I guess this is the scientific term for horny.

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.

Of course there's always Leah Culver, who's just plain hot no matter how you slice it.

Sometimes it was hard to concetrate, but sometimes it was actually motivating. It brought the competitiveness out of me, and I actually was pretty productive, while i was not thinking about stuff.....

But the upside of the whole thing that I drank a lot of water, since the kitchen was on that way, and I got to upgrade my wardrobe to look good.

Since then, I started dressing much better.

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)

I was somewhat nonplussed by this statement until I read this:

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/nonplussed?view=uk

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.

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)

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".

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".

EDIT: Looking at the spouses of supermodels or the super rich is probably unhelpful in gauging the behavior of most of the population.

The question has never been "is attractiveness a factor" but "how big of a factor is it". So a study that artificially boosts the importance of one factor is useless is answering that question

Also, why aren't supermodels relevant? I think they're the most relevant in that their physical beauty makes their choices almost limitless so when they choose an unattractive man it shows how little that aspect means to them.

Supermodels aren't relevant because they lie so far outside the norm, and can't be used to predict the behavior of a typical woman (even a very attractive woman).

Are women more flexible about their partner's attractiveness based on other factors? Maybe, but without any kind of research, it's all conjecture and confirmation bias.

The 'challenge' theory also applies to guys who are married or who have girlfriends --- it is a challenge

If you can hold an actual conversation, then you can also be judged on personality, intelligence, humor, etc.

So if you want to 'fight outside your weight class', keep your tongue inside your mouth.

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...

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

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?

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.

Yes they have. In any statistic, you can introduce bias (many times without even knowing), the most common one being selection bias.

For example, I'd bet that the results for this research done on men coming from fields that are male-dominated (like engineering, finance), are totally different from the results of men coming from female-dominated fields.

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.

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).

>their kids

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

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.

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."