How your brain decides what is beautiful | Anjan Chatterjee

As a 11th year student this is very helpful to me. I was told to choose or invent a topic for philosophy and I was very intrigued as to WHY beauty? Why would we have a better chance of survival because of this? What about ...

Thank you so much for this. I'll be back to say what grade I got thanks to your presentation. Really. Thanks a lot, this is very inspiring.

Great talk, lots of wisdom in this. I love what he says at the end about how we should treat people based on their behavior and not their looks. Bravo! <3

This cleared so many of my questions. My bone structure, according to me is immaculate. My facial structure is a lot like Angelina Jolie's and our jawlines are almost identical. I have feline eyes, a narrow nose and almost full lips. In short, I fit in the current social media beauty standards with ease. Despite all of these, I still considered myself to be ugly. I had a friend who was chubby and she had a chubby face, doe eyes and her features were mostly blunt, giving her a 'cute' look. She was my best friend, and everyone always considered her to be the most attractive. When we were younger, boys would fall head over heels for her and nobody would bat an eye about me. She would always be complimented based on her looks and no one would ever compliment me, even if I were standing right next to her. All of this made me hate my physical appearance, and I had severe depression for almost two years before I finally got it, It's not like I'm not beautiful, to me, I am very beautiful. Just that my face doesn't go with the beauty standards in my country. I'm from Southeast Asia, and people here prefer petite women with blunt features that give them a cuter look. Id probably be considered attractive if I were an instagram model or If I were born in the west. Funny how the perception differs so much all over the world. And I'm don't care about getting attention from people now, glad I got out of my insecurity. No one is probably going to see this but it's okay, I think I just needed to vent haha.

Great Talks and lots of clarity on how Beauty plays a key role in our life.

BTW as a Bengali, I'm very proud of Anjan Chatterjee.

I like the idea that beauty is influencing our brains, and creating the associated physiological reactions, even when we are not consciously looking for or focusing upon it. Taking that notion and applying it to non-human aspects of beauty, it makes an intriguing case for filling the world with beautiful art, beautiful architectural design, beautiful landscapes, etc. to positively influence people.

This man cleared my biggest question of life

Loved this talk, I believe when we focus on growing our consciousness awareness as a people we'll start looking at the realness of others and the actual situation at hand instead of relying on subconscious walls/tests built by a personal methods of assumptions and interactions with others.

Basically learn more judge less.

Really interesting and well explained. I've heard the notion "symmetry is beauty" regurgitated with conviction so many times, and every time I cringe because it appears to be too simple of a model for beauty. It is certainly a component, but not the only one. A testament to this is my high-school crush on a girls with a crooked smile.

Lo importante es encajar contigo mismo, y lo que opinen de ti fisicamente o psicologicamente tampoco deberia importa, desde que respetes al otro y no ofendas a nadie. Lo unico cierto es que al final de la vida todos iremos para el mismo hueco y hay no importara tu fisico. Solo lo que dejaste bueno para los demas, tu esencia, como serviste a otros lo que pueda ofrecer tu bellesa interior.:)

I really appreciate how he apologized to explain something universal with heterosexual norms. He shone a light and acknowledged(?) a whole community, which is so nice to hear. Great speech as well!

The way he talks is so relaxing. I'm going to replay this thing to sleep. ❤

Very comprehensive and thoughtful presentation. Thank you Anjan Chatterjee.

Symmetry is something like comfort not the thing that excites our senses but rather a point of reference.

The more sensitive to beauty you are the more you enjoy asymmetry.
Like people who enjoy complex music trained their ears to appreciate more & more dissonant chords.

Today's mainstream media produce more comfort than beauty be it in music or in beauty magazine. Since science as got into the matter of beauty it has been industrialized and vulgarized.

This is just my observation that I base on both scientific studies and personal philosophy.

7:55 this is such an important concept in evolutionary psychology that is constantly overlooked. The distinction between the proximate cause and the ultimate cause. To often people confuse the inherent arbitrary liking of something to some cognitive extrinsic desire for survival.

I so enjoyed this. Inspires me to learn more. Wished the description had links or book references.

Omg this is mind opening! Yes I love knowledge!!!!!

Beauty is the intuition for the pattern of perfect being/existence

factors considered to be beautiful-
1.mixed race
2.symmetry
3.hormones-facial features
4.health-reproductive

"Beauty is a work in progress-" Well said.
Sadly the world is still deeply brutal.
Also, it is misleading to imply "people don't view beauty correctly" and then quote Darwin and Freud, both of whom rooted their scientific theory from the perspective that human psyche and human nature is flawed and ugly, with no hope of being otherwise. But how can this be? When we not only seek beauty in an ugly brutal world, we try to replicate it.
Thoughts?

Symmetry and shades of color in tldr, but it's actually an interesting question of what makes a person feel uncomfortable or don't have to correct it, usually that comes from a feeling that it's not exhibiting chaotic format and increasing our arousal, meaning if it's not structured as we understand to be a beautiful pattern our mind thinks it's ugly, like if you take away the mindful determinate thinking or sexual human arousal feelings, then all there's nothing really to beauty, that's why cheap beauty is not as attractive if you must think about it in a bigger picture.. but I feel the basis of beauty must be derived from a thoughtful existential feeling to be interesting. And sadly it's quite the crazy drug if you process beauty on a artificial level, making one hyperfocus to look one way at the beautiful not the other, in some way that behavior is not beautiful in the aspect of wholesomeness.