site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3232 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 6, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I don’t think this is the case? It’s very, very, very hard to disentangle beauty from wealth.

You can see a bit of dynamics on smaller scales with skin tone ranges as defined by tans in-community: historically traditionally whiter skin implied you were rich enough to stay indoors, but in more modern times tanner skin implies you’re rich enough to spend free time outside, but these are fairly weak and obviously context dependent. But that’s clearly not what you’re talking about.

The fact of the matter is that by the time a post-puberty person can “fairly” judge attractiveness, they have a ton of stereotypes and social influence floating around. Plus, wealth often leads to fitness and attractiveness even semi directly, both in things like bone structure, teeth, weight, muscle tone, and more (some of which also have socioeconomic connotations). Also, worth noting as an aside, measures you’d assume to be universal indicators of appeal are not perfectly universal - if I remember correctly there are differences in eg hip ratio preferences that differ between groups. All this to say that it’s a fool’s errand to make a claim like that.

Anecdotally it’s whatever. I don’t think it’s wrong to have preferences even if they aren’t perfectly fair. I think it’s wrong to discriminate, but I’m not gonna bat an eye if someone says Ukrainians are the best or something, but don’t pretend it’s some universal truth

Was this meant as a reply to me or OP?

You asked if Western Europeans are the most attractive. The answer is pretty clearly that there’s not only no data to suggest this, but some major methodological issues on top if you wanted to investigate this, so practically there’s no way to know. Beauty standards are like, pretty famously in the realm of culturally subjective. So it’s functionally an intractable problem. I would thus further opine that it is therefore not worth thinking about.

Now whether you were genuinely promoting the idea, or using a Socratic method to pick apart the assumptions of the OP, that I failed to figure out. I figured it would serve both purposes here, I guess.

Now whether you were genuinely promoting the idea, or using a Socratic method to pick apart the assumptions of the OP, that I failed to figure out.

The latter. Not that I'm totally convinced that OP's premise is wrong (and I don't really agree that it's an intractable problem) but my issue was more with taking it as truth to the extent that we can start thinking about what the broader implications might be.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats