little has changed socially for them. They do feel a lot better though!
> I won’t deny that there is some stigma around being overweight from some people, but I’ve also rarely seen a person change only their weight.
This feels like it could be a correlation vs causation thing. Its a lot easier to put effort in if you see it getting results. Is it that they suddenly put effort in triggering all this or js it the weighg loss made the investment of putting effort in return results where previously you'd need a much higher level of effort to see results making it only seem worth it after the weight loss.
Or is it the weight loss resulted in higher self confidence giving all sorts of knock on effects.
I think its really hard to tease apart cause and effect here.
A data point, though my situation is not even about weight: I used to be skinny fat in my mid-twenties until mid-thirties - so basically still kind of slim but some belly fat and not much muscles. Kind of average, unremarkable.
After a breakup I started being more active again, I went bouldering once a week and gradually got into shape and then really athletic after about 2 years when I started going twice a week. My total weight didn't change at all. I dress just as good as before and have the same overall style. Of course most clothes simply look better on me, now that I'm more in shape. Same good job that I still like. I do go out a bit more. But overall I would say I really didn't change anything except getting more attractive from putting on muscles and losing fat.
It made a hell of a difference for dating. Before I felt mostly invisible but since then got approached in bars all the time, which rarely happened before. After some time I got way more confident - but when this stated I sure wasn't yet. Some woman even told me into the face that I lacked confidence after they approached me and realized I don't have the personality and/or confidence matching my appearance. They certainly only approached me because of my appearance.
The people only loosing weight are probably held back by other things. If they changed everything but their weight they likely wouldn't have more success either. I would say I had most things figured out already before and It seems I was held back only by having an average build. Just getting fit absolutely made the difference for me.
Sounds like a body recomp- well done!
> He also bought a new wardrobe and replaced his old worn out logo T-shirts and cargo shorts with clothes more appropriate for an adult.
I think the problem many __men__ have with that is that an "appropriate" wardrobe looks more uniform and less individualized, basically boring.
I don’t think that’s particularly true. There’s a lot you can do with texture, colours and silhouettes, even within items that are “the same”. I do think most men are pretty unimaginative when it comes to dressing themselves though, and most can’t even do basic things like getting trousers hemmed to fit them properly.
The key point in his change was that he started looking like someone who cared enough to put some minimal effort into dressing himself.
It’s not about being uniform or bland. He went from old worn-out clothes he didn’t care about to wearing clothes that were appropriate for a business casual environment or a casual date. When you start dressing like you care, regardless of how unique and individualized, others notice.
It goes a little deeper than "does not care" though: worn out can also be a symptom of caring a lot. Caring in the way of having a strong desire to identify with the stuff worn, and newly bought stuff just not checking that box. Then any newly procured garb, no matter how carefully selected, perhaps even customized, will feel like being dressed up as someone else. It's like a trap, just not being wired for new clothes. I wonder if there's a connection to childhood dress-up play, as in kids who had good times masquerading as some archetype are less likely later in life to fall into that "that's-not-me" trap regarding new clothes.
For many years in large corporations, pretty much the only acceptable dress was white shirt, tie, dark suit, and dress shoes. We were still wearing something like that at trade shows into the 1990s before things started loosening up.
(Mildly funny story. One big, probably Unix show, the IBM estaff showed in logoed polos and suddenly everyone else is like If IBM doesn’t need suits we sure don’t.)
While I can kind of see what you are aiming at, a basic button down and clean pants go a long way. Keep it ironed and clean, and you go even further. No need for the anything that looks like a uniform.
I tried going for just a button down and clean pants and was stopped by the police.
Men's fashion is a little boring, but there's a lot you can play with in terms of fabric and accessories within it anyway. Men's wear blogs are kinda interesting
And you can usually tell the difference between a tailored suit and something ill-fitting.
I guess it all depends on the type of women you're trying to attract. I'm married and have kids, so old worn out logo t-shirts and cargo shorts sound nice and comfortable to me, in most everyday situations. I'll dress appropriate for the circumstance.
Only if your idea of personality is expressed through a logo tshirt.
Only if your idea of personality is expressed through a textured fabric
I have a lot of respect for folks that successfully lose a great deal of weight. If I know someone did that, my estimation of them generally goes up, several notches. I'm no stranger to quitting stuff, but significant weight loss is still terrifying to me. I could benefit from losing 20-30 lbs, myself, and it's not been easy. Success has been ... elusive.
Maybe it's different, these days, with GLP-1 drugs (I have always called it "Gila Lizard Poison" in my head), but it takes serious discipline and grit to lose the weight, and keep it off.
That generally comes from massive personal change; both internal, and external. Quite difficult.
It's difficult if you think of it as big, but what if you break it down into smaller, manageable steps? Start by being consciously aware of what you eat in a day (or better yet, week); write it down, do some back of the napkin calorie calculations.
Then adjust. Change one habit; could be reducing portion size by a hundred grams, drinking less, switching to black coffee, I don't know what people have for habits.
Same with exercising, don't go all in at once, try going to the gym or for a long walk once a week. It takes six weeks to stop, change or start a habit, so it will take some self-discipline for that period. But if it's small, incremental change instead of a "change your life around" it's a lot more manageable.
Also be aware of the "survivorship bias", the "before / after" posts on social media, the "I changed my life in $period" - these make it look like it was an overnight lifestyle change, but that's not necessarily true, what you see is the end result and if you pay attention you'll notice that usually there's years between the before / after without any breakdown or in-between progress.
Losing weight is one of the prime examples of the difference between simple and easy. We've evolved over millions of years to try to gain weight; reversing that is hard.
I’ve noticed there’s a similar challenge in keeping bad ideas out of your head.
Weight loss, debt recovery, and other habit changes are just that - changes to habit which are much more difficult if you don't admit that's what you're doing.
This has been discussed from time immemorial and confronting it as it is (that in the case of habits we are more animal than rational) is the beginning of change.
An example is that you can't just "cut it out" you have to replace it with something else.
>Some will of course argue that you losing weight will also make you more confident
Having been one of the people who experienced this (well the inverse, scarily skinny to lean and muscular), the confidence comes entirely from people in your life congratulating you, followed by strangers and new people just having a baseline positive glow towards you.
I don't know who came up with that line, it's repeated a lot, but I am almost certain it came from someone who never experienced the transition and soothed their ego by telling themselves it's all just a state of mind.
Both can be true: A person’s state of mind is affected by people around them.
Height as a man is also a huge bonus, at least in the cultures to which I’ve been exposed. There are examples I can think of men not being conventionally attractive, but just in the top quintile of height, and receiving special attention in dating and leadership opportunities.
I remember reading some study that (in men) height compared to your peers at 16-19 highly correlates with confidence.
This is a benefit. Being healthy and fit is objectively great for you. That your peers subtly nudge you in that direction is great. And in contrast, I feel horrible about "body positivity" - making you feel good about an objective problem that's incapacitating and killing you is a huge problem.
The problem with this stance is that the alternative (making people feel bad) will exacerbate the problem by contributing to feelings of hopelessness and ostracism.
The first prerequisite for making difficult changes is a supportive environment - not a judgmental one.
My personal experience was that the shame I'd been made to feel throughout middle school for being overweight fueled the motivation to buckle down and lose weight when I was independent and mature enough to come up with a diet that I could sustain.
> the alternative (making people feel bad)
The actual alternative is to tell the fat people that they really need to fix their serious health problem!
Politely watching them die before you is maybe comfortable, but pretty messed up.
I'm also quite anti "body positivity" as it is usually espoused online, especially in relation to weight, which is by far the main focus of the movement. It feels quite self-destructive, you accept that your weight is unchangeable (even though I would say that in 75% of cases, and probably even more, it definitely isn't), and try to feel "proud" of it, even though there are piles upon piles of quite definitive research which proves that being overweight is horrible for your health, and you essentially start preventing your improvement, by choice this time. You start eating more because now you decide that you actually like being fat, now thinking that that's who you are and always will be, and you should feel proud of yourself (which is quite silly all in itself), and you just end up in a worse state than before. Body positivity will not help you get healthier.
But, we also shouldn't forget that the idea of body positivity didn't just pop up out of a vacuum, it's inherently a reaction to the culture. And here I disagree with you, if your peers and society in general just slightly nudges you to be healthy then that'd be okay, but that's not really what happens from my experience. I used to be quite overweight, especially while I was a teenager, and it was tough. People didn't really treat me like a peer, everyone avoided me, and made fun of me constantly for my weight. Random people would tell me how fat I am (by the way, I wasn't even that fat, far from obese). And in the end it fucked me up quite badly, I had no self-respect, no confidence, and I didn't really want to live at that point. I managed to turn it around, I stopped eating properly for days, often just snacking on a package of nuts for an entire day, I would start passing out when standing up, I would exercise so much until I couldn't walk anymore, and in the end it helped! I lost a ton of weight, people stopped tormenting me, and I started to be perceived as quite normal. I even had my first real boyfriend, nobody even looked at me before. But I was still miserable and felt way more unhealthy, at that point I was underweight and eating one portion of rice a day, maybe with some vegetables. No snacks or sweets of any kind. What was essentially bullying did help me to lose weight, but it did not make me healthy. That's just my personal anecdote, I bet there are people who used people making fun of them to start a journey of healthy self-improvement and honestly that's great, but I know most overweight people can't take it well. This is kind of the issue with using shame to get people to improve (though most people who hate on fat people definitely do not have that as their goal), as that shame often messes with your mental health, and makes progress way harder. Many overweight people straight up turn to food to try to feel good, just making the issue way worse. Or they get better in a self-destructive way like me. Ironically I was definitely not healthier when I was underweight, I felt physically awful most of the time, but because I looked quite normal people thought I was more healthy! Weight isn't a perfect metric for health itself, and we shame overweight people disproportionately more than underweight people (especially for women, though I bet for men it's different).
And I think a lot of people who try to follow body positivity have a similar experience to mine (at least I think so, I don't really have proof!). They have endured a ton of meanness for their weight, and often started to hate themselves because of it, and then they turn to body positivity as a sort of "Fuck you!" to the people who made them feel subhuman for their weight. And it's obviously also not productive, it's just a heavy swing in the opposite direction. It's caused directly by the shame society places upon being overweight. It's just the opposite side of the same coin, where I believe both sides suck.
- "Being fat is morally bad!"
- "No, being fat is morally good actually!"
It's kind of tough to find a good solution for this, I think we all agree that we should try to prevent as many people being an unhealthy weight as possible for the good of the people themselves and society as a whole. And I 100% don't think we should encourage people to be and stay obese just because it's easier, but making fun of people who are overweight does not actually help them either. I don't really have a solution for this. I personally try to stay "body neutral" in a way, I try to avoid putting a moral value on unhealthy weight, and I try to view it as any other health issue. But as a society, I think it makes more sense to avoid bullying fat people in the hopes that they take the bullying and turn it into nice and productive improvement, and just make being a healthy weight easier, make healthy food the easiest food to access, put value in sports and walking, and just make it easier to live a healthy life by default.
Sorry if this response kind of turned into a sob story, I thought it was important to try to offer what my own experience was like when I was experiencing the pressure to lose weight, as I know a few people who were or still are overweight who felt similarly, even if it's not universal! :)
I think being conventionally attractive gives you a lot more chance practice socialising and my observation is that, people who use that chance get so good at it, they remain very good at relationships even at old age.
Ive seen the opposite in some people.
I know a ~55ish year old lady who is beautiful, but looks 55. I see her adjusting to her new reality and its painful. I imagine she used to be able to get away with being mean and sarcastic because she was so hot.
Now it just causes office fights. "I wont work with X" is something Ive heard.
The interesting part is that I originally only worked with her on the phone, so I always thought she was mean... Then I saw her in person and everything clicked.
plenty of mean and sarcastic ugly people around too
They often have "other reasons" people put up with it - even just being the office attack dog you sic on annoying customers will make you a valuable team member.
Some ugly people are mean because they are ugly and take their frustrations out on the world.
Some pretty people are mean because they can get away with it and never learned that it's often counterproductive in the long term.
This is just some people, others act differently.
Problem with that story is that you "imagine" her to have history to match your ideas about how people behave, but you do not really know her history.
Having been overweight my entire life until recently, this is accurate. The "it's just your newfound confidence" argument misses the mark completely.
The baseline level of basic respect you receive from strangers such as simply making eye contact, holding doors, or initiating small talk changes almost overnight. It is a very bitter reality to wake up to when you realize you were basically invisible before.
I dress like a hobo so that everyone fucks off and nobody wants anything from me. Sometimes I go somewhere and people walk away, giving me personal space. It's amazing.
Are you sure it's not your username? ;)
When I was on antidepressants I noticed people were much more likely to approach me and start up a conversation. I think so might have been more at ease a confident an also more likely to smile and make eye contact with strangers myself. So I think self confidence and general openness play a big part too.
I used to be fat, currently I'm not. A lot of people who hadn't seen me in a while congratulated me. After that I haven't noticed much difference TBH.
Same here. Afterwards I got more fat again, and again I don't notice a difference in how people threat me.
i think op is a woman.
> Whereas you'd practically be a ghost before weight loss, random people will suddenly look you in your eyes, smile, even start conversations with you.
All the slim ghosts might think different here.
I feel this as a guy trying to lose weight very seriously this year. On one hand, I can lose weight but I will forever be short unless a miracle occurs lol. I’ve made my peace with being unattractive for the most part, the attempt to lose weight is primarily for health reasons.
I went from being a scrawny guy in my teens, to a chubby/fat gamer in my late teens/early 20s, and then a fit athlete in my mid 20s. While I had envisioned much more interest from the ladies, my biggest surprise was how much nicer, kinder, and helpful random people were. And in a professional setting, co-workers and leaders just treated you more seriously - especially when it came to handing out leadership roles on projects etc.
Also helps to not be a teenager.
I noticed the same thing after I started dressing smarter.
I lost 100 pounds and as amazing as it was that everyone (not just potential mates but literally EVERYONE, even family) no longer thought I was lazy and was just… nicer to me - was honestly kind of depressing. And I was an active fat person! I often did 50+ mile bike rides when I weighed 280.
People aren’t much more sophisticated than our ape brethren at the end of the day.
There’s a decent anime exploring this on Netflix right now. “Lookism” https://m.imdb.com/title/tt22297722/
step 1 be attractive
step 2 don't be unattractive
It is the same with being accompanied by a very beautiful woman.
Without changing at all, the difference of how people treat you when you are accompanied by a very beautiful woman is staggering. People are more nice and polite even dare I say subservient. People low key treat you like you are some sort of important person.
Beauty, and proximity to it, was is and will be a social status symbol.
My pet theory is that it is a term in the objective function to limit the mutation rate; hence the theories that claim that beautiful faces are the "averaged" faces of a race/ethnic group
Women maybe? I have lost weight and remained completely invisible to the world.
Race and gender also make a difference. People don’t want to say it. But back when dating apps put out more stats I remember this was well known.
On the flip side, there's nothing more valuable than being able to walk around as a "fat" and/or "unattractive" person to really hone your filter ...
Once things have "improved", the filter remains and I'd argue those solid friends/colleagues/etc are proven gold.
In my books, there's nothing worse than being rich, beautiful, attractive off the bat as you might never know if those close to you are hangers on or the real deal.
Lots of ""'s here to be respectful that my opinions on the matter may differ from others.
> random people will suddenly look you in your eyes, smile, even start conversations with you.
i am not fat, infact very fit, athlectic and in shape. This never happens to me. maybe if you are a woman, this happens.
I find even something as simple as a haircut can have a massive effect.
Among all the other reasons that people have explained that this isn’t exactly correct a probably isn’t entirely attributed to just weight… I’ll make an opposite proposition.
Perhaps we are evolutionarily programmed to avoid people with impulse control issues?
I think there might be something here. I believe people flock to bigger, stronger and healthier people as some sort of evolutionary strategy for survival. If we were in a crisis and had to revert to tribes requiring everyone to pitch in to save humanity would you rather have the person who can resist impulses and keep a strict schedule (fit/healthy) or the person who looks like they lay around eating everything in sight. Using looks alone someone may assume the more healthy and fit person would be better to keep in their circle and thus prioritize being in their good graces.
I understand that it's not that simple, and someone's physical ability has nothing to do with intelligence in the real world. Unfortunately we're all subject to making split second judgements when interacting with strangers and as a result people don't think deeply about how that impacts those they deal with (or don't care).
Alot of discussions from trans people have been very validating of gendered experiences as they get to objectively experience both and see the difference
Do you believe that they get an unadulterated perspective of both experiences? That they would be getting the experience of a woman rather than that of a trans woman?
Or as 30 Rock put it, attractive people live in the "bubble".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bubble_(30_Rock)
The difference between female/male is also abysmal.
It is hard to believe research like this means anything while research in real science fields tends to be so nuanced and hard to make conclusions about.
This only serves as a tool for people who are trying to find a basis for their beliefs.
My first job during and out of college back in 2003, we were entirely remote. We hired exclusively over the phone which resulted in a mix of people that were completely diverse in their backgrounds and at the same time truly qualified to do the work.
The company went on to grow quite successfully until it was acquired 6 years later. I feel that zoom and video conferencing allows some of that "appearance" factor back in. Based on my experience though, if I had my way, job interviews would be exclusively audio only.
I think most 'attractive' people put effort into their appearances, which might appeal to management types who evaluate work performance. Also, imo the best way to get a management position in my experience isn't to work hard, or be knowledgeable, but to be the least objectionable pick.
This varies with country/company, with Euros usually being appearance focused, but in US companies, it's dudes in crumpled T-shirts all the way to the top (in engineering).
Seriously, it's so entertaining to sit in on an important meeting with a US vendor which looks like a college dorm party with an impeccably dressed guy or lady (from sales and/or management) who sticks out like a sore thumb.
Best way to get a manager position is to be a few inches taller than everybody else. It doesn't make a lick of sense, but pay attention to how often the boss is taller than everybody else on the team. Not always, but far more often than random chance can account for.
(Incidentally, the best boss I ever had was barely 5 feet.)
IIRC CEOs have a very high average height, and height can account for a very large portion of the female vs male management disparity.
That is far less common outside of tech. Even within tech, I did throw on a blazer and tie when I interviewed for my last job. Totally unnecessary but any company for which that’s actually a problem it’s a red flag. I did start dressing down a bit for most of the developer-oriented conferences I attend for the reason you say.
> if I had my way, job interviews would be exclusively audio only.
Unfortunately, cheating is becoming rampant in remote interviews, especially for early career roles right now. I think companies are moving toward having final interview rounds in person because it’s such an effective tactic to discourage interview cheating.
Screens were voice calls for a long time. I’m a big fan of what’s normally the day of interviews be in person even if you take AI cheating out of the picture. I realize not everyone agrees. Zoom interviewing is mostly a COVID outcome.
Forget cheating, we get entirely fake people applying for our positions.
we get real people who are likely fronts for other people.
can't prove where or what -- could be lazy devs in Alabama, or North Koreans -- but it's happened enough that it's notable
> if I had my way, job interviews would be exclusively audio only.
The problem just shifts. People with attractive voices would then have an advantage.
Indeed, but more tractable for a person to address.
At least voice coaching / training is relatively accessible? A lot easier than some physical features imo.
And you could argue having a clear easy to understand voice is a job skill for most positions, I think.
> job interviews would be exclusively audio only.
Have fun. If you do it in volume, you'll get scammed pretty badly. Both by luck of the draw, and scammers who will actively target you.
Audio interviews are currently broken. People can use AI and many will do. Not necessarily for speech generation but to know what to say.
For research studies, we slowly revert to on premise physical interviews at work. If we want the ChatGPT answers, we don’t need another human in the loop.
HR loves video interviews for precisely this reason. They understand their role in the company to use their social expertise to suss out bad vibes, and it turns into something like Mean Girls.
> job interviews would be exclusively audio only.
Have fun. If you do it in volume, you'll get scammed pretty badly. Both by luck of the draw, and scammers actively targeting you.
Anonymizing grading wherever posible seems like the obvious policy response here. The fact that many universities still haven't standardized blind grading for written work — even after decades of evidence on evaluator bias — says a lot about institutional inertia.
An alternative story could be that the women’s presented appearance online may have changed more than men’s and that real appearance changes could weaken the correlation between the paper’s stored photo-based beauty score and what instructors actually saw live. Maybe woman changed grooming effort more than men, or the effects of fashion trends that explicitly drove the woman towards less attractive styles etc.
if that mismatch increased more for women than men, the estimated “beauty premium” for women could fall even without any change in teachers’ discriminatory behavior. The paper just assumes the attractiveness stayed constant during the period, but seems to have had no data to verify this.
aren't online curses a lot text only which inherently is harder to communicate
very important observation indeed, if that wasn't accounted for it means much less to me
> When education is in-person, attractive students receive higher grades in non-quantitative subjects, in which teachers tend to interact more with students compared to quantitative courses.
I wonder how much of this is less about attraction and more about social skills. Granted, higher attraction affords more opportunity to develop those skills, but I have met plenty of charming people who were not conventionally attractive.
> Granted, higher attraction affords more opportunity to develop those skills
I think this is largely a distraction from the direct effect. For any level of social skill, good-looking people at that level are perceived much more positively than others at the same level.
The question of the causal effect between physical attractiveness and social skill is interesting, though. There are plausible stories both ways, imo: your version, and the contrary one saying that pretty people coast on their looks and the rest of us have to try harder to be interesting or appealing in other ways.
(It's also hard to fully separate the skills from the looks, because the same behaviours that work for a good-looking person might backfire terribly for someone at the other end of the scale. Do we say those two people are equally socially skilled, or the pretty person is more skilled because they chose a strategy that works in their context and the other person didn't?)
> the same behaviours that work for a good-looking person might backfire terribly for someone at the other end of the scale.
This was summed up well in the "Hello, Human Resources?" cartoon[1]
1: https://www.threads.com/@smiling__sisyphus/post/DN56r2hkRXs/...
In many instances, attractiveness is tantamount to having social skills. It's not even a matter of developing a more sophisticated skillset; attractive people (and all the people who are subject to affinity bias) are just given the benefit-of-the-doubt more, and more consistently. This is where advice like, "Be yourself," and, "Don't fear rejection," and the idea that, "the only thing stopping someone from connection is their willingness to dare to try," come from: people whose attractiveness has preempted the requirement to really change or consider how they approach interactions.
Or maybe it's harder to justify a higher grade on objective tasks like math/physics/...
It's very sad people on this site still fall for this rhetoric.
Attractive people have advantage even without the social skills. We have all observed it. Don't cope.
Good point. Good looking people may have different social skills. Some may have horrible social skills; others may be great. That whole focus on looks is very strange.
Who is your parents play a larger role than attractiveness.
A larger role for grading University students? Certainly not where I studied in central Europe. In which country do university tutors know the parents of their students?
I remember in college there were always small groups of students chatting with professors after class or going to office hours. Many profs would drop pretty big hints about upcoming exams. I guess it was a mix of enjoying the attention, pitying weaker students, and wanting to reward "participation". Always felt a bit unfair to me.
What's unfair about office hours? At least at my school they were posted in advance and available to any student at no charge.
It's not the office hours themselves that felt unfair, but the way some students got privileged hints about upcoming exams.
Every professor has their own style, most of the ones I had were very open that office hours were a pretty great way to get help/more targeted hints on what to study. This isn’t in my opinion, a problem. Their goal is to educate you as best as possible in theory, via classes, homework, and office hours. Students who take the time and effort to attend office hours clearly want to at least pretend to be putting in extra effort, so why wouldn’t they out more effort into helping them learn? I doubt that they are directly giving away test answers.
It's always said that a lot of success and opportunities are attributed to being in the right place at the right time (aka "luck"), but in a lot of cases, those folks had the tenacity to be in the right place ALL the time; when opportunities arise, they typically go to whoever's present and available.
Chatting with professors after class or attending office hours might be a grift, but it's not necessarily unfair. Specific circumstances aside, anybody can do it to get some leverage.
While engineering school was hard, I did think quite a bit of it was pure participation testing.
I used to think this was wrong, until I got into engineering.. Sure there is the rare math problem, but most of the difficult part was: "Are you willing to fly to mexico and be awake at 3am when the parts are made?"
I might be downplaying though... I did calc 1 at a job.
Attraction matters and it matters a lot. This isn't news, a lot of people just don't like to acknowledge it.
I think there is an expectation that it should not matter, and there is a reality that it does matter, and there is lots of discussion because the expectations and the reality do not match.
Why is there an expectation that it should not matter? Is it just childrens shows? In many countries you have to put a headshot on your resume, that seems very overt that attractiveness / looks does matter. In the west there is a large idealism over practicality sometimes.
One thing I like about China's education system is the Gaokao entrance exams for universities. It doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, ugly, or beautiful. All it matters is how you score. It's as meritocratic as education can be.
Don’t wealthier families hire tutors to prepare their children?
That’s what happens in the US with the SAT/ACT.
I think you’d need free, universal SAT tutoring available to everyone in order to be more meritocratic.
At the very least, it's complicated. I went to an appallingly bad, fundamentalist religious high school (not my choice) that didn't offer extracurriculars, honors classes (never mind AP!) etc. and if I hadn't been able to do exceedingly well on standardized tests I could not have gotten in to the colleges I did. My parents did not pay for any test prep. I did learn and practice on my own though, which is how I know that evolution does not, in fact, teach that you can grow wings if you want them badly enough.
Khan Academy was free and used to obtain 99th percentile SAT scores. Academic resources for success are abundantly available, but they require discipline, time, and effort.
> Khan Academy was free and used to obtain 99th percentile SAT scores.
Is it not free anymore?
China has made for-profit extracurricular tutoring illegal since 2021. [1] Of course there can be under the table operations and discussion to be had about regionally biased gaokao difficulty, but I think it's worth recognizing gaokao being a real chance for upward class mobility, hence why it is so competitive.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Reduction_Policy
Oh so that explains it!
Starting in 2020 when I was a new professor, I was contacted by a company that works with Chinese families to tutor their students directly. I would be paid $400 an hour to teach them online remotely.
Originally I thought it was because of COVID lockdowns and that may be part of it.
But the opportunities have continued since then. I stopped doing it as my career has become more involved but I still get solicitations from time to time, so it must be because of what you say.
Tutors barely move exam scores, particularly if they're only hired for test prep. You can crush tests without cramming, tutors or any of that if you just pay attention in class and do all optional homework.
The actual problem is that we are not blank slates, and wealthy parents tend to be wealthy because they are more intelligent, and likewise give birth to predisposed-to-be-intelligent babies.
I always find it slightly ironic how mother nature gets so much reverence from ostensibly communal types, despite her being the most shamelessly power hungry entity ever conceived.
> wealthy parents tend to be wealthy because they are more intelligent
Not "more intelligent", just "unusual in some way". People can be wealthier than average for all sorts of reasons unrelated to intelligence (as defined by IQ). Here's a sampling of them:
Being social and good at sales. Most successful real estate agents I've met don't strike me as particularly brilliant.
Working a boring job, living modestly, and investing in index funds for 20 years.
Winning the lottery (either literally, or by accidentally buying something cheaply that turned out to be worth a lot)
Marrying rich and divorcing.
Inheriting wealth.
Being a successful athlete or entertainer.
Intelligence correlates highly with not having anti-social behaviors.
So a lot of the time, it's not "being smart" that carries you to wealth, its avoiding the "disastrously stupid things" that prevents you from being poor.
This take is bafflingly unscientific. You are spewing pure unadulterated ideology here - a particularly ugly one too.
Yes, behavioral genetics is the climate science of the left. If there are PhDs and university departments studying it, I'm not gonna be someone who sticks there head in the sand for the sake of their flavor of political identity.
merit doesn't mean equal wealth spending to obtain a result. And it's not black and white.
Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring doesn't necessarily make their score higher, and there's also diminishing returns. Someone poor who do not afford private tutoring can also receive good score due to their natural talent and/or hard work in self-teaching/practicing.
> universal SAT tutoring available to everyone in order to be more meritocratic.
and that is now called school isnt it? Everybody gets at least some minimal standard of schooling.
The fact is, meritocratic is meant to describe the opposite of nepotistic (or sometimes hereditary/aristocratic). Under a nepotistic system, no matter what you do, you cannot succeed without becoming the in-group somehow.
Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring will make their score higher if they have any kind of aptitude. Likewise if they have easy access to books, extra study resources, a quiet space for study, no family distractions or challenges, and so on.
Poor people typically have none of those extra resources. Some poor people with extreme talent will be able to overcome the challenges of relative poverty, but others with equal talent won't.
It's extremely hard to create a true meritocratic system, and Gaokao certainly isn't it.
So wouldn't it then be fairest to punish kids with high income or high wealth parents? Say set median household income. If parents make double this the score is automatically halved. If they make half it is doubled. Same on gross wealth. More wealth there is bigger the cut.
This would mean that says Musk's kids would need to get sufficiently higher scores than children of someone with no wealth.
If you had that system, and I was Elon Musk's kids, I would feel entirely justified in paying half the taxes society expects me to pay. Let's see if that logic works both ways.
> Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring doesn't necessarily make their score higher, and there's also diminishing returns. Someone poor who do not afford private tutoring can also receive good score due to their natural talent and/or hard work in self-teaching/practicing.
If these are outliers it isn't really meritocratic. If there 100 desired spots that are allocated by the exam, and 1000 students, and wealth (tutors/extra time etc) moves the needle enough to make a meaningful difference, it's basically nepotistic just the in-group is who's parents can afford it. Depending on where you are this can compound each generation.
Tutoring can provide some advantage to the richer, but at least in my anecdotal experience I have never seen the advantage provided by tutors being able to match what really motivated poorer students could achieve by self study, at least not in the countries where in the past there was good access to public libraries, or today there may exist cheap Internet access.
> If these are outliers it isn't really meritocratic.
Merit is about demonstrated ability, not how much effort, time, or money was put into getting the ability.
As long as you convert money into ability and ability into results, that's merit. Nepotism is when you convert money directly into results, buying a score.
That it tends to become a caste system with extra steps (which steps provide a defense of the system as “fair”) is one of the chief criticisms of meritocracy (and criticism of the idea is where we got the term itself)
I think the point is that some start with an advantage when it comes to earning merit because by luck of birth they were born to parents with a lot of wealth.
I don't think you can have a truly meritocratic system unless everyone starts on a level playing field with the same access to resources. That is not a system that exists anywhere on this planet.
Sure, but tutoring involves learning and improving the skills at hand. Meritocracy doesn't mean equal opportunity, it means candidates are evaluated equally without regard to superficial characteristics like appearance.
Of course candidates that study more have an advantage. But that doesn't make it non-meritocratic. That'd be like saying a marathon isn't meritocratic because some people spend more time training and conditioning.
Well nothing is truly meritocratic - even with free tutoring, kids will still have different genetics, different home environments, different upbringings etc..
Colleges in the US that removed standardized testing from their applications, in the pursuit of trying to be more meritocratic, found that fewer students from underrepresented backgrounds got in, not more. In hindsight (and to some in foresight) this makes sense because now schools leaned more heavily on grades and extracurriculars, both of which can be gamed by wealthy families far more easily than a standardized test.
To me grades sound like easiest thing to tutor for. Especially if homework is involved. Even basic editing and feedback before submissions could make absolutely massive difference.
> Don’t wealthier families hire tutors to prepare their children?
Effect of tutoring is greatly overstated.
It could still be more fair than no standardized testing
Take it to it's logical conclusion. Free universal choice of schools rather than being tethered to your home address.
I strongly disagree. I've gone through a similar education system and it's soul crushing to not perform well in those singular events that define your career and identity.
I don't know this specific exam, but most of these can be gamed in the sense of learning to the test. So depending on what training resources someone has available (e.g. rich parents who can afford tutors), I'd consider them only partially meritocratic.
If this is the case, then why doesn’t everyone get the top a score? The answer is, of course, that it’s not so simple, and you can’t just learn to the test.
That’s just like with sports: anyone can learn how to train himself, and anyone can improve with training, but in the end, some people will end up faster, and some people will end up slower.
My point was exactly that the chances are NOT the same for everyone. A kid from an affluent family might have both better tutoring as well as fewer troubles in life that could deter from learning.
But of course, in addition to that, there is always also a genetic component, as in sports.
The question is what you're measuring. You can have a test that gives you whatever distribution of scores you like. But is the thing it measures competency in the subjects it tests, general intellectual ability, familiarity with the test format, etc.? The worst negative outcome is usually subordination of learning itself to preparing for the exam, which can happen even when the gatekeeping function of an exam still works perfectly.
China also bans test tutoring as a commercial service. Without a doubt people will still be able to find tutors if they're sufficiently capable, but the scale of this problem should be vastly altered by that action.
Chinese education is also extremely constrained by the practice of "teaching to the test" to the point that the Gaokao indirectly stands in the way of innovation and reform in education. Schools doing interesting things to improve the quality of education are historically not very competitive on the Gaokao anyway (e.g., some unusual rural schools where students historically have bad prospects anyway and parents are overburdened or indifferent) or explicitly trying to carve something out outside the college track (e.g., private tech/entrepreneurship schools created by big tech companies).
There may be some good things about the Gaokao but having spoken to some (Chinese) teachers in China, it's also a limiting factor for education prior to university in a lot of ways, limiting the freedom of teachers and driving up risk aversion in parents.
(It's also effectively graded on a regional curve, which might be a good thing but isn't meritocratic in the straightforward way you suggest.)
>is the Gaokao entrance exams for universities.
The road to hell is built on good intentions.
Taiwan and Korea have even "fairer" systems. In China different provinces got different test problems. Especially students from Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin get completely different ones. In Taiwan/Korea everyone takes the exact same test.
However I've never met anyone from these countries who have a high opinion of their systems. Personally I do think our standardized exams cause massive 'overfitting' issue (borrowed from machine learning). The exam is not as brutal as Korean one though.
YMMV.
The problem is the high stress generated by the one-shot approach. There has to be a balance between the objectivity of a single test and practical concerns (like choking because you were sick or got bad sleep the night before).
Ultimately, the only "fair" outcome is an abundance of opportunity. The vast majority of people are worth something to their community and society. And even then, as long as there's enough food and shelter to go around, no one should have to justify their mere existence.
Having worked in with Chinese people, they always say it's meaningless.
How many folks from China have you met that haven't passed/been to university?
Oh honey
As the other user posted, practicing for tests are extremely important. I grew up middle class, got an average score on my tests (but I did really well in math)
My wife, upper middle class, took entire weeks of courses and scored higher than me on everything. But I am better than her at math for sure.
And a side note from me as a Pole - online I see many Americans speaking about how cruel Gaokao is, but... It's America that's outlier. I had the same style of exam in Poland to get to uni, and it's the same in the entire EU, and rest of the world. So I have no idea why Gaokao is singled out.
The US has plenty of exams, starting in early primary school. All states have Standards of Learning (SOL) exams every few years on the main subjects. Then, starting in high school, you have a combination of Advanced Placement (AP) subject exams (college level, often granting college credit) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exams, Scholastic Aptitude (SAT) or American College Test (ACT), SAT2 subject exams, and probably a few I've forgotten.
The SAT or ACT are technically the only ones "required" for college, but most of the elite schools expect AP or IB (which tends to give the students a year or two of calculus, a fourth year of foreign language, and some deeper dives into other sciences or social studies).
But, because it's split across so many tests, there's no single "score poorly and your life is ruined" exam.
IB may become important for US college admissions over time, but that's more aspirational so far.
True, I only listed it because, at least where I live, high schools often do one program or the other. If it's an IB school, you end up taking the APs on your own (ie, there isn't a class focused on that content, though the IB curriculum should, in theory, end up covering the same stuff, at least for the major subjects).
Your single exam performance doesn't forever assign you to a class of people, you still have an opportunity to redo the exam next year or to be successful even without a degree. That's not possible in China nor Korea. Even in Germany flunking a class might ban you from ever retaking it at any other German university.
I am currently living in Japan, and it seems that they follow the American style exams. I don't know if it is a result of the post-war occupation, or it was already like that before WW2.
Back home in Spain we follow the same style of a single national-level exam that you mentioned though.
I don't know how this exam is in China and Poland, but from what I've seen about the south Korean one it is much harsher on the students than the french one, even in my time
We have the SAT and ACT, and those are objective. The wealthy still pass disproportionately due to better tutoring specifically oriented to those tests. It’s Goodhart’s law.
Wouldnt wealthy people on average be better educated and potentially more intelligent than the poorest group?
I would expect wealthy to always be well represented.
> potentially more intelligent than the poorest group
It's easy to think this but its not true. There is just a ton of privilege involved in life. There are groups in India who purely tutor slum kids to the top IITs(the JEE exams in India are very hard).
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_30
better educated I get, but more intelligent? That doesn't track.
Yeah it'd be very slight, but things like stress and nutrition can affect your memory in the long term which is a part of intelligence.
That's fair, but... What's the alternative? Obviously someone's going to have better academic performance if you have tutors, there's no way around. Still, if you have good academic performance - you have it.
American system feels more unfair when you're given points for extracurriculars like playing instruments or sports, like that's not going to hold poorer children even more (also how's that related to academic performance at all? Unis should not care about unrelated things)
The university will argue that a well-rounded student body improves the experience for everybody. IE, a college that's 100% "nerds" won't be as good as college that's 80% "nerds", 10% "smart jocks", and 10% "band geeks" (or whatever other categories you want).
I probably agree with that, but also acknowledge there's no good way to make that completely objective.
In Europe, university is treated as education for adults, not your entire life. Most universities are not campus resorts like in the US, but just buildings in the city itself, students live a normal life in the city, they rent a apartment or live in a dorm, take public transit to get to places, do sport at a sport place independent of the university, etc. You can live a well rounded life that way. The university is there so you learn your specialization. Of course people make friends there, but it doesn't have to be your entire life, and the university administrators job is not to meddle with people's social lives to make them "interesting", but to allow learning.
Our oldest unis are generally "downtown" or similar - Harvard, Princeton, UVA (sort of - Charlottesville is a really small city), etc. Though most do still have their own dormitory housing, at least for underclassmen.
The large campus-style uni is fairly recent creation - many came out of the land grant system during/after the Civil War. And even as newer unis have been created, they've followed that general design (even though they aren't land grant institutions).
> I probably agree with that, but also acknowledge there's no good way to make that completely objective.
Even worse, rich kids have far more means to engage in extracurriculars than poor kids.
Universities in the US and other countries are not the same, and comparing them is not really fruitful.
US universities do care about extracurriculars and GPA and other things because they aren’t optimizing for raw academic performance, they’re optimizing for various other things like an interesting student body (that attracts donors, professors, and future students), real-world networks, and so on.
Pure lottery for all slots? Seems that it would be fairest possible alternative. Anything else being less fair.
One important thing is whether the tutoring is making better students, or just gaming the test.
And after graduation they can grind leetcode, and after that they can practice social cues to get in the management class. It's gamed tests all the way down.
For people who choose that career path. Still, somewhere somebody is doing some work.
The uggos I guess
Good schools for everyone
Everyone has a tendency to support the system they went through. I've done it numerous times for standardized tests and I went through them. I think the information value of a person who was certified capable by system X recommending system X is probably low.
After all, if you flipped the script and the US used standardized tests and you were then told that China uses a committee of experts that will certify incoming applicants' stated political positions, race, and cultural background in order to "craft a class" (as an admissions officer calls it in SAT Wars) with a carve-out for the children of those who have already attended, you would be informed of the need for meritocracy, the tendency towards nepotism, and the obvious racial biases that will affect individuals in such a system.
Likewise, you would doubtless be informed that the East's more holistic look at the total student is a superior form of student selection since it is driven by a Confucian focus on the gestalt human rather than on the reductive metrics of the West.
What is interesting to me is to hear from those who have succeeded in some system but nonetheless wish it were different.
>and it's the same in the entire EU
That's not true.
Yeah, I definitely didn't do any kind of entrance exam to get into University so unless there have been more recent changes to it it's not needed for all subjects. And its also not needed if you can just filter out bad students via normal exams in the first semesters.
Its basically anything that sticks by saying "China Bad, USA Good".
Because they want to say that China is bad. When, as you say, US is the outlier in inventing strange ways to admit kids to college. I'm from Brazil and the entrance is exam is similar to China, there is a single exam and the note is used to determine which college you can go.
I don’t really find it strange, if anything a slavish obsession to test scores strikes me as strange. School is just an artificial institution like any other, it’s not as if getting good grades is equivalent real-world success or “true” intelligence.
The US also has the best universities in the world, by and large, (even if the regular education system is lacking), so I am pretty skeptical of the idea that raw test scores as the sole criterion would lead to better outcomes.
Raw test scores are a good idea in many countries because it reduces scope for corruption + gives even the poorest kids a chance. Though I would argue there needs to be multiple chances a year and not just 1.
Wow! So advanced! Does the rest of the world do the same with jobs (a single exam to determine if you get hired to any company), or does it invent strange ways to interview and hire applicants well?
China IS bad though.
Why glaze China so much when you can be impressed by the west instead.
All these zoomers grow up on a China propaganda app.
How is China bad? Their education system did take them from absolute poverty to #2 superpower in a few decades.
Oh, no it is very impressive.
I mean from a moral and "care about me" perspective.
Yes Trump bad but USA has done more for EU than China.
Another day, another leftie glazing China on HN again :)
This site is turning into Reddit
Balances out the mass media. Drink propaganda from both sides. Healthier for you.
Mass media here is leftist, think BBC
Don't american right wingers like the SATs too?
Your country has very black-and-white politics. Anything <entity I don't like> does / says is bad.
I am Swedish
I'm rather surprised not to see a single mention of the Halo effect in the article or ensuing comments. This is a relatively well-known phenomenon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
The most interesting results is that the title is true only for females - for males the beauty premium persisted!
Our society has a lot of pretty privilege (and tall privilege for male identifying humans). Taking steps to address this is welcome.
Why though?
Maybe the advantages are natural and our species is selecting for it.
Because we know better.
There's a word for that. Hubris.
A couple things here:
1. This should have a 2022 tag
2. This is ripe "red pill" fodder and many of the comments here are "red pill" coded.
For the uninitiated like me:
The manosphere has its own distinct jargon.[31] A central tenet of the manosphere is the concept of the red pill, a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix. It concerns awakening men to the supposed reality that men are the oppressed gender in a society dominated by feminism
( From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere#Jargon, I landed there from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_(disambiguation) )
They stole it from other groups online that simply used it to mean "I can see through the bullshit now". It got nothing particularly to do with the manosphere and the grifters in it.
Only recently learned about the 'red pill' thing by watching the 'manosphere' documentary by Louis Theroux. For others unaware how it relates to the above comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere.
The documentary was an interesting if somewhat unsettling thing to watch.
Almost all of the people in the Manosphere are grifters (moreoever almost any influencer online). If there was a study that said the complete opposite of what the study found, they would twist it to suit their agenda also.
Outside of social media these people effectively have very little if any influence and aren't worth worrying about.
> 2. This is ripe "red pill" fodder
So what? We should act like attractiveness is not a huge privilege because of that? As with other privileges, I think it's important that we are aware of that.
I was wondering about the year. Are schools still doing online course work and exams now? I would think ai concerns would drive even more in person oral test / notebook testing stuff?
It has more to do with body positivity and anti-beauty trends.
Being fat is now a style a preference.
Being attractive gets you all sorts of unwarranted hatred, targets on your back etc. for doing nothing.
Being a fatass is a choice, being attractive is something you can't control or realistically should not have to.
We should not have to purposely make ourselves uglier to get more acceptance from overly political freaks, sorry.
Everyone should strive for the highest standard of beauty.
> Being fat is now a style a preference.
> Being attractive gets you all sorts of unwarranted hatred, targets on your back etc. for doing nothing.
I'm not aware of what fantasy land exists where attractive people are hated and being fat is the new style trend. Certainly not there one where GLP-1s become the hottest new pharmaceutical.
I remember this study! It caused huge controversy in Sweden.
The phd student who conducted it trawled through students' Facebook pages and took their profile photos (without consent). Then he had a jury of 74 teenagers rate the photos on a scale from 1 to 10. Then he tried to correlate beauty with grades for distance or in-class education. De-anonymizing the data was trivial so everyone could pretty much see how the jury had rated each profile photo. And research data is public.
It was a seriously weak study with questionable methodology and a too low effect-size to draw any conclusions anyway. So no reason to get alarmed if you are ugly. :)
I wouldn't place much stock in small studies like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
I wouldn't either. The difference for female and males reeks of the law of small numbers.
It's comment catnip for HN though.
I was attractive and had a horrible personality (college sperg). Long flowing hair, rakish funk, striking. Like bees to honey.
When you complain about having to interact with AI when applying for a job, remember that AI could be the most fair and unbiased recruiter...as long as companies want to...
AI has exactly the biases of its training data.
Once it’s all AI learning we’ll be set.
Can confirm!
In the past they would stare in pure awe at my guaranteed impeccable looks.
Now they ask me damned question to calculate the speed of fluids in different pipes through the Bernoulli's principle. And ChatGPT only helps so much here ...
Also, I think there must be a pretty big difference between female and male, because even if a male student is attract, if I am a male teacher and interested in females, would I wish to prioritize on looks, if the underlying grading is instead done on e. g. testing knowledge and skills? Why would looks even factor in here? Such a system would be flawed from the get go.
I wonder why the beauty premium remained for males after the switch to online but not in females?
It's easy. For women the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty. They are judged by it and the core of their power stems from it. That is why there is a beauty industry that centers around women and none for men. That is why women "care" about beauty much more than men. They know that beauty = power.
Women rely on beauty for success much more than men. It is not just in terms of "grades". Even in engineering jobs you can see it, a beautiful woman can get armies of male engineers to "help" her. I literally saw one female engineer get 2 male engineers to spend 3 weeks on a project for her just by virtue of the fact she's a woman.
And she's not even aware of this. Like she thinks people are just "nice". But men are not conditioned to ask other men for this kind of help and we can't expect 2 idiots to spend weeks on a "favor" for someone else.
We live in a world that tries to deny this reality with "gender equality" but these cultural ideas fly in the face of millions of years of biological evolution.
Now that being said. We very much expect that the grades of women should go down when not in person to a degree MUCH MUCH more than men. That is completely is expected. The question now is, why was there even a correlation of better grades and beauty among men in the first place? Why did that correlation exist when men do not rely on beauty? That is the anomaly here.
I think part of the answer is clear. Beautiful men do not rely on beauty for success. They never did hence why when you removed it as a factor the success rate did not change. What's going on I suspect is even more controversial: Beauty correlates with intelligence. This is not an insane notion. We already know that height correlates with intelligence, but it is likely beauty does too.
Edit: I looked it up, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
And it looks like my guess was true. This is indeed what's going on.
> For women the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty
Physical attractiveness is a social asset, and it's a more useful asset for a woman because men are affected by how women look more than the other way around - that's all fair enough ... but "the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty" is a bizarre framing.
It's not bizarre. It's truth that's hard to accept in modern times. Also you need to look at this from the perspective of prehistoric times that made up most of human evolution. Modern culture and technology has made it so that a women on their own could in theory gain as much power and capability as a man so the dynamics are more equal now in terms of opportunities but they are still unequal in terms of biology and genetic behavior/instincts.
Think about who goes hunting? Who builds the house. Who farms the farm? The man. A women does not have the strength to be the primary driver behind all these tasks. She can assist, but, again, she is not the primary driver simply because she does not have the intrinsic strength to do these things. The further you go into the past, technology becomes less relevant and physical strength becomes more of a requirement for survival.
In prehistoric times, a women's status lies primarily in what man she is able to "control" to take care of her because her strength and capabilities render her biologically much less capable in the prehistoric world.
Of course this also begs the question of what happens to a woman when she gets old and ugly? Where does she get her power from? She gets it from her man. In prehistoric times, women needed to secure a man when young and at the prime of her power... than she sires his children and through that is able to secure life time protection from that man well into old age when she loses her beauty. That's how it worked for millions of years and that is what is baked genetically into her biological instincts.
You're right it does sound bizarre in modern times. Also very taboo to frame things this way. But it's also the underlying reality. You need to think of things from this perspective rather than the perspective of what's "taboo". It's only bizarre because society has conditioned you to look away from the cold hard truth.
The key here that you need to realize is that women in power is very recent phenomenon. You see women CEO's, women going for the presidency, and women founding startups. This is all very recent and enabled mostly by technology. Historically, this is not how female power presented itself.
> And she's not even aware of this. Like she thinks people are just "nice".
Social graces require that she play it off as people being "nice", but I guarantee you she knows precisely what's going on. Women aren't stupid.
She may have even deliberately cultivated this relationship, but that's not something a rando internet person like I can determine.
You're right. Many women know what's going on. But many actually don't.
A lot of women live in this contradictory state where they know subconsciously but consciously they don't know at the same time. To help illustrate... It's the same type of human contradiction many software engineers face with AI, unable to admit that it's in the process replacing a skillset that upheld their identity. It's a form of lying to oneself... convincingly.
I would say off the seat of my pants if I were to give you very very estimated numbers.... like 45% know explicitly what they are doing, than 35% live in this contradictory state I described above, and a good 20% have no clue.
>She may have even deliberately cultivated this relationship
Oh many women do this. But they don't necessarily know that these relationships only exist because they are beautiful and that they are women. Again... many know... but not all know.
>Women aren't stupid.
This isn't true. Many women are really stupid. Many women are smart too.
> Women aren't stupid
Some half of women are below average intelligence.
> That is why there is a beauty industry that centers around women and none for men.
Oh us men also have a beauty industry - or, I should rather say, an attractiveness industry. We just get sold different, and arguably far more pricier, things... luxury watches and cars, tailor-made suits and shoes, grooming, gym memberships.
And similar to how women got anorexia through unhealthy beauty standards for decades, that comes back to bite us men this time with "looksmaxxers" [1]...
> Clavicular attributes his looks to, among other things, taking testosterone from the age of 14 and smashing his jawbone with a hammer to supposedly reshape his lower face - neither of which is recommended by health professionals.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx28z4zypkno
No. These aren't beauty. It's status symbols. They are symbols of power, capability and utility. Men are judged by raw power and capability. The industry for beauty for men is more of a way for men to advertise raw capability. It is not "beauty" for "beauties" sake.
The beauty industry for women is more superficial. Make up for example serves nothing for status and everything for youth and beauty.
Now there are things like expensive jewelry... but this stuff doesn't help women in terms of attractiveness. That is not to say that women don't wear symbols of power...Jewelry is more of a status symbol for women advertising their status to other women: "Look at what my man got me, look at the power and status of a man that is in love with my beauty."
That is not to say beauty doesn't help men. But it does to a much lesser degree than women. Also your citation is a news article documenting a phenomenon. You need numbers to answer the question: Is this phenomenon an anomaly?? Or is it common place?
I think the answer is obvious, I mean the stuff I talk about here isn't anything new. It's just hard to talk about it because our culture has conditioned us to look away from the truth and more at artificial ideals of equality and balance. Men and women in reality are not equal. And this inequality doesn't necessarily "balance" out like yin and yang.
The problem is that once people become aware how the society actually functions because of our biology, the social contract will collapse.
First, it's very unlikely all people will become aware of it. Our culture has made it taboo to even think in this direction.
Second, nothing will change. People will still behave based off of their instincts and underlying biology. Awareness of the underlying biology doesn't change anything. Men are very much always attracted to young women with nice curves even though they are well aware that this attraction is just an irrational biological instinct. Awareness does not change behavior, therefore, society will not collapse.
The article says:
Why is beauty a productivity-enhancing attribute for males in non-quantitative subjects? Generally, it is difficult to disentangle the reasons behind why beauty improves productivity (Hamermesh and Parker, 2005). However, relative to other students, attractive men are more successful in peer influence, and are more persistent, a personality trait positively linked to academic outcomes (Dion and Stein, 1978, Alan et al., 2019). In addition, attractive individuals are more socially skilled, have more open social networks, and are more popular vis-à-vis physically unattractive peers (Feingold, 1992). Importantly, possession of these traits is significantly linked to creativity (Soda et al., 2021). In our setting, the tasks faced by students in non-quantitative subjects, for instance in marketing and supply chain management, are likely to be seen as more ”creative”, and significantly contrast the more traditional book-reading and problem-solving in mathematics and physics courses, the latter presumably perceived as more monotonous. Together with the large use of group assignments in non-quantitative courses, these theoretical results imply that socially skilled individuals are likely to have a comparative advantage in non-quantitative subjects.
I guess even attractive males have to work hard.
One gender still has to approach, the other gender still waits to be approached.
"possession of these traits is significantly linked to creativity (Soda et al., 2021)" - This might be a hint that male attractiveness is correlated with IQ. Explicitly mentioning associations with IQ is taboo in academia.
That's an interesting take given that the previous sentence specifically lists "these traits" and none of them sounds like "IQ":
> attractive individuals are more socially skilled, have more open social networks
I'd say you need different evidence if you want to grind that axe.
Among the Big 5 personality traits, Openness to Experience is the one most correlated with IQ.
And have you tried to find out why IQ associations are "taboo" in academia?
Yes. Have you tried to find out why making certain pieces of scientific knowledge taboo has had very bad consequences in the past?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=IQ
Yes, crickets.
Perhaps some other (hidden) premium that only shows in males, like a confidence premium?
Because its a small study with a biased population.
People underestimate how specific the genetic pools are that relate to high intelligence
meaning what exactly ?
As an attractive person myself that studied engineering in several countries of Europe and some years in the US I don't believe there are many opportunities for you to take advantage of your attractiveness. Most examinations were in written form.
I have huge doubts about the study. In cinema, theatre, sure, you need physical presence, but engineering... I don't believe Von Newman would have needed presence to impress other people.
Another very important thing is that there are very important differences between sexes. The most physically attractive man in the world without the proper attitude and without leadership and success is nobody.
I am what is called a sigma male. I was never interested in power, dominating others, being the boss. Women prefer ugly and short people if they are leaders to tall and beautiful man that are not social.
In fact, if you get uglier as you age but get more successful, you will receive way more attention. If you command a group of people, run a company or are a big boss, women will get in love.
Also, if you are tall and beautiful, men will get envious of you.
I'm not sure what or why you use AI for this text (translation?) but even in foreign language universities, it is "von Neumann" - wouldn't be translated as your AI did.
Billy Bob Thornton dating Angelina Jolie is the quintessential example of this. He had presence and charisma but was very average lookswise. Claviculars head would explode if he saw a picture of them together.
Dont...Always stay below the Hot/Crazy line...
https://youtu.be/pInk1rV2VEg