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Correction: Physically attractive people tend to have an easier time in general at everything in life that involves IRL person-to-person interaction. Try going

Correction: Physically attractive people tend to have an easier time in general at everything in life that involves IRL person-to-person interaction. Try going to interviews with missing front teeth and see how far you get. Thank you for attending my TED Talk, now feel free to spend that research money on curing cancer instead of studying obvious things humans knew for hundreds of years.

causal 3y ago
Science is still worth doing to confirm our intuitions, but I agree that this headline approaches a tautology. "People who other people like tend to be favored by those people"
SJC_Hacker 3y ago
Physically attractive people are going to have an advantage in many things, depending on the field. However, sometimes it doesn't matter all that much. And I think in some circumstances it works to their disadvantage esp. when it comes to women. Some Youtube personalities have been able to succeed despite not being very physically attractive, e.g. Sabine Hossenfelder (sp.), or not even showing their face at all (e.g. Perun) They are just know WTH they are talking about and present it in relatable/funny way.
- _trampeltier 3y ago
  It just doesn't matter (or at least less) if you know people over time. If it is just a few days, it allways does matter.
- pishpash 3y ago
  Cover on, SH is playing the Debbie Downer character so needs to look like that.
- parpfish 3y ago
  I think a lot of people have some intuition that Berkson’s paradox is at work and that’s where the disadvantage comes in. If skill and attractiveness are unrelated but there’s a filter process at some point that only lets people through if they’re hot OR talented, you’ll see a negative relationship between skill and attractiveness after the filter. the prosecutor example is interesting because it suggests that either thats not happening
  - pishpash 3y ago
    It doesn't say that's not happening. It says they are winning cases.
- tokai 3y ago
  On the other hand many youtubers can stay successful even though they are horrible people making bad content, while being physically attractive.
lapcat 3y ago
> now feel free to spend that research money on curing cancer instead of studying obvious things humans knew for hundreds of years. This is a false dichotomy. We can and indeed should study medicine and psychology, among countless other subjects. The author of the article isn't a medical researcher and wouldn't be able to cure cancer regardless of whether he received research money for that. Moreover, the article gives no indication that it was funded by any grants. Professors publish articles as part of their regular jobs. Unless you're proposing that universities abolish all departments except medical research? I'd guess that it's probably cheaper to prevent cancer than to cure cancer. One way to help prevent cancer is to successfully sue and/or prosecute companies who introduce cancer-causing substances into the air, water, food, and other parts of our environment. Thus, I'd say that the factors resulting in courtroom success are relevant to the fight against cancer.
- photonthug 3y ago
  > Unless you're proposing that universities abolish all departments except medical research Doesn’t follow, and I’m sure you’re not proposing that funds/time/attention spent in one place can be double spent in another. It’s reasonable to criticize a waste of resources since there’s always a real opportunity cost
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > It’s reasonable to criticize a waste of resources I don't believe it's a waste of resources. > there’s always a real opportunity cost Pitting cancer research vs. psychology research is a false dichotomy. (And again, the article author didn't appear to receive any extra funding for this research aside from his regular professorial salary.) Society spends vast sums of money on a vast number of things. If you want to talk about a waste of resources, I could list a million things that are worse than this research, not just worse as in less useful, but worse as in actively harmful to society.
    - tombert 3y ago
      > I could list a million things that are worse than this research, not just worse as in less useful, but worse as in actively harmful to society. The thing that comes to mind is the “manufactured ewaste” that people buy on AliExpress and Wish.com and Temu. The products on there are enticingly cheap, but are often so crappy that they rarely even get a single use, and end up in a landfill. Plastic waste is bad, but I am even more concerned with potential problems with lithium batteries piling up in landfills, not even considering the potential ethical issues with mining the resources for the battery. It’s one thing to me if the device you are actually using was made with dubious labor, it’s another if it’s a device that will immediately become waste.
klipt 3y ago
Maybe we would cure cancer faster if we rewarded the smartest students instead of the most attractive ones.
tombert 3y ago
Just because something appears immediately obvious doesn’t imply we shouldn’t study it. Plenty of “common sense” thing are wrong, and even when “common sense” is right, it can be useful to figure out the “why” or to what extent. Yes, attractive people generally have an easier time in life, we all know that, this is surprising to nobody, but at the same time, it probably doesn’t affect every field equally. Being attractive probably matters an awful lot in the modeling industry, but probably matters less in the tech support industry. This doesn’t mean that it matters 100% in modeling or 0% in tech support. Also, I mean, how much money is spent on truly useless stuff? I spent multiple years working for the marketing tech team of a company. Wall Street traders contribute a lot less to the world than medical researchers but get paid an order of magnitude more. It’s hardly like this is the low hanging fruit in fund-reallocation.
- riedel 3y ago
  I think putting a more constructive aspect to it would be great though. I guess there is still judicial systems in which everyone wears a rob and wigs. Was it studied if this lessens the effect? Wonder if it makes sense to come back to those things to counteract biases.
  - tombert 3y ago
    I don’t think it needs to supply a prescription, at least in the initial research. I think it’s valid enough to determine if the bias exists before we try and figure out solutions for it.
User23 3y ago
They also tend to be smarter[1]. What we perceive as physical attractiveness is obviously some kind of mate selection adaptation. It’s no surprise that it would correspond with both intelligence and fertility. The halo effect exists because it’s a somewhat valid heuristic. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289610001315 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
- missingrib 3y ago
  It correlates, which could also explain a link in the opposite direction. Secondary sex characteristics sometimes have nothing to do with overall fitness. You can see this most clearly in animal species where the females value elaborate ornamentation, like peacocks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_son_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_son_hypothesis.
trimethylpurine 3y ago
It's a soft science anyway... >The first measure introduced an objective counterpart to human ratings by employing a machine learning algorithm developed by Megvii (Face++ Beauty Score). Apparently obfuscating a subjective variable makes it objective in soft science research. I lose interest immediately after that.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pvg 3y ago
Omit internet tropes. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
banish-m4 3y ago
I think the "homeless guy" social experiment where he tries unsuccessfully to get a table but then drives off in a Lambo is the peak of our social progress. That and the % of poor and minority men in prison.

causal 3y ago

Science is still worth doing to confirm our intuitions, but I agree that this headline approaches a tautology. "People who other people like tend to be favored by those people"

SJC_Hacker 3y ago

Physically attractive people are going to have an advantage in many things, depending on the field. However, sometimes it doesn't matter all that much. And I think in some circumstances it works to their disadvantage esp. when it comes to women. Some Youtube personalities have been able to succeed despite not being very physically attractive, e.g. Sabine Hossenfelder (sp.), or not even showing their face at all (e.g. Perun) They are just know WTH they are talking about and present it in relatable/funny way.

_trampeltier 3y ago
It just doesn't matter (or at least less) if you know people over time. If it is just a few days, it allways does matter.
pishpash 3y ago
Cover on, SH is playing the Debbie Downer character so needs to look like that.
parpfish 3y ago
I think a lot of people have some intuition that Berkson’s paradox is at work and that’s where the disadvantage comes in. If skill and attractiveness are unrelated but there’s a filter process at some point that only lets people through if they’re hot OR talented, you’ll see a negative relationship between skill and attractiveness after the filter. the prosecutor example is interesting because it suggests that either thats not happening
- pishpash 3y ago
  It doesn't say that's not happening. It says they are winning cases.
tokai 3y ago
On the other hand many youtubers can stay successful even though they are horrible people making bad content, while being physically attractive.

lapcat 3y ago

> now feel free to spend that research money on curing cancer instead of studying obvious things humans knew for hundreds of years. This is a false dichotomy. We can and indeed should study medicine and psychology, among countless other subjects. The author of the article isn't a medical researcher and wouldn't be able to cure cancer regardless of whether he received research money for that. Moreover, the article gives no indication that it was funded by any grants. Professors publish articles as part of their regular jobs. Unless you're proposing that universities abolish all departments except medical research? I'd guess that it's probably cheaper to prevent cancer than to cure cancer. One way to help prevent cancer is to successfully sue and/or prosecute companies who introduce cancer-causing substances into the air, water, food, and other parts of our environment. Thus, I'd say that the factors resulting in courtroom success are relevant to the fight against cancer.

photonthug 3y ago
> Unless you're proposing that universities abolish all departments except medical research Doesn’t follow, and I’m sure you’re not proposing that funds/time/attention spent in one place can be double spent in another. It’s reasonable to criticize a waste of resources since there’s always a real opportunity cost
- lapcat 3y ago
  > It’s reasonable to criticize a waste of resources I don't believe it's a waste of resources. > there’s always a real opportunity cost Pitting cancer research vs. psychology research is a false dichotomy. (And again, the article author didn't appear to receive any extra funding for this research aside from his regular professorial salary.) Society spends vast sums of money on a vast number of things. If you want to talk about a waste of resources, I could list a million things that are worse than this research, not just worse as in less useful, but worse as in actively harmful to society.
  - tombert 3y ago
    > I could list a million things that are worse than this research, not just worse as in less useful, but worse as in actively harmful to society. The thing that comes to mind is the “manufactured ewaste” that people buy on AliExpress and Wish.com and Temu. The products on there are enticingly cheap, but are often so crappy that they rarely even get a single use, and end up in a landfill. Plastic waste is bad, but I am even more concerned with potential problems with lithium batteries piling up in landfills, not even considering the potential ethical issues with mining the resources for the battery. It’s one thing to me if the device you are actually using was made with dubious labor, it’s another if it’s a device that will immediately become waste.

klipt 3y ago

Maybe we would cure cancer faster if we rewarded the smartest students instead of the most attractive ones.

tombert 3y ago

Just because something appears immediately obvious doesn’t imply we shouldn’t study it. Plenty of “common sense” thing are wrong, and even when “common sense” is right, it can be useful to figure out the “why” or to what extent. Yes, attractive people generally have an easier time in life, we all know that, this is surprising to nobody, but at the same time, it probably doesn’t affect every field equally. Being attractive probably matters an awful lot in the modeling industry, but probably matters less in the tech support industry. This doesn’t mean that it matters 100% in modeling or 0% in tech support. Also, I mean, how much money is spent on truly useless stuff? I spent multiple years working for the marketing tech team of a company. Wall Street traders contribute a lot less to the world than medical researchers but get paid an order of magnitude more. It’s hardly like this is the low hanging fruit in fund-reallocation.

riedel 3y ago
I think putting a more constructive aspect to it would be great though. I guess there is still judicial systems in which everyone wears a rob and wigs. Was it studied if this lessens the effect? Wonder if it makes sense to come back to those things to counteract biases.
- tombert 3y ago
  I don’t think it needs to supply a prescription, at least in the initial research. I think it’s valid enough to determine if the bias exists before we try and figure out solutions for it.

User23 3y ago

They also tend to be smarter[1]. What we perceive as physical attractiveness is obviously some kind of mate selection adaptation. It’s no surprise that it would correspond with both intelligence and fertility. The halo effect exists because it’s a somewhat valid heuristic. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289610001315 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

missingrib 3y ago
It correlates, which could also explain a link in the opposite direction. Secondary sex characteristics sometimes have nothing to do with overall fitness. You can see this most clearly in animal species where the females value elaborate ornamentation, like peacocks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_son_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_son_hypothesis.

trimethylpurine 3y ago

It's a soft science anyway... >The first measure introduced an objective counterpart to human ratings by employing a machine learning algorithm developed by Megvii (Face++ Beauty Score). Apparently obfuscating a subjective variable makes it objective in soft science research. I lose interest immediately after that.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pvg 3y ago

Omit internet tropes. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

banish-m4 3y ago

I think the "homeless guy" social experiment where he tries unsuccessfully to get a table but then drives off in a Lambo is the peak of our social progress. That and the % of poor and minority men in prison.