You would think that way, looking like that!

No, I'm kidding. I've seen photos of you on ILX's very useful photo threads. But what do those photo threads do to our debates on other threads? How do they change the way we relate in debate? Is a debate in which all our posts have passport-style photos next to them feel very different from a debate where we're all just lines of text on a white page?

It's something that by reflex we have to assume is a terrible thing to do, because judging books by covers is always bad, right

There are two completely different languages running alongside each other, the rational-symbolic language where we all think we share the same terms and can defend our positions the way we would when we play chess, and the visual-associative language. The first is a language of universals, a rational language of thoughts, the second a language of specifics, an emotional language of textures and the feelings they evoke. Now, the internet has so far favoured the first. But as bandwidth increases, it will increasingly favour the second.

Also, a person's inside and outside is much more intimately linked than a book's cover and inside, which are usually the ill-coordinated products of two different people

Reading that back, it struck me that every human being is also "the ill-coordinated product of two different people"!

Momus, I think you have worked hard to physically resemble the kind of person you want to be, and now you are spot-on. It must be exhausting! Me, I just look like a swollen mashup of Rowan Atkinson and old-school Pee-Wee Herman, except as an ex-jock. I'm not sure if that's how I come across here or not, but I kind of doubt it.

That sounds like that Talking Heads song Seen and Not Seen:

He would see faces in movies, on T.V., in magazines, and in books....
He thought that some of these faces might be right for him....And
through the years, by keeing an ideal facial structure fixed in his
mind....Or somewhere in the back of his mind....That he might, by
force of will, cause his face to approach those of his ideal....The
change would be very subtle....It might take ten years or so....
Gradually his face would change its' shape....A more hooked nose...
Wider, thinner lips....Beady eyes....A larger forehead.
He imagined that this was an ability he shared with most other
people....They had also molded their faced according to some
ideal....Maybe they imagined that their new face would better
suit their personality....Or maybe they imagined that their
personality would be forced to change to fit the new appear-
ance....This is why first impressions are often correct...
Although some people might have made mistakes....They may have
arrived at an appearance that bears no relationship to them....
They may have picked an ideal appearance based on some childish
whim, or momentary impulse....Some may have gotten half-way
there, and then changed their minds.
He wonders if he too might have made a similar mistake.

I'm not going to go so far as saying Wilde was spot on but I sure as hell know there's not going to be any good wine in a bottle that looks like, well, you know what kinds of bottles I'm talking about, so there's no reason to assume that it isn't a valid judgement?

I tend to think of it as similar to some of (scientifically valid, not new-age) holistic methods employed in anthropological studies - there's nothing that can't be measured, recorded, and analyzed for correlation, and no hypotheses than can be derived from the data are intrinsically evil. When your anthropometrist starts discussing institutionalized eugenics that's a different matter, but really we all perform our own eugenics all the time, when we avoid fucking ugly people.

"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances."

it makes me sad that other ppl do, because i am ugly.

You almost lost me with this opening line, but I read through the rest of it anyway.

"Pablo" has some monster earlobes, by the way.

the tricky thing about the internet, and even more if it goes the way you say, is people can control their 'appearance'. which would only make things more confusing. you are judging people by their ideals and their ability to appear as if they reached them. you can only see people's reactions, their 'energy', how they treat you and others by spending realtime with them.

i thought the conventional wisdom was that he was an extremely sweet and cultured man

In other words I don't think you can answer Momus's question (it IS a question right?) in the abstract.

and also in *real life* (whatever that is).

Its amazing that someone who writes as much as you do either simply can't read or chooses to take fragment quotes out of context. The "it's a fair cop guv'nor" had nothing to do with your GIS picture. In any event, I could care less about how you think I look. Next time you are in town PLMK and you can see for yourself.

and i say: new proverb time! "post-modernists should know better than to not judge a book by its cover"