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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   1851 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 14, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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This is awful. Morality aside, you could pick any trait of yours from a hat, and it would be more open to modification than your looks.

?

You can modify your looks, with everything from trivial ease to great expense. Make up. A proper haircut and shave. Rhinoplasty. Buccal fat removal. Ozempic.

Intelligence, for example, another nigh unalloyed good, is nigh impossible to modify. Stimulants don't make you smarter, just harder working/dedicated/conscientious. Even the most well studied options like ashwagandha for memory show minor effects.

Perhaps genetic engineering should take us in the other direction instead -- so that no one is too attractive, and instead of mewing and bone-smashing we'd be cultivating virtue and writing proofs.

I'm at a loss for words. I suppose making a taller bucket helps some of the crabs.

Good looks, at least in the form of clear skin, facial symmetry and hair, is a sign of good overall health. It correlates with intelligence too. It might be be more zero-sum, but it is not entirely so, so I fail to see any reason why something as questionable as enforcing "looks restrictions" on genetic engineering is remotely a good idea.

Once everyone is on the Pareto Frontier when it comes to attractiveness, we'll find something else to compete on, though I doubt your suggestion of "cultivating virtue" and proof writing will get any take up.

I thought the sarcasm was obvious enough. Oh well

My bad. I didn't think it was that Ben Franklin quote, which I can see after I bothered to open it.

Don't mind me, just dying of my 8th bout of COVID here.

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