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> attractiveness is not an inherent property of a person This is like saying "value is not an inherent property of an object" - which is true in a philosophica

> attractiveness is not an inherent property of a person This is like saying "value is not an inherent property of an object" - which is true in a philosophical sense, all value and beauty is a subjective, and depend on the opinions of people. But how would you then explain the existence of objects that have value to almost everyone in society (e.g. a car)? Similarly, how would you explain the existence of widely-recognized attractive people (models, actors, etc.)? There must be something inherent to those objects/people that makes them so widely accepted as such. Even if only related to the current culture (though I personally believe that many things go beyond culture and enter domain of human nature).

DangitBobby 4y ago
The value of a thing to someone is also subjective. Ask two people (or even the same person twice in one day) how much they'd pay for a sandwich and you'll get different results. But "what's the value of a sandwich" has a very simple objective answer if you're at a sandwich shop. Maybe a slightly less objective answer if you're talking about the average price of a sandwich in all sandwich shops in the country, but it's still sensical to give a straight answer based on that metric. No such objective answer can be found for attractiveness, though there isn't any fundamental reason why not; maybe if we had a culture of fetishizing appearance to the degree that we'd rank people and their attributes on the spot, we'd have more "objective" agreed upon measures available.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  Sure, I understand and acknowledge your point. All I'm saying is that there is an objective fact: There are things which are almost universally recognized as attractive/valuable in the current society. That indicates that there must be something inherent to those things that make them appeal to such a huge number of people. In other words, subjective != arbitrary. A ball falling in a maze of obstacles may follow an unpredictable path, but a million balls falling will have a predictable distribution of paths. At scale, human experience still follows some rules and patterns. If a person/thing is almost universally recognizable as beautiful/valuable, at point we may recognize some of its qualities as "inherently desirable".
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magicalhippo 4y ago
Surely attractiveness is a function of both the person being evaluated and the person doing the evaluation? That is, a person's visual appearance has N aspects, and each person evaluates those N aspects differently. Attractiveness is then a kind of dot product between the two. Seen this way, a person which is universally attractive is one with aspects u that is the solution to Au = 1, where A is a matrix of valuation vectors (one row per person), and 1 is a vector of ones. Obviously very simplified but...

DangitBobby 4y ago

The value of a thing to someone is also subjective. Ask two people (or even the same person twice in one day) how much they'd pay for a sandwich and you'll get different results. But "what's the value of a sandwich" has a very simple objective answer if you're at a sandwich shop. Maybe a slightly less objective answer if you're talking about the average price of a sandwich in all sandwich shops in the country, but it's still sensical to give a straight answer based on that metric. No such objective answer can be found for attractiveness, though there isn't any fundamental reason why not; maybe if we had a culture of fetishizing appearance to the degree that we'd rank people and their attributes on the spot, we'd have more "objective" agreed upon measures available.

bheadmaster 4y ago
Sure, I understand and acknowledge your point. All I'm saying is that there is an objective fact: There are things which are almost universally recognized as attractive/valuable in the current society. That indicates that there must be something inherent to those things that make them appeal to such a huge number of people. In other words, subjective != arbitrary. A ball falling in a maze of obstacles may follow an unpredictable path, but a million balls falling will have a predictable distribution of paths. At scale, human experience still follows some rules and patterns. If a person/thing is almost universally recognizable as beautiful/valuable, at point we may recognize some of its qualities as "inherently desirable".

deleted 4y ago

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magicalhippo 4y ago

Surely attractiveness is a function of both the person being evaluated and the person doing the evaluation? That is, a person's visual appearance has N aspects, and each person evaluates those N aspects differently. Attractiveness is then a kind of dot product between the two. Seen this way, a person which is universally attractive is one with aspects u that is the solution to Au = 1, where A is a matrix of valuation vectors (one row per person), and 1 is a vector of ones. Obviously very simplified but...