<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 05/05/2013 04:57, Harvey Newstrom
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:005b01ce4944$aab5fba0$0021f2e0$@HarveyNewstrom.com"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1">
<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered
medium)">
<style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Consolas;
panose-1:2 11 6 9 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:black;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
pre
{mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-link:"HTML Preformatted Char";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New";
color:black;}
p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph
{mso-style-priority:34;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:black;}
span.HTMLPreformattedChar
{mso-style-name:"HTML Preformatted Char";
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-link:"HTML Preformatted";
font-family:Consolas;
color:black;}
span.EmailStyle20
{mso-style-type:personal;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:windowtext;}
span.EmailStyle21
{mso-style-type:personal;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle22
{mso-style-type:personal;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle23
{mso-style-type:personal;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle24
{mso-style-type:personal-reply;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
font-size:10.0pt;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
--></style><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapedefaults v:ext="edit" spidmax="1026" />
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapelayout v:ext="edit">
<o:idmap v:ext="edit" data="1" />
</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]-->
<div class="WordSection1"><span style="font-family:"Times New
Roman","serif";color:windowtext">Makes sense to
me. People would remember compliments or complaints from
their target audience. The only feedback they would hear or
pay attention to would be those. They may not even realize
that different targets could have different color
preferences. They may be merely going with what “everybody”
seems to tell them about colors. If they never hear the
non-target audience feedback, they may not really be making
choices at all.</span><br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
This probably also explains a lot of non-sexual clothing selection
like dressing to fit with a workplace. You pay attention to signals
from the boss or social trendsetter since their approval is
important. Which incidentally fits in with a piece of advice in
Dress for Success that notes that businessmen should not let their
wives or mothers select their clothes: if the goal is to send
signals to work-mates (and the wife does not work in the same
environment) then her advice is likely to be slightly off-target.<br>
<br>
Of course, workplace clothing is often utilitarian and more about
signalling conformism. I felt like a dangerous outsider in my
pinstripe *grey* suit last week when I was exploring the insurance
district of London: everybody could tell I was not one of them.
(Seeing a horde of identically dressed insurance underwriters emerge
from Lloyds at exactly one o'clock and making their way to the
nearest sushi take-away is one of the great natural wonders of the
world.)<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 05/05/2013 05:13, Andrew Mckee
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:op.wwlfb8ek0wog37@nikita" type="cite">It might
be a cute idea, but I tend to follow the medical research
suggesting gay, lesbian and trans-gender people really do have a
brain that is gender opposite to the rest of their body.
Following the correct dress sense for a woman trapped in a male
body trying to attract a straight man or another female brain
trapped in a mans body, gives me a headache. :-) <br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well, the evidence is mildly complicated. It seems that some
hypothalamic systems of gay men and straight women are somewhat
similar in the hypothalamus region, limbic functional connectivity
and brain asymmetry (
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/06/13/0801566105.abstract">http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/06/13/0801566105.abstract</a> )
but various studies (especially olfactory and pharmacological ones,
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.pnas.org/content/103/21/8269.abstract">http://www.pnas.org/content/103/21/8269.abstract</a> ) seem to suggest
that lesbian women do not have exactly male brains. I think it is
likely that there are basic developmental differences at the bottom,
but then these get expressed in a highly learning-specific way.
Things are not terribly deterministic, and one should not be overly
essentialist about sexual orientation. It is more about what people
tend to do and feel than a particular well-defined state.<br>
<br>
So my first order guess is that if you want to figure out what group
X likes, you should try asking group X (or watch revealed
preferences in their behaviour). If you cannot or dare not, asking
group Y that has somewhat similar preferences might work, but
introduces noise. If you go to group Z that is also trying to
impress group X, they might have figured out tricks you do not know.
Of course, it might be that they are actually trying to impress an
actually different group (like gay men being mostly concerned with
gay men), so there is some reason to be sceptical there. So my
second order approach would be to listen to advice or information
from all these groups and combine it: there are probably robust
patterns that would be true despite the filtering effects, and these
are strong enough to care about. Combined expert sets typically
outperform individuals on messy pattern matching. Inter-individual
differences in what people like are anyway pretty big, so trying to
exactly match advice or what some example person likes is bound to
be biasing (except if you have a particular person in mind you want
to impress, of course). <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University </pre>
</body>
</html>