Women's Attractiveness Judged by Software

Original Paper & Obvious Criticisms by eldavojohn · 2008-03-31 08:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

I believe the the original paper can be found here from Dec of 2007.

There are some obvious criticisms:

In the first stage, 30 human participants were asked to rate from 1-7 the beauty of several dozen pictures. For a masters project (which this was), that's a decent sample size. For research and practice, I do not think that will suffice.

Second, this was done using eigenalysis and principle component analysis. While that's interesting, I have not always found that to be a great approach. Five or six years ago, they were all the rage although I cannot really find anything fruitful that has come from applying this to human faces. This also means that they cannot generate the 'most beautiful' face but if they did, it would simply be the composition of all their eigenvectors (in this case, ghostly looking images of faces) into one representing the highest scoring beauty.

The lead researcher said this program 'constitutes a substantial advance in the development of artificial intelligence.' Having taken several AI, computer vision & machine learning courses, I don't find this to be at all substantial. An interesting masters project for sure, but several years ago I saw people doing the same things at local universities with the same results.

Why don't they tell us how this scored some celebrities from around the world like say Iman Abdulmajid, Zsa Zsa Gabor & Angelina Jolie? I have a feeling that their system is over-trained and would perform poorly in real life. Facial beauty requires imagination and this system was hand trained on a hundred points. I don't think that's enough but I wish they would have published more results to either prove or disprove my criticisms.

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My work here is dung.

Re:Original Paper & Obvious Criticisms by coren2000 · 2008-03-31 08:48 · Score: 5, Funny

Out of 7!!! Who the #$%! ever said "Oh that chick is a 7, I need to do her now!"
Software should conform to the normal 10pt ranking scale damnit!
Re:Original Paper & Obvious Criticisms by spun · 2008-03-31 08:52 · Score: 5, Funny

Out of 7!!! Who the #$%! ever said "Oh that chick is a 7, I need to do her now!"
Software should conform to the normal 10pt ranking scale damnit! This is Slashdot. A seven is more than most of us can ever hope for.

"I've never done a ten, but I did five twos in one night!"
--George Carlin

--
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Re:Original Paper & Obvious Criticisms by Bombula · 2008-03-31 09:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

I participated in a psych lab as an undergrad about 10 years ago where the masters students were doing some project like this. We had to rank pictures of women's faces in order of most to least beautiful/attractive. Just faces, black and white against a black bakground, no other context - not even neck. What stood to me was that afterward, when they explained the results, they showed that some astounding percentage of participants - something like 97% - ranked the pictures in identical order. I think there were around 30 faces. There was a very high level of agreement among people over what is and isn't beautiful.
Also noteworthy was that none of the top faces were celebrities. Oh, and the top face was absolutely breathtaking. I mean impossibly beautiful. Several times over the years I've poked around on the internet trying to find it. I remember at the time suspecting it was photoshopped to be perfectly symmetrical, but it was more than that. This face was otherworldly - and to have such an astonishingly perfect face not belong to a celebrity? Weird. Could be some model I'm just unaware of though I guess.

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A-Bomb
Re:Original Paper & Obvious Criticisms by coren2000 · 2008-03-31 09:16 · Score: 2, Funny

Call 911, there is a fire in my pants.
Re:Original Paper & Obvious Criticisms by coaxial · 2008-03-31 12:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

I do research in collaborative filtering, which is essentially what this is.

In the first stage, 30 human participants were asked to rate from 1-7 the beauty of several dozen pictures.
For a masters project (which this was), that's a decent sample size. For research and practice, I do not think that will suffice. Why don't they tell us how this scored some celebrities from around the world like say Iman Abdulmajid, Zsa Zsa Gabor & Angelina Jolie? I have a feeling that their system is over-trained and would perform poorly in real life. Facial beauty requires imagination and this system was hand trained on a hundred points. I don't think that's enough but I wish they would have published more results to either prove or disprove my criticisms.
The number of participants in user studies are usually pretty low. A 30 person sample size is actually pretty good. It would have been better if the number of participants exceeded the number of items being rated though. That would have made this project better. A simple case would simply have been to enlist a bunch of undergrads from some classes. Double bonus points if he got their participation in the project mandatory. That's a common technique in psych departments to get subjects.

I can tell you why they didn't use celebrities. It's completely irrelevant. First off the training data consisted of 91 caucasian (i.e. european descent, i.e. "white") women. Any results with Iman would be completely spurious since she's african (i.e. "black"). Non-whites simply don't exist in the world of machine rater. Her rating would be dependent on what weights would be assigned to skin and hair color. I would suspect that since her skin color lies outside the range of what society defines as "white," this extreme variance would either strong rate her as attractive or unattractive. Not in the middle. But as I said, it doesn't matter since she's not of the population the training set samples. Second, the faces used in the study are all neutral expression, full frontal, under controlled lighting with no makeup and jewelry. Try finding any celebrity photo like that. Third, what is the point of using celebrities? What does that give you that a random sample doesn't? The only reason why I would think that you would mention celebrities is that you believe that somehow they represent a population of highly attractive people. That's a false premise. There are plenty of unattractive celebrities, and there's celebrities that are allegedly attractive but really aren't. Case in point: Angelina Jolie. I find her absolutely hideous. She is the ugliest woman that the media tries desperately to convince me that is attractive. Sorry. No. On the likert used in this study, she's a 2. 3 at best. Now even if I am a freak, and you're implicit assertion that celebrities have above average attractiveness even under controlled conditions, what's the point of using that for testing? The system would need to learn nothing to test well on that data set. Hell, this would be all you'd need to perform well:
int ratePhoto(Photo *p) { return 7; }
Not very interesting is it?

You're also assuming that there is some sort of objective analysis here, and there clearly isn't. All you can do is measure how the system performed to the human judges. In this case, the system. The system had a Pearson's correlation of .82 with the human judges. This corresponds to a MSE of .39, which is very good. In fact it's significantly better than the previous study this work appears to be based on, which only achieved a correlation of .6 on a similar dataset. So there goes you're argument that this isn't noteworthy.

This leads us to the discussion of why they only used a 91 image dataset. First off you're limited to what data sets are available. These datasets have apparently been used repeatedly throughout the community so apparently they're a standard set for eva

Wrong Metric! by 222 · 2008-03-31 08:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Apparently, men' faces are more difficult to grade."

Or perhaps their bank accounts are easier to derive a "value" from!

I kid, I kid. I think.

Re:Wrong Metric! by The+Ancients · 2008-03-31 08:24 · Score: 5, Funny

If I had mod points I'd mod you '+1 divorced'

--
The Mothership

Not quite by calebt3 · 2008-03-31 08:24 · Score: 3, Funny

Apparently, men' faces are more difficult to grade. Or men are not good at identifying another man as attractive when they are straight.

requires external criteria by jollyreaper · 2008-03-31 08:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Apparently, men' faces are more difficult to grade." That's because male attractiveness is graded on a curve, the curve set by wealth, power, and social position. Remove those factors, flattening the curve, and the Cuban pool boy will be ranked at the top once more.

--
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne

Re:requires external criteria by Anonymous Coward · 2008-03-31 08:38 · Score: 2, Interesting

According to some research, people tend to prefer their own race's looks, so Cubans are likely to find cuban pool boys more compelling than Swedes. Obviously there are exceptions for exceptional beauties of both sexes. But, this is a general trend. For instance, I have seen a total of one Indian guy I found hot and one I found attractive. I have dealt with a lot of Indians. I also don't tend to find latinos compelling, but there are always exceptions. I like young white guys the most, and this is likely due to genetics. One study found that people are better at differentiating between the facial features of their racial group. This can be due to increased day-to-day exposure to those features, but also can be due to genes.
Re:requires external criteria by jollyreaper · 2008-03-31 09:01 · Score: 4, Interesting

According to some research, people tend to prefer their own race's looks, so Cubans are likely to find cuban pool boys more compelling than Swedes. Obviously there are exceptions for exceptional beauties of both sexes. But, this is a general trend. For instance, I have seen a total of one Indian guy I found hot and one I found attractive. I have dealt with a lot of Indians. I also don't tend to find latinos compelling, but there are always exceptions. I like young white guys the most, and this is likely due to genetics. One study found that people are better at differentiating between the facial features of their racial group. This can be due to increased day-to-day exposure to those features, but also can be due to genes. This can go both ways. While there is a degree of comfort for selecting mates within one's own racial subgroup, there's also a trend towards being attracted to exotics, i.e. those outside of the subgroup. This sort of desire has been postulated as an evolutionary adaptation to keep genes from becoming stagnant. I am not sure if this still in the realm of speculation or if there has been any experimental verification. Of course, culture can also completely fuck up a given subject's appreciation of beauty. Just look at how standard African features have been looked down upon in females. Look at any black couple on television and you'll see that the man may have markedly pronounced African features but the women will always be of mixed race, skin tending towards coffee color but facial features all comfortably Caucasian. I very much doubt this is by chance.

--
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Re:requires external criteria by value_added · 2008-03-31 09:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

That's because male attractiveness is graded on a curve, the curve set by wealth, power, and social position.

I'm not an expert of male attractiveness, nor do I play one on Slashdot, but I imagine similar factors (absence of damage, proportionality of features, symmetry on the vertical plane, etc.) would play a similar enough role. That said, there have been plenty of studies showing that the "attractiveness" of a male's face corresponds to the menstrual cycle of the female: during ovulation, the "rugged and handsome" look is preferrable to "nice and well-shaved" whereas the inverse is generally true at other times.

As for "wealthy and powerful", I guess that could similarly depend on the financial and social status of the female. I prefer to consider it a truism in the same way that in the wild, it's typically the biggest, strongest, or the one with the most goodies that gets the opportunity to mate.

A side note for anyone cherishing the notion that everything is relative or personal, and there can be no standard of attractiveness. Even across disparate cultures where such things can run into the extremes, the attractiveness value of facial symmetry, to take one example, remains universal. I remember a PBS program on the subject years back that examined the faces of famous movie stars. Turns out by taking a ruler to the face of someone like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, you'll discover both have nearly perfectly symmetrical faces. I imagine one could conclude there's some form of Golden Ratio that applies, particularly to body shapes like those of Angeline Jolie. ;-)

Woman scientists will retaliate... by Anonymous Coward · 2008-03-31 08:25 · Score: 4, Funny

...and generate a manhood-size-prediction algorithm.

Re:Woman scientists will retaliate... by Maxo-Texas · 2008-03-31 10:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

Your theory sounds lovely-- I'm just saying what I've seen in practice.

It takes time to build a friendship, then a sexual interest, then a romantic relationship-- the guys I know who have stable relationships do not let their women hang around alone with other men. When their feelers go up they chase the guy off- usually just by saying very mildly that they are not comfortable with the situation.

In my case, they had a business relationship first.. then started meeting for lunch-- then I stopped being copied on emails-- then his wife stopped being copied on emails-- then they acknowledged something deeper than friendship (this is about 5 months in-- like I said, I got to read every email from both of them once I stopped the blind trust thing), then they started having sex-- then she had some work conferences (i.e. trips to his ranch)-- (now we are at 7 months)-- then they had a full out affair- he dropped hundreds if not thousands on jewelry, flowers, dinners and THEN he found out about me (she told him there was no one else-- he was married so there was no conflict right away) -- THEN she fought him for three months to keep both of us-- finally she told me and tried to keep both of us but as you would imagine, she was 60% him / 40% me and sliding towards him by then or else she would have cut him off instead of trying to keep both of us.

You are right- we are all individuals who control our own destinies and we have no strong control others. But it take time to slide from loving someone to being willing to lie and betray them. If you catch them early, then you can stop things before they are too far along.

If he had not been so damn wealthy I do not think it would have been an issue. It was like the second sentence out of her mouth when she broke the news to me. The universe had sent a wealthy man to take care of her. It was right after she said crying that she had had an affair with someone and she didn't want to lose me.

And I make a good income and wasn't stingy on sharing it and had proposed. She was gloriously happy while at the same time she was being a complete skank. She and he started out with the idea that it would be a discrete little side thing that they would do during the day and "no one would get hurt". His family is hurt... I'm torn all to hell... his wife is hurt. The two of them lied to everyone. I damn near had a nervous breakdown over it because there was almost no warning. I knew she was under stress and consoled her and she told me it was about her business- I trusted her completely at that point. The stress was apparently really that she was fighting with him to keep it all secret and under wraps.

I wouldn't be posting but she tried to open up contact with me again last week after I had successfully ended contact with her for several weeks and that attempt opened up all the pain again.

--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Re:Woman scientists will retaliate... by glittalogik · 2008-03-31 12:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

First off, I'm really sorry you've had to go through this shit. It sucks, and I feel for you. Second, standard disclaimer: IANAwhatever, and could be wrong about all of the below.

Unless there's something about this guy that you don't know or aren't telling us, your ex is a gold-digger and that spiritual connection you felt was you being a hopeless romantic idealist. It's easier to write off half the human population as lying, treacherous harlots than to admit that you might have been wrong about her specifically, but it'll ruin your life more than she ever could have without your help.

Whilst I doubt your situation is unique, I can assure you it's not universal, and hopefully caution you from overextrapolating from it. Whilst I've had three partners (that I know of) cheat on me, admittedly done the same to one of them when I was much younger, and been presented with one or two opportunities to be 'the other guy' in ostensibly monogamous relationships (none of which I went through with), not a single one of those situations has never had anything to do with money.

I'm making this worse, aren't I?

The point is, there are more reasons for relationships beginning and ending, and for those beginnings and endings overlapping, than you can possibly keep track of without ending up not only alone, but alone with one or more A.V.O.s against your name. I'm great friends with two of those three ex-partners, and the one I don't talk to is for entirely separate reasons. Turning bitter and cynical, or paranoid and stalkerish, isn't going to help your cause.

There's someone better than you, or me, at just about anything. If you make the game about money, and attract a partner who thinks the same thing, then there's going to be someone with more money, and you know what happens then. If you make it purely about physical attraction, there's going to be someone coming along who's taller or handsomer or cuddlier or whatever it takes to catch your significant other's eye. If you pick a specific criterion or criteria like that, you're going to lose. She might cheat on you, she might have the decency to dump you first, or she might stay faithful and spend the rest of her life quietly and unhappily imagining what could have been, but none of those sound especially appealing to me.

This bit is going to sound like self-help wank, but the only thing you can do better than anyone else is be YOU. It's up to you to make sure that's a good thing (i.e. staying healthy, not living in Mom's basement, soaking food stains etc.). It's up to you to make sure that you're actually putting some effort into it and allowing yourself to evolve (i.e. working towards the job you want, allowing yourself creative outputs, growing past OS fanboyism). It's up to you to find someone whose tastes intersect significantly (maybe even perfectly) with what you are, and what you're happy being, and who intersects similarly with your tastes.

Hell, I know furries who are in happy decade-old relationships; trust me, there's someone for *everyone*.
Re:Woman scientists will retaliate... by indiechild · 2008-03-31 15:42 · Score: 2, Informative

You should read material by David DeAngelo. It sounds like you don't really understand attraction, or women in general. Wealth doesn't really have much to do with attraction, but power and excitement do.

And stay away from your ex; ideally you should break off all contact. She's already demonstrated once that she will cheat, there is absolutely nothing to stop her from doing it again.

I agree that you need to catch her early before she cheats -- but this cannot be achieved by preventing her from seeing other men or getting jealous and angry. If she's looking elsewhere, that means you're not exciting enough, i.e. boring. If her sexual and attraction needs are being met (and ideally exceeded) at home then there is no need for her to be looking elsewhere.

Also, men outwardly displaying signs of jealousy is not a good thing, it signifies that the man is of "low social value".

We're geeks, we're smart, we should empower ourselves by learning about this stuff rather than stumbling around in the dark.
Re:Woman scientists will retaliate... by indiechild · 2008-03-31 20:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

Don't be sorry. I hope I don't sound patronising or like I'm lecturing; I just wanted to share my view and thoughts on the situation.

I don't think wealth = attraction, although wealth is often associated with high social status/value. But you don't have to be wealthy to have high social value.

Maybe your ex really is a gold digger (and I don't mean that in a spiteful or hateful way) and wanted to be with the other guy because he lavished so much money and expenses on her. But I think it's important to realise that all that wealth means nothing... she doesn't really love him, she just loves being pampered and spoiled by him. And that definitely does not equal attraction, it only equals affection (big difference). Affection can get men sex, but only grudgingly, and in increasingly fewer spurts. It's a bit like the other guy is paying her for sex; that kind of arrangement won't stay happy or continue forever, so he's the big fool in all of this.

Once again, I want to emphasise: wealth does not automatically mean attraction. In fact, spending lots of money on a girl is typically the way that "beta males" get women to grudgingly have sex with them. (there are exceptions of course, you can spend lots of money on a girl and still be a complete stallion and ladies man, as long as you know how attraction works)

In any case, the one thing that is for certain is that your ex seems quite messed up emotionally and is definitely not a person you should stay in contact with. In fact, it's probably best to have no contact at all. Unless of course you want to be the guy on the side who she goes to for hot sex, but that's probably not the wisest or most ethical thing to go with.

I'm sorry it's turned out like this, but as you say, it's good that you at least found out before you married her. I agree with the other poster, there are plenty of other wonderful women out there, just waiting to be discovered. You thought you had your special girl, but it turns out she wasn't the right one. That's life, and that's OK; you just carry on and continue your journey.

This article is useless without Pics by Your.Master · 2008-03-31 08:25 · Score: 4, Funny

I swore I'd never spout that misogynist meme, but for once it bears a glimmer of truth.

more average is more attractive by Noodles · 2008-03-31 08:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

I saw an article in a science journal years ago that showed photos of women averaged together. The more photos in the average, the more attractive the final photo became. The conclusion was the more 'average' the woman looked, the more attractive she was. Makes sense to me.

Re:more average is more attractive by oni · 2008-03-31 08:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

The conclusion was the more 'average' the woman looked, the more attractive she was.

My unscientific opinion is that men tend to rate nearly all women as attractive, and are not very picky beyond that. It's almost a binary, yes/no kind of thing. If pressed a man might be able to say, "this woman is a 6 and this one is a 7" but that rating has no meaning because few, if any, men will pass up the 6 in order to pursue the 7. The male strategy seems to be a shotgun approach - flirt with every woman.

Women on the other hand, seem to rate very few men as attractive, and do seem very picky. A woman will judge a male as "6" and ignore him completely, because she knows a 7 is out there somewhere, if she keeps looking.

In summary, I think that if you picked 10 males and 10 females at random, and then asked 100 or so males to judge the females and vice versa, you would find that the males ranked the majority of the females as attractive, and "in the field" so to speak, you would find the males flirting with all of them. You would find that the females ranked a minority of males as attractive, and "in the field" you would find that those are the only ones they are interested in.

So like you said, an average female face is indeed attractive. This is good news for women. Most of them (and they know this) are attractive to the opposite sex.
Re:more average is more attractive by ABoerma · 2008-03-31 09:07 · Score: 5, Informative

You can test it for yourself at http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/average.
Re:more average is more attractive by russotto · 2008-03-31 09:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

One explanation for this is that we consider symmetrical faces to be attractive (very few people are perfectly symmetrical). Averaging multiple photos will make for a decently symmetrical face.

Perhaps, but it turns out if you take one attractive but not perfectly symmetrical face, split it down the middle and combine with its mirror images, the resulting symmetrical faces are not more attractive; they look wrong.
Re:more average is more attractive by LaskoVortex · 2008-03-31 09:24 · Score: 3, Informative

This is the paper. There were several faces more attractive than the average. So, a conclusion from that paper was that you can't do wrong with average, but you can do better on occasion.

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Just callin' it like I see it.
Re:more average is more attractive by oni · 2008-03-31 12:31 · Score: 3, Insightful

The entire philosophy is completely alien to me.

Well, I think that a lot of it is basic, sexual-species instinct. A male who is too picky leaves fewer offspring than a male that is less picky. Thus, we all have the genes of those less picky males, and thus we are less picky. Conversely, a woman makes a huge investment in a child. At least several months and as much as three or four years. A woman who is less picky might get pregnant by a beta male, and then tomorrow, when that alpha male comes along, she can't take advantage of his genes. She loses. So as a result, the more picky females left more fit offspring, and as a result we all carry the genes for picky females.

Contraceptives and abortion haven't been around long enough to change those instincts.

Layered on top of that is our cultural programming, but its effect seems small, often invisible. Culture tells men to commit to one woman and buy her a giant diamond ring, but most men don't (or they do but they cheat) and women complain that men are "afraid of commitment" but that's like saying a bear is afraid to stay awake all winter. Culture tells women - actually, not even culture, most women are smart enough to realize that an average guy with a steady job and no major vices like alcoholism or violence will give them a happier life, but it's just so hard to resist the instinct that says, "bang the dirty guy from the biker gang." LOL!

It's *very* difficult to overcome instinct, especially when you deny that the instinct exists. That's what we do. We pretend that we're special, that we're the only animal without these instincts.

As we all know.... by EmbeddedJanitor · 2008-03-31 08:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

Women are in charge of quality control.

Men will nail anything and the women really control sexual interactions. The cost of mating is far lower for men than for women therefore women are far more choosy.

--
Engineering is the art of compromise.

Re:As we all know.... by xPsi · 2008-03-31 11:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

Women are in charge of quality control.
Men will nail anything and the women really control sexual interactions. The cost of mating is far lower for men than for women therefore women are far more choosy.
Probably for most of our 100000+ years as a species this was true. But with birth and disease control advances in the past 50 years, great strides have been made to allow the relative coupling risks for women to drop considerably, at least in principle. Some men and women embrace this sexual symmetry by choice and this has given women more sexual freedom than ever before in history (i.e. they don't have to be so choosy), but for many, I guess old evolutionary habits are (understandably) hard to break since certain behaviors are essentially embedded in our wetware.

--
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi

Why do we need software for this? by $RANDOMLUSER · 2008-03-31 08:27 · Score: 5, Funny

I thought that's what beer was for.

--
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill

Missing Word by Kyont · 2008-03-31 08:31 · Score: 5, Funny

Women's Attractiveness Judged by Software Engineers

There, fixed that title for you...

--
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.

Knees by kevin_conaway · 2008-03-31 08:31 · Score: 2, Funny

I thought the true measure of a womans attractiveness was the pointiness of her knees

Even beyond that... by SatanicPuppy · 2008-03-31 08:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

Even beyond the very real problems listed above, I'm not aware of any actual empirical standard of beauty. All you can point to is a general average of perceptions of attractiveness, and even that is far from foolproof as evidenced by the thousands of women who actively try to personify that average, and end up looking subtly hideous (a la Anna Nicole Smith).

In the end, it all comes down to individual perception. Sit ten guys down with thirty pictures, and you're going to get 10 different #1's. Maybe you can teach a program to be able to say who it thinks is hot, whatever use that is. Or you could write a program that would allow a person to rate a hundred or so pictures, so that you could run a dating service that automatically pairs you up with people it thinks you'll find attractive...That's the only use I can come up with.

--
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.

Re:Even beyond that... by toddbu · 2008-03-31 08:36 · Score: 5, Funny

In the end, it all comes down to individual perception.
I wonder how the algorithm works after the machine has had a few beers.

--
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
Re:Even beyond that... by SatanicPuppy · 2008-03-31 08:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yes and no. Yes, you'll get a more accurate answer, as far as the machine is concerned, but no, in that the answer will be the lowest common denominator of attractiveness.

When you put enough numbers together, all you really get is the sort of bland result that is acceptable to the largest number of people. The female equivalent of McDonald's food, top 40 music, and white bread...No real room in there for the beauty that can occasionally startle you, stop you in your tracks, that we all look for and seldom find on television.

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ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Re:Even beyond that... by SatanicPuppy · 2008-03-31 08:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

Not me, but that's pretty much my point. You thought she was beautiful and I didn't, and neither of us is objectively right or wrong.

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ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Re:Even beyond that... by MarcoAtWork · 2008-03-31 08:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm not aware of any actual empirical standard of beauty

you are kidding right? Even programming a very simple algorithm along the lines of

bigger eyes, beauty++
highly symmetrical face, beauty++
triangular or oval shaped face, beauty++
clear skin, beauty++

will give you a pretty good set of matches

--
-- the cake is a lie
Re:Even beyond that... by gravesb · 2008-03-31 08:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

I thought there were studies that show symmetry had a very high impact on attractiveness.

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http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Re:Even beyond that... by SatanicPuppy · 2008-03-31 09:00 · Score: 5, Funny

You just described something out of the x-files...Want to try again?

--
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Re:Even beyond that... by timeOday · 2008-03-31 09:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

The idea that there are no set standards for beauty is wishful thinking. Every guy wants to find a girl who is beautiful and for some reason nobody else has noticed. In reality this never happens. The next time you see a pretty woman in the airport, don't look at her, look at all the guys as she walks by, it's quite noticeable. Attractive people are treated better from a young age and, knowingly or unknowingly, they leverage this asset to get what they want. This is not some quirk in the study of psychology, it's the driving force behind the behaviors that shape evolution. It's a cruel trick of nature that we are not all created equal, and I'm glad we're civilized enough to moderate some of the resulting inequality.
Re:Even beyond that... by tekiegreg · 2008-03-31 09:25 · Score: 2

Obligatory:

Bite my shiny metal *ss

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...in bed
Re:Even beyond that... by MadnessASAP · 2008-03-31 09:55 · Score: 3, Funny

being human, beauty++
Especiall on /.

--
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Re:Even beyond that... by debrain · 2008-03-31 10:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

Attractive people are treated better from a young age and, knowingly or unknowingly, they leverage this asset to get what they want. All beautiful women who have been stalked, abused, or raped because they are physically attractive, may beg to differ. Also, not being taken seriously because you're a "barbie doll" is a less-than-subtle discrimination permeating Western society. Attractiveness, like all things, has good and bad points. It is fallacious to say it is an asset without costs.

You may be interested in reading about the "evolutionarily deceptive" teenage years, where soon-to-be-ugly people appear attractive to seduce a mate, and soon-to-be-beautiful people repel mates so as to avoid the wrong one.
Re:Even beyond that... by wealthychef · 2008-03-31 10:12 · Score: 4, Funny

I can't believe the algorithm looks at faces. Obviously wasn't designed by a man.

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Currently hooked on AMP
Re:Even beyond that... by borawjm · 2008-03-31 10:15 · Score: 5, Funny

I wonder how the algorithm works after the machine has had a few beers.

The algorithm works better, but the hardware fails.
Re:Even beyond that... by Eudial · 2008-03-31 10:21 · Score: 5, Funny

In the end, it all comes down to individual perception.

I wonder how the algorithm works after the machine has had a few beers.

Here's the revised version:

hotness_t is_good_looking_drunk(void* girl) { return ID_TAP_THAT; } // Auxiliary morning after code void hangover(void* girl) { if(is_slashdotter(this) || girl == NULL) { basement.exit(); new breakfast()->eat(); // Sorry, no clean-up throw new moan(); } try { if(memory.search(LAST_NIGHT, "condom") || !is_good_looking_sober(girl)) { exit(EXIT_QUIETLY); } else throw new logic_error("Yeah right"); // Like this ever happens } catch (amnesia_error* e) { // Plausible deniability :-D aspirin* a = find(this->apartment(), T_ASPIRIN); if(a == NULL) throw new moan(); else this->ingest(a); } }

--
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Re:Even beyond that... by The-Bus · 2008-03-31 10:21 · Score: 4, Funny

Wow, I may end up being the most handsome man in the world. I've been repelling mates for many years past my teenage years.

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Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Re:Even beyond that... by dgatwood · 2008-03-31 10:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

What would be useful for a computer dating service would be for you to rate each girl as you see them in terms of attractiveness, similar interests, etc. and use an algorithm like this to then filter out women that you probably wouldn't be interested in. Since each person's definition of beauty differs, it really needs to learn an individual's preference. Ideally, this could be combined with latent semantic analysis of the text that the potential dates typed as part of their profile to further improve matching accuracy. Man, I should totally design and patent that.... That and five bucks would buy me a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

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Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Re:Even beyond that... by kiracatgirl · 2008-03-31 10:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

I don't believe he ever said or implied that being attractive had no negative points, just that it is an inherent benefit - or perhaps it's better to say weapon - in human social interactions. Somewhat akin to the two-edged sword analogy, it can either help or hurt you. Attractive people either wield their attractiveness knowingly to further their own ends, or unknowingly and to an unknown end. Using it actively can cause unforseen negative repercussions (fanboy stalkers etc.), and using it unknowingly causes all sorts of benefits and detriments to the attractive person and to those around him/her. Being unattractive works in much the same way, albeit with vastly different effects.
Re:Even beyond that... by omnifrog · 2008-03-31 11:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

There's a quote I can't seem to remember but paraphrased, it's something like this:

If you think no one takes you seriously because you're beautiful, just see how seriously they'd take you when you're ugly.

The human condition is that most of us are a$$holes to people we don't know. Beautiful people tend to have different experiences with jerks, but studies have shown time and time again that they ultimately benefit from their beauty. Including lower rates of depression and teenage suicide as well as other metrics such as paycheck size. When I hear someone prettier than me complain that people don't take them seriously because they are beautiful, it generally annoys me... at least they're getting some attention at all.

It's a similar comparison to a rich person who is stressed out about the fact that they're going to wear the same outfit to two parties. The stress is real, but it's nothing like worrying about whether you can pay your next rent bill.

In my experience, the prettier people who complain about problems due to their attractiveness are not attention whoring, but actually feel as if their attractiveness is a burden, but fortunately for them, they have never actually had to worry about the isolation and other problems that occur when one is unattractive.
Re:Even beyond that... by Anonymous Coward · 2008-03-31 11:53 · Score: 4, Funny

Damn that's hot. Got any more pics?
Re:Even beyond that... by Belial6 · 2008-03-31 13:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

Complaining about being beautiful is like complaining about being rich. The benefits massively outweigh the drawbacks to the point of not even making a difference. Just like when your rich, you can easily make yourself not rich, someone who is beautiful can easily make themselves not beautiful. The reason that beautiful people, particularly women, often get treated like "barbie dolls" is because as a group, they are FAR more likely to be dumb. Why would this be? Because they are human. Humans generally take the path of least resistance. If they don't have to learn, they generally don't learn. A hot woman is way more likely to live well by leveraging her looks than an ugly woman. This is not a judgment of 'women' as much as a judgment of 'human'. Stop for a second and think about whether you would REALLY spend as much time and effort improving your intellect if for your entire adult life, you had a line of women that would buy you whatever you wanted, and have sex with you any time you wanted. I know I wouldn't be as smart.

"All beautiful women who have been stalked, abused, or raped because they are physically attractive, may beg to differ."

I think that every ugly woman who has been stalked, abused, or raped irrelevant of their physical appearance may beg to differ with you.

It's real simple. Any beautiful woman that REALLY thinks being beautiful is worse than being ugly is too stupid to have a valid opinion. If she really believed it, and was smarter than a retarded monkey, she would just stop being beautiful.
Re:Even beyond that... by sheldonc · 2008-03-31 15:34 · Score: 2, Funny

You just described something out of the x-files...Want to try again? A wig and a little lip gloss... I can see it...
Re:Even beyond that... by EdIII · 2008-03-31 21:41 · Score: 2, Funny

LOL. That's exactly what I was thinking!

A male designed algorithm will be processing everything from the neck down :)

Ohhh, and the whole damn thing could BSOD on some DD's.....

Digital Misogyny by crymeph0 · 2008-03-31 08:34 · Score: 3, Funny

On the bright side, this should encourage more women to enter the science and engineering fields, if for no other reason than to crack into this system and perform the digital equivalent of dumping your cocktail on your head. I think training it to rank goatse as aesthetically pleasing would do the trick.

--
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.

Symmetry by Reality+Master+101 · 2008-03-31 08:38 · Score: 5, Interesting

I read an article a while back that made the point that one of the biggest factors in attractiveness was symmetry. The "perfect" face doesn't have any features out of alignment. There was another study that made the point that "averaging" faces produced more attractiveness, but this was actually the wrong conclusion. It was the averaging process that smoothed out features into perfect alignment.

Symmetry actually makes sense. The more messed up someone's face is from ideal, the worse their genetics could be. Of course, there are other factors such as shiny hair, clear skin, sharp cheekbones, fitness, which all factor back to health.

--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.

Skin smoothness by superstition222 · 2008-03-31 08:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

The theory from some is that this averaging resulted in an illusory correlation between average and beautiful due to the fact that the averaging process improved the appearance/smoothness of skin. People apparently really really like good skin.

Re:Skin smoothness by phantomfive · 2008-03-31 14:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

I would mention that Cindy Crawford had a mole on her face. In fact, at one time 'beauty marks' were considered highly attractive in all women, so much so that they would apply then with makeup if they had none of their own. What does that do to the symmetrical theory?

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Qxe4

Old news by mcpkaaos · 2008-03-31 08:55 · Score: 2, Funny

Men have been judging women by their software for ages.

--
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.

We knew that by Anonymous Coward · 2008-03-31 08:55 · Score: 2, Interesting

What we're looking for is a healthy specimen to breed with. We will judge the health of said specimen based on our own body type. For instance, if we have long fingers, we will find long fingers attractive and vice versa. There really isn't a godlike ideal that we strive for. We just want someone healthy who can give us healthy children. In that regard, the way the body curves is just as important as the face, if not more so. Somehow we think that judging beauty based on the face is pure while judging on the basis of other bodily characteristics is less pure. Not so. When us guys get all excited about a woman's secondary sexual characteristics, we're just thinking about the good of the children.

Shallow HAL? by OutSourcingIsTreason · 2008-03-31 09:04 · Score: 2, Funny

They made a movie about it.

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"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini

Something ommitted by Pojut · 2008-03-31 09:06 · Score: 5, Interesting

Something I have noticed is that the more intelligent a woman is, the more attractive she looks when showing certain emotions.

An intelligent woman looks highly attractive when confused...you can almost see the gears working in her head, trying to figure it out. An unintelligent woman just has a dumb confused look on her face.

From what I have seen, intelligent women tend to not necessarily have more attractive facial features, but a more attractive way of showing their emotion and reaction to things. Not something that is commonly thought about.

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Living With a Nerd

Re:Something ommitted by megaditto · 2008-03-31 10:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yeah, or maybe their teachers and parents put more effort into educating them because these girls "looked smart."

--
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Re:Something ommitted by monoqlith · 2008-03-31 11:16 · Score: 2, Funny

Something I've noticed is the attractiveness of women is directly proportional to how insulted they are when a computer scientist asks them out.
Re:Something ommitted by kiracatgirl · 2008-03-31 11:21 · Score: 2, Funny

You just made all of my social interactions with male peers for the past eight or nine years make sense in a handful of sentences, and for that I must thank you.

what of love? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-03-31 09:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

I fell in love, unexpectedly, with a woman who was not a classic beauty.

Within a handful of months, I noticed I was finding women with facial and body characteristics similar to hers more attractive than the magazine beauties I normally ogled. Indeed, the model types started looking odd to me.

Now add in cultural and racial preferences and this "breakthrough" starts sounding like "bullshit".

Software already exisits by Special650 · 2008-03-31 09:45 · Score: 2, Informative

Its called "Am I hot or not?" I won't even google it to see if it still is there

Men more difficult by Anonymous Coward · 2008-03-31 10:09 · Score: 2, Funny

"Apparently, men' faces are more difficult to grade."
Because you don't keep your wallet on your face.

very linear perception of beauty by reiisi · 2008-03-31 11:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

In a certain city, an attractive girl gets unwanted attention. Take the same girl to a different city, and nobody notices her.

Until she starts acting "cute".

Beauty and attractiveness are somewhat separate concepts, but, as my mother used to say, "Beauty is as beauty does."

Look at Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog, or, for that matter, the Wilson sisters. I don't know about you, but I didn't think they were either attractive or beautiful until I'd been listening to their music for several years.

Or, for that matter, look at the Mona Lisa. I'm still not sure what the fuss is there.

Any way, happy Aril 1st.

--
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.

Re:very linear perception of beauty by Cadallin · 2008-03-31 12:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

I've never seen anyone seriously argue that the woman depicted in the Mona Lisa (if it is actually a woman, there is considerable debate on that point) is attractive. Which has very little to do with how significant a painting is judged to be. If it did, Alberto Vargas would be listed as one of the greatest masters of western art. http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?prev=Ethnicity/Peruvian-American&dir=Site_index%2FPeruvian-American%2FVargas

Re:Someone doesn't know the definition of empirica by MrNaz · 2008-03-31 14:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yes, but there is empirical evidence of highly parallel preferences among males that indicate the presence of common perceptions regarding what constitutes beauty.

The fact that there are no empirical standards for beauty is not due to the absence of any common standards for beauty (albeit not universally applicable), rather our inability to represent the metrics of the mind using mathematical or linguistic representations.

--
I hate printers.

Chicks before D**** by religious+freak · 2008-03-31 18:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

Apparently, men's faces are more difficult to grade. Rather, what kind of dude wants to (or perhaps is even able to) code for MALE face attractiveness? I can't help but think the guys coding this said "hey let's do the women faces first, because I don't mind looking at chicks all day", rather than it being too hard.

Yes, I'm assuming the team was mostly male... hopefully I don't offend anyone with this obvious assumption.

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If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011

Flaw in "average" beauty: smooth skin by KWTm · 2008-03-31 23:34 · Score: 2, Informative

I read a web site somewhere about some German researchers trying to figure out what was "beautiful" by taking eight of the top Miss Germany contestants (including the winner) and algorithmically averaged their eight faces into a ninth composite face. To be fair, the beauty queen contestants had to wear no makeup and have a neutral expression on their face. They let people rank the nine faces in terms of beauty, and it turned out that the non-existent ninth "averaged" face was ranked the most beautiful.

They then expounded on how people found an average prototypical face the most beautiful.

When I checked back later with the web site, they had added an addendum to the web site, saying something to the effect of, "Oh, yeah, we also found that, by averaging the photos together, we smoothed out any skin blemishes on the face, and maybe it could be possible that there's a chance that somehow people were just finding that the ninth average face had the smoothest skin and was thus the most beautiful."

In other words, "We completely forgot to account for the superhumanly flawless skin in the algorithmically generated face, which invalidates all this work we've done, but we've put so much work into this project that we don't want to throw it all into the trash just yet." Kinda like how a PhD candidate researching a breakthrough in space-dwelling aliens might add, at the very end of his thesis, "Oh, or it might have been just ants crawling on the lens of the telescope. Woops."

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404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
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