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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3461 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.

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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.

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