
Men lose their minds speaking to pretty women - timr
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6132718/Men-lose-their-minds-speaking-to-pretty-women.html
======
dtf
_When a man meets a pretty woman, he is what we call 'reproductively
focused'._

I guess this is the scientific term for horny.

~~~
electromagnetic
I wouldn't call it reproductively focused, that's _way_ more than most men
think when they meet a pretty woman. I'd say carnally focused; reproductively
focused comes a few hours later if they've forgotten a condom.

~~~
TriinT
I would still call it "reproductively focused". Condoms and being legally
forced to support your biological kids have both been invented since we
stopped evolving ;-)

~~~
xiaoma
we haven't stopped evolving

~~~
TriinT
I was being facetious...

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rottencupcakes
Being software engineers, I don't think we need to worry about pretty women in
the workplace degrading our work performance.

Hacker News itself is 94% male, according to the poll that was up a while ago.
That's a ratio that goes unmatched at the nerdiest tech schools.

~~~
tricky
Yeah, but there are always those women who are "IT" hot. You know, the ones
that wouldn't get a second glance out in the bars, but look pretty good in the
workplace talking about hardware and whatnot.

~~~
dgabriel
And the men are also "IT" hot, so it evens out.

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wallflower
One of my sister's friends, a short average looking bald gay man is constantly
hit on by very attractive women (he lives and works in NYC). He says it might
be due to the fact that he is totally non-plussed by beautiful women (since he
has no sexual interest in them)

There is always desensitization training. In one day, you could probably
approach fifty attractive women and effectively tame your fear. I've never
done that, and I think it would be a courageous (courage comes after the
action) personal exercise (probably to attempt in a city you do not live in)

~~~
TomOfTTB
My dad acted in the Theatre and so I had been doing Theatre tech since about
11 years old (and have many, many beautiful women as friends). With that
experience in mind I can verify you sister's friend's claim.

When you come right down to it there are two things you have to realize about
women.

1\. As hard as it is for Men to comprehend the truth is attractiveness isn't
that high on a woman's list. It's not that women don't like an attractive man
it's just lower on the list. Here's an example I use to explain it to men. I,
as someone who dated a lot of theatre women, like dating professional dancers
(for reasons I won't be so crass as to spell out here). But I'll certainly be
interested in a beautiful, smart, funny woman who isn't a dancer.
Attractiveness to women is like being a dancer to me. It's a plus but not a
deal breaker. Hence "average looking bald guy" isn't necessarily a deterrent.

2\. Attracting women in general boils down to one simple concept: Stand out
from the crowd in a good way. No women wants a guy that seems average to her.
So when your sister's gay friend shows a lack of interest in a woman every
other man drools over it makes that woman wonder why and gives the guy a sense
of mystery to him. Hence he stands out in an appealing way which makes women
want to take a shot with him and see why he's different.

~~~
ch1x0r
It seems to me that men would actually very much like to believe that women
don't care about attractiveness, but we do. If it was the case that women
don't care about attractiveness, why is it that (if research is to be
believed) most couples tend to be about the same level of attractiveness?
Probably because women actually do very much care about attractiveness. Is it
possible to have some personality attribute that would outweigh average or
below-average looks? Yes, but not nearly as common as most men it seems would
like to believe. I am having a hard time buying the hot women hitting on
average bald gay guy story. It is fun to flirt with gay men, definitely, but
not because we actually want to get with them, and NYC women know how to spot
gay men. There's something missing to this friend of a friend of a sister of
a... story.

~~~
TomOfTTB
First, might I suggest you read a comment before replying to it. I never said
women didn't care about attractiveness in fact I said just the opposite.

Second, most couples in my experience aren't of equal levels of attractiveness
(and I'd like to see the research you quote because I don't know how levels of
attractiveness could be gauged effectively enough to conduct such research).
In fact, I'd say just the opposite in that there is legitimate research that
says women are prone to date/marry men older than they are which would mean
other traits rank higher than attractiveness (which of course fades as we
age).

Beyond that, looking at the extreme, have you ever looked at the husbands of
SuperModels?

Like Paulina Porizkova:
<http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/9066/paulinaqv6.jpg>

Or Heidi Klum: <http://www.clevelandleader.com/files/heidisealbaby.jpg> (I
love ya Seal but that stuff on your face is weird)

~~~
geebee
You didn't say that women don't care about attractiveness, but you did say
that attractiveness "isn't all that high on a woman's list." So while your
position was a bit misrepresented, I don't think you can quite claim to have
said "the opposite."

This is all a question of degree. I do think that physical attractiveness does
play a very big role in both directions. But clearly women do place a somewhat
lower premium on it than men do.

Just to add to the anecdotal useleness, rich men do attract women, but women
swoon over Brad Pitt or that twilight star waaaaaay more than they every will
over "the donald".

~~~
xiaoma
Brad Pitt is both rich and famous. I'm not sure he does much to make your
point.

At 46 years old, Brad Pitt is also about twice the age of the women who get
the most attention from men. In order to make a fairer comparison, imagine a
man who's very handsome, but whose career and overall signals of success are
on par with the physical attractiveness of "the donald".

------
10ren
Self-consciousness lowers competence.

 _I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about
equally unreal. With all humility, I think 'whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
do it with thy might,' infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love
one's neighbour as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must
have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and
equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbour; you must be living
with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing._ \-
Oliver Wendell Holmes
[http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/topics/ability_and_ach...](http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/topics/ability_and_achievement_quotes.html)

OTOH, A simpler hypothesis is that the blood supply available to their brains
was reduced by the interaction.

~~~
jonsen
Men have got two brains, but only enough blood to supply one at a time.

------
bad_user
I could tell you that without a "research study". And any of my grandparents
were also aware of it.

These kind of studies leave me a bad taste. It's as if they ran out of funds
and want to produce something entertaining that sells stories and that looks
like real research.

It also promotes sexism. I mean, what would be the natural conclusion coming
out of such a study? Stay away from beautiful women? Don't hire them because
you'll go nuts?

~~~
restruct
Unless they fake the data, researchers do not have control over the results.

Yet I hope the article is not being upvoted as startup advice: "Don't hire
beautiful women."

Perhaps heterosexual men can also train themselves to think of beautiful women
as people first instead of as sex objects primarily.

~~~
joeyo
True, but don't discount the importance of _interpretation_ of results.

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omouse
fuck this noise, take this pseudo-science off of hacker news please.

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acg
In my experience women are far more self-conscious meeting the opposite sex,
displaying a complete range of behaviour from being nasty to people they like
through to completely avoiding them because they can't cope. It seems this is
one of those articles destined for women's magazines.

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stcredzero
There is something in women which evolved for millions of years. Like many
products of natural selection, it is highly complex. It works on many levels,
some of which are banal, some of which are fascinating on the deepest
intellectual and aesthetic levels.

It drives me crazy how many women hold themselves in low esteem. (I think it's
worse in the US.) Even the plainest, most homely woman can light up given the
right circumstance.

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msie
Oh man, it happens to me all the time and I make the same mistakes every time.
I just cannot prevent it!!! :(

~~~
arithmetic
I wonder who funds "research" like this. And where do they do studies of this
sort? The "duh" school of research?

~~~
roundsquare
<http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38575>

------
roundsquare
Hmm, I wonder if this happens if men are trying to impress women with their
intelligence. There was an article on HN a little while ago about how women
are attracted to intelligence.

~~~
bendtheblock
I thought it was about how women _aren't_ primarily attracted to intelligence
(unless you mean a different article)?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=567807>

~~~
roundsquare
It was this one actually. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=799344>

However, its only about birds... I'd forgotten that.

Oh well, I still wonder if it happens to guys who are trying to show off their
intelligence (probably a decent strategy in some limited circumstances).

~~~
Sutibu
The general impression I've gotten is they go for pure animal magnetism when
looking for a good fuck, and sensitivity, intelligence etc. when looking for
some chump to help raise their kids.

~~~
Herring
>chump

>their kids

You're apparently not going to be winning any parenting awards.

~~~
xiaoma
Are there special parenting awards for mistakenly raising another man's kids?

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yosho
wow, thank you captain obvious...

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electronslave
Awesome. This totally precipitated the requisite defensive responses from the
younger crowd.

Put this in your pipe and smoke it: press release interpretations (especially
of gender studies) are playground arguments, in this case over whether guys or
girls are better. If you didn't get it out of your system then, you're
probably still in it.

That is, the only people who care about the outcome are those sad, insecure
souls who think every generalized test of some self-confirming experiment
likely crafted in a Ritalined-up haze by a disingenuous grad student MUST
apply to them.

Need proof? What is this experiment testing? Would you put college kids in a
computer lab for an hour to test general rules about gender and attraction in
society? No. No you wouldn't.

No, HN, this study is not very good, and neither is the silly reporting about
it. But if you want, you can have social awkwardness as a door prize.

------
Sutibu
We need science to tell us this?

~~~
lutorm
We do. Just because something that was found to be true sounds completely
plausible a posteriori doesn't mean everything that sounds plausible a priori
is true.

I remember Al Gore quoting Mark Twain in an Inconvenient Truth: "It's not the
things we don't know that gets us into trouble, it's the things we know for
sure that just aint so."

------
nazgulnarsil
reproductive organ is a redundancy.

