Discussed in this episode: Lookism / Types of Discrimination / Beauty versus Attraction / Plastic Surgery /Employment Discrimination/ Incels

click here to SEE The full transcript of the episode:

Jay Shapiro: I want to start this episode by giving you a short walkthrough of an oft cited piece of moral philosophy. It has been described in many forms by Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and others, but it's most often associated with John Rawls.

It's called the veil of ignorance, and it could be dreamed up as something like this.

Imagine I place you in front of a mirror and cover your face with a completely opaque veil. All you see is blackness.

I then ask you to spin a giant wheel in front of you that will determine your new physical characteristics, your height, race, hair color, etc. The randomness will also determine your place of birth, income, parents, etc. Picture a very bizarre game of Wheel of Fortune happening here.

So you spin the wheel and it lands somewhere, but remember, you're still wearing the veil and you can only see darkness.

And then I tell you that you are about to enter a new world and you’re soon to be a member of the society in it. After this very strange experiment is over, you'll walk out of my lab and go live in that system. But now, with the veil still over your face, you get to design this new world outside the lab. You get to set all the rules and customs for it. How crime will be dealt with, how money would work, how governments might behave, how fires are put out, how wealth is distributed, how education operates. Everything.

After you design all the details of this world, the veil blocking your view is removed and you see your new self in the mirror for the first time. This veil, of course, was the veil of ignorance.

Many high schoolers I work with are very attracted to this thought experiment. I think in large part because high school is when you kind of start to take off the blissful veil of ignorance of childhood when everyone was sort of friends with one another and you realize that you are entering a strange society and there are roles and clicks and hierarchies you know.

As their bodies rapidly change, you can picture high schoolers staring in the mirror and whispering, oh good, I'm the pretty cheerleader or I guess I'm the emo punk or hey, it looks like I'm the short drama kid. The veil of ignorance is a bit like being cast in a remake of The Breakfast Club.

This episode is all about discrimination. In particular, it's about Lookism, which is a type of discrimination which we rarely consider, let alone talk about. Though upon slight consideration, it's obvious how ubiquitous it is.

We can consider how we would feel if we removed the veil into this current 2020 society and realized that we were a black teenager or an Asian woman or a corn farmer in Angola or the Queen of England. These forms of inequity and discrimination get a lot of attention and study. But what if we remove the veil and notice that we are very attractive or very unattractive? These forms of discrimination garner almost no attention.

But the veil of ignorance trick reveals these variables for what they are... random. The same thought experiment is also sometimes called the Lottery of Life, which reflects the random nature of existing in a world without asking to be here. And of course not choosing your physical characteristics or the place of your birth, or just about anything else. It's a random lottery before birth, and here you are. So, we face a strange dilemma when it comes to the problem of discrimination against unattractive people.

This random physical trade can increasingly be corrected for with plastic surgery.

In South Korea, this notion has gone extreme. In a recent study, it's estimated that between 20 and 30% of all South Korean women get plastic surgery. The trend for men is coming fast as well, with men altering their faces to achieve AK pop kind of look.

And of course, we all have a kind of digital plastic surgery performed on social media with a slew of filters and Photoshop effects.

There's even a touch up my appearance feature that is defaulted into the on position and zoom conferencing. Not sure if you knew that, but it's there. Maybe it's why you like it a little more.

Than Skype or Google.

South Korea presents an interesting special case of policy. There's a discussion there that employers should not be allowed to request a headshot or profile photo for job applications as to avoid attraction bias.

I had a discussion with Francisca Minerva on the topic of Lookism. She studies lookism. Amongst other things. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Warwick University, and it was a wonderful conversation which was recorded remotely due to Covid. As much of the season was.

And I think you'll really enjoy it. I'll be back at the end to give a few final thoughts and more philosophical lenses in which to consider the problems of lookism. Also pay special attention to the very delicate balance in this topic between the concepts of attractiveness and beauty. The idea of attractiveness is anchored by evolutionary explanations bounded by signals of health and sex and reproduction.

Which makes it a relatively stable concept in the history of the species and across cultures.

Something like mucus dripping from one's nose is not very attractive for obvious reasons of signaling unhealthiness.

And the other concept of beauty leans more towards socially constructed historically contextual fluid. Ideas that can shift quickly through time and space and location. O. OK, enough of me.

Episode one of Season 2 in the wonderful. Francesca Minerva.

Lookism, it seems like one of those obvious biases or obvious prejudices you could define how what you mean by it. That is just hard to talk about, almost because it's just so obvious. And then it has almost this built in implication of not wanting to sound like you're some beautiful person who's like, you know, disparaging others, or vice versa, claiming that you're unattractive. It carries with it. It's almost like impossible.

Entry way to even open up the conversation at all. So how did you do it in the academic sphere?

It has been quite difficult, so before starting this job University work, I had a grant at the University of Ghent in Belgium and actually will get back again to when I'm done with this project. So I think that was the first grant that was given to somebody to work on lookism. There's not really much work on it.

From a philosophical perspective, I think because it is one of these difficult topics. In a sense, like when when I found some references to to lookism or discrimination based on attractiveness, it seems with the assumption that a lot of authors have is that it is not the same as other serious forms of discrimination such as.

Sexism or racism?

So even if it's true that a certain extent attractive people and has some advantages and unattractive people have some disadvantages overall, this doesn't really have an impact on their life because they think that it only effects romantic experiences. In fact, we have.

So much.

Data and so many studies proving that that's not the case, and that Lookism has an impact on income on job opportunities and classes have been promoted to find job of, you know to everything. So I think it is quite similar to other forms of discrimination that are taken and then have been taken away more seriously by philosophers and in the past decades.

I think I think I saw in one of your. I don't know if this was your study, but it was.

Attractiveness was worth something like $230,000 in buying power over lifetime, yeah?

Yes, that's a study by this economist, then hammer. She would much spent a large part of his career working on Lookism and being an economist. He was very interested in assessing how much lookism costs, and in these figures that have been found, like pretty much this same kind of differences in income between attractive.

Non attractive and average looking people in many countries. So we have high consistency.

I think that there is an interesting and useful split when we talk about this word attractiveness that that tell me if you agree with this split that you could talk about it in terms of sort of evolutionarily grooved markers of attractiveness that maybe evolution has implanted us for reasons of sexual selection. Maybe these are things like symmetry or.

You know good. Even like good posture or muscles to take care of. You know the young. All these kind of things that you can sort of trace back in some ways as a natural phenomenon as opposed to other things that are more societal influences. And I think you talk about things like in a rich society. Attractiveness tends to lean more towards thinness, which might be a symbol of I don't know you well if there's something and you can afford to have a special kind of diet versus in poor societies.

Chubbier bodies can be more attractive, and so those kind of dials move pretty, you know, fluidly throughout the way societies change, but there are some anchors that might be kind of just universal or eternal, almost as long as we're biological creatures that like to have sex, is that sort of a useful parsing of this word attractiveness?

I think that's how you put it is right? That's what I understood, at least by reading this letter for many years there are.

Two schools of thought and on one side Lydia said, Beauty is a byproduct of evolution. So those features they were considered a proxy for health and reproductive fitness. Now and I'll consider like attract would also consider attractive. So whatever helps you to spread your genes and to survive in a certain environment is considered beautiful. This doesn't apply only to people, it applies to everything to the environment.

Well, if I'm beautiful is what helped our survival through evolution.

The hand is another school of thought according to which beauty is byproduct of societal preferences, and innocence is a form of oppression. Our oppression is expressed, so people have this aesthetic preferences that reflect their sexism or racism and their standards of beauty are byproduct of this social.

Cultural preferences and I think meter is right and both arise in a way. There is a grain of truth or quite a bit of truth in both approaches. But you need to take into consideration the features you're talking about. So if you're talking about features like Symmetry, Mutiny, which is how young you look or how feminine you looking for a woman, and I'm asking you looking for a man.

Anne, how smooth is your skin? So these things that are really ingrained in our evolutionary brain, I think that the influence of society on these preferences is very little.

And I don't think that society society really write a big role in determining this. Preference is indeed we know from studies on very young children a few weeks old that they tend to find attractive and we know that we suppose if I never tried it because they stare for longer at the same kind of people, same faces that they're adults, find attractive. On the other hand, it is also true that Society of course has an influence of our.

My study preferences and we know that a preference for like thinness an as is influenced by by society were saying by how rich and how much food is available for the society. I think that the preference for Caucasian features in most magazines is merely cultural preferences and there is no race which is more beautiful.

There are beautiful people in all races. They are equally distributed but it is for societal, cultural, economic reasons that these blondes, risking type of beauty is the most represented. And then people think that it's the only standard of beauty. And I tried to look like that. So we have to take into consideration what kind of feature we're talking about. This blonde hair universal standard of beauty is in.

Part of evolutionary brain that we like blonde hair, not. It's not symmetry and evolutionary preference rooted in our evolutionary history. Yes, I think so. So we need to be careful. Think this distinction is particularly important from the perspective of practical philosophy. When we try to figure out.

How to address lookism? If we are saying that, well, we need to solve this problem. Some people are less attractive. We know the model with the standards of beauty are risky material. Well, what should we do if we think that it's just a problem rooted in societal preferences and we tried to change standards of beauty through society intervention, so portraying certain kinds of features, I don't think we're going to achieve much with respect to.

Those features that we like for evolutionary reasons, I don't think we can do much to change our preference for symmetry present. On the other hand, if you're talking about.

Ethnicity and Breanne body weight and height and hair color we can do a lot.

So you're basically saying like, no matter what societal knobs that will turn, we're never going to have like a preference. Suddenly, for like yellow eyes, because it's a, it's a ingrained, you know, we sort of read that as like that's a symbol of disease or bad health, which is bad for the jeans. And I don't want to make with this person then like we can't overcome that. But so in South Korea, let's talk about the South Korea situation now and this case I don't know how you explain it. If this is sort of just like a runaway train.

Of beauty memes that seem to lean Western I mean skin bleaching, body bleaching, hair, lightning, removing of the fold is pretty ubiquitous at this point. I mean, the estimates are pretty wild, like something like I don't know between 30 and 50% of women are getting at least some kind of surgery or say they want it and this has led to a real. I don't know how. I don't know if you can explain how that phenomenon may have happened or this is just a strange case. And then what we could possibly if we decide it's a problem.

What we could possibly do about it? Because the situation that it's resulted in now is people thinking that they can't get jobs or job offers without this kind of surgery, and then then it gets even more complicated, because getting the surgery is also a little expensive, which is also a symbol that you have that kind of money to waste, which is a symbol of, you know, you're so. It just gets so it gets so toxic and complicated there. I don't know how practical philosophy could even address that problem, yeah?

I mean, I haven't studied the case of South Korea.

Specifically though, remember when it was.

Teaching some classes on Lookism in Melbourne had some South Korea students have told me about it and then you know it's very common for people turning 16 to have cosmetic surgery as a present. South Korea might be an extreme, but it's important to notice through mind that 'cause when the surgery is very common and is practiced a lot in in a lot of countries, even in news weather like economic crisis, the expenses.

On beauty, an especially on cosmetic surgery are always growing. That's the only area that seems to not suffer any problems from economic crisis. So people are investing more and more and more in looking attractive. And of course, it's in a sense. It's a self healing process because if the average of the people around you, the average local brand new keeps increasing. Then we struggle to keep up. So if you were.

6 and when asking 1 to 10, you were six and you know you were just like average like everyone else. You didn't have participants. But then when everybody starts to get as many surgery and becomes A7 or an 8, then you notice how well should I be. His advantage? Maybe I can do some Nip attack to to look more attractive. So that can also benefit advantage, at least not being disadvantage at this point. And then you know it, it keeps it. Keeps going on there.

Some important considerations. So as I understand this particular aspect about cosmetic surgery in South Korea seems to be the most interventions. If I understand correctly, are aimed at looking more Western like, so there is an element of like ethnic 'cause my knee surgery, which is also quite common from people outside South Korea and South America. And you know it is.

Quite a well known and well sadly phenomenon, so I think that for that again it seems to be mostly problem of.

Suicidal influenced? So why did this myth of the Western beauty spread so much? Can we do something to replace this Western standard of beauty with the Korean standard of beauty? Which is what these people naturally have their naturally beautiful according to their ethnic praise. So I think in that sense, if we if there was like a campaign to promote non Western beauty.

That could be quite successful. I say that because, for instance, we know that people react quite quickly to what they see on TV, so there was a study Fiji Islands there was pretty much no case of anorexia nervosa and then a few months after TV was introduced and a lot of Western people an Western models like of course people on TV at the most attractive, reportedly still having the first cases of anorexia on your hand. We know that experiments in which.

People think in this case was women exposed to different kind of pictures of women of all sizes and ethnicities felt more comfortable and more happy about their appearance than the ones that were exposed to you know, pictures of models that people react quite quickly to this. So in this case, when it comes to ethnic because my surgery, I think that by changing this standard of beauty, Newport rain.

Korean beauties on magazine and TV and on the Internet alot could be achieved that would be interesting to understand. Why in South Korea this is so common. I honestly have no idea about it, but I guess some. Maybe there are some studies about that, why it became so popular in South Korea and not for instance like in Japan. But the kind of and you were saying. Also there is other kinds because my disorders like rejuvenating cosmetic surgeries.

Is quite common. That is a more difficult one, and indeed I think rejuvenating cosmetic surgery is extremely common in the Western world as well. If you look around on the Internet or like on Instagram, it seems like there is no old woman and even women in their 50s and their 60s look younger than a woman in her 30s. That hasn't done any rejuvenated cosmetic surgery, so since I was a look at people 20-30 years old and then as I go actually look younger than me.

Maybe there is something wrong with me.

And and that's that's a difficult one, because because evolutionary reasons women tend to consider less attractive as they as they age. And that's very well known phenomenon. Therefore, the temptation to look younger is is very is very strong because you got to benefit from looking ten 10:30 years younger.

The question these are all like just hot button kind of think you're dealing with race and ethnicity and I think what's really interesting. I'm curious how you how we we talk about these things without being misunderstood where, especially when you're talking about evolution and explaining a phenomenon like a beauty, standard of symmetry or height or whatever it is through an evolutionary explanation to to just, you know.

From that lens is oftentimes construed as a justification for it, or an endorsement of it, as this is the way it ought to be, or something that we are foolish to try to think we can overcome, or something like that is that I mean, how do we talk about these things without the kind of thought experiment to do is like if you're saying OK, evolution is ingrained. These ideas of beauty into us for the reason of survival and procreation.

And let's say I don't want to have kids or let's say like this is no longer a problem. We can have genetic engineering like you know, kids could look, we can make them. I could have a. We could have two unattractive people historically in their society or even the way evolution says and have a baby. But they genetically engineer it to look like, you know, a supermodel, no problem. Whatever it is like is can we? Are we stuck with the evolutionary kind of explanations or can we transcend those? Is that sort of a philosophical duty for us?

To maybe I'm pulling in some sort of like veil of ignorance, moral ethic, kind of thing to put on the table here, but do you find yourselves yourself in those kind of situations a lot? When you're giving an evolution explanation and people are thinking you're it's a justification or an endorsement.

Yeah, I think that's quite common.

The thing is that I'm not happy that things are the way they are, of course, and it's it's obviously would be better for everyone if we didn't have this kind of preferences and.

In an ideal world that you know the way we look at, it shouldn't have any impact on on our existence and our life are successful. We are happy we are. How likely we are to find a partner, but that's unfortunately that we wishful thinking we have to deal with the situation we have.

Now and how we going to make things better for the people we're leaving now we're stuck with evolution in a sense, but you know?

We're also continuing to evolve, and we're also getting becoming able to modify our bodies and our brains as well, so it's not absurd to think that perhaps in the future we will be able to re engineer some preferences. Then we have evolved with or that maybe through natural evolution with the medicine take much longer. Those preferences will will change because as you were saying, it's true that.

During evolution through evolution in human history, it was very useful to have this miscue.

Launch to gets close to a person that maybe had an infectious disease, and because the naked eye or you didn't want to invest resources in having a child with a person was also affected by disease, because then this child and be healthy would die. So we, we know we had to deal with a different set of problems. Obviously now we have completely different standards alive. Yeah, medicines and I think there is really that link between how healthy we are.

And how good looking we are is not that strong anymore, though. It is true to a certain to certain extent, like when you have a cold or really under the weather, have a flu. It don't look as.

As good as usual, I guess, so there is still some connection there, but our brain hasn't really kept up with that. With the change in that link, so our brain hasn't really is not really capable of guessing that Oh well, even if this person is not really.

I tried, this is really really healthy and therefore another is no risk in reproducing with there with him and so on so forth. So maybe it will take a while to the granted to adapt to that, but it could be a very long time. And of course there's no use to tell people who feel now like they are discriminated against because of the way they look, though. Well, don't worry. In 2,000,000 years things will be different. Well, thank you so much. I mean, I'm not going to be there in 2,000,000 years so.

Yeah, I just want I want I want to peg that there because I think so far I failed to clear up that that we've been talking bout lookism on sort of both under ends of the spectrum or I have being like very attractive people are unattractive. You really tend to focus on the unattractive in the discrimination aspect of Lucas. My pin that there that most of your focus is on that end. Speaking at it of it almost as like a disability we do we give all kinds of you know, grants and medical treatment and free things for people who just happen to be born with disabilities. We go out of our way quite a way to try to bring them up to a place where we feel like, oh you got a bad.

A bad draw of the lottery of life and so that just seems kind of cosmic lanfair and will intervene as much as we can. But we don't do that for unattractive people, and that's really where you spend your time. Just wanted to peg that there 'cause I feel.

Like we should clear that up, yeah, that's the main concern because of course I'm not really worried about people who have a lot of disadvantages advantages because they attractive is true that there are some studies suggest and and in some areas very attractive people have some disadvantages. But overall one is better off.

They've been very attractive, then very unattractive. There is so much evidence on this. That's an you know. It's it's just very obvious, like if you could choose, but you know panda building neurons. They entered the Walden life as a very talkative person, that very attractive one, and you had to compare the advantages and disadvantages. Definitely will go. We've been very attractive, but we also know that the advantage of attractive people and disadvantages of unattractive people are not.

Balance so it is more than the penalty on being an attractive is greater than the premium on beauty, so this is a more serious problem and it is a more serious problem because as Italian philosopher I'm very concerned about suffering and how to improve the well being of people. How to reduce suffering. These form of differential treatment and discrimination is something that brings about a lot of suffering in the world.

You mentioned that you are utilitarian philosophers. So do you mind? Because it's a, it's a subject that comes up a lot in, you know, in this podcast throughout season one and now, I'm sure in Season 2 of how you define that it you know it has a lot of wrinkles to it. I think it's I probably am guilty of unfairly maligning it as some sort of oversimplistic pro and con list. I think at its base it's something like that, but it's more. It can be much more nuanced than just sort of maximize flourishing, minimize suffering, and then washing your hands of it. It's.

I mean, how do you start your to build your moral framework of a criticism of as a utilitarian?

I think that of course I mean utilitarian.

Philosophers are often accused of, you know, having these impossible standards and Internet ISM is not something people can really leave by because it's very demanding. And it's it's true in a sense, you know, it is very demanding, but so are many other approaches to morality. For instance, if you take Cantonese and very seriously, it's also extremely demanding. So morality is demanding in general, and.

Boils down to what you think is the best way of going about your life and what kind of difference you want to make in the world. And I think that the best way to decide which course of action to take is to look at the consequences of our choices or actions and so at the impact of things rather than principle. Guiding some actions in the case of of Lookism, I think that the main problem.

It's not the concept of discrimination self, but if I'm that the people who are victims of these form discrimination under forms, combination experience, lower standards of well being and they suffer, and because of the consequences of lookism, I think we have a moral duty to intervene. And as a philosopher I thought that.

The main duty was to actually make people aware about this form of discrimination because I notice that other people would deny the existence of lookism at all. Like I don't know, that doesn't exist, it's not, or they would think, Oh yes, there is. Is this promise combination. But definitely I'm not doing it, and I think that's the that's a good thing to start with. Making people aware of their own lookism so that they can start thinking about it.

As I often say, I mean I think I was more Locust before I started working on this and then started thinking on my own actions so and they know they can be like very small things like there are a lot of studies on on tipping.

People tip waiters, not according to how good they are doing their job and how attractive they are. So is it true that we're like we're tipping more attractive person at Indiana one? Or like how we pay more attention? There is even like.

Now that is on how long, for how long we sustain eye contact when attractive person rather than a 31 and you know obviously attractive people getting more attention. Starting to act in this way. So just make like.

To start making small changes in direction and just making people aware of it, I thought it was something that needed to be done because nobody else was talking about it.

Yeah, it's like the now very hackneyed. Check your priveledge kind of calls for racial or other kinds of discrimination that check your priveledge in lookism. It just is huge. And yeah, it's actually probably much more effective. You're right, just noticing yourself, actually. With that question, I'm really curious as a utilitarian to get to slide into the moral.

Philosophy part of it.

Where do you think the sort of moral responsibility really lies in this situation is like the way the waiter. It's almost a perfect experiment there because you have this fungible asset of a dollar that you that you could already sort of like you know, count up what's happening and you have different waiters and you could just do the do the math. If a waitress is like, yeah, I'm fully aware of Lookism in our society and I'm trying to make money, so I'm going to wear push up bra or padded bra and a little extra makeup because every time I do that I come home with another $20.

Versus the days I don't so like I'm going to do that is it? Is it our moral responsibility to be the ones that sort of like this is very? I mean, when you're in the race conversation this is almost unhackable of like. Check your privilege and then now what is that? Does that mean bring me as a white man? Sort of down to the to the place in American Society where I might get more likely to be harassed for just jaywalking. Which people of color are well in the attractiveness side. Does that mean, like, well, OK?

I think I'm pretty attractive on nights where I wear this makeup and then I get more tips. Should I not be doing that? Is it our more responsibility to like do that or is this more of a top down thing like the example of South Korea is like banning a government ban on employees demanding photos with job applications? Where does the more responsibility lie?

I think we need to make a distinction between like different kind of interaction and a different realms of life in which lookism makes a difference.

So we were talking about in the job interviews and job applications. I think that we should try to reduce as much as possible, then role played by Lucas and Marina form discrimination. For instance, writing a paper arguing that we should use virtual reality for as many interviews as much as possible, because if all the candidates look exactly the same sound, exactly the same and there is a neutral environment, then we can really.

Evaluate the competence of each candidate instead of being influenced by.

Now the voice or the way they look and this refers not only to you know the way they look in terms of being attractive or not, but I was like the Rays and you know their gender. So using virtual reality I think would solve would help solve so many problems when it comes to hiring for instance. And of course there are other dynamics than one is hired that promotion etc. But I think we should really make an effort to have you know, comedians.

I'm waiting to see me in person and then I don't want like do an interview in either on the phone or in virtual reality if we can, and I thought some companies started doing that. They started doing interviews on on in virtual reality. I think we really should like really make a huge huge difference when it comes to personal interaction. Then he will say, well, you know in person interaction if you are looking for a partner or a friend then you are entitled to have your.

Preferences they can be racist. They can be look is that can be sexist. That's entirely up to you. It's not a job, it's your private life. I think that something can be done in their respect as well, and I think that in a way, especially when it comes to dating, for instance, introducing dating app that are based on features has really harmed a lot of people were not extremely attractive and especially men. I felt some suggest.

So it sounds like this takes about Tinder matches. If you're not an extremely attractive, men is really useless to get on Tinder because you're not gonna get a date. Men are more generous and evaluation of attractiveness women, but women are extremely harsh.

Windows in men attractiveness. I've never used Tinder. I'm old enough to.

Fortunately, had been spared that before you know Tinder and smart phones and selfies and Instagram, people would meet through friends and school work and they would interact and know each other at a different level. So you know, even in the person they didn't strike, use incredibly beautiful of meeting them by talking. After little bit, you maybe get attracted to other characteristics, and I think that by focusing so much on appearance, like analysis, why?

And decided that person is not attractive enough to even talk to them. People are really missing a lot of opportunities to have meaningful and happy relationships, and I think that that's really sad. So again, I think virtual reality. Prisoners could be helpful. I hope somebody will develop dating app where people can make virtual reality and talk to each other before they meet in person or and to have the time to develop an attraction which is not.

These exclusive me on physical appearance, but an affinity and.

Whether I include this or not, I was a. I'll give a pitch 'cause it was really kind of fun. I came in late as an editor on a a little reality show for Facebook called I think it's called Virtual Dating and it was almost exactly this. The idea was two people would go on a blind date in virtual reality for the first time in like they were these interesting. Lee crafted world, some of them that I think the first episode was too like gamers.

They like they both like gaming in real life. They never seen each other and then in virtual reality that one was like this weird warrior Princess like Avatar and the other one is like a Tiger kind of thing. Whatever like fantasy creatures. And they had swords and they had like this cool little blind date all in virtual reality that was crafted for them to like Slay the Dragon or whatever they did and then at the end of the show. Of course it's like the reveal is taking off the things and then seeing each other for the first time and it's actually very cute show so maybe people are like open to the idea.

In some ways I.

Think is much better.

It's cute, yeah, with the tender thing and social media and Instagram and all of this, it's probably gotten even worse that 'cause we're talking about cosmetic surgery, but that's a whole layer of filters and all kinds of digital manipulation that you could do that also seems to be on a philosophical sense. There's the look as in problem, but also the distancing between your physical, actual self and this projection of your ideal.

That you know will play well in a marketplace of attractiveness, but you could never hope to even become yourself. The stories of people going into doctors and ask telling them like, can you make me look like I've made myself on Instagram are like heartbreaking. I don't know. Yeah this yeah.

Yeah, and I think again, like you know why it's it's messing up with our evolutionary preferences. Well, for instance, I notice that on Instagram alot of features.

Uh, women that have done something to the to their lips. I think now need filler, some very common so there is up. The upper lip shouldn't be bigger than the lower lip or the same size as I think the perfect ratio is like something like you know the lower lip should be like 1 1/2 the size of the upper lip, but now that has doesn't seem to exist anymore. Like so many people have this huge lips and I wonder if they're actually making themselves more attractive.

Or not, or whether there is a standard of beauty that applies only to Instagram and then in real life that stars a beauty doesn't really apply. I don't think it does because it looks incredibly fake and we we know that you know, people can sense the fakeness of over certain pay. So I don't know if these people were trying to become Instagram beautiful and then also like harming their chances of being attractive.

In in real life, because these are already very beautiful women, many cases they just exaggerate some feature to be up to date to match a stand on the beauty that only exists online else like extreme long eyelashes. I mean it's it's complete different from from what we know looks attractive in the normal world in which we interact. And then people are comparing themselves with this. My Oh my God, my lips are weird because they're like the upper lip is not on that.

That's perfectly fine. That's how we should look like.

I'm also worried about spreading of harmful founders of beauty that are harmful also because they don't make you look prettier, yeah?

That's there's almost like this sounds very dystopian because when we started talking about the differences of attractiveness and if we focus on just sort of the societally grooved ones in EQ. Society, you know this kind of look as attractive or whatever. Well, there's almost just or explanation or X cluster of population or whatever. Wherever the beauty meme started to spread. Well, there's like a.

There's an Internet nation out there that probably people occupy a lot of their time, and now that has its own kind of standards that is totally removed from a real world, an bad ideas or or just South Korea. We could pick on for being this particular geography of this. But no like, let's talk about the Internet as a kind of geography of virtual geography. That's also out of control.

Yeah exactly. I mean like there are people, I mean skin pores and disappeared. It seems nobody has.

Horse under skin how? How did we change the.

Max rose skin so that it looks so smooth like not even two weeks old children look like. I mean that that's the kind of skin doesn't exist. Of course you're constantly compare yourself to death. Oh my God have Forza Miskin somethings wrong with me now you're human and I think this is really this is really affecting.

A lot of people today agree that not even aware of.

But even the people.

I think the problem is also had. All these features are so manipulated filter photoshopped that even the people who post these features don't look like themselves in these features, so they cannot keep up themselves with their own standards of beauty. So I think you know they keep you have to keep trying to to look like this better or like it allies, but actually worse version of themselves and that's a lot of hard work.

Yeah, it's also video as well as well, because I work in that field, I mean.

If this is not unique to Instagram or still photos, the kind of digital makeup is actually literally what the process is called in post production with these flame and other kinds of programs of any tech people out there know them where you could go in. And really, you know, remove the wrinkles out of someones corner of their lip for an entire movie or video with a very precise kind of hand that you can't very, very difficult to detect. So it's yeah it seems like it.

Rather, leave rather difficult entrenched problem, but on the I'm curious this is more of an evolution question. What's happening with something like the pores thing you can sort of identify the extremes that evolution would have given to you of, like I don't know, massively open pores is some sort of sign of sickness or not optimal health or whatever, and so it did it, it just embedded this little like small small pores are good or whatever, but they don't seem to have an off switch that way. It's like how did we then decide that zero pores are invisible?

Force if it goes that that always happened that that way, or you know a lot of these beauty markers seem like you can. You can understand the gradient that evolution would give you, but it doesn't seem that way. It's like this is good, and then we just go all the way the other other way.

Yeah, I think that.

It's it's difficult even for me to keep looking at these things. I can't get it like honestly with the upper lip thing. I'm really puzzled. I don't know how we got there. I don't know if some celebrities started spreading this meme. Of, you know, having lived the same size and extremely big, of course. You know it's.

About like

not extremely thin lips, but again, we shouldn't normally be attracted by lifting look the same size, same things for breasts. I was talking to.

Some cosmetic surgeons, and apparently people, a lot of people ask for.

Breasts that look fake.

Yes, yeah that you know they want brands to look so so big. But also like there's so projected an like they're constantly. You look at constantly wearing a push up. So I think that before you know the goal or cosmetic surgery was make look people better. But natural like they were naturally lacking in the beauty lottery. Even people who are not there was the goal and now it's more like making them look page.

Or like you know, like some standards of beauty are completely fake and.

I honestly don't know how we got there. Why would somebody want to have lips look fake, but would somebody want to have breast look fake? Yeah, and again, it seems that it's a complete different standard of beauty that has evolved.

Independently from, from what we can see, we have some origin in OK. We don't like saggy breasts by anyone but I extremely protruding projected breasts is also not something we should find attractive and I it's hard to explain how that.

Is there a name I think like in for the phenomenon of race? They just. It was like the contact hypothesis of just if kids grow up around other kids just literally in contact with other kids from different races like.

It actually does a lot of work on its own being in contact with them is there. Is there a kind of a similar phenomenon with attractiveness? That whole phenomenon of I think you mentioned it before? Like maybe having a friend for awhile or getting closer to someone who had first. Like you know there was no spark you weren't super into them, but after like a month you're like. I think I'm developing a crush on Dave or whatever. Even though you don't find him like crazy attractive. The phenomenon of familiarity leading to.

Affection and then sexual attraction. Just sort of comes along for the ride is there if there's a name for that tell me what it is and more about the phenomenon. Is that potentially explaining of maybe people who are just inundated by on Twitter of being in contact at least visual contact not developing relationships with individuals but in contact with that standard beauty. And that meme of beauty. Eventually you're like I'm into it now I don't.

Know, yeah, I think that I think that's possible.

I think that again, in this case the influence of society has is enormous in the innocence even overcame evolutionary preferences, at least for some people. I think it started with Photoshop and probably up to another 2-3 indicate decades ago. Women were only compare themselves with.

Beautiful women then. Anyway, we're still normal like I was looking recently at pictures of Marilyn Monroe. Who is the most beautiful women? But now I think she wouldn't be considered beautiful. I was noticing she had a little bit of a belly Jenna little bit. Initially was a big chubby. I was asking myself who should be considered attractive now? Should be asked him was probably not because now we have all these people who are under God cosmetic surgery and can.

Delete any minimal effect in in their body or interface. Look completely, completely unnatural, like innocence, like something you were mentioned before. It is a status. Symbols like celebrities are doing that. If celebrities, things say it's OK like to look like Kardashian.

Then you know there's something good about it. Then I can prove that I'm also rich and have the resources to for cosmetic surgery. I think maybe there's a problem not being able to distinguish the real world from from the Internet World News. A conversation about porn as well. How porn really changed Mail preferences for how women should should look like. And I think for a lot of them in one thing that I think is really strange is how.

But then a plastic became very common, like as many surgical vagina. And I was really puzzled by this phenomena. Like why are people doing it like no, you don't go around with your vagina exposed.

Why does that matter? Well, so in some cases, of course you know some people have some information it's comfortable they need, but in most cases you know it doesn't really matter how your vagina looks like. Turns out that there is a type of vagina is really common in porn and then men, men start expecting their partner to have a vaginas look like that. And women somehow became aware of that and started requesting a lot of cosmetic surgery. Never done it so there is no.

Area of the human body? Literally nothing that is not now subject to scrutiny and is not compared with this idealized version of women or men that are even porn on Instagram magazines. And it is exhausting for everyone.

Yeah, exhausting. It's exhausting to listen to. I mean honestly, just like yeah every single part so to try to end it with a couple minutes of talking about potential solutions. We talked a little bit about.

Top maybe top down sort of restrictions, or VR, or maybe banning these companies in a place like South Korea is like no, no, you just will make it illegal to send photos with your your job application or something. I'm curious about your thoughts on sort of representation in media. It seems we just have to admit that we're incredibly influenced by the images around us and in film and TV and and advertisements etc. Now all over the Internet.

And it's a big again. The relations are the analogies to racial conversations or just need to be made here. 'cause the conversations about representation for black characters or gay characters or whatever on TV I think is a really interesting thing does. Does television or entertainment have a moral responsibility because of this psychological landmine that it puts in everyone's sort of brain to treat it carefully and to maybe not just be a mirror of Society of societies racist?

But actually have take a moral stand to to use the tool of representation of celebrity in a way that could affect change. We've not, as far as I know, we've never seen anything like that for lookism. I don't see anybody crying for like we need more ugly people on TV because we need to. I don't know represent them better. Or maybe it's a different problem, because if it was, like if there was a racism problem saying people you know discriminate against Brown or black people. So we're going to put them all over your TV. And guess what? They're also really attractive.

So you're going to like it, and eventually you'll like them more. And that's a great way to penetrate through really awful racism is being attracted to them.

Well, I don't know if putting an unattractive person on TV does that on its own. It has its own sort of challenges.

I mean, I think that one step, at least it should be done. I think some companies started doing that is to not a brush. Photoshop like the models that they use for their products. And it was an underwear and some clothes I.

Think the UK banded or they did the UK? Does the UK have a regulation now where they like?

You have to declare if it is or something. I know there was a hubbub.

About this maybe maybe they do.

Maybe also France, Anne and I think France also is regulation of the minimum weight of models, for instance, idly can have really skinny models anymore.

At least starting to show people were still attractive, but like still look human. So like not put a shopping people or modifying them in a way that even they don't look like themselves in in the commercial. So starting doing that would be great because people look Oh no. There are people who ate. This is our third year old person. Looks like this is a 50 year old person. Looks like there's nothing weird with me and I think yes it will be good to have a quota.

So there is in part it's true that we, you know we maybe get more pleasure from watching a movie where the actors are extremely beautiful, then moving with actors and an extremely beautiful like their unattractive. But again haven't really tried that. Not not not much really, and maybe you know, maybe we can. We can give it a try. Maybe we can try to start using in hiring.

Slightly less attractive people and left less and see how it goes. If people felt developing, maybe we actually can enjoy movies even if no Brad Pitt or you know the camera not in them anymore. So yeah, I think I think it will really make a difference is stop photoshopping an introducing people who don't really fit the standard of beauty which at the moment is really narrow. It doesn't need to be this narrow. There's no reason.

This this seems like.

Again, that waiter analogy, if you had if the movies and the producers themselves were analogous to a bunch of waiters in a restaurant, all fighting over tips.

There must be a name for this problem of no, but nobody is going to do it on their own unfortunately. Because of this truth of human psychology and your producer being like oh Francesco's, telling me to put like a less attractive lead in my film that I just invested $100 million in. But the data says like I'm going to make less money like no no ones going to free market might not ever solve this one. So as much as like a libertarian ethic wants to be applied to this.

I have trouble seeing it actually not just spiraling out of control. Even more so yes.

To start from, the people think we had, we had some success, so I mentioned before that there are some companies. They're not photoshopping man, modifying the features of the models and I think it didn't start from the company. I think they they notice this. So on line and I said and they were like this movement for appreciation of curly people and you know people are different.

Real bodies, I think Dove Beauty was one of the early ones, yeah?

Exactly, so there is now, I think, a demand people want to see that at least some people do, and the number of people that seems to be growing.

I think people don't really like feeling mortified. Innocence in constantly exposed to the standards of beauty, and people who look so unnaturally beautiful and so extremely beautiful. I think that maybe there needs to be a change in the sense of like pain, more attention to what people really want. And then you know, maybe then I'm wrong. It may be that actually people want to watch a movie when the actors are not.

Incredibly beautiful, it's hard to know how much of that is signaling as well if people are joining an online movement or if a hashtag goes around.

And there's a big movement of like we want real bodies. But then the companies are tracking all of their Instagrams and their porn preferences or whatever. And they realize, like you know, they're just signaling like it's feel this one feels so ingrained. 'cause someone could say that they are like.

You know, not discriminating and love all races and everyone looks the same and they would date a fat person or a skinny person. They could say all that, but you know when push comes to shove, those are like primal passions that feel beyond our free will to control. I think there's there's a bracket there, which is why I'm so perplexed by solutions on this one. As another, there's another anecdote and example. The girlfriend and I were recently in Peru back when we can travel right before the coronavirus stuff started.

And there's like open markets there in this incredible. This is a perfect analogy as well, just like the waiter, things and it's very uncomfortable where there's tourists, so we're obviously the ones with the money, and you're in these open markets and there's the line of literally like identical juice shops. And if you ever been to prove they have like these fruit juice shops everywhere, it's really good. They mix guava and papaya and oranges. Whatever else, you get whatever, and they're just. They're all identical, a little the same menu, the same machine, just like a row of them all, each of them with a different.

Woman at each of them, and they're all overly made up and all calling out to you to be like hey and you know come get my juice, whatever it is and you know my governor were thirsty and we wanted juice and then were suddenly faced with the dilemma of like which one of these literally identical stands are we going to choose? And I don't know. It's like we should have just like close your eyes and roll the dice or playing like a number game between us we went to I don't know the 4th one down and she was lovely and made us a nice shoes but like you're like I could have gone to any of these.

And yeah, it's like it seems like and and and I don't know it's impossible for us to get behind what we could have been aware of it. Like you're saying, maybe that's the best we could do of like. OK, I'm aware that now my attraction bias is engaged for all of these women and I'm going to try to transcend it in this moment and make some divine choice for the right orange juice. But I can never get behind that. Maybe I did pick the most attractive one. I've no idea. We did it together.

I don't know. We just like went blindly to one of them, which wasn't even the closest to us. I don't know what was happening.

Not, I mean, it's it's it's. It's difficult. Not saying, you know, I don't think there is like one solution that you applied to all cases to all situations and solve all the problems. And I think this takes a lot of thinking and I'm I'm glad that now there are more people working on this topic then when I started six years ago. There's more thoughts going into that and I think it will require so much thinking and effort from you know, individuals wearing normally engage in Lucis practices.

And you know, I say that about myself, and they know everyone else. And he's doing that to certain degree.

There must be a dating site with no photos. I haven't done the research on it. There must.

Be one, yeah I'm I would hope so. They were using dating apps. I don't know. Of course. I mean, I'm also looking in my relationships like. I mean I wouldn't say my boyfriend is exactly not at all. So I mean there are some levels of which like so you know it's it's our preference, is that.

That matter a lot in our in our decisions, but I would like to think that you know when we choose a partner. For instance, we don't look only the way their appearance but also other things and and this should be the case for other areas around the right person. Interaction like friendships and you know, professional collaborations and all sorts of things. Obviously I think that the Internet and the fact that we're constantly exposed to people's appearance make black.

Makes that very, very difficult. We often interact through Twitter and Facebook and let you know, and we see each others face.

First thing that wasn't the case 20 years ago.

Got this is I could talk to you all day. This is such a hard problem. I've 'cause I'm almost thinking like the when you're talking about your boyfriend. Of course I think my girlfriends attractive. It's like we're stuck in that. And you almost want to say the bad answer to all of it is like, well, this is a defense for like arranged marriages where you never even see your partner. It's just totally like your family pics for you and then you're forced to marry. This person has nothing to do with your attraction to them. It's like.

This is a partnership and you just need to do this and then there's this tons of social pressure to stay together. Obviously about shame in the family and all these other things. It seems like that retreat from the problem of attraction bias is, you know, the lazy OUSD most fascistic sort of response to it. And but I don't know, it almost gives you sympathy for the impulse to even try something like that 'cause you're like. Well there are trying to address a real problem, maybe very with worst consequences. As a utilitarian. You might be like well.

You know the math doesn't add up for them, so.

Yeah, I mean.

Obviously it's important to say I have also dated people, didn't think they were attractive, but physically at all and then, but I was attracted to them because they were smart and funny and it had things. But I think that a lot of people had the same experience like in you know ending up with dating someone who didn't think they would be attracted to. But I think that that's

not going to happen.

Anymore if people rely on, you know on the in app in which the feature is the thing they are supposed to judge it a personal. So again, I think that from this perspective, by the Internet's really I mean in a sense it's creating more opportunity to meet a partner, because now you can meet people living on the side of the wall, then start charging to them.

And you can chat with you know 10 different people in a day, but.

It has really given.

Physical attractiveness, a prominence that it didn't.

It didn't used to have before, Fortunately, so there is something we can we can do that and obviously also that people have different. I study preferences and sense, so I think there are limits to that. There are some people that everybody considered considers an attractive, and some people that everybody considers active, but within that you know.

I keep talking about.

Attractiveness and unattractiveness. But what I really mean is like beauty and ugliness, because attractiveness is, is is a more complex phenomenon.

And I think we can be attractive when we have like some some other features, but those features need time to be discovered and be familiar with, and if we're only stopped by this curse interaction in which you know we stumble, attractiveness then becomes very hard. And again they did. This map was made that very, very difficult.

Almost like the I don't know you spent way more time in these definitions than I have attractiveness and beauty. It's almost that like sexiness.

Is the word that were really criticizing here 'cause it has a more revolutionary kind of appeal to it, yeah?

Yeah, I use physical readiness for places because that's the term is used usually in the literature. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's the best when you look at it from, you know.

Because you know, being attractive is the capacity to attract people to you, probably at number reason. Which physical attractiveness obviously plays an important role, but it's not the whole story. As many of us have experienced in their life. So for.

A defense of the word attraction I my favorite definition of it is the opposite of attractiveness is not ugly. It's boring being on yeah, so being non boring is away and we know that is.

Is an attractive quality in all kinds of ways an that? Maybe that's what actually needs to be promoted more than as you're saying, physical attraction or sexiness as being can sexiness. You know, it's not boring in some regard, but it's boring and a lot of other. Or it doesn't guarantee non boredom. And the things that obviously matter when it comes to hiring someone or a mate or anything.

Yeah, yeah exactly. And you know this very obvious when you hire someone as you were saying. But also like when you.

In your personal interaction, you don't want to be stuck with a person who is really beautiful, but it's also incredibly boring. You know going to have a good life, so there is some some balance there that we need to find.

Maybe we should end it there. It's a nice. It's a nice sort of hopeful, you know, peak of light in an otherwise kind of depressing conversation, so maybe shouldn't there. So if people want to find out more about you, your website has all kinds of, like your academic writing and publications and videos at the best place for people to interact with. Yes.

Yes, it's just francescaminerva.com right? Yes, great, easy to remember. Well thanks so much. That was like super.

So much.

So I really enjoyed that conversation and I hope that there was plenty for you to take away from it as well. Appan listening and editing. I lament the lack of solutions that were offered here. Lookism seems to be such a difficult problem to address, but I do think it's day is coming. Here's some of my closing thoughts.

What's odd to me is that we have decided that certain levels of extreme unattractiveness should be met with sympathy and charities. I'm thinking here of cleft lip advertisements on the subway. If you've seen them Operation Smile as a charity that's been around for 38 years now and perform surgeries on this birth defect, the defect can have minor medical dangers such as difficulty cycling for babies, though that can be pretty easily overcome with custom bottles.

For the most part, the defect if we can call it that is that it renders the person less attractive and the upturn in the lip is considered unsightly.

It also appears at birth in babies looking at a baby. Reminds us just so obviously how they didn't choose to be born and are innocent. They very recently played the bizarre Wheel of Fortune veil of Ignorance Game from the opening segment of this episode.

Their lifestyle choices or diet or exercise can hardly be a factor for their appearance as three month olds, this cleft lip is just pure chance.

We also hold the same kind of sympathetic view for people with abnormal growths or strange birthmarks or other kinds of deformities, especially on their faces, but these seem to be special cases where the physical manifestation of something unattractive is just very obvious and common enough to be considered an unfortunate condition, which we should intervene in incorrect for anyone so unlikely to have been struck with them.

But somehow we harbor a strange disdain for people who simply think their nose is a little too large or chin too weak.

Presumably as babies, these features looked fine, but as an adult they grew oddly and now are out of place. We react as though these kind of unattractive conditions don't amount to a sympathetic bad break, and that we should set up charities to fix fixing slightly off noses through plastic surgery feels unnecessary in vain, and some people get the distinct feeling like it's somehow cheating to correct them, even though again, no one would dispute that they're just as randomly dispersed.

As a baby with a cleft lip.

I'm not entirely sure what's happening here, and it sounds like Francesca isn't either, but we can all see the problems. Dangers that this kind of aesthetic obsession is causing us. I have a guess and a strange analogy of what could be going on.

Perhaps we have a kind of evolutionary mate seeking playground in our minds, something like an amusement park ride, but at the entrance instead of a sign reading. You must be this tall to ride this ride. There is a post that says you must be at least this attractive to be able to compete at all in there.

We think everyone has a right to enter, so we'll fix that growth or cleft lip. But a big nose or a small chin or heavy brow. Those all passed the test, so you get to enter the playground of society and have a fair chance.

But this analogy fails because the roller coaster is fun for everyone who gets to ride it and everyone at every height as long as they meet the minimum requirements. What we know is that the playground of life is more fun and more lucrative when one has more attractive points.

This is now starting to sound a bit like a sympathetic manifesto for the Incel community. If you were somehow first encountering that word in sell, it stands for involuntary celibate. I peered into their online community a bit out of curiosity, and the darkness of their discourse is disturbing and unhelpful. There certainly are plenty of teenagers who just need to relax, wait for their acne to clear up, and work on their confidence. But their plight is not completely imagined. And in the philosophical community, we should think of genuine solutions that are more creative than that.

Ugly Angel that swells in them.

Let's also take a moment to consider that not all signals of physical attractiveness are just dice rolls of genetics, but much of it is signaling of values.

If someone is very fit and lean and you find them attractive, this makes sense in that those appearances might be the result of good hygiene, self care, good dieten discipline, all good values to display as a parent or romantic partner.

Someone very overweight and dirty might be signaling laziness and impulsive iti and selfishness, which might make you think twice about partnering with them and folding their genes into yours.

This of course is just experienced as not being attracted to someone or being even repulsed by someone.

So physical attraction is obviously very complex and we're dealing with a lot of factors here. Those who wish to deny the truth of evolution and say things like physical attraction is entirely a social construct, are sadly unlikely to be very helpful here.

The tension between the brackets of our evolved senses.

In the case of this episode, sexual attraction for certain phenotypic traits and our moral explorations of what we know is right is going to be a theme not just for Season 2 of dilemma but for the human species in the next 100 years. I think we can see the moral path somewhat clearly with something like lookism. When we recall the veil of ignorance, thought experiment. From the standpoint of that simple lottery of life, which reminds us that our physical attractiveness before the aid of makeup, plastic surgery, or our lifestyle choices.

Like diet or exercise is just as random as our height, hair color or skin color.

And thus discrimination and biases based upon it are just as vile as the racism we always hear so much about.

Francesca finds a moral correction rightfully with the elevation of the notion of beauty rather than physical attraction.

Beauty being the kind of deeper worth of a person in a more perfect world, this would matter more than signaling sexual appeal through the blind impulses of evolution to procreate and duplicate genes. But climbing that mountain is fighting a part of who we are that is deeply entrenched as we so often have to do. In philosophy, we have to ponder if we want to transcend our evolution and craft a more moral world around us, and if so, how. As Francesca points out.

Perhaps the first step is to simply become aware of the bias in the 1st place. I'm glad she's on the case. I encourage you to seek out some of her publications on her site, not all of them are in English, by the way, but most have translations, and if you are interested in further reading and digging into some of the data we mentioned, Daniel Hamermesh wrote a book called Beauty Pays. Why attractive people are more successful? Which is plenty of data and tries to calculate the beauty gap. There's also a book titled The Beauty Bias by Deborah Rd.

Which focuses a bit more on the legal aspects of discrimination against unattractive people. I hope this topic gets plenty of attention and I trust if you pay a bit of mind to it in your daily life, you'll find it everywhere.

Episode 2 is a bittersweet episode. I recorded it with Emily Thomas, who wrote a book this year called The Meaning of Travel, and it hit the shelves just about. At the same time that coronavirus ground international travel to a halt, but we had a lovely conversation about her absolutely charming book. We shared stories of our travels and life, and we take a stroll through her book, which is full of fascinating histories of the philosophy of travel, and has tons of beautiful and funny stories with anecdotes like.

Bear leaders of the Grand Tour in Europe Village in Alaska, where it is always Christmas. A reexamination of the word sublime, and if man made objects can amount to it, the political complexities of mapmaking and a nod to a genuinely American addition to philosophy, which I, as a beleaguered American at the moment, can celebrate. You may also be hearing that I'm recording this little bit outside. I think that's also going to be a bit of a theme for Season 2, as some of my in person recordings.

With Coleman and other guests are going to be recorded outside, which of course at the moment is a bit safer and easier to accomplish with social distancing. So thank you so much. Enjoy Season 2, find me in 2 weeks.