Beyond Letters and Numbers

11:59 PM

Aestheticism is extremely important. As someone who has developed video games, the graphics do not have to look like how they look. They can just be squares or circles, and just have a stat number to them like health and attack power. A weapon can just be a square, being held by a circle character, and an attack with no animation would just reduce the health of the opponent, another circle, by a number. Yet, characters in games are often fleshed out and detailed, so are their weapons, so are the enemies, and so are the attacks with all the animation.

If everything were viewed logically, everything on the screen can just be square objects with data. There doesn't have to be a walking animation. There doesn't have to be any color. It could just be squares on a screen walking around and doing quests and fighting enemies. However, that would make for a pretty boring game. That's how I noticed that aestheticism, or the way things look, matters.

Why is it that being fat looks unattractive, but having six pack abs and muscles looks really attractive? I think humans have an innate ability to sense the health of other humans, through appearance, and it's muscles and abs that looks universally attractive to us, while fat looks unhealthy. I don't think beauty and health are social constructs, they are universal traits that every human judges the same. I don't think I was taught in school to view abs as attractive, and fat as unattractive, I would just see them in the movies and instantly know which was which.

Isn't that interesting, that people can be universally attractive, aesthetically speaking? I don't think anyone finds an obese person attractive, or a senior woman more than a woman in her early 20s. We have to be objectively speaking here, to their spouse, an obese woman can be attractive, or a senior woman attractive, but that's based more from personality and experience, and building a bond and relationship with that person, over just aesthetic beauty.

Skins ages and changes over time too. Why is it that we find unwrinkled skin more attractive than wrinkled skin? Blemish-free skin over blemished skin? I don't think blemishes matter much for guys though, as scars and other "battle damage" can be attractive to women, but clear skin on a woman looks really attractive to guys. The shape of the skin matters too, the shape is influenced by fat and muscle, with muscle looking aesthetically more pleasing and attractive than fat. It is an instinctual view too, we just know right away if someone's body looks good or not, from a single glance.

Faces also impact how a person looks. Based on studies, it's facial symmetry, but also indescribable factors that looks attractive. The people in the "incel forums" have given some facial features, these indescribable factors, names, or actually just found the scientific names for them, and it's sometimes a meme online. I'm going to make up a term here because I don't know any of them, but let's say "acturnial jowl" is a thing, and it's this part in between someone's cheeks and jaw, and it looks attractive based on some measurable degree. Scientists actually study these things, and come up with names for them, but aesthetically speaking, we can just detect these instantly.

It's interesting that someone's face can look attractive or not, based on instantly viewable factors. Just from a tiny bit of sag or aged skin, we can instantly tell whether someone is older or younger. Based on symmetry, amount of fat on the face, and other facial features, we can tell if someone is attractive or not aesthetically. We can instantly judge whether someone looks good, just by looking at their face. Of course most people are average, and then you have beauties like, I'd say, Margot Robbie who have a 10/10 face. I'd say Wahl has a 10/10 face, she is extremely gorgeous and she doesn't put on any makeup (her body is a 10/10 too). I'd say Godfrey Gao has a 10/10 face.

Just like the ELO rating system, we can really only rank aesthetic qualities in comparison to others. I'd say people like Cara Delevingne (in 2012) have a face that's in the top 0.01%. I would put Kali Roses (from her earlier years too), the porn model, up there too, in the 0.01%, as well as Wahl. No offense to anyone, but we do change over time, at some point we do reach our "prime" in which we are the best looking version of ourselves, and after that is just decline, with no way around it except to just slow it down like Bryan Johnson has.

Instinctively, but also confirmed by studies, we can tell how attractive we are just by looking in the mirror. We can tell if we are someone aesthetically good looking, or someone that isn't, just by looking in the mirror. We can tell if our hair is okay, how our teeth are, how our skin is, and so on, just by looking in the mirror. For me, I think I am pretty decent looking, but I am just fat, and I hate that about myself. There have been moments in which I have been below 170 pounds, and I looked great, when the fat on my face was a lot less.

We look better when we're lighter, and have a good muscle ratio, with near minimal body fat. I know I would look great at 150 pounds, with decent muscle, but I haven't reached it yet, I haven't gone below 170 pounds in nearly a decade. People don't believe that I am overweight or obese, and people don't think I can look any better. I really want to show off how good I can actually look, when I weigh my perfect weight. To compare, Guy is around the same height as me, but he weighs 50 pounds less. Eric is also around the same height as me, and he weighs 30 pounds less. If they were my weight, they would look obese and not great at all, for me, I look great for my weight, and I know I look so much better lighter.

I've only glimpsed at how I looked below 170 pounds, and I looked good enough to be in video. I've never seen what I could look like at 150 pounds while still young and supple, and I really want to. I also know the time window for me to look my best is limited. We get older every day, and we look slightly less and less as good than previous, if we're already "over the hump" of our prime. I think I'm already over the hump of my prime, if I were 150 pounds at 25 years old, I'd look better than 150 pounds at 30 years old. But, since I never reached below 170 pounds after I turned 23, I would look better under 170 pounds at 30 than over 180 pounds at 25.

Anyway, numbers and letters are interesting. They both show a "language", I am just using the word language because there is no word yet that conveys this idea I'm about to demonstrate. Each letter or digit, is like a puzzle piece that you can add to other puzzle pieces to create a coherent result. Each letter I add to each word, creates a longer word, and the words can produce a sentence, and reading these sentences conveys ideas. A number is also just another "language", with symbols like the plus or minus sign to convey different operations with the numbers, sort of like periods and commas.

These interactions and operations between the symbols are completely arbitrary. Periods convey an end to a sentence, a pause to the ideas being conveyed. A plus sign conveys adding two numbers together. and ending in a result. The "languages" also have rules, such as having spaces in-between words, or that in math everything has a correct answer and it will always be that answer no matter what.

Musical notes are another "language". The placement of the notes can convey the tone, with the shape or color noting how long to play the note for, or how the transition is between two notes. There can be lyrics added to be sung, and different instruments may have different rules for their notes, such as the difference between woodwinds and percussion instruments for example.

There was some point in history where musical notes weren't invented yet, so there wasn't a way to convey music in this organized manner. There was also a time in which the numbers today, and even the letters we use today, weren't invented yet. I am wondering if there will be another more common "language" in the future, conveying some sort of idea we haven't even conceptualized yet? Maybe there can be a language for hand movement for example. Drawing certain symbols with certain rule-sets determines where to place the hands, how much force to use, what the fingers are doing, where the elbow is bending, and so on. I mean that's a "language" I just made up just now, and it is totally and completely viable. It is something that can be invented at some point in the future.

I am just wondering what kind of other concepts would be translated into a "language" someday? It might be dance. Maybe there could be a language for dance in general? Maybe facial expressions? I understand these can all be drawn or recorded on video, but I'm talking about a "language" to easily convey these concepts without video. We can speak words too, we can play instruments too, and have them on video, but we can also have it in writing.

Anyway. Today I didn't do much. I worked for a bit. I watched some videos. I did some math. I played some Beat Saber. And that was it. I'd write more, but I am pretty sleepy. I didn't do much today, but I learned a decent amount through this sort of introspection.