Long answer: being romantically desirable via being hot is not the be-all and end-all. If someone is mildly attracted to you, you’ll have more pleasant interactions with them. I have felt this in both directions for myself.
Then those effects percolate outwards as “status” (in the generic rationalist description of the word). If third parties see you having positive interactions with other people, they’ll think more highly of you.
And also, non-autistic individuals (I mean in the actual, clinical sense of autism; the effect I’m describing is actually one of the most interesting and unique features of autism as opposed to just social awkwardness) preferentially ally themselves with people they expect to be high-status. So if you’re attractive, since people (on some level which is basically instinctual) will expect you to be have more social cache with others, they’ll be nicer to you even if they’re not attracted to you, nor have they seen you have a series of positive interactions with people who are.
P.S. I’m unclear from the information you’ve given whether you actually do have high variance in attractiveness over time. E.g. a “fresh” haircut is only good if the haircut looks good on you. For men it is (famously!) often the case that their freshly-cut hair is unattractively short. I usually find 2-10 weeks post-haircut to be optimal. For clothes, do they fit you well? Do the outfits go together and complement your overall style? The variance here comes from “5-year-old T-shirt and jeans” vs “well-fitting shirt and jacket” not vs “new T-shirt and jeans”.
Generally from what you’ve said I’d guess that you’re not getting much natural variance in attractiveness.
If I understand you correctly, essentially you’re saying that the practical effect in my daily life would be that everyone would treat me slightly better. So for example when I ask a friend or colleague to do something with me, they are 10% more likely to accept, which is significant over time, but hard to separate from natural variance. This seems plausible, but hard to verify.
Regarding natural variance I think the variance is significant, but in the downward direction. Essentially some of my t-shirts are not particularly well designed, covered in sponsors, say specific years like 2016 on them, and the print is visibly worn out from years of laundry. Contrast this to a plain dark t-shirt that I think looks OK, and I think there is a significant difference. Similarly my hair typically gets cut to about 4cm on top and 1cm on the sides, which I think looks OK right after the haircut. However, after growing about 1 cm per months for 3 months, it starts covering my ears, pube-like hairs grow in the back of my neck, and the ends of my hairs are splitting.
Nevertheless, this variance might not be enough to detect spread out overall treatment changes like the one described in the first paragraph.
My alternative hypothesis is that looks matter a lot for first impressions, but are replaced by stronger status indicators when someone gets to know me better. This would align with how looks matter the most in cases where strangers judge you, like being on stage or in person marketing.
But in this world, the people I interact with daily are people I interact with regularly, so they have stronger signals of social status that override their looks-based initial impression, and hence looks don’t matter much in my daily life (outside of meeting new people like dating).
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: being romantically desirable via being hot is not the be-all and end-all. If someone is mildly attracted to you, you’ll have more pleasant interactions with them. I have felt this in both directions for myself.
Then those effects percolate outwards as “status” (in the generic rationalist description of the word). If third parties see you having positive interactions with other people, they’ll think more highly of you.
And also, non-autistic individuals (I mean in the actual, clinical sense of autism; the effect I’m describing is actually one of the most interesting and unique features of autism as opposed to just social awkwardness) preferentially ally themselves with people they expect to be high-status. So if you’re attractive, since people (on some level which is basically instinctual) will expect you to be have more social cache with others, they’ll be nicer to you even if they’re not attracted to you, nor have they seen you have a series of positive interactions with people who are.
P.S. I’m unclear from the information you’ve given whether you actually do have high variance in attractiveness over time. E.g. a “fresh” haircut is only good if the haircut looks good on you. For men it is (famously!) often the case that their freshly-cut hair is unattractively short. I usually find 2-10 weeks post-haircut to be optimal. For clothes, do they fit you well? Do the outfits go together and complement your overall style? The variance here comes from “5-year-old T-shirt and jeans” vs “well-fitting shirt and jacket” not vs “new T-shirt and jeans”.
Generally from what you’ve said I’d guess that you’re not getting much natural variance in attractiveness.
If I understand you correctly, essentially you’re saying that the practical effect in my daily life would be that everyone would treat me slightly better. So for example when I ask a friend or colleague to do something with me, they are 10% more likely to accept, which is significant over time, but hard to separate from natural variance. This seems plausible, but hard to verify.
Regarding natural variance I think the variance is significant, but in the downward direction.
Essentially some of my t-shirts are not particularly well designed, covered in sponsors, say specific years like 2016 on them, and the print is visibly worn out from years of laundry. Contrast this to a plain dark t-shirt that I think looks OK, and I think there is a significant difference.
Similarly my hair typically gets cut to about 4cm on top and 1cm on the sides, which I think looks OK right after the haircut. However, after growing about 1 cm per months for 3 months, it starts covering my ears, pube-like hairs grow in the back of my neck, and the ends of my hairs are splitting.
Nevertheless, this variance might not be enough to detect spread out overall treatment changes like the one described in the first paragraph.
My alternative hypothesis is that looks matter a lot for first impressions, but are replaced by stronger status indicators when someone gets to know me better. This would align with how looks matter the most in cases where strangers judge you, like being on stage or in person marketing.
But in this world, the people I interact with daily are people I interact with regularly, so they have stronger signals of social status that override their looks-based initial impression, and hence looks don’t matter much in my daily life (outside of meeting new people like dating).