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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28318 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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To what extent do you think it's appropriate to judge someone else for their body type? Would you assess someone that was weak, small, or skinny as also lacking in character?

I think these days basic nutrition knowledge is pretty widespread. I mean it's not very good quality - someone that says "you need carbs for energy" is missing the mark but they at least have the concept of a macronutrient. I did meet a guy once who I had to explain what calories, protein and carbohydrates were to.

To what extent do you think it's appropriate to judge someone else for their body type? Would you assess someone that was weak, small, or skinny as also lacking in character?

It seems like the word "judge" is the one that needs to be defined most here. Else we will struggle between mottes over a bailey neither can claim.

On the one hand if you define the action of judging someone as "deciding that due to this grievous character flaw, this person has no moral worth as a human being and no instrumental value to you or to society in any context;" then obviously it is wrong to judge others on their body type. The counterexamples of people with various suboptimal bodies who are nonetheless valuable and admirable in other ways abound.

On the other hand, if we define judging someone for their body type as "ceteris paribus, the person who allows their body to sink into a state of severe ugliness and uselessness is significantly more likely to exhibit one or more character flaws relative to a person who keeps fit;" then obviously this is a useful parameter for making judgments. If only in the sense that things like income, education, aspirational class, basic grooming, intelligence, all correlate with some degree of fitness.

If you had no other information than BMI, and you were asked to form a team for more or less any task, you'd be better off picking the BMIs in the normal range versus the obese range. ((I say this as someone whose BMI is firmly in "overweight;" the proportion of people who get into the overweight range through lifting weights is a rounding error in the population)) The judgment reflects an accurate and useful fact about the world.

One can still contend that an accurate judgment should be ignored for moral reasons, that everyone deserves a chance. Nepotism is often opposed on moral grounds even if, ceteris paribus, nepotism picks outperform those chosen at random on some parameters.

To me the question, functionally, is whether society is exerting the correct level of judgment. That's where you find out whether you gain an edge. If society is judging too harshly, then you can gain an edge by giving people a real chance. If society isn't judging harshly enough, if they're ignoring relevant information, then applying discrimination can help you choose good candidates.

This is generally one of the flaws in anti-discrimination law, it leaves money on the table for those who break the law.

Yes, I agree that judgment contains a moral dimension, and it's not without basis to apply the concept here - clearly, the consensus that is being built here is that fat people are bad people. But is that judgment actually useful or valuable? That is to say, that if Linda, 52, obese, white, divorcée, six years of experience, applies for an admin position, should her fat ass go to the back of the line? Should you factor in his fatness when deciding if Uncle John is invited to the barbeque? On a population level, have obesity rates skyrocketed over the last hundred years because we've become less moral, and not because it's harder to exercise that discipline in the Oreo Age?

(Of course, I wrote that comment for entirely orthogonal reasons - I often worry compulsively that other people judge me based on being small or weak. And the question stands - would we consider judging an anorexic*, or a weak man?)

(*Anorexia is of course, interesting to me, because I can see the appeal. In many ways it's the inverse of morbid obesity in that it's the fetishization of discipline and adhittana. It's admirable really in a kind of Prince Pamiya kind of way.)

Yes that's the question we're considering. And what I'm asking you is, do you think it has marginal value or no indicative value at all?

So rephrase your questions, back at ya, choose between applicants for an admin position: Linda, 52, six years of experience; Louise, 52, hobby triathlon runner, six years of experience, applies for an admin position. Which do you pick, no other information?

Your Uncle John is 600lbs, eating himself into an early grave. Your Uncle Jack still rows in Masters division meets. Ceteris paribus, which is the one you'd want your child to look up to?

Linda, 52, six years of experience; Louise, 52, hobby triathlon runner, six years of experience, applies for an admin position. Which do you pick, no other information?

If I can't get more information?

Heads, I hire Linda; tails, I hire Louise.

Sure, the skinny/fit one. Outside of the context of perfectly spherical cows, BMI is really just one variable among many - race, age, gender, all of which could justify discrimination. Men, for example, are much more likely to be criminals than women are, while old people are much more likely to die.

Sure. And if we iterate a thousand reps with the time and a few thousand bored college students we could assign weights to each. We could run Fat Linda with a degree from a Penn State branch in the Poconos against Fit Louise with an associates, and scrawny John the deacon at my local church against Crossfit Jack who got divorced until we settle on a weight for body weight, where being out of shape is worth about a year of college or $10k/yr in income or such and such level of ability in raising a kid. I can even come up with reverse arguments: a girl who is in too obsessively good of shape may be vain, a slightly pudgy guy might be more relaxed and fun! Maybe that plays in!

And then eventually we would have cohesive metrics to determine just how much to judge someone. But in reality, we'll never exactly get that, so it'll just be informal. If you're arguing that most people assign too much weight to weight, argue that, but that's different from "don't judge people by their bodies!" It's "don't judge people too harshly!"

Fat advocacy is constantly assaulted by the problem of people judging too harshly on one hand, slightly overweight people thrown in with the 600lb life folks and judged as obese wastes of space; and on the other hand 400lb people trying to argue that they're the same as the chubby moms, and don't deserve any critique at all. And there are points where we say don't judge by because it has bad social impacts. Argue that! But we all should agree it's a basis for judgment.

Also it's obvious to judge men to be more dangerous than women! I used to have to get assistant rock climbing coaches to fill out SafeSport background check forms, and consistently it was the teenage girls who got super upset because "I can't remember the address we lived at when I was eight and my mom won't pick up the phone!" And I had to explain to them, it doesn't matter, teenage girls aren't who they are looking out for, it's just civil rights law that they have to make you fill out the form too. Refusing to exercise judgment there creates vastly more paperwork.

I did not originally suggest that it's wrong to judge people for their bodies. I just asked if that same judgment applies to people who have otherwise unappealing or unhealthy bodies. Is it immoral to be very skinny or to be weak? Do we consider people with severe eating disorders to be immoral - so long as they keep themselves in that sweet BMI spot? What about anorexics - certainly, one cannot fault their discipline.

I just asked if that same judgment applies to people who have otherwise unappealing or unhealthy bodies.

Yes. Clearly, to an unhealthily skinny person.

Do we consider people with severe eating disorders to be immoral - so long as they keep themselves in that sweet BMI spot?

Absent damaging health problems or mental distress, I actually don't quite know what an eating disorder is. When we were teenagers it was skipping meals, but now most of the informed fit people I know utilize fasting at least some of the time for health reasons, and they function well. At the same time, eating disorders have expanded to include "Orthorexia" which is eating very healthy foods.

Right, but the whole argument against fats is that being fat is immoral because it indicates a lack of discipline. Being anorexic is not a lack of discipline. Indeed, deliberately starving yourself and going on extended fasts used to be seen as a praiseworthy spiritual practice.

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I’m not going to judge just on weight. There are just some obviously bad habits that I think if I know about them I would include in the estimate of their character. A person who is clearly and obviously out of control in a major area of life likely has other serious issues that need to be dealt with. If we go out and you have 3-5 drinks, I’m taking note. If you have obvious problems regulating your screen use, I’m taking note of that. There are just certain things you can use for a proxy for desirable behaviors. And I see no problem with saying that being overweight beyond the normal range is somewhat a good proxy for self discipline.

Would you assess someone that was weak, small, or skinny as also lacking in character?

I think it's reasonable to infer that, all things being equal, an able-bodied person who's visibly fit or strong has more discipline than an able-bodied person who is neither of those things (with certain caveats: it requires more discipline to hit the gym several times a week as opposed to working a job in which you're using your body all day long).

Other than genetics, the only thing that will have any meaningful impact on one's height is childhood nutrition (or lack thereof) - neither of which an adult has any control over as an adult. (For clarity: it's not reasonable to expect a five-year-old to feed themselves, never mind to feed themselves healthily. If they wind up shorter than one would expect based on family history because of poor childhood nutrition, then they're a victim of child abuse.)

It's an old joke/grievance, but short male incels are entirely justified to point out that it's completely unfair that making fun of a man for his height is seen as perfectly fair game, but making fun of a woman for her weight is seen as beyond the pale.

Who says it’s beyond the pale to make fun of fat women? It’s not the politest joke in the world, but neither is the short guy humor.

It's a hard thing to quantify, but I think a talk show host who made a joke at a fat woman's expense would face far greater social disapproval than one who made fun of a short man. I think Graham Norton or Jimmy Fallon could get away with teasing a man for being short (provided he wasn't a literal dwarf) in a way they couldn't if they had Lizzo or Rebel Wilson on as a guest. Nicole Kidman joked that one of the best things about divorcing Tom Cruise was that she could wear heels again, and got a huge laugh. If a male celebrity was married to Lizzo and divorced her, if he made an equivalent joke on a mainstream chat show people would be appalled. The body positivity movement pointedly does not include short men under its remit.

You don’t have to listen to the body positivity movement.

I know I don't, and indeed I don't. My point is that I think it's very telling that the movement exists, is influential, and is by and for overweight women.

I've heard that it was actually by and for men who love overweight women who wanted both to encourage more overweight women and a group where it's easy to meet a lot of overweight women, though I haven't checked deeply for the veracity. Perhaps it's been fully coopted by overweight women by now, though, regardless of the origins.

There's far more overweight women than there are men who like overweight women, by order of magnitude...

I have hate-followed the HAES/Body Positivity/Intuitive Eating movement for years. It is absolutely for fat women. There are a few fat men in the movement (though they mostly keep quiet because they will quickly be told that they don't suffer as much from society's fatphobia as women do), and there may be a handful of fat-fetishists, but the vast majority are fat women who want to be told that they are sexy and desirable and healthy and don't need to change a thing.

I’ve always found this part of women’s culture baffling. A men’s fat-group would be one focused on solving the problem rather than wanting to change society to accommodate their own lack of discipline. It’s self-defeating in a very broad sense to suggest that the solution to “people don’t like that I’m fat,” is to demand that people stop noticing that you’re fat rather than joining a gym or eating less or something else that would make you less fat.

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To what extent do you think it's appropriate to judge someone else for their body type? Would you assess someone that was weak, small, or skinny as also lacking in character?

Not the OP, but I will bite - yes, it is appropriate with possibly the exception of "small". I can judge people especially for things that can be under their control: that they are weak, that they are anorectic, that they lack personal hygiene, that they have bad breath and other things including things like tattoos, piercings, foul language and so forth.

Now I have a question for you: why do you think it is appropriate to judge me for my criteria I judge for? Why should I care for what you judge as judgmental? Are you some ultimate meta-judge, who is going to set the standards of judging for all people? Who elected you into this position?

Well, I'm not really interested in judging others (beyond ways that are immediately useful). Fundamentally, people base their judgment not on their own, spontaneously generated values, but on the values they were taught by society. I don't think it's possible or even worth trying to truly escape from those values, though of course you can react against them superficially or engage in dialogue with them.

Well, I'm not really interested in judging others

I don't believe you (90% of the time when Alice criticises Bob for being "judgemental" all she means is that Bob routinely expresses judgements that Alice doesn't agree with), but even if that really was the case, I think you should be.

That's silly. Of course you should make a judgment on the people you live with and whether they will steal from you or not. That is an example of a very useful judgment. Judging people on the TV is not useful.

Well, I would counter that forming assessments of people is a muscle, and if you don't use it, it might atrophy. That's the whole reason behind "learning from other people's mistakes" or "learning to recognise red flags": recognising that behaviour X is toxic and harmful in a person you don't know personally will make it easier to identify when someone you DO know starts exhibiting that behaviour. (Who knows, maybe there are people who started watching My 600 Lb Life for entirely base, ignoble reasons, but came away from it better equipped to spot warning signs of problem eating in their own friends and family.) If you only ever express judgements of people when being on the wrong side of a judgement call could have a severe negative impact on your life, but remain stubbornly agnostic at all other times, you run a severe risk of making the wrong judgement call when it really matters, or perhaps even failing to recognise that you're in a situation in which a judgement call is required. (Basically https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N2pENnTPB75sfc9kb/outside-the-laboratory and https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/09/constant-vigilance/)

Imagine two social workers, one who is extremely credulous and endlessly forgiving for all the bullshit excuses her junkie asshole clients offer her (after all, it doesn't affect her one way or the other); the other who sees through their bullshit instantly and tells them to get their shit together or she's cutting their social welfare. Which of these do you think is more likely to get ripped off when her own son gets into meth?

Or to use a less emotionally loaded example: imagine two employers, Alice and Bob, who make hiring decisions in their respective firms. Sometimes Alice's contacts in other firms will send her a CV and say "I'm thinking of hiring this candidate, what do you think of him?", and Alice always does her level best to provide an honest and fair assessment of the candidate's strengths and weaknesses according to their CV. The same thing happens to Bob, and he generally just tells the contact what he thinks they want to hear - after all, hiring decisions in another firm have no impact upon him personally. I would argue that Bob is far more likely to make a bad hiring decision in his own firm than Alice is, as by passing up valuable opportunities to assess candidates in other firms, his skill in this area will be more poorly honed than Alice's.

but on the values they were taught by society

I went to a Catholic primary school and was inculcated with a set of values on how I ought to judge people. More recently, as an adult, I have been bombarded with messaging about how I ought to judge people, coming from a woke perspective.

Truthfully, I don't really think either inculcation attempt was successful. I'm not claiming that I'm some kind of independent freethinker who Does His Own Research unlike you #sheeple. Rather, I think that, to the extent that I judge people, I'm relying heavily on heuristics bestowed on me by natural selection. Obese people, junkies and certain other groups inspire a primitive disgust reaction in me which feels deeply innate, an instinctive knee-jerk response similar to the reflexive stomach-turning sensation you get when you smell vomit or rotten food.

(Not that I'm saying all of my instinctive disgust reactions are appropriate or reasonable! There was a thread this week asking why some people feel uncomfortable around people with Down's syndrome, and I will cop to that - I know it's not fair of me to have that reaction. Likewise people born with horrific facial deformities.)

Maybe when I judge people on a higher level of cognitive reasoning, that's something that can be consciously inculcated or taught. I don't really know, though. A lot of my moral reasoning seems to ultimately come down to "what's good for the goose is good for the gander", an evolutionary heuristic we share with chimpanzees.

I concede that in addition to society's values, you also inherit a bit from evolution. Either way, you are not forming your values. For example, you say that it's not fair of you to have a negative reaction to DS people. But you didn't invent that notion of fairness independently.

No, I didn't independently of my own accord arrive at the conclusion that you should treat people with Down's syndrome with respect. Probably there are very few people who can truly claim to be moral innovators in this regard.

I went to a Catholic primary school and was inculcated with a set of values on how I ought to judge people.

Catholics aren't big on Matthew 7:1 I guess?

Yes, but there's still much judging to be done. Luther and Calvin are clear.

But, lest we may stumble at this preaching and misunderstand it, if hereby it were altogether forbidden to judge and pass sentence, it is clear from what has often been said above, that Christ is preaching here only to his disciples, and is not at all speaking of the judgment or punishment that must occur in the world; as father and mother at home among the children and servants must judge, rebuke, and also chastise, if they will not do right.

These words of Christ do not contain an absolute prohibition from judging, but are intended to cure a disease, which appears to be natural to us all. We see how all flatter themselves, and every man passes a severe censure on others. This vice is attended by some strange enjoyment: for there is hardly any person who is not tickled with the desire of inquiring into other people’s faults. All acknowledge, indeed, that it is an intolerable evil, that those who overlook their own vices are so inveterate against their brethren.

John 7:24

Fundamentally, people base their judgment not on their own, spontaneously generated values, but on the values they were taught by society.

I don't buy it. Society pounds me with messaging about how I shouldn't judge, that people could be fat for any reason or no reason at all, that we barely even have control over our own bodies. In stark contrast, my personal experience is that I can manipulate weight and body composition by simply making choices and developing consistent habits. This isn't difficult at all for me. The reason that I judge fat people isn't because society told me to, it's that my personal experience makes me believe that they have serious character defects. I can believe that making choices and developing habits is much harder for some people than others and still recognize that this is a product of poor executive function, which manifests as a character defect.

There is a small coterie of fat acceptance activists that is occasionally wheeled out like the Washington Generals or the Libertarian Party to be laughed at, but for the most part, no. That's why 600lbs Life even exists in the first place, it's a show that as we have just discussed in this thread, make fat people look even worse. Why does such a show exist? So people can watch it and feel justified in hating fat people. Which is to say, it makes them feel better about something they were already doing. It's not by accident that you are, yet again here, casually mentioning how easy* it is for you to gain fifty pounds of muscle or lose fifty pounds of fat on a dime. It's not because you're embarrassed.

  • It comes and goes, but it was once the fashion for people to brag about how hard they trained or how strictly they didn't. In the year 2024 it seems the opposite - fitness models take pictures of themselves eating donuts, and now people seem to brag about how little they need to train.

I train a lot and I don't think I've ever claimed otherwise. The easy part is identifying what needs to be done to gain muscle, lose fat, increase strength, or increase aerobic endurance. My claim isn't that people don't need to actually make changes, it's that failing to do so is a character defect. Denying that it's even possible to do so is even worse, diminishing people below the level of having agency over their own bodies. As with other addicts, it's easy to observe that they're telling the truth about their inability to regulate their own behavior, but it is a defect.

So people need to make changes - to what end? What ideal body type are people supposed to be striving for? I mean even over thirty years I've seen expectations of what men should look like change a fair bit.

If someone was stretching me out on the rack, I wouldn't need a complete answer for what my happiest possible state looked like to know that I would be a lot closer to it if the torture stopped. You don't need to fully flesh out (no pun intended) the ideal body type to argue it's better not to be obese.

Well, I'm not really interested in judging others (beyond ways that are immediately useful).

I don't believe you, unless maybe you have a very broad definition of immediately useful. For instance, what use did you have scolding the OP for judging people outside of their "character"?

I openly admit that I am very interested in judging. Judgment is necessary when analyzing all actions or things as good/moral or bad. What I wanted to point out is a very common trope of some people, who lack even basic self awareness and who can with straight face say things such as "unlike all those nasty bigots, I am very open-minded and non-judgmental person". The ask by anybody not to judge, is often just a manipulation technique to normalize and shelter from criticism what they themselves judge as a good thing. With no such treatment offered to what they deem as bad things such as bigotry, which has to be judged and punished harshly.

I didn't scold the OP at all. It's quite normal to judge others, particularly men, for being small or weak, and I've been on the receiving end of that judgment many times. Of course, there is a difference between observation and judgment. I can observe someone's behaviour without forming an opinion on it. I also don't agree that judgment is always necessary. This is not meant in a cuddly liberal way. Rather in a kind of sense that one should treat events and people sort of like passing clouds. And I would add that I also think that I am very judgmental - I just don't think that's a valuable or desirable trait in myself.

Even for stoics it is absolutely okay to judge others and especially themselves in accordance with stoic virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. For instance Seneca was very critical of Nero, and Epictetus had no problem judging emperor Domitian for his tyrannical actions.

In fact Stoics would be the first ones to point to fat people as negative example of what happens if one lacks self-control, which is the core basis of the virtue of temperance. I know this, because they actually did condemn gluttony and other excesses of Roman elites.

I am not sure where you came to this idea that stoics are some silent monks never to talk and make judgements. One of they key values of stoicism is courage, which includes courage to tell the truth even in face of tyrants like Caligula who wanted to order Seneca to commit suicide, then let it go given Seneca's poor health.

Fine, I have deleted the word stoic from my post. I would not have added it if I knew this would mislead you so badly.

Rather in a kind of stoic sense that one should treat events and people sort of like passing clouds.

This would be easier if the non-stoic side of the anti-judgment movement were able to keep their behavior restrained. A lot of people do act like you; though they don't pretend they don't judge. They just judge silently but choose to be polite. But forbearance is mistaken for weakness which is followed by an attempt to deny that the judgment is legitimate.

Since We Live in a Society someone is going to have to be disagreeable and tell the truth that being fat is usually a lack of virtue and trying to cover that fact up is also lack of virtue. If only for the kids, who can't be expected to have a philosopher's judgment and stoic detachment.

You might benefit from reading what I said. I said I'm not interested in judging others, not that I didn't - I of course, pass judgment on others, naturally and uncontrollably, and according to values I did not generate. But that judgment is rarely useful - if someone irritates me, or displeases me, what can I do about it other than seethe? Isn't that the real poison in whale watching on reality TV? Why not watch Sam Sulek instead?

Oh, come on now. You literally have reality TV shows devoted to displaying fatties like circus freaks for the people in this thread to hate on. If you needed to be told by your television set that it's okay to hate fat people, then you're not being brave. If you're watching it, it's for you - people watch shows like this to be told they're right, not to be challenged.

and other things including things like tattoos, piercings, foul language and so forth

Are you judging them solely on aesthetics here? Or do you think these things actually give you meaningful insight about their character?

Or do you think these things actually give you meaningful insight about their character?

I certainly do, or at least I think one can draw meaningful inferences from these things. At the banal level, you can look at certain tattoos and reasonably infer that the person got it when they were in prison. More broadly, a person with prominent facial tattoos or piercings is making (or has made) a conscious decision to transgress certain standards of how people are expected to comport themselves in a particular society, which implies a disregard for social convention and perhaps an elevated* willingness to transgress social norms other than mere dress and comportment.

I have one tattoo but it's on my torso.

*When compared with someone without prominent facial tattoos or piercings.

If by character you mean moral character, then yes, aesthetics can be used to signal moral character. If I see somebody with MS-13 face tattoo or wearing Hells Angels bike jacket, I have no problem with that.

And sometimes I will also judge outside of moral character. If I want a partner for pickup basketball, then I may judge a 5 foot tall nice god-fearing guy as unsuitable for that role. In fact if he is of a good moral character, then I expect him to accept it with stoicism and plow through the situation with grace and respect as opposed to complaining about it. If he did whine, then I would also judge him as a little whiner unsuitable for other activities as well.

The issue with gang tats isn't that they have ink in their skin; it's that they are openly advertising that they are a member of a murderous gang. You're conflating the message with the medium. Do you not actually judge all people with tattoos in general? If you do, can you explain what you're judging them for/about? The same goes for piercings and swearing; what about these things leads you to make character judgments?

Yes, I judge people with visible tattoos for it. Specifically, they’re valuing self expression over not looking like ruffians.

“Like ruffians”? Piercings and non-facial tattoos aren’t that taboo anymore. Almost half of adults under 45 have at least one tattoo. It’s been over a decade since the “tatted-up barista with full sleeves” archetype became a thing. Workplace rules about covering up tattoos have also become far more relaxed in most industries. Sure, face tats are still pretty taboo outside of the traditional subcultures you'd find them (line cooks, construction, etc.), but the OP didn't specify face tats in particular.

Personally, I don’t have any tattoos, but that's because I’ve never felt the desire for any, not because I think I would be ostracised for violating a social norm. The worst I would have to endure is my parents giving me shit cause they think all tattoos look ugly.

You can say it about other things as well. More than 20% of people in USA are obese, 1 in 5 people un USA experience mental illness, 25% of women are expected to get abortion, 28% of black males and 16% of Hispanic males will be incarcerated during their lifetimes. We can go on. I do not think that just because something is common, that it automatically means it is also a good thing.

So yeah, maybe it is not such a good thing that we normalized former taboos. What is also interesting in this debate is that the word judging really has negative connotations for many people - except of course if you "judge" something positively. Fat Cosmopolitan model? No problem if somebody judges her overflowing fat as beautiful and herself as stunning and brave person. Somebody has neck tattoos and sleeves? No problem complimenting them for their bravery and confidence. Of course you can judge somebody if he has Make America Great Again sleeve, in that case it is disgusting and not a signal that this person is actually brave to wear his beliefs literally on his sleeve.

It is not about being judgemental or non-judgemental. It is about judging certain things positively and other things negatively, while claiming the moral high ground.

My point wasn’t that because tattoos and piercings are now common that they’re now good; my point was that they're now so common that they’re no longer a useful signal of if someone is a “ruffian,” I.e., a criminal, member of the underclass, or otherwise the type to get in bar fights (e.g., tattoos have long been associated with marines and sailors).

You now have to actually look at the tattoos to potentially get any useful information about the person with said tattoo. If they have prison tats that tells you different things than if they have a USMC globe and anchor which tells you different things than if they have generic normie tattoo art.

Being fat is different. No one wants to be fat for the most part (aside from maybe young women who put it on only in “all the right places” in subcultures into that look), and absolutely no one actually wants to be obese; anyone saying otherwise is coping. So when you see someone who is fat, you see someone who, for one reason or another, either can’t or doesn’t even try to manage their weight. That does give you some amount of information about them, but as more and more people get fat, the information is starting to go from “this is a person on the lowest end of the self-control spectrum” to “this person is not on the highest end of self-control”.

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Sure, the MS-13 face tattoo was just an obvious example that was meant to show the principle - if you present yourself or behave in certain way, you will be judged, it is inevitable.

Let´s say that I know that somebody has tattoos and piercings, and I do not know anything about it: if it is some face tattoo or tramp stamp or nipple piercing etc.

I could judge such a person as having been at certain point in time as reckless, vain, possibly with some body dismorphia or at least self-esteem complex. It is not some gamebreaker for me, but neither is obesity. But it is a hint.

But there is another level here I want to touch. Sometimes there are situations, where we are speaking about very deep concepts, which evade “rationalist” thinking and endless scrutiny. One famous example is when Plato went about in his Academia, thinking about definition of what is a man, he came up with definition of “featherless biped”. Then he met Diogenes:

According to Diogenes Laërtius, when Plato gave the tongue-in-cheek definition of man as "featherless bipeds", Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato's Academy, saying, "Here is Plato's man" (Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Πλάτωνος ἄνθρωπος), and so the academy added "with broad flat nails" to the definition.

This is such a rationalist story. Everybody knows what is a man, even a child or village idiot. A good example of trying to ruminate and categorize definitions of what is X, only to completely miss the point and ontology of the problem. This is similar to me: being a fat, weak, tatooed person with a ton of piercings who swears like a sailor is weird and stupid. We may endlessly harp on it, adding epicycles to our definitions but it will not capture the essence. Also there is the tactic of “dont be judgemental” and accept the expert definition, in order to shame you out of your instinct, that even a small child learns somehow without knowing that fat people have higher risk of diabetes according to this metastudy.

Aesthetics give a meaningful insight about character.

Now you have to have some cultural substrate to read it properly as for instance tats could mean extreme religiosity or irreligiosity depending on where you are, but it is a signal. Consciously or unconsciously people use their looks to communicate something to you.

A book's cover isn't the entire story, but it does give good insight about the content most of the time. The title is usually accurate, and if it's lined with that arsenic green, you know to grab gloves just in case.

The title is usually accurate

This does not appear to be the case, if you’re judging someone’s moral character based on the mere presence of tattoos.

People marking their bodies in a way that they know leads people to make assessments about their personal characteristics and then complaining that people make those assessments tells me something about their character. Personally, I like quite a few tattoos, have had great friends and serious romantic relationships with tattooed people, but yeah, there are assessments that you can make based on tattoos that are reasonable.

People marking their bodies in a way that they know leads people to make assessments about their personal characteristics and then complaining that people make those assessments tells me something about their character.

Being visibly Jewish in a place whose inhabitants hate Jews by your reasoning also says something about one's character. Or kissing one's gay partner in front of a homophobe. Or having a bumper sticker proclaiming your political party in a place where people oppose that political party.

If doing X leads to bad reactions, those bad reactions can't be justified with an appeal to "they know it'll have bad reactions".

Doing X knowing full well that it will inspire a negative reaction doesn't necessarily tell you anything about a person's moral character, but it absolutely does suggest that they are reckless, foolish, prone to taking unnecessary risks, lack forethought etc.

Supposing a broker was telling me that I should invest in company X because it was an absolute sure thing. I notice that he has a tattoo on his bicep reading "MAN U PREMIER LEAGUE CHAMPIONS 20XX" when in fact Arsenal won that year, and he explains that he got the tattoo when Man U won the semi-final. I'm sure he's still a nice guy, but it's only reasonable for me to heavily discount his claim that such-and-such is a "sure thing".

Those things all do say something about one’s character. Some degree of rebelliousness, courageous, or social obliviousness is required to do things in public you know will garner negative reactions. The fact the reactions are negative do not make the actions negative per se, but they do change what information you can gather from the action.

In your example: there are presumably other gay couples that don’t kiss in front of homophobes, and that allows you to judge them in other ways. Maybe they’re cowardly, or just very polite.

Being visibly Jewish in a place whose inhabitants hate Jews by your reasoning also says something about one's character. Or kissing one's gay partner in front of a homophobe. Or having a bumper sticker proclaiming your political party in a place where people oppose that political party.

It certainly does in all such instances. Absolutely.

justified

You are the one turning a purely analytic argument into a moral one here. Figuring out one's moral character doesn't directly have much to do with what sort of moral character is appropriate or just or what have you.

It can be good or it can be bad that you're the sort of person who is covered in tats or engages in risky ostentatious displays.

But it is something.

The objection in these cases isn't that someone wearing a Star of David is identified as a Jew, it's to the antisemitism downstream of it. Likewise, if someone kisses their gay partner, it's reasonable to infer that they're not straight and that someone with a bumper sticker is a supporter of that candidate. All of these things are examples of appearances that lead to correct identifications of people.

I didn't write anything about bad reactions specifically. I wrote that people will make assessments based on tattoos and that this is a fine and reasonable to thing to do. Of course, I do think some bad reactions are legitimate - treating people with gang tattoos (or apparent gang tattoos) as threats is a good decision. But really, even the most mild, inoffensive tattoos imaginable still provide information about the individual with them.

But really, even the most mild, inoffensive tattoos imaginable still provide information about the individual with them.

Yes, but isn’t it reasonable to complain when someone reads way too much into a mild and inoffensive tattoo?

It's an analogy.

And I can tell with a high degree of accuracy that someone who bears permanent tatoos is unlikely to be a serious practitioner of most Abrahamic religions or other such naturalistic philosophies since they ban the practice with a small number of exceptions.

This does tell me something about their moral character. In that they do not hold their body's form to be sacred. Which itself is correlated to other things.

Of course none can read minds and have perfect knowledge of circumstances. Hence the phrase about the book and its cover.

But only a fool blinds himself to the obvious in the name of deeper inquiry.

When people tell you who they are. Including by making aesthetic choices. Believe them.

In that they do not hold their body's form to be sacred. Which itself is correlated to other things.

And what correlated negative moral judgments might that be?

Once upon a time in ancient China, it was forbidden to cut your hair because that would be violating the sanctity of the body your parents gave you. Obviously, we find this to be a rather silly judgment nowadays. In fact, conservative Chinese people these days look down upon long haired males.

It's a common mistake to look at tradition from this empty standpoint of pure reason and think that just because it's arbitrary, it signifies nothing.

The fact it was so strongly forbidden informs you very strongly as to the behavior of people vis a vis social norms and is a good proxy for their beliefs given the basis of such social norms if they violate it.

Ancient Chinese people who sought to honor their parents in the ways of their culture at this time wouldn't break the taboo. Which makes the existence of it valuable to signal familial loyalty. Indeed a common occurrence in early modern China would be the opposition between this particular norm and new modern norms. How people negotiated this opposition told you much about where they stood at that pivotal time. Symbols are meaningful.

That the cultural mores change and the signals with them is not a failure of tradition. It is in fact how tradition works and how it is eternal, despite the specific instantiations of it being ephemeral.

I agree that the signals send important information. I would say that:

  1. It is the signaling, not body sanctity, that truly matters here
  2. The receivers don’t always infer the correct information from the signal. Perhaps once upon a time cutting your hair/getting a tattoo meant that you were a person of low morals and no respect for others, but nowadays the younger generation largely cuts their hair/tattoos their bodies to express themselves
  3. It is fair for those operating off of new signaling patterns to complain about those who haven’t updated to the latest communication protocols yet
  4. It is fair for those whose avenues of expression are unfairly closed off because society happened to converge on that avenue of expression as an important signaling game, to complain about the state of affairs. I would greatly sympathize with someone in Ancient China who strongly desired to cut their hair in spite of the silly signaling that their society imposed on that act. Y’all can find some other way of signaling familial loyalty, thank you very much.
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What @hydroacetylene said below.

There is even a subculture of (admittedly very online) RadTrads who almost encourage getting a Christogram tattooed on you somewhere.

And there's the tradition of sicanje. That is, however, largely cultural as opposed to theological.

I've personally always wondered why the aesthetic traditions of Catholicism and Orthodoxy do seem to bump up against an invisible force field when it comes to tattooing.

Having double-sleeved up young priests (all images being reverent, of course) might help The Youths feel like the Church is no cap fr fr.

Muslims have Henna despite stronger (but not coranic) prohibitions. I am not talking here in the absolute, but the general tendency of Abrahamism is to disavow such practices and people who disavow such practices are therefore more likely to be Abrahamists, which is useful information.

As I have said previously, reading cultural signals requires knowledge of the relevant cultures to be satisfyingly accurate. And it never bears certainty because we are all individuals. But generalizations are still useful and informative, despite the fanatical attempts by many to deny that they are.

There are traditional tattoos given at the end of pilgrimage routes in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Full tattoo sleeves aren't looked on very kindly by either tradition because God made our bodies about the way he wants them to be, but it's not a sin per se.

And obviously self consciously relevant posturing is more likely to be cringe than relevant.

No, Christianity does not ban tattoos. It doesn’t look particularly kindly on the practice but there’s no hard ban.

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