Day 0065

Cheated on Les Mis with a brief dip into The Kreutzer Sonata. Not even thirty short pages in and he's already pulling out the mirror to our cognitive biases. This time it's our weakness for conflating beauty with goodness; the physical attractiveness stereotype. It's where we find ourselves believing that attractive people are more intelligent, more competent, more trustworthy and more successful than less attractive people. It's why it's so easy to deify beautiful girls, and it's why I fall in love with alarming frequency.

That evening it seemed to me that she understood everything, all I was thinking and feeling, and that all my thoughts and feelings were of the most exalted kind. Alll it really was was that silk stockinet happened to suit her particularly well, as did curls, and that after a day spent close to her I wanted to get even closer.

It is amazing how complete the illusion is that beauty is the same as goodness. A pretty woman may say the most stupid things, yet you listen, and you don't notice the stupidities, it all sounds so intelligent. She says and does things that are infamous, yet to you they seem delightful. And when at last she says something that is neither stupid nor infamous, as long as she's pretty, you're immediately convinced that she's quite wonderfully intelligent and of the very highest morality..Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

Started a copy of a Rubens drawing having seen some of his paint studies at the Courtauld yesterday.