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It's not clear to me -- your comment seems to contain conflicting statements -- do you think no correlation could exist between facial characteristics and sexua

It's not clear to me -- your comment seems to contain conflicting statements -- do you think no correlation could exist between facial characteristics and sexuality? If you think there might be, do you think no program could ever detect it?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sova 9y ago
To answer your first question: Correlation could exist, but the idea that they are correlated implies that my physical features will change when my sexual preference changes. Ponder that for a minute. Sexuality is not a boolean value, it's not a yes or no, it's not a this or that, even for people who are attracted to females they are not attracted to every female, and people who are attracted to males are not attracted to every male. It's such a silly thing to try and hone in on, because it removes the primary deciding component of human sexuality from the study: personal, intimate, real human preference. It's like attempting to discover one's favorite flavor of bagel shmear based on high school portraits. You may find some surprising results, realize neural nets are trainable phenomena, and then run around giving everyone plastic surgery because more pronounced cheek bones tend to prefer Strawberry Shmear, and if peoples' cheek bones were adjusted their flavor preference would change.
- vadansky 9y ago
  >the idea that they are correlated implies that my physical features will change when my sexual preference change No, it doesn't. It means sexual orientation and hormonal/chemical composition might be related, and hormonal/chemical composition might affect facial composition. Everything you wrote afterwards is just an emotional outburst to an uncomfortable results from a study you obviously didn't bother reading.
  - sova 9y ago
    "Sexual Orientation and Hormonal Composition" is a whole field of research on its own. Sexual Identity and Portraits we scraped off a dating site is too tenuous a leap for me to appreciate as any sort of "data" for serious science. If they had taken 5000 people, asked them to self-identify, and took a blood sample and measured various hormones, that would be a lot more satisfying. Yes, I am emotionally bothered by this whole enterprise, because sexual orientation is not something you can understand through portraits, and this study makes the claim that 7/10 times a computer can do it. That's not the case. Let's say there's a 50% chance that hormonal/chemical composition and sexual orientation are related, and let's say there's a 50% chance that hormonal composition affects facial features. That means that for the both of them to work out we have a 25% chance they are correlated. That's a pretty generous estimate, given that there is no data supporting the second half of that equation where "hormonal composition affects facial composition" as far as I'm aware. The best we are doing with this dataset is inferring hormonal composition from what someone put down as their sexual preference. Or am I missing a large piece of the puzzle?
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  > To answer your first question: Correlation could exist, but the idea that they are correlated implies that my physical features will change when my sexual preference changes. Ponder that for a minute. Why couldn't physical features change? I believe hormone changes can affect appearances, so it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility. > Sexuality is not a boolean value, it's not a yes or no, it's not a this or that Did it occur to you that possibly the correlation with facial characteristics could be a matter of degree? Consider the correlation between facial characteristics and racial background. I'm half European, half Asian. There's going to be a stronger correlation between people with near 100% European ancestry and "European facial characteristics" than people with 50% European ancestry, than people with 25% European ancestry, etc
  - sova 9y ago
    My point is that Sexuality is not classifiable like Eye Color is classifiable, and we should not treat it as such.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sova 9y ago

To answer your first question: Correlation could exist, but the idea that they are correlated implies that my physical features will change when my sexual preference changes. Ponder that for a minute. Sexuality is not a boolean value, it's not a yes or no, it's not a this or that, even for people who are attracted to females they are not attracted to every female, and people who are attracted to males are not attracted to every male. It's such a silly thing to try and hone in on, because it removes the primary deciding component of human sexuality from the study: personal, intimate, real human preference. It's like attempting to discover one's favorite flavor of bagel shmear based on high school portraits. You may find some surprising results, realize neural nets are trainable phenomena, and then run around giving everyone plastic surgery because more pronounced cheek bones tend to prefer Strawberry Shmear, and if peoples' cheek bones were adjusted their flavor preference would change.

vadansky 9y ago
>the idea that they are correlated implies that my physical features will change when my sexual preference change No, it doesn't. It means sexual orientation and hormonal/chemical composition might be related, and hormonal/chemical composition might affect facial composition. Everything you wrote afterwards is just an emotional outburst to an uncomfortable results from a study you obviously didn't bother reading.
- sova 9y ago
  "Sexual Orientation and Hormonal Composition" is a whole field of research on its own. Sexual Identity and Portraits we scraped off a dating site is too tenuous a leap for me to appreciate as any sort of "data" for serious science. If they had taken 5000 people, asked them to self-identify, and took a blood sample and measured various hormones, that would be a lot more satisfying. Yes, I am emotionally bothered by this whole enterprise, because sexual orientation is not something you can understand through portraits, and this study makes the claim that 7/10 times a computer can do it. That's not the case. Let's say there's a 50% chance that hormonal/chemical composition and sexual orientation are related, and let's say there's a 50% chance that hormonal composition affects facial features. That means that for the both of them to work out we have a 25% chance they are correlated. That's a pretty generous estimate, given that there is no data supporting the second half of that equation where "hormonal composition affects facial composition" as far as I'm aware. The best we are doing with this dataset is inferring hormonal composition from what someone put down as their sexual preference. Or am I missing a large piece of the puzzle?
jamesrcole 9y ago
> To answer your first question: Correlation could exist, but the idea that they are correlated implies that my physical features will change when my sexual preference changes. Ponder that for a minute. Why couldn't physical features change? I believe hormone changes can affect appearances, so it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility. > Sexuality is not a boolean value, it's not a yes or no, it's not a this or that Did it occur to you that possibly the correlation with facial characteristics could be a matter of degree? Consider the correlation between facial characteristics and racial background. I'm half European, half Asian. There's going to be a stronger correlation between people with near 100% European ancestry and "European facial characteristics" than people with 50% European ancestry, than people with 25% European ancestry, etc
- sova 9y ago
  My point is that Sexuality is not classifiable like Eye Color is classifiable, and we should not treat it as such.