SIGGRAPH 2010 - Roving Reporter : "What Are You Excited About At SIGGRAPH"

[earx23]

nice discussion. in any case. intelligent women scare of a lot of men. especially men who are less intelligent. so they almost exclusively end up with men who are at least their equal, intellectually.

[CommonAtheist]

Sounds reasonable. Okay... agreed.

[CommonAtheist]

The 1/X*Y was to illustrate that a person is who is both intelligent and attractive is very rare and uncommon, which contradicts your claim that there are "plenty" of such people. However "rare" and "plenty" are such subjective words that it's pointless to debate them. I can say there are plenty of people who got hit by lightning... yet they're also very rare. Anyway, in my experience very attractive women are never interested in anything intellectual.

[CommonAtheist]

Somehow I doubt a woman who looks like her would be at SIGGRAPH unless it was her job, which it is. SIGGRAPH is for nerds, geeks, and other people who have intellectual curiosity. The amount of curiosity someone can have is inversely proportional to how attractive they are. This explains why women who have Ph.Ds in astrophysics or computer science exude little or no sex appeal, while women who exude lots of sex appeal usually aren't interested in anything intellectual. Sad but true.

[shinWangXiao]

@CommonAtheist There are plenty of attractive people who are also highly intelligent. It's your own problem if you can't seem to meet them....

[CommonAtheist]

@shinWangXiao Haha... you can say that about anything. "There are plenty of gold bricks lying in the streets of the city where you live. It's your own problem if you can't find them.  There are plenty of ways to hit the lotto jackpot. It's your own problem if you can't find them. There are plenty of invisible pink unicorns. It's your own problem if you can't find them."

[shinWangXiao]

@CommonAtheist Certainly, a pauper might say, "there is no such thing as gold bullion!" To which I might reply, "There are plenty; it's your own problem that you can't afford any." The pauper's conclusion is incorrect because of a lack of wealth. Perhaps one who believes that there are no beautiful women or handsome men who are also highly intelligent comes to this incorrect conclusion due to lack of something else. As for invisible pink unicorns, those simply do not exist.

[shinWangXiao]

@CommonAtheist On the other hand, if you happen to have some research that can factually demonstrate an inverse relationship between attractiveness and intelligence, you *might* have a point. Peer reviewed and published, please. Of course, such research would be tough to generalize, since measuring attractiveness or intelligence is an iffy task at best.... For example, you clearly think this reporter is attractive. Personally, I don't. It's mostly subjective....

[CommonAtheist]

@shinWangXiao Research shmeeserch. It's simple common sense. 1 out of X people are attractive. 1 out of Y people are intelligent. Therefore the percentage of people who are both is 1/(X*Y). So if 1 out of 10 are attractive and 1 out of 8 are intelligent, 1 in 80 people are both attractive & intelligent. And 1 out 5 of them is single and 1 out of 4 of those is of dateable age. So that's 1/(10*8*5*4) or 1/1600... less than 1/10 of 1%. And that's "plenty of people" in your opinion?

[shinWangXiao]

@CommonAtheist .1% of what? 1,000,000? 300,000,000? Yes, that is plenty. Not that it matters, since your figures are arbitrary and therefore invalid. Of course compounding probabilities narrows odds. Remember your original argument: curiosity (and therefore intelligence) is inversely related to attractiveness. You can pick any two attributes and observe that if they both have a probability of less than 100%, compounding them will narrow the odds. This does not imply an inverse relationship....

[CommonAtheist]

@shinWangXiao If 1 out of 5 people are interested in geeky intellectual things, you'd expect that 1 in 5 very attractive women would be interested in geeky intellectual things, but that is not the case. Whatever statistics you obtain regarding the average person's level of curiosity in scientific things, you'll find that very attractive women (and men) tend to be less curious than average. I don't have sources to back that up. This is just my suspicion based on my experience.

[shinWangXiao]

@CommonAtheist Indeed, "rare" and "plenty" are different: rarity has to do with frequency, while plentifulness refers to simple quantities. As you point out, a thing can be both plenty and rare. I respect your experience, but it is *your* experience, which is doubtless colored by all sorts of things particular to you. My experience has been different, so I can't help but doubt the generalizability of the conclusions drawn from your experience.