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Notes -
As a very wise friend of mine recently said:
Dressing neatly in a clean and appropriate suit and tie doesn't strike you as a cognitively demanding task, or even really in this day and age an indication of wealth outside of branding, just as a chore to learn and a cultural heritage to pass down. But it does serve as a filter for baseline intelligence and conscientiousness when widely understood as something we can screen for. There are people that are too stupid to dress themselves properly, or insufficiently conscientious to do so neatly.
By building a culture where this is a well known expectation, we create a culture where we can look at someone and (as @pbmonster said in the SSS thread) have their IQ tattooed on their forehead. There's obvious spirals of fashion and veblen goods and in-group signaling that are bad, but culturally expected dress codes don't need to be focused on that. The broad concept of "appropriate" dress. does not need to veer into wasteful or extravagant dress.
Basically, yes, you shouldn't judge a book entirely by it's cover; but damn wouldn't the book store be more convenient if book covers told me more about the content in the book? And this seems entirely within the control of the publishing industry.
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