I was looking forward to a blog entry when I misread the first sentence as "A lot of people seem to rate people on their books."

The average rating should be 5, so you should rate people a 5 quite often, and I'd say that the standard deviation should be about 1. Mathematically, 68% of the people you rate should be in-between 4 and 6. 95% of people should be in-between 3 and 7. 99.7% of people should be in-between 2 and 8.

Now, I don't think you necessarily need to go about this in such a way as to ensure mathematically accurate distribution. What if you think that the most attractive person isn't that much more attractive than the average one, while the least attractive are far below average? Or vice versa? Wouldn't it make sense for such a person to have a baseline other than 5?

And what about the increasing ease of access to and increasing quality of cosmetic products, or people's tendency to be more attracted to people from their own time? That would lead to people from history being rated lower on average, or if the scale was adjusted to account, people of the present being rated higher.

Granted, you could probably include the period of history someone's from as the context you mentioned, but I don't think the first problem I mentioned could be solved in that way.

So what you're saying is that to some people, the average person is fairly attractive?  I guess I see where you're coming from.  My sister will see a picture of an average person and think "That looks very good the way that they are, and doesn't need anything changed."  Although I suppose that the whole point of rating people isn't necessarily to say that everyone looks equally good.

Anyway, I guess that 5 could be someone that you're neither attracted nor repulsed by, and have a fairly neutral opinion on, and for all I know, that could be a small minority of the population.  I mean, for all I know, the average person to you might be slightly attractive to you, and ugly people are the exception, so that would make sense for a reason why someone might not make 5 their baseline rating.  Me, personally, I think that ugly people are the norm and that attractive people are the exception, to if I were to skew one way or the other, I'd probably rate people 4 more often than 6.

You bring up some interesting points.

24601

Uh. How do you not see anything wrong with this, why is rating people on a numerical scale not considered horrible? I mean, it doesn't even work that well for rating products like video games and movies, and you want to boil everything a person is, in their entirety, to a number?

Why is that okay?

Uh. How do you not see anything wrong with this, why is rating people on a numerical scale not considered horrible? I mean, it doesn't even work that well for rating products like video games and movies, and you want to boil everything a person is, in their entirety, to a number?

Why is that okay?

There's so much more to people than their actions, looks, background, personality, etc etc that you can't just boil it down to and dismiss the entirety of someone as a number

Why is it that people never seem to notice the part below the entry title that says "Posted by Jean Valjean, in Humor?"

I have never actually rated anyone before writing this entry, when I rated Hepburn, Kennedy, and Bale.

Also, anything can be defined through math if you're a good enough of a mathematician.  I'm a firm believer of this.  I love numbers.

24601

Why do you claim to write this entry in 'humor' and then continue on with defending the point of the original entry?

Rating someone is on the same concept as putting people in "good" and "bad" categories. If you average out anyone's actions, appearance, personality, intentions, etc and then dismiss someone as that number, you get a number that probably says nothing about that person. To use an example that you used, say there's a single mother that abused her children. Now that's obviously a bad thing, but take into consideration her most likely abusive upbringing and probable drug and drug addiction. You can't fault her for being abused as a child, and the drug/alcohol addiction was probably a result of that upbringing and childhood, and possible peer pressure or other situatuonal factors. Ultimately, ff she tries to do the right thing but her reality has been so skewed by those factors, does that make her a "bad" person? Should she deserve a bad rating because of things that were more or less out of her control?

I personally find that if you look for the potential in someone, then you can see the world from a less cynical way.

OK, one: I could not see that tag on my device. Two: saying something is humor does not give you a free pass to say whatever you want and then pull the "I didn't actually mean it" card and avoid all criticism. Three: this is not humorous or otherwise amusing. Four: numbers, while useful, have their limits and tend to lack things such as context. Philosophy for example, tends to have little to do with math.

While I don't personally engage in the practice of rating people, I understand what it's all about.  It's basically a practice in trying to quanify just how attractive you find someone.  And there you go; there's the variable that it all boils down to, and that's why I don't think of this as some meaningless multivariable thing.  "How attractive do I subjectively find someone?"  And I suppose that you can attach a number to that.  I've been asked to attach a number to similar things.  "On a scale of 1 to 10, how depressed are you?"  I have to answer questions like that all the time.

I also hope that people realize that this blog isn't what it used to.  I rarely write entries where I try to communicate ideas that I sincerely believe in.  For the most part, I have a sarcastic, cynical sense of humor, and I find cynical things amusing.  Such as the rating system, and how it often doesn't make sense, so I poke fun of it.  When read this entry to some of my friends, they found it amusing, which just goes to show that humor is a bit subjective.  Maybe you don't see the humor in it, but that doesn't mean that others can't.

And finally, you can bet your butt that I can bring mathematics into philosophy.  I absolutely love doing it.  It's a fun challenge, and it's very satisfying.

24601

Rating someone based on their looks is not the only variable you suggested in your original entry. Even if that was what you were suggesting, that's a big problem unto itself.

Also, if I interpreted the entry different than you intended, that is not my problem. I saw nothing overtly humorous in the entire entry. It all looked very serious to me, and I'm not the only one who interpreted it that way. If you want it to be recognized as a joke, maybe put a "/s" or a little note at the bottom so that people who don't know you or people that don't regularly read your blog don't have to leave its meaning to their own interpretation.

I didn't say that rating someone based on how attractive they were was the same thing as rating them based off of their looks.

And yes, I think that it's your problem that you interpreted my blog differently than I intended.  I labeled it "humor."  And even if I hadn't, I also saw someone on Youtube make a video on essentially the same thing as this, and though he kept a straight face, I knew to interpret him as being humorous.  And hey, I thought it was funny, because I appreciate sarcasm.

24601

I didn't say that rating someone based on how attractive they were was the same thing as rating them based off of their looks.

 

And yes, I think that it's your problem that you interpreted my blog differently than I intended.  I labeled it "humor."  And even if I hadn't, I also saw someone on Youtube make a video on essentially the same thing as this, and though he kept a straight face, I knew to interpret him as being humorous.  And hey, I thought it was funny, because I appreciate sarcasm.

 

24601

But if you don't believe it then why did you post it, it doesn't read like satire and there doesn't appear to be a joke I'm not getting, so why post it? This is a legitimate problem people have to deal with and by writing this entry it seems that you either don't understand the problem or are okay with it. If you where going for satire you failed.

it is not their problem that they in interpenetrated it, I got the same message they did, and based on the upvote distribution, I'm not alone. You are in the minority. So why did so many people not find it humorous?

Again: 

OK, one: I could not see that tag on my device. Two: saying something is humor does not give you a free pass to say whatever you want and then pull the "I didn't actually mean it" card and avoid all criticism. Three: this is not humorous or otherwise amusing.