Just Looking: Check Out the Computational Topography on Her!
摘要
If beauty is visual cocaine, can—and should—we resist its addictive power? Ted Chiang’s story “Liking What You See: A Documentary” explores this question. It imagines a neuroenhancement that defeats “lookism.” This tendency, to favor physically attractive people—to judge books by their covers—may be ingrained in our evolutionary psychology. Calliagnosia (Calli) changes that. It allows users to see physical features like eye color or facial proportions objectively, without assigning aesthetic value to them. Thereby, it blunts any “halo effect” that might lead us to unduly attribute positive personality or moral or other social qualities to better looking people, and to favor them in decisions like hiring or romantic partnering. But does Calli really allow us to engage in fairer or what we might term “just” looking, and if so, should we be required to use it?