Alwyn and i discussed a bit about cuteness today. He suggests that cuteness actually represents the kind of proportions that make people shower more care and concern for the subject. For example, people show more care to babies that are cute. This seems logical. However, i wonder whether the word "cute" refers to the same thing when directed to a baby and to young person.

However, evolutionary wise the chance of reaching that is quite small. Firstly, there must be a roup of people who have the genes to appreciate cuteness, and you also must have people who are, themselves, cute. The chance of having a high proportion of either evolving together seems quite low. If the cuteness appreciation genes were already there in the first place, then it makes sense to believe that a cute baby is more likely to survive, and hence pass on its cuteness genes, assuming that those exist. However, this is afterall, based on an unsubstantiated assumption that the cuteness appreciation genes were already there. Why do people even have cuteness appreciation genes in the first place? It seems quite unlikely that those genes would actually help them survive and prosper. This means that if they did have cuteness appreciation genes in the first place, it is quite unlikely to evolve to exist anyway. Even if it does, it seems also unlikely that these genes would exist in almost all of us in the current age.

Unless, of course, that cuteness appreciation genes come "bundled" together with cuteness genes. Then perhaps it would make some sense for them to exist.

But I still think that cuteness came before cuteness appreciation. Cuteness appreciation is only favourable to the survivial of the being if cuteness had already existed, and the cute being would also have a higher chance of survival. Basically, i mean that alwyn's suggestion may be right, but i think mine is more probable.

Alwyn also disagreed with my belief that cuteness and beauty are mutually exclusive. Hmm. I guess that has to do with what a person exactly means by cute. This is a very important point. What is cuteness? Crap. I really don't know. I guess it comes into our vocubulary when we see someone or something that someone points to and says "ooooooh so cute...." and then after a few more incidents we automatically somehow find some similarities between them and link the word "cute" with that.

Perhaps every word is like that. Especially the more abstract words. Like love, good, bad, evil, justice... blah. Those concepts that nobody really care to explain but everyone just love to use them (even i am using the word "love" which i have no idea of what it means. I guess it just happens to suit the context). The words are being used differently as we grow up, each person links different things to a word because one hears different ways of the word is being used to describe and explain different scenarios. Therefore, if someone asks about abstract concepts like love, evil, good, and bad, I suppose we do no read too much depth into it. The word means different things to everyone. Just take love as an attraction. Good as things you want to be associated with, bad as otherwise, evil as things against your own conscience. Let's not read too much into these abstract subjective concepts.

While Jingwen says that "love" is a bastardised word, I think that it is okay if one does not use it indiscriminately. A more bastardised word, in my opinion, is "know". Once you use the word know in your own favour, it is quite impossible to argue against you, and that is unfair. What is unfair is not that you know more, but once you start using the word "know" you stop accepting ideas from other people and you would assume that you are right from the very start. Consider this statement:

"Did you know that science is wrong?"

How are you going to respond to that? Yes? No? Whatever it is by using that "know" you are already assuming that whatever statement that is bundled with it is true. We shouldn't do that. There is a joke that stems from the common misuse of the word "know":

"Are your parents gay?" "No."
"Is your brother gay?" "No."
"Is your sister gay?" "No."
"Are you gay?" "No."
"Does your mother know you are gay?" "..."

There is no way you can answer that and still say that you are not gay.

I think that is considered is logical fallacy. Thanks goodness. Let us all try to minimise the use of words, meaning of which we are not sure ourselves.