Post: #1

I have heard it said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What do you guys think?

What is the metric for beauty? How do you measure it?

Post: #2

I think it´s is individual, but there are people, who are simply good-loking to everyone. So, someone is done better, someone worse. But I think it´s not measurable.
Anyway, I guess it´s easier for women to "measure" men. There´s ideal in masculline look (tall, muscles, sharp edges in face). While different men prefer different types of women.

Last two years I suffer from some kind of blonde syndrom. I am not interested in any other girls than blondes. Must get rid of it

Post: #3

My theory:

Up until the rating of 7 it is purely objective and hard to deny.

After 7+ it becomes a matter of personal preference and style.

Post: #4

Beauty is objective. Or at least largely objective.
I'll elaborate later. For a cursory glimpse: you can debate over whether Miss World is truly more beautiful than her competitors, but you wouldn't say she is fugly; on the other hand, you can disagree over whether a morbidly obese woman are uglier than skeleton-like anorexic woman, but you can't honestly say they are physically attractive.

Post: #5

I think Zan Perrion said it best:

"There's a difference between hot women and beautiful women. Hot women are everywhere; they abound. They are beautified, not beautiful. Beautiful women, on the other hand, are rare and a real mystery. Hotness speaks to our impulses. Beauty speaks to our imagination."

Post: #6

Always remember, to a horny male hippopotamus, a big fat, sweating swollen female hippo is the greatest fucking sexy thing he has ever seen!

Yes, beauty is very subjective.

Post: #7

I can't prove this scientifically of philosophically, but beauty is objective. Confusion happens because not nearly everyone agrees on what is beautiful. Resolution happens when we accept that claiming something is beautiful or ugly is irrelevant to whether everyone feels the same emotional or physiological response to the same stimuli (even if only for a moment, and even if someone denies it).

So beauty is objective, because everyone feels the same emotional or physiological response to the same stimuli. It's just that some people can easily acquire beautiful things, which makes them Appreciative. Others can't easily acquire beautiful things but believe in their ability to eventually do so, which makes them Aspirational. And still others can't easily acquire beautiful things and don't believe they ever will, which makes them either Peaceful or Destructive.

Every political struggle pits the Destructives versus everyone else. Leftists are destructive, as are certain hyper religious conservatives, but we all have the same response to beauty.

Post: #8

Reminder for anyone who is gonna prove whether beauty is objective: objectivity must not be confused/conflated with intersubjectivity. It doesn't matter if most or all people say (intersubjective opinion) the Earth is flat, the objective truth is the earth is closer to being round.

Post: #9

You have to define beauty. As exemplified in the above posts.

Liberty Sea post pretty much sums up human attractiveness. Human female attractiveness is far more objective than human male attractiveness.

Even in regards to human physical attractiveness, the female side is still more objective than the male side.

Post: #10

Beauty is objective largely, but with some wiggle room for individual preferences.

A woman with a slender hourglass figure will always be considered beautiful by a majority of men. A woman with long hair, same thing.

Now, there are some men that are okay with short hair and a few extra pounds, but that doesn't mean that if they had the beauty ideal available to them, they wouldn't snatch it up in a heartbeat.

Post: #11

Yes beauty is objective, and I'll prove it right now.


Which one of these women is good looking, and which one is disgusting?






The subjectivity comes down to 2-3 points. Some men will find the woman on top a 1, and some might find her a 4. Some men might find the woman on the bottom a 7, and some might find her a 10. Average people will get ratings between 4-6.

Good looking people are good looking, and ugly people aren't. It's not hard to tell at all which is which.

Post: #12

From what I've read about aesthetics, beauty is definitely objective, and seems more or less to boil down to symmetry and evenness.

Things which look "asymmetrical", crooked or uneven tend to look unattractive. This doesn't just include physical appearance, things in general that are thought of as "beautiful" or "ugly".

As an example, look at the "sound waves" on a program like audacity of a song melody - they are smooth and harmonious. Look at the sound waves of a recording of "fingernails on chalks" - they are awkward and asymmetrical.

Post: #13

There are always self deluded people who suffer from the pointy elbow syndrome and inverted sour grapes. I should know because I am one of them.

Post: #14

I remembered reading an article on this recently. This is the interesting part:

Quote:Symmetric faces are construed as more beautiful than asymmetric faces in all cultures (irrespective of the race of the person being evaluated and the race of the evaluator). You can visit Bedouins in the Middle East, the Yanomamo in the Amazon, and Inuits in the Canadian north, and they will all agree as to who is or is not beautiful (based on facial features).

Clear skin is a universal preference. Certain morphological features that connote masculinity (square jaw) or femininity (high-cheek bones) are universally preferred.

Rotund Rubanesque women, heavier women preferred in Central Africa, and catwalk thin models, while varying greatly in terms of their weight, all tend to have hourglass figures that correspond roughly to a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.70 (although cultural settings can slightly alter that preference).

Babies who are insufficiently cognitively developed to be influenced by socialization gaze at symmetric faces for longer periods than they do at asymmetric ones.

I can provide numerous other examples that support the universal components of beauty but I suppose that you get the point. It seems that irrespective of the number of times that these points are made, social constructivists simply cannot accept the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence in support of the universality of some beauty metrics.

Post: #15

Does it really matter? You go for what you like regardless, whether other people agree with you or not.

Post: #16

(06-25-2016 07:08 AM)Blobert Wrote:  Does it really matter? You go for what you like regardless, whether other people agree with you or not.

I have gotten into an argument with a person about beauty. About whether beauty is objective or not.

His argument is that there is no intrinsic or fundamental quantity or quality of beauty.

It does not truly objectively exist. It is merely subjective "In the eye of the beholder" so to speak.

Like for example the comparison between Mona Lisa and a Blank canvas in his opinion one is not truly superior to the other of like when there are instances that that Mona Lisa is offensive to certain people while not having the issue with a blank canvas while others think the opposite way.

The fact that even if one can find something pleasing to most people its not the same as being objectively pleasing. Even if universally appealing to all people means its merely appealing to people not that it objectively exists and it can be measured or quantified by some metric.

Post: #17

Infowarrior,

That person you argued with has a Destructive mindset. Is he a happy, hard working person? I predict not at all, but your answer may surprise me.

Post: #18

(06-25-2016 09:52 AM)MMX2010 Wrote:  Infowarrior,

That person you argued with has a Destructive mindset. Is he a happy, hard working person? I predict not at all, but your answer may surprise me.

I dunno. I only saw his comment on reddit which focuses on some type of anime called "Legend of Galactic Heroes" and I was commenting on the Aesthetic change that occurs over an empire after an Autocratic leader assumes control which in contrast to its democratic rival seems to be Aesthetically superior which sparked the argument.

I do not possess any information on the person aside from his comments.

Post: #19

Statistically, no. But why bother accounting for outliers and freaks?

Post: #20

(06-24-2016 04:48 PM)captain_shane Wrote:  Yes beauty is objective, and I'll prove it right now.


Which one of these women is good looking, and which one is disgusting?






The subjectivity comes down to 2-3 points. Some men will find the woman on top a 1, and some might find her a 4. Some men might find the woman on the bottom a 7, and some might find her a 10. Average people will get ratings between 4-6.

Good looking people are good looking, and ugly people aren't. It's not hard to tell at all which is which.

I agree wit this except for rating purposes I think it's more like 1 full point. 1 point is a huge range of girls. If two people disagree more that a full point one of them is not being "objective" and is using personal taste to account for their rating. One mans 6 cannot be another mans 9 and still be called objective.

Post: #21

We all have our personal tastes; they may be subjective and moot.

But the 0.7 hip-to-waist ratio preference is pretty much a constant across almost all cultures.

Forest, trees, and all that.

But today's toxic media culture tries to undermine even that.

Unplug from that shit.

Post: #22

How could it be objective? Its not.

Post: #23

In practice, A lot of chicks can pass the boner test that aren't beautiful, because sexual attraction can be triggered in all sorts of ways.

That's how game works, it focuses on the intrinsic values not the externals.

WIA

Post: #24

It seems that people keep going back the same things here. Let me just make it easy for anyone who doesn't want to wade through all the posts:

1. Beauty is objective.
2. Yes, there is a threshold where past it, taste/ego/comfortability/personality all become more and more of the equation (debating what 7,7.5,8, etc are)
3. Again, discerning the scale isn't as important as the point that YES there is a threshold, which proves objective beauty.

Post: #25

Depends on the definition of "beauty."

A painting can be beautiful, but that also depends on the audience. A painting of two people having sex with eachother, or someone being brutally murdered, may not be appreciated by some and may even be seen as disgusting and offensive. Others may find such a work wonderful and captivating. Some things can play on the imaginations of certain people and strike deep mental chords with them depending on those people's tastes which will be dictated by their upbringing, environment, and whatever else molded them to be who they are up to that current point.

Everyone in this thread is talking about beauty in the sense of a woman's physical attractiveness. A woman with favorable genetics can certainly elicit sexual arousal from men. That is purely biology. There are objective points to that - symmetry, hip-to-waste ratio, etc. Again, though, the word "beauty," as Linux hinted at, marks something more imaginative and profound. Something more abstract.

This can be held evident by the fact that one man may call a woman "beautiful" while another man would disagree, and vice versa. If you get broad enough, you can generally say with objectivity whether or not one woman is more physically attractive than another if they look different enough, but again "beauty" is something more intangible.