Why do gentlemen prefer blondes ?

Before considering the title, let's relax a little. Check this out :

Pretty cute, aren't they ? Yesterday I sat down to contemplate this thing and I came to the conclusion the first one is actually the cutest. I showed this to my mom earlier today, and she said that actually, the first one is the cutest. Apparently, we agree. But then again we're both Transylvanian, and actually related and besides, I grew up in her house. We kinda know each other.

But then again...

Me Which would you say is the best pup ?
Her The best?! Omg. 3rd in line I guess but I would hug them all equally!

Me Not 1st ?
Her Well the leaping is suparcute but #4's got a good leap too, so I picked 3 for his sorta casual foxtrot lookin' deal he's got goin.

Me Hehe. I got myself a great article.
Her Out of pup picking?!

Now let's leave this aside for a moment and consider the issue of Schelling points. Suppose next time you fire up your Bitcoin client to send a payment, aliens suddenly kidnap you and the two people who control the addresses immediately after and immediately before yours. Just like that.

You don't know who they are (other than probably assholes, seeing how they're burning all these Watts for no good useful purpose such as clicking on cat pictures and saving the world by raising awareness on social media sites about how unrisenⁱ the awareness is). You don't know where they are. You kinda could guess that they're probably male and under thirty if pressed, but who's pressin' ya ?

The ony thing you know for sure is this : the aliens are going to show you a chess table, and if you all three pick the same chess piece you can go free. But if you don't... if as much as one of you picks the wrong piece... o boy. Let's not go there.

So you look at the table, and lo and behold! It's all white pieces with one black pawn lost in there. Because the aliens are retarded, being aliens, and so they have no cottonpickin' idea what pick on the nigger would mean. And so... you pick on the nigger and save yourselves. (By the way, you're all white, odds are, right ?)

So there you go. The single black pawn is a Schelling point, on that chess table. How do you know this ?

You know this by cultural immersion. There's absolutely no good reason that the black pawn is more the "correct" piece than the white fool, or any other. And yet... it's obvious. To whom ? Well... to you, because the aliens somehow missed it.

So now, let's consider the problem of the Schelling point more generally. Kids are constantly asked to pick among alternatives, and kids are very finely tuned to pick up on the adults' approval or disapproval. Consequently... even if all the anteaters are verily equally huggable... I and my mother, we share a convention. Something that's not shared by someone who didn't live with us, in the same place, in the same culture.

Generally when scientists try to model why gentlemen prefer blondes they tend towards silly explanations, stuff perhaps more useful to explain why gentlemen prefer coeds. On the contrary, I propose to you that preference has absolutely nothing to do with sexuality, or with genetics, or with evolution, or tits or lactation or asses or post partum depression or the blonde at all, in any physical, determinate sense. I propose to you it's purely a convention.

The issue of "which chesspiece to pick" has to be solved somehow, just in case we ever get abducted by aliens in the described arrangement. This is very important, and the human brain spends a lot of time and space keeping good solutions ready.

This training is achieved through doing a lot of "which'd you prefer" all through infant, child, preteen and even teenager life. There's a lot of "which anteater is cutest" needed to coalesce into clear and reliable Schelling point identifying mechanisms in the human brain.

The net result of this being that gentlemen prefer blondes. For no reason whatsoever, other than it just so happens. As a waste product of their Schelling point picking mechanism, if you will. Nothing to do with the blonde.

How you like it ?

1. Waah! Awareness' all flat! Waah! Kyle! [↩]