A neurologist named Joseph Weingartner explains that calliagnosia, calli for short, works by using technology (a “neurostat”) that can block certain neural pathways. When the neural pathways for observing and assessing beauty are blocked, calli is thus artificially induced. With calli, all facial features and their estimated values, such as the symmetry of a face or the straightness of a nose, aren’t discriminated. With neurostats, any kind of agnosia can hypothetically be induced, such as the inability to see race, though they’ve been less successful in trial. Weingartner, as well as those who are pushing against calli, say that there’s potential for calli to inhibit sight in ways other than beauty, such as not being able to observe signs of symptoms in patients or not being able to make visual art.

The Students for Equality Everywhere (SEE) organization hopes to push calli into the mainstream, starting with a school-wide requirement for Pembleton College. Maria deSouza, the president of SEE, is Pembleton’s representative for the calli movement and has ensured that Pembleton can provide accommodations for anyone looking to have calli. Against her are many lobbyists, such as People for Ethical Nanomedicine, who are campaigning to shut down the calli initiative.

At Pembleton, student also debate for and against calli among themselves. Those for it say that it eliminates lookism, a kind of discrimination that doesn’t operate on merit but rather immutable qualities that no one can control. Those against it say that it deprives a significant degree of human experience and leads to a slippery slope of further deprivations.

While the debates at Pembleton rage, it’s revealed that a few anti-calli students were paid to dissuade their peers by a public-relations firm, Wyatt/Hayes. The revelation significantly hurts the anti-calli movement, which is now seen is inauthentic and ingenuine. Walter Lambert, the president of the National Calliagnosia Association, visits Pembleton to deliver a speech in wake of the breaking news, and polls find that most students support calli.

Tamera Lyons is a first-year student at Pembleton. She’s hoping to get her calli turned off when she turns eighteen. She had been a student at Saybrook, a school for kids to grow up in an calliagnosiac environment where beauty wasn’t a concern. When she finally gets it turned off, nothing seems different to her—her reaction to her own unmasked appearance is tame. Soon enough, she sees herself as beauty, and she feels much better about having turned off calli. As she observes beauty around her—whether in boys or in commercials—she contemplates often about what beauty does for her, what beauty’s place in the world is.

During a conversation, Tamera’s roommate Ina tells her that her ex-boyfriend, a boy named Garrett, had never been good-looking at all and therefore undeserving of Tamera. Tamera reflects on their past together, how they had been a good fit in spite of appearances. She consisders that calli might’ve been good for her back then.

Tamera reaches back out to Garrett, telling him about the calli movement about Pembleton. Garrett still has his calli on, and Tamera tries to persuade him to turn it off. She thinks that if he can now see how beautiful she really is, then Garrett will get back with her. On a video call, Garrett sees Tamera with makeup on, and compliments her, and she thinks that she’s won him back. However, later on, Garrett turns his calli back on because he doesn’t like the way he looks.

The day before the election, everyone restates their cases for and against calli. Rebecca Boyer, a spokesperson for People for Ethical Nanomedicine, delivers an eloquent speech against calli. Polls switch, and the calli initiative is shot down soon after. It’s later revealed that Boyer’s speech was manipulated to make Boyer’s voice more persuasive, thus ironically falling into the same kind of trickery as calli, as pro-calli proponents charge.

After the vote, Tamera decides to get her calli turned back on. She realizes that, in caring a lot about her appearance, she sought to use beauty in order to gain advantages—such as winning Garrett back—which she sees as an act of unfairness on her part. In sympathy with Garrett’s desire to live in a world without beauty, Tamera forsakes beauty as well. While she admits there are many imperfections with the idealistic desire to eliminate beauty, she sees calli as a good, hopefully temporary, solution to humanity’s superficiality. https://waldyrious.neocities.org/ted_chiang/liking-what-you-see-a-documentary