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Comment by dondraper36 | Hacker News Reader

This isn't surprising because physical attractiveness is also known to be subconsciously associated with better health and genetics. These are quite important factors, similar to intelligence.

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Actually, for me, this is both not and a little surprising. Not surprising because confirms that attractiveness in males is actually important to women (as a puny example of a man, have known this all my adult life, haha). But also it's a little surprising because (if remember correctly) there have been studies showing that success is supposed to be an important factor in how a woman views a man's attractiveness, that the more successful they are, the more attractive the man seems and vice versa. This makes biological sense, because a more successful man would mean more access to resources and status (And maybe not surprisingly, the reverse is not true, where men are evaluating woman's attractiveness. Success has little impact on attractiveness). Yeah, would think intelligence in men would have made a bigger impact...

...Although, attractiveness is of course tied to success as well, with more attractive people tending to be more successful than less, so maybe women are also picking up on this as well?

Arguably "success" is an externally managed and unbiased shorthand for quality.

As in, it's hard to "get ahead" by definition. So anyone that's overtly ahead of the pack has therefore been vetted as superior to most everyone else. It's a reasonable proxy for gauging intelligence, charisma, and interpersonal skills without even meeting them.

As you get more information you'd realize he made his millions making, say, a software product so, fine, that lowers the assumption of interpersonal skills and charisma and increases it of intelligence. Regardless, the shorthand implies an excess compared to average.

TL;DR - Arguably, "successful" is a rational and effective way to gauge a mate's value.

Hmm, I only half agree with your statement on success being a effective way to gauge a mate's value. Yes, success indicates some level of ability, but is in no way a true measure. For instance, a person who has gained his fortune mainly by inheritance and little work of their own is not nearly skilled as a person who has done it nearly all themselves. Or, often someone is in the right place at the right time, but they themselves are fairly average (maybe they joined a randmom startup and was always a junior member of the company, but still became super wealthy because the company IPO'd and they happened to have a decent number of shares).

I'd agree though on average it does indicate some greater chance at being more skilled, but for me at least, success doesn't directly gauge a mate's value. Like many things, it is a lot of factors that all need to be considered together.

Inherited status is a different kind of status, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or have merit.

Inherited status is an implication of advantage. Sure, YOU didn't out-compete the herd, but your creators did, and my knowing that /you/, through your parents, are the product of success is status for you, too.

Sure, earned success is /also/ a boost, but... let's not pretend like inherited success is a /detractor/.

Everyone weighs what they know with what they don't and assigns status.

Good looking? Plus! Overtly intelligent? Plus! Very awkward around people? Minus! Inherited status? Plus! Black sheep? Hm... If I respect the family's status then... Minus? If I don't then... Plus?

and so on.

We all know "it is a lot of factors" and quite obviously status is merely among them, including inherited status.

Well, I guess like everything, it's up for personal interpretation, which is why I think that success is still only one of the factors in determining viability as a mate. Yeah, what I have tended to notice is that the few friends I have that come from rich families, often from foreign countries and grew up with servants, is that they are limited in ways that I don't really see as someone I'd regard highly as a mate. They often lack simple basics skills, like fixing simple things around the house or the social skills to treat others as equals (well, this last one I only know one person like this). To me, coming from a lot of money can actually be a negative.

Yeah, for me, success is just one of the factors, but to each their own - and I am sure I'm personally biased, because I have not be as successful as I would have liked in my own career paths. If I was really successful, might be saying something completely different (would hope not, but who knows?).

Meh, you can always come up with reasonable competing hypotheses which is why you need to put it to the test.

If it turned out that intelligence outperformed attractiveness, then you could say that it isn't surprising since parental intelligence would keep their offspring alive longer than just being good looking in a challenging survival situation.

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