Smarter or prettier?

[girly_girl_]

At a dinner with friends a few days ago, a question came up: if you could be 10% smarter or 10% more beautiful, which one would you choose? Without any doubt, I'd choose being smarter, since in my opinion being smarter would bring you many more benefits in what you could accomplish, whereas beauty is superficial and fleeting. I was surprised to

Comments

[arvindn]

My first reaction was amusement that there is room for two opinions on this.

But then I realized that perhaps the answer might depend on how beautiful/smart you already are. The prettier you are, the more reward there is for becoming 10% prettier. The same goes for smartness. For example, if you are a model, 10% prettier might put you in Megan Fox territory and you'd make a hundred times more money. On the other hand, someone who is averagely attractive would become somewhat above-averagely attractive, which isn't that big a deal.

Similarly, if you're a professor at a top 10 university, 10% smarter might put you in reach of a Nobel.

All this assumes that your only goal is to become more successful, since that's where your friend's argument seemed to be going.

+1

[taleon]

Maybe your friend already felt that he/she is smart enough and becoming 10% prettier will have many more benefits than becoming 10% smarter.

Re: +1

[girly_girl_]

Yep, that's exactly what the friend said :)

[girly_girl_]

Good point. I didn't think of the extreme examples, when a 10% improvement might put you in a completely different ballpark.

Funny..

[max_i_m]

Even purely in terms of success, there are two ways to look at it:
One is to think that success is produced by something like the product of smarts times beauty. Then the gain is higher when you increment the smaller quantity - if you are smart, it's good to get more beautiful. This is what taleon is saying.

On the other hand maybe success is produced by the maximum - then you should clearly increase what you already have a lot of. This is what arvindn is saying.

I think these are probably both true but in different ranges of parameters. In the extremes - models and professors- it's better to "play to your strengths"; but in the middle of the pack - maybe it's better to concentrate on "eliminating deficiencies".
(Further disclaimers apply, individual results may vary etc etc.)

Re: Funny..

[girly_girl_]

Hmm... I guess one can rationalize both answers :)

[morfizm]

Я бы выбрал 10% smarter. Красоту при желании всегда можно прокачать, если тратить время и следить за собой. Дополнительный ум же совсем не следует из затраченного времени на его развитие. Ну, кроме того, ум в жизни больше пригодится. Я думаю, даже шансы получить better social connections выше, если быть smarter, т.к. в этом случае я смогу делать smarter choices about my social connection, а также attract smarter people.

[girly_girl_]

I agree :)