NP Comic for Thursday, Jan 5, 2023

[Darth Fluffy 302]

NP Comic for Thursday, Jan 5, 2023

Four more or less normal characters highlight the notion of beauty influencing charisma, in turn influencing persuasiveness.

Rich, meanwhile, reacts to their discussion as he recovers from a lightning strike. He appears to get better.

FWIW, I'm not on board with where the discussion is heading. Beauty is not the same thing as charisma. Some RPG, it might have been an edition of D&D, broke out physical beauty from charisma as comeliness.

Granted, there are correlations. In the age of video accessibility, a good looking politician will tend to do better than one who is not. But it is hardly the whole story.

Charisma has to do with credibility and trustworthiness. Self confidence is a big factor, as is competence and track record. Charisma is clearly tied to persuasiveness, but looks is a factor only, and not even the main one, otherwise Mitch McConnell would not be a leading republican, to pick an example. Ultimately, charisma means that you are willing to invest a level of your attention with the person who has it. In this sense, looks is more of an ice breaker than a deal maker, although it could also be a deciding factor if all other things are equal; a tie breaker.

Hotness is not a good synonym for looks in this case, because it leans more toward sexual attractiveness rather than appears competent. It is of limited specific utility in persuading others if they do not thing they have a shot with the speaker, and the limits of the topics of persuasion are more immediate, but not really tied to a sense of leadership necessarily - although, they can be.

What is most weird about this is that the framework of the comic is presenting a shallow view of looks as charisma as a major influence in how people interact, but, for the most part, they do not. You might appreciate how a server in a fast food facility looks, but if they can't get your order right, you are not going to give them a pass. The saying, 'Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes to the bone' highlights this; someone might look attractive, but when you get to know them, you quickly learn what they are really like and dislike them.

Yet this view is not entirely with out merit. We are very visual, much of our interaction is based on visual cues. People project a demeanor through the expression on their face and how they carry themselves. (Blind people compensate and become more sensitive to other cues.) Your outward appearance  has some correlation with the person inside.

There is yet another side to this, 'Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder'. Not everyone will see 'looks' the same. All kinds of biases and prejudices play in as well, as can relationship. A person you like will seem to look better than someone you do not. Racism and ethnic bias comes into play.

Not all persuasion is based on charisma. Neverwinter Nights, based on D&D 3, had a persuasion skill, but also listed an intimidation skill that accomplished pretty much the same thing.

So, to me, the train of thought running through the last set of comics misses the mark; I'm not convinced it's even plausible that a skeptical mayor is influenced by a bard's opinion merely because she looks good. Indeed, if he is, that might be a red flag to be wary of a secondary agenda on his part. Why is he granting unwarranted credence to what she says?

Larry and George are speaking in-character. It is unclear that Nanase is. Ellen apparently thinks so, too, because she is not speaking for a character, so she must be addressing Nanase.

So Rich's reactions: with Larry, he's having a difficult time separating the character from the person, it's too personal; with George, who he does not know as well, he's calming down, better able to accept it, with Nanase and Ellen, he is calm and confused, they are messing with his world view.

I have to admit, I'm not a fan of this direction for this comic sequence, but it made me think and in turn define some things that have seemed inconsistent for a long time.

 

 

 

 

 

[ijuin 572]

Ellen does have a point—her body is based on Tedd’s notion of ideal hotness as expressed in the design of FV5. She thus knows that her appearance was literally made to be hot.

55 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Granted, there are correlations. In the age of video accessibility, a good looking politician will tend to do better than one who is not. But it is hardly the whole story.

A good example of this would be the 1960 Kennedy vs. Nixon Presidential candidate debates, which were the first time that such debates had been televised in the US. Audiences who saw them on television were more favorable toward Kennedy than those who heard them on radio or read transcripts without seeing the candidates in action.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

A good example of this would be the 1960 Kennedy vs. Nixon Presidential candidate debates, which were the first time that such debates had been televised in the US. Audiences who saw them on television were more favorable toward Kennedy than those who heard them on radio or read transcripts without seeing the candidates in action.

I thought of that as an example, although Nixon had a fair amount of charisma as well. He had a lot going for him and was very popular when elected in '68. If he hadn't screwed up as badly as he did by being a paranoid, suspicious, vindictive bitch, he'd be remembered as a great leader. He accomplished a lot.

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

He accomplished a lot.

He created the mess that international trade is today.  If the PRC stayed inward focused it's highly likely that the US economy would still have a semi-major industrial component.  

[Darth Fluffy 302]

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

He created the mess that international trade is today.  If the PRC stayed inward focused it's highly likely that the US economy would still have a semi-major industrial component.  

That may be true. Less controversially, he defused much of the Cold War tension of his era, including opening up dialog with China (seems a bit out of character for a former HUAC member, no?). I suggest if you wish to explore this in detail we take it to the political thread.

[ChronosCat 155]

8 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

FWIW, I'm not on board with where the discussion is heading. Beauty is not the same thing as charisma. Some RPG, it might have been an edition of D&D, broke out physical beauty from charisma as comeliness.

Developments in D&D are probably fairly irrelevant to this storyline; Dan doesn't actually have a lot of experience with tabletop RPGs. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the game they're playing in story wound up influenced by some of the video games he plays. (I seem to recall appearance playing a large role in persuasiveness in Dan's "Parable" story/game, so this may be Dan playing around with the same ideas again.)

The part where it gets weird is when Nanase and Ellen talk about it as a phenomena they are concerned about in real life. Of course, as you said looks do play a part in how people react to one another in real life, but generally being good looking isn't enough. Considering what George said, I don't think this is Dan's mistake - I think Nanase and Ellen are supposed to be mistaken. But I suppose we'll have to wait and see to know for sure.

[mlooney 3,417]

11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Beauty is not the same thing as charisma. Some RPG, it might have been an edition of D&D, broke out physical beauty from charisma as comeliness.

Yeah, the "unearth arcane" book for 1st ed AD&D added the comeliness stat.  Wasn't kept for later editions, however they did explain that charisma was more than just good looks.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

There is only so much that looks, manners, clothes, or any of the multitude of personally controllable factors can do to improve your persuasive abilities, even if you see to all of them perfectly.  

But there is no limit to how much getting any of them wrong can damage your persuasiveness. 

[mlooney 3,417]

Of course you can, with some work, overcome the problems with being less than perfect in appearance and still be persuasive.  Most of the WWII leaders were some what missing in the looks department but were never the less extremely persuasive.   

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

Was there something wrong with the way Churchill looked?

I've spent most of my life trying to look just like him.

[mlooney 3,417]

Well, he was, by WWII, mostly bald and overweight.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

Right.  Just need to lose a little more hair.  

[mlooney 3,417]

Well, just for what it's worth, most healthy babies, particularity white ones, but not always, look like Churchill.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

55 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Well, just for what it's worth, most healthy babies, particularity white ones, but not always, look like Churchill.

... but without the cigar.

[mlooney 3,417]

14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

... but without the cigar.

True.  You don't see a lot of babies with cigars.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

I can picture Groucho as a baby with a cigar, bushy eyebrows, and a mustache. Seems fitting.

[ChronosCat 155]

On 1/8/2023 at 9:22 AM, mlooney said:

True.  You don't see a lot of babies with cigars.

But on occasion... (Baby Herman from Who Framed Roger Rabbit comes to mind.)

[ijuin 572]

Baby Herman, though, is permanently youthful rather than newly born. If counting age as time-since-birth rather than physical maturity, he was old enough to legally smoke tobacco.