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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Support Open Source: Seduce A Woman Today

I love reading Robin Hanson's blog Overcoming Bias. Today, a post on conspicuous consumption and public causes caught my eye. It reminded me of Tor Norretranders's keynote at EuroOSCON last year, and not just because Robin is keynoting this year....

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I love it when psychologists show something that's already been known and demonstrated for how long now? I would love to ask the men in the sidebar, how they chose their mates. What did you notice first? Her fecundity, helpfulness, or the cost of her shoes? And in what order?

It would be interesting to do a study on how women use conspicuous consumption to relate to each other. Working in the fashion field for many years, I found that women buy luxury goods, especially accessories, for each other, not men. We send signals to each other in the mating game, that men don't even notice, as they're concerned with fecundity. In other words, women use such goods to evoke insecurity in other women, causing them to stay away from the men they are trying to attract. Whether this is conscious or not, is beside the point, as the same luxury makes you feel good (and powerful to other women), whether you get the man or not.

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