jeremy writes:
i disagree. two-person social interactions are different because each
person has the obligation to pay attention to the other person and to respond appropriately. because
of this constraint, the conversation has the potential to flow much better (or to fail horribly). in a
large group, nobody is obligated to be paying attention at any given time, and so nobody has an
incentive to invest thought and effort into the conversation.
there's a correlation between vapid and
popular because there's a correlation between vapid and dumb and between dumb and good-looking and
between good-looking and popular. the first and third should be clear; the second is because beautiful
people have less incentive to educate themselves (people already pay attention to them) and because
dumb people are more likely to choose a mate (and procreate) based on looks instead of brains.
i wasn't going to respond to this, but i've just thought of a response. whenever there's correlation in human society, the causation generally goes both ways. you have a correlation between two traits that allows people to group up with lots of things in common, and then there's pressure on people with one of the traits to acquire or act like they have the other one, since there's a ready-made group for you there if you do. i agree with jeremy's chain of correlations, but i think they're all two-way causations.
in particular, i'd just like to add that beautiful people do in fact have less incentive to educate themselves, but dumb people also have more incentive to be beautiful, since they aren't going to snag those elitists of us who require intelligence in our mate regardless; it's easier to change from ugly to pretty than it is from dumb to smart, to put it crudely.