A lot depends on just how offensive a particular
person's offense happens to be. The more offensive a person
is, that is the more strongly that person evokes negative
emotions in others, the more people tend to throw the book
at him.

For example, child molesters are very offensive, so they
get no love.

A fat glutton knows exactly how eating the next box of doughnuts
will make him feel: as good as he felt eating the previous box
of doughnuts.

In contrast, the fat glutton may have no clear idea of what sex
with an attractive woman feels like. It's difficult for him to
correctly evaluate the net hedonic impact of choosing to
sacrifice his immediate pleasures of gluttony.

Doughnuts are a sure thing. Women are not.

A man might do all the "right" things, control his weight,
stay in good shape, and still fail to get sex with
attractive women, let alone reliably. He might even occasionally
see some fat guy scoring with some of the chicks he wants.

My question relates to my statement above in terms of
their ability to take responsibility for their condition
in that each individual, through his or her choices, not
only responds to the prevailing reward structure of
society, as it filters through his or her reward processing
system, but also contributes to the reward structure
other people feel.

Because of politeness and other social constraints, people
like you may not be sending the clearest possible message to
fat gluttons in real life. You can express your opinions
more honestly on Usenet, because in real life honest people
get punished harder, but they carry more impact in
face-to-face interactions.

Even though fat gluttons experience a degree of disapproval,
what they see is probably just the tip of the iceberg compared
to what others around them feel.

The actual reward a fat glutton gets by overcoming gluttony
will vary by the individual and is not easy to predict.

Also, fat gluttons may be the victims of incorrect beliefs
such as the notion that their weight is not a strict function
of how much they eat.

Studies have found that fat gluttons tend to underreport their
actual food intake, in proportion to how fat they are. If a
fat glutton does not even understand why he is fat, how is
he going to properly evaluate the consequences of his behavior?
He may get the wrong message from such social disapproval as
he can detect, as if he is being persecuted for something he
did not choose.

Suppose everybody tells you the ice on the pond is safe.
You skate out there and fall in. Whose fault is that?

Granted, you chose to skate on the ice. But other people
misled you, either because they lied or because they were
mistaken.

It's not practical to independently confirm everything you
hear yourself. There is just too much information. We
constantly trust other people to lead us in the right
directions. We routinely trust peers and experts.

And of course sex can be as spectacularly destructive as
getting fat if things go wrong.

I'm still waiting to meet one of those "other drivers" who
are so reputedly bad in snow.

When in fact they have to advertise more because the product
is not as good.

If you see a product on TV commercials every time you turn on
the TV, you know the product sucks compared to a product with
similar sales that requires no advertising. Really good products
generate their own sales through word-of-mouth referrals from
happy customers. The miracle of modern advertising technology
is that ad companies have sufficient powers of mind control
to hide this glaring truth from almost everyone. They can
build a positive image for a product which lacks the qualities
necessary to create its own image.

When a woman is actually attractive, men can see that she is
attractive when she advertises very subtly.

A sexy woman looks better when she is wearing a shapeless
sweat suit than a fat woman looks wearing supposedly sexy
lingerie. The sexy woman does not have to go out of her way
to call attention to her sexiness. She would have to go out
of her way to hide it, say with a burqa.

To quite a degree men are able to "see through" a woman's
clothes. This is especially true in real life when people
walk around. Even somewhat baggy flowing clothes tend to
drape in such a way that the observer builds up a fairly
accurate mental model of the underlying body shape.

But most attractive women help out a lot by wearing clothes
that fit very well. For example, when I go to the gym, the
sexiest women there are not necessarily showing tremendous
amounts of skin, but the clothes they do wear are basically
painted on. I have a fairly good imagination but they
do not strain it.

An attractive woman is likely to get into bed with men
more often than the fat girl, making the attractive woman
more of a slut. The attractive woman makes herself easy
for the men she chooses.

But so many men hit on the attractive woman that she
does not seem easy to most of them. For most of them
she is more difficult than going to the moon.

But when she is easy she is totally easy.

A person's attraction can be less than 100%. For example, a
man might find a fat woman's large breasts attractive, and
her large butt unattractive, but he might be willing to
overlook the butt and focus on the breasts.

The fat woman would be mistaken if she thought the man found
her *comprehensively* attractive, when in fact she is
attractive enough to him to get him over the threshold, but
not necessarily more attractive to him than other women he
cannot attract.

It's like the way taking a McJob does not mean the person
likes everything about it, but he likes it more than no
job.

If your work involves any face-to-face contact with
people who find you sexually attractive, your sexual
attractiveness *will* be a factor.

Hopefully not the deciding factor but a factor
nonetheless. As I mentioned earlier, being sexy is
not always an advantage. A very sexy woman might
disturb some of her male co-workers who experience
painful frustration every time they see her. It
depends a lot on her personality. It's not easy
for a sexy woman to make men feel good while
simultaneously making sure they are fully aware
she is rejecting them. But it can be done.

Humans are the product of a billion years of evolution,
ruled by their glands. Not the sort of thing one can
magically un-do by putting on a suit and watching a
30-minute sensitivity training video.

If she's an ice princess who makes me feel sexually worthless
then I would lower my evaluations.

I'm not saying I would do this consciously. If you want to
get ahead in any group of humans the key is to make the
others feel good.

Look at how some people automatically react with negative
emotion every time I address them on Usenet, simply because
by pointing out their numerous errors I made them look
stupid in the past. Now they associate negative hedonic
tone with my messages, so they are already biased against
me before they even start to read.

This is just how people operate.

If you go to work in a physical office with glandular
humans (not robots), your sexiness or lack thereof will
inevitably be a factor. As will your tendency to feed
egos by giving compliments. Certainly not the only factor,
but don't be fooled by the thin facade of "professionalism."
People aren't judging you like a piece of equipment, based
solely on how well it operates.

Like every other human I will naturally favor other humans
who make me feel good.

Unlike most other humans I have absolutely no problem
admitting that I am human. But I understand their
embarrassment.

For example, if you praise a man's work, he will experience
a much greater mental reward than if an ugly woman (or man)
praises his work. Unless the other evaluator has very high
rank.

Surely you understand gifts can have an emotional impact
far out of proportion to their monetary value.

With the boss it can backfire, of course, if the boss gets
the idea that you are trying to bribe her. Unless she's
open to bribery.

I have to agree with you that people are exasperating. It
will be nice when we can surround ourselves with intelligent
robots that do only what we want, and we never have to deal
with humans again.

But you could probably achieve some of the same benefits
by being "sweet."

The trick is to acknowledge men as sexual creatures and
cater subtly to that without leading them to think they
can score with you. I've seen a few sexy women who know
how to do this, but I could not tell you exactly how
they do it. Obviously that is not a skill I've ever
needed to master.

I read about women who go to science bases in Antarctica
where there are ten men to every woman. The women find the
only way they can get any work done is to hook up with men
right away. Otherwise, in the close proximity of the bases,
all the men know they are available and hit on them
relentlessly.

I suspect that when high-quality ultra-realistic sex robots
are affordable to the average man, men and women will be
able to work together more efficiently, because men will
be fully relieved of all their sexual urges when they go to
work.