My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

This is a bullshit rationalization for horrible behavior.

The people doing the judging certainly aren't gonna reproduce with 99.99999% of the people being judged, and I'm being extremely generous here.

Sure, but why would they care? And why do you think it matters?

That's precisely my point. If you're not gonna reproduce with someone, their "reproductive fitness" is none of your business.

Once again this is just a rationalization for horrible behavior.

You could argue that they are ruining the value of the signal for everyone.

While I certainly agree that it is an example of poor judgment and perhaps weak character to be broadly judgy about cosmetic efforts in general, I can understand the theoretical plight of someone who might be taken in by a deceptive person in that regard.

If you steelman the argument you can see the point, but it’s also unreasonable to assume that a person is living the steelman version of life (and being a deceptive person) just because they had a facelift.

OTOH, if you are admiring people’s genetics using their appearance as a proxy, I can see why it might seem like “cheating”

If it was about signal-to-noise, there would be no bullying of bald people, or short people.

But the problem is not admiring good looks if they're natural, or expecting someone to be truthful, or anything of the sort that might or might not theoretically happen.

The problem is clearly with the bullying. And the assumptions around character. And basically using "changing yourself" as a proxy for hallucinating all sorts of completely unrelated bad characteristics. And the rationalizing around it.

It's the same for behavior: people are fine with the behavior of "naturally charming" people but as soon as someone mentions "learning how to do it" people immediately jump to conclusions and call it manipulative.

Or it could still be, but have other explanation. E.g. you're called out if you ruin the signal to noise ration, but you're also called out if you genuinely give the unfit signal.

(Don't approve doing this or anything, just pointing the blind spot in your dichotomy, interested in the argument on a purely technical manner).

Someone having one consciously developed ulterior motive… does increases the likelihood of them having other consciously developed ulterior motives that might be hidden away?

The linkage isn’t as strong for unconsciously or subconsciously developed ulterior motives. Hence the huge gap in how people behave towards that.

HN never ceases to surprise me with the rationalizations for any kind of behavior.

Calling it "ulterior motive" is already a judgement call.

Being better at socialization is virtually demanded by society. "Not looking good" is also punished. There is nothing ulterior about anything.

The fact that a certain chunk of society demands both perfection and authenticity already makes it necessary for people to not be transparent about such things.

You keep using this word rationalization. I don't think it means what you think it means

But this is the neurodivergent ‘just world’ blind spot.

The world isn’t just. People like people with good genetics, because being friendly with the strong gets you benefits more than it gets you costs. Especially if you’re able to influence (or even pathologically manipulate) them.

Most people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.

Also, most attractive people work to be attractive because it’s often mutually beneficial (assuming they can counter manipulate or influence appropriately). Having people attracted to you gives you the ability to use other people’s resources for your benefit.

Most attractive people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.

This is generally kept covert, because like most covert power, it attracts negative attention if brought to conscious awareness - as then it’s perceived as manipulation, not influence, or encourages more jealousy, etc. as it’s not fair.

But life isn’t fair, except where we make it, and making something fair requires power.

And acquiring and maintaining power is fundamentally unfair.

Nope. I'm using it correctly. You might be in denial, though ;)

I'm not saying the word is just anywhere in my message.

I'm just saying I can call a spade a spade.

If anything, it's the rationalizations around certain behaviors that are claiming the world is perfect and just as is.

You might think that those people’s opinions don’t matter, but it turns out that ‘lots of other people value me highly’ is in itself a signal.

And yes, it is horrible, but if you want to solve a problem, you must first understand the problem, and ‘some people are just born with Evil in their hearts’ is not a very good sociological model.

By definition all discussion about opinions, perceptions, etc., are judgement calls…?