[ExI] Fashion

[Anders Sandberg]

On 05/05/2013 08:50, Giulio Prisco wrote:
> My own coolness standard is simple: I don't think about coolness at
> all. I tend to buy cheap but solid clothes that may last for decades,
> with simple colors without labels and decorations. When I wake up, I
> wear the first clean things that I find. The message that I try to
> give is "there is no message here."

Which typically is very cool. Note that one element of coolness is that 
you are not supposed to look like you are trying to be cool.

One could make some evo psych argument that insofar coolness is about 
signalling fitness, making sure the coolness signal looks like an honest 
signal rather than something one deliberately works on is a way of 
amplifying it.

But there is also the peace of mind and timesaving argument: caring too 
much about being cool wastes enormous amounts of effort, money and time 
(just witness teenagers as a kind of caricature of this tendency). In 
fact, XKCDs excellent table of how much time it is worth to optimize 
one's habits ( https://xkcd.com/1205/ ) suggests that it is probably 
worthwhile to spend several hours (for example by shopping smart) now to 
shave off 30 seconds of indecision at the wardrobe each day.


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University