face,

in sexual and social species, is a proxy selector that maps multiple dimensions of fitness into a compact at-a-glance featureset. A face must be at least as difficult to make as the adaptations its proxying for (“counterfeit protection”); in a race against evolving vision and intelligence, face becomes a “selection attractor” — “selected for selectivity” as it grows more socially focal, collects value functions, holds up long after the underlying adaptations it reflected have been irrelevantized and lost; beauty emerges as an integral apex evaluator, nurtures love. ■    A face tends to evolve out of what was, to start with, a concentration of mobile outward-directed organs — sensing, signaling, interacting; the metaevolutionary trend of faciation involves gradually more of the phenotype — both physical (hands, hair) and cultural (language). In its constant war on cheating, face piles up variability, complexity, evolves “proxies for proxies,” only to be reset by periodic waves of simplification — neotenic innocentizing, not quite erasing the complexity but remelting it; eventually facing becomes conscious (“makeup,” art of face) hiking the chance of both success and failure but, in the long run, making face a more honest indicator (“undeserved depth” harder to feign). With their mind windows, protean bodiless Minds may be well on their way towards “all face” — “full of eyes.”

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