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Avatars Used For Australian Online Sex Appeal Study
An anonymous reader writes "Australian scientists are seeking volunteers online to help them better understand sexual attraction. At a specially created website — www.bodylab.biz — users can go online and make their own ratings of computer-generated avatar images of men and women of greatly varying shapes, sizes, and proportions. The bodyLab team will analyse and compile the results and each month will cull about half of the images — those that are least popular — and virtually 'breed' new body shapes from parent avatars with features rated as most attractive by people taking part in the experiment. Over time, the scientists hope thousands of users will help them work through six or more generations of avatars to narrow down the special combinations of features that make up the 'ideal' body — although they're keeping an open mind about whether several combinations will emerge."
Its honestly quite difficult to tell which grey cartoon body model is more attractive. I tried doing it, but I really just felt like I was making the ratings up...There are a few that looked like ogres that I could tell weren't attractive to me, but honestly that was about it.
What have alligators got to do with Australia?
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
So start with adult population of Australia
Then, Subtract adults who have jobs, families, hobbies, and no time for silly things like this
From that, subtract the single college student who has any wisp of maturity or enlightement
From that, subtract old-timers with no interest in the Interwebz
So who's left? Alcoholics, the unemployable, angry loners...?
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I think what is happening is that the grey aliens are getting older, fatter and more lonely since being captured at Area 51 and exposed to a high fat and sedentary American superspy lifestyle. With this study they hope to find the ip addresses of those attracted to grey blobs and abduct you later tonight for a little probing.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Clearly, they meant to use the boobylab.biz domain but misspelt it.
Yeah...
I tried rating 4 different sets of models and I just couldn't find any that I could honestly rate above a 0. No matter what sized model I was shown, it seemed like there was something decidedly strange, disproportionate unattractive about their characteristics.
Then it hit me: It's the posture. The "blender pose" is just not a way that real humans go around holding their body. It seems fake, shows off all the wrong parts of the body, and exaggerates features of the model that would appear normally proportioned in a regular standing pose.
Given that (imo) gaping flaw in the dataset, I predict this will turn out to be another junk project that spawns CNN headlines like "Scientists find the perfect bodytype, and it's not what you expect!".
Okay ladies, whose more attractive? Fudd or Sam? What would their kids look like? A cartoon Hot or Not. Is this for some masters student's thesis?
...and my score was roughly 0.95. My highest rated model (which I gave a 3), had an average score of 1.36. Eye of the beholder, I suppose... The only models I really scored 0 were models that lacked any hip definition. Basically, models that looked like dudes with tits. A sight that is all too common here in America. Get a treadmill, America.
The feet were the same size (pretty small), which made some of the larger women look very disproportionate and therefore less attractive. And WTF was up with that subliminal car drawing in the background??
Where did they get those pics of me???
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The test really was seeing how attractive fat women are to most people. None of the figures were what I'd consider thin and only one wasn't obviously fat. They were various shapes of fat but still fat. There are lots of body types that aren't fat. They'd save 10 minutes of the testers time to first find out do you find fat women attractive. If yes proceed otherwise you are now finished with the test.
Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude. When you make a commitment to a relationship. Maxx Shredder
A normal guy wouldn't rate a woman 0-10 in his head, but rather a "yes" or a "no",
Also. this "experiment" while interesting doesn't count for men getting horny, looking at pictures of naked women makes us horny, after a while our "reptilian brain" takes over and almost everything looks attractive.
It would be interesting to measure that in the data ... How after 5-8 clicks, every fat blob gets increased sex appeal.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Seriously, What a croc!
Ice Cream has no bones.
Crocodile Dundee? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090555/
under the weight of rendering all those fat chicks.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Women are far more arcane than Linux, I would wager many of my ex-gfs ran OpenBSD because by default their ports were all closed.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
You should be shown 2 or more models at a time and be asked to choose the best looking one. Rating each one individually on a scale is worthless.
Behind each of the models, there is a faint picture of a Volkswagen Beetle. At first I thought of some form of subliminal advertising, but they must have needed some way to show relative height. And a Beetle is of course fairly universal.
Crocodile's =/= Alligators
Bah. You all got it wrong.
If you look closely, you can see a watermark-like image of a Volkswagen Beetle behind the models.
This made things much easier. I simply imagined trying some heavy-petting in the back seat with each model. That instantly ruled out the models with gigantism, the Ogres and left exactly one model with a snowballs chance in hell...and she still got a -1.
In all seriousness, the second time I tried it I got different results. I actually rated one of the models a +1 on the second time. Probably because she didn't look like she was on a diet of pure corn-syrup and might actually fit in the car.
You all know what will happen.
Some Anonymous Coward will post this to 4chan.
And then the hambeast will be chosen as the most beautiful body type.
Hey, I saw it in theaters and thought it was okay, but you won't see me getting aroused or suicidal over it...
You fucking idiot.
$Subject
I find Avatar to be very sexually appealing. Oh, not the movie. Damn.
I can't fap to this.
My suggestion would be todoornottodo.biz
That biz on the end makes it even better.
HotOrNot clone with avatars. That's hot.
Me and her / him / it in the Beetle, aw yeah, i'm not complaining, it isn't real so might as well enjoy it in my head while i get the chance.
Oh, wait, Australia...
Great, another way to assist people in feeling even more insecure about their bodies.
Only this time they'll be able to quantify how 'unideal' you are.
They want you to pick a single country that defines where your ancestors are primarily from.
Good luck with that one.
At least on a paper survey when they say "Pick one" I can ignore them and pick 2 then it's their problem, but with this stupid web widget I have to pick just one.
If the president can't accurately pick one how can I? :)
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
God, only one time there was a 0 rating from me, everything else was -3, -2 and -1 and honestly, I did not like a single one of them, how do they come up with these models, did they take the LOTR Orcs or something?
You can't handle the truth.
Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.
Source Error:
Line 51:
Line 52: Public Function GetAverageRatings_Top1(ByVal intSetID As Integer) As DataSet
Line 53: objDS = objDBStats.GetAverageRatings_Top1(intSetID)
Line 54: Return objDS
Line 55: End Function
Source File: C:\HostingSpaces\bodylabb\bodylab.biz\bodyLab\App_Code\Business\Stats.vb Line: 53
Stack Trace:
[SqlException (0x80131904): Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.]
Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.Container.InvokeMethod(Method TargetProcedure, Object[] Arguments, Boolean[] CopyBack, BindingFlags Flags) +202
Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.NewLateBinding.LateGet(Object Instance, Type Type, String MemberName, Object[] Arguments, String[] ArgumentNames, Type[] TypeArguments, Boolean[] CopyBack) +275
HAP.Stats.GetAverageRatings_Top1(Int32 intSetID) in C:\HostingSpaces\bodylabb\bodylab.biz\bodyLab\App_Code\Business\Stats.vb:53
Stats.GetAverageRatings_Top1() in C:\HostingSpaces\bodylabb\bodylab.biz\bodyLab\stats\Stats.vb:85
Stats.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\HostingSpaces\bodylabb\bodylab.biz\bodyLab\stats\Stats.vb:60
System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +99
System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +50
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +627
- I would rate that there was no button to be clicked.
You can't handle the truth.
Can anyone find software that can generate 3d human models, so someone could make their own version of this?
The website is extremely unsatisfying, in way too many ways.
They choose who will survive every month, which seems a bit pointless. You can easily weed out a rhino without needing a million people to tell you she's ugly. Having every individual user converge on what he finds attractive would be a far faster way of getting results and would also preserve individual tastes better.
I'd suggest generations of 10-20 individuals and picking one of two choices to be in the next generation. It would converge very fast, I'd assume halving the parameter space every five clicks. According to this they have eight measurements down to the millimeter with maybe 300-500mm average possible range. 400^8 is about 10^21 is about 2^60, giving 300 clicks to get down to the millimeter accuracy. Assuming no one cares whether a woman is 1681 or 1682mm tall and only full centimeters matter, around 200 clicks or 40 generations should be enough.
You could rate the hawtness of other individual's final generation on a scale of 1 to 10 as a separate task.
Flamebait?
C'mon folks, that was funny.
Initially I thought 'what a good idea', just implemented poorly due to the low quality of the models. But thinking about it some more I think the whole study is misguided.
I suppose they used generic grey models to avoid complicating the issue and becoming unable to attribute what is sexy and what isn't, but doesn't that kind of defy the point? And surely there are enough unique people in the world to find a good example of every body type / combination of body features that they want to test for?
The final figure will be of a women of normal enough proportions not to give serious artifacts in the base model being stretched but as slim as possible.
That is the problem with trying to use base model for all body types you want to create. You can't because the curves don't curve. It is why TES (Fallout 3) has whole body replacers and 3d renders have a lot of different body types made by third parties. Because you can't just take a full figured body and turn it into a slim one with things looking odd.
It is also known that standing straight up like this is both unnatural and unattractive. There is a reason Playboy never uses a pose like this and only the most hardup jack-off to medical/photograph reference books.
The ideal "western" body type is already well known. Bar the fatty lovers, on the whole men tend to prefer women that do not get harpooned when they go swimming in the sea. What a suprise.
this experiment would be a whole lot more intresting if they had generated better bodies, not just stretch one base model into freaks (some of the builds are impossible, I seen several females with a inward crotch where as even slender women tend to curve out there).
You would get a better result with displaying all the playmaters from Playboy, then you could get a real feeling for how tastes changed. But that study already has been done by the editors, you can see the body shape changing over the years. Tit size has also gone down. When they could show more of the rest, the size of the tits got less important and since big tits are basically fat, this means the body weight could go down as well.
Don't they have Playboy in Australia? Would explain a lot.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That those "ogres" are going to get culled from the next generation. So hopefully within a few generations they should be nailing down a few basic shapes that are going to be "attractive". Which is probably a decent way of doing it. If each of these pictures is treated like one individual, and if they use the ratings people plug in as a gauge for how likely these individuals are to have children, then they can build the next generation pretty simply. The next generation, then, should be "better".
Grey matte skin = bad. I won't be surprised if most human males don't find grey matte "plastic" mannequins super sexy, no matter how wonderfully shaped they are.
Skin appearance does help in determining the fertility: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4396230.stm
Even after 12 years, my wife surprises me once in a while with the intricate way in which her policies interact!
the ideal female has to have a milk line of three tits on each side
my id has spoketh
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
for each iteration you should be able to rate breasts, butt, nipples, camel toe, stomach, torso, head, etc. the good with the bad model just doesn't work well in getting an ideal model with a few iterations. also you should be able to input general preferences from the start.
Why not just go to hotornot.com if you'd like to see what millions of people consider a 10?
Work Safe Porn
Let's have another one for colors. People can rate the color they find most attractive, and the site can come up with an average.
I guess that beauty isn't really in the eye of the beholder anymore. I'm reticent to rate anyone in this study because I don't see anything good coming of it.
In the first place, science has no place rating attractiveness. Beauty is *supposed* to be subjective, not objective. Imagine, for a moment if how someone might feel if their body shape had been *scientifically proven* unattractive. Nothing good can come of this.
Speaking of nothing good, we've seen how women are especially sensitive to body image. Normally, it's been an anecdotal thing, but this could be a cosmetic marketer's wet dream come true. The entire cosmetics industry - including cosmetic surgery - relies heavily on women being unable to see themselves as naturally beautiful; if there was some ostensibly *objective* way of showing a woman to be, shall we say, less-than-optimally-attractive, there would of course arise a large demand for whatever product or service "corrected" the problem. Instead of seeing the natural variety in body shape, they'd all appear about the same. Which would frustrate the many men and women who find society's idea of an attractive body, well, rather plain and uninteresting.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
"You had best not do that, Avatar!"
http://images.wikia.com/u5lazarus/images/e/ee/U70019.ogg
http://images.wikia.com/u5lazarus/images/f/f8/U70023.ogg
This and 4chan post a few down were funny!
And what's with the dummies near the models?
> I couldn't pick out any attractive ones because their faces were all pixelated!
And? I'm into that. I gave them all 3s.
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quite a selection: from flacid to morbidly obese. don't bother if you like ballerinas.
If you look at the statistics of who's rating they list Alaska as a country separate from the US!
They all have weirdly shaped buttocks, and they all look like they're wearing stretchy children's pyjama bottoms. That's not attractive.
As most of the Aussies I've met seem to be heavy imbibers, I wonder what effect this will have on the results.
Of course, I'd wager, the most sexually attractive woman avatar will most likely look like Iveta B.
That got us interested. Ten years ago you would have said "Australian scientists use the Matrix to study sex".
Also, thanks Slashdot:
Total number of men who have rated : 18649
Total number of women who have rated : 2131
Please tell me that I am not the only person to read this as:
(Avatars Used For Australian Online Sex) (Appeal Study)
instead of:
(Avatars Used) For (Australian Online Sex Appeal Study)
I was wondering why and how an avatar could appear an online sex study.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Beware the children's section. It could veer toward what Australian law considers paedo-porn.
Have I looked at the sight? Maybe in a few million years. Sounds like they haven't evolved as far as Neanderthals yet.