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Comment by pb7 | Hacker News Reader

The article itself isn't about this but one could theorize that the headline taken literally is also likely true.

Ngl for a minute before clicking I was slightly curious if this was some random study of the literal interpretation.

I believe there is ample research showing height and attractiveness (one could reasonably consider weight to be one determining factor in attractiveness) do play a factor in career success, compensation, and selection for leadership.

Invader Zim was prescient, it turns out.

I think it goes more the other way around. Successful people prefer to look attractive, so they take the necessary steps to achieve that. Elon M would be an example, I guess.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7378972

Yes, we all know that time when Musk decided to grow taller.

Yes, we all know that time when Musk decided to grow t̶a̶l̶l̶e̶r̶ hair.

Fatness and lack of stature was the original topic.

But the comment you replied to talked about attractiveness in general.

Here’s the comment that that one was a reply to:

> I believe there is ample research showing height and attractiveness (one could reasonably consider weight to be one determining factor in attractiveness) do play a factor in career success, compensation, and selection for leadership.

Look, only about obesity and height (and mainly height). To which they replied:

> I think it goes more the other way around. …

Which makes no sense because no one ever mentioned hair, so that can’t be used as a direct counter-argument to a comment about research on height.

Are we gonna continue this? This is enough for me.

I would write a rebuttal, but you have written it for me. "attractiveness (one could reasonably consider weight to be one determining factor in attractiveness)" does not mean "attractiveness (which means weight)".

Wait, it's possible to look significantly more attractive through willpower alone? I dress okay and am not a total slob but I've never considered myself anything more than average-looking, and I've certainly never been told that I'm hot or that I should consider a career in modelling.

What tricks can I apply to make myself as gorgeous as Elon Musk?

I noticed at Microsoft that the tallest people always got promoted. It never made any sense to me - we weren’t playing basketball.

It may have been other factors that were involved in their promotions. Did they perhaps walk around with their arms out to the sides, in a T-esque shape?

I think that only works in Tetris.

Halo Effect, baby.

To give one (admittedly not conclusive) datapoint: almost all US Presidents have been taller than the average American male, many of them exceptionally slow (Lincoln was 6'4"!), and the effect has become more pronounced in the modern era (height was less of an advantage in the days when there was no TV or photography so voters had less of an idea what you looked like.)

Also, the taller presidential candidate is statistically more likely to win the election: "In the thirty-one presidential elections between 1900 and 2020, twenty of the winning candidates have been taller than their opponents, while nine have been shorter, and two were the same height. On average the winner was 1.1 inches (2.8 cm) taller than the loser."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heights_of_presidents_and_pres...

I haven't read it yet, but looked at the headline and debated if it was related to the FAT file system and there was a language called short.

I'm still interested in why engineers who know FAT should be valued more. It seems like an interesting thing to look up

Here’s a hot take on that front: “ The well-known association between height and earnings is often thought to reflect factors such as self esteem, social dominance, and discrimination. We offer a simpler explanation: height is positively associated with cognitive ability, which is rewarded in the labor market.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709415/

I think it's definitely true that attractiveness indicators correlate with characteristics like intelligence. If you think about it, this shouldn't actually be that surprising; it would be silly if the factors that went into sexual selection had no correlation with survival-boosting traits.

Hm, perhaps I'm reasoning about this correctly, but wouldn't you think the opposite? Being attractive provides evolutionary slack that requires less optimization on other characteristics (like intelligence), and vice versa.

Being judged attractive is a cultural thing that varies with time and place.

Being judged intelligent is also a cultural thing that varies with time and place.

Unless your culture is static for 20+ generations, don't expect much influence of it on evolution.

There are attractiveness signifiers that are not culturally mediated (e.g. clear healthy skin is valued everywhere, extreme obesity or thinness is very rarely valued, being very short is very rarely valued, etc.)

Intelligence also seems to have plenty of culture-independent aspects.

> Being judged attractive is a cultural thing that varies with time and place.

This is partially true, but there are many significant markers of attractiveness that are not particularly context-dependent.

> Being judged intelligent is also a cultural thing that varies with time and place.

This I disagree with much more strongly. "Being judged intelligent" isn't explicitly isn't the only thing that feeds into the evolutionary drive, and the second-order consequences are much more significant: being quick-witted/funny, increasing likelihood of success/resources, etc. The concept of general intelligence is not nearly as narrowly-defined as you're implying. To take an example, subsistence farming isn't exactly _easy_. General intelligence is an important factor in success at subsistence farming just as it is in success at post-industrial white-collar work.

No, I don't think this reasoning holds. What is intuitively considered attractive is itself an evolved trait, so as a meta-evolutionary strategy it almost certainly selects for otherwise desirable traits.

In this thread, "attractive" is being used as shorthand for "physically attractive": it was first introduced in response to a comment talking about height.

Also, while intelligence is per se attractive to some degree, it's also mediated through downstream effects like a higher likelihood of financial/resource success.

What's the correlation coefficient though? Attractiveness may only be weakly correlated with intelligence, in which case it isn't very meaningful.

That's almost certainly at least part of the explanation, if for no other reason than that height and cognitive development are both adversely impacted by some of the same environmental conditions from conception through childhood.

The issue with that theory is that height is significantly more correlated with labor market outcomes for men than for women. Naive models of what you're suggesting (where e.g. negative gestational or early environmental influences are correlated with disrupted height growth and cognitive abilities) would result in men and women both showing the correlation.

A secondary point is that a correlation between height and cognitive ability existing in a world where children suffer poverty/malnutrition/exposure to lead does not imply that a correlation between height and cognitive ability exists in a world without that suffering, so studies using data from the 50s and 70s might have limited relevance for the present day.

> The issue with that theory is that height is significantly more correlated with labor market outcomes for men than for women.

How about cognitive abilities? You'd need to state that there is no (or less) difference in those between the two genders in order for this to be a valid counter argument.

> correlation between height and cognitive ability existing in a world where children suffer poverty/malnutrition/exposure to lead does not imply

The paper uses UK and US data.

Now let's make the same argument but with race or gender. :/

came for hope - walked away disappointed.

And that’s true even more if they are bald and with a beard.

I knew a senior software engineer who was in his 60s, who was short, fat (pot bellied), completely bald (or shaven), and had a large white beard.

He also used to ruffle the feathers of HR. Once, when a woman from the talent acquisition team tried to give him generic instructions about conducting interviews, he told her “Lady, I don’t need all this, I’ve been doing this since before you were born”. (She was born in the mid-80s.) She reported him to HR, and obviously they didn’t do anything, since he was one of the most valuable engineers at the company.

He had a great breadth of knowledge and experience, and was really good at what he did.

So what you’re stating doesn’t necessarily always hold true.

Sometimes when people refuse to learn something new because they think they know better they are right, and sometimes they are wrong. Sadly it is difficult to know in which of these group you are, so it might be a good hedge not to refuse to listen to the young people. Even the most knowledgeable engineer can become a net negative quite easily.

Hubris right? Gets you twice, every time.

What?? Beards are discriminated against professionally?

Depends on the length of the beard.

Ah yea, that makes sense.

The balding greybeards are among the most respected engineers of my peers

But not necessarily when they apply for their next jobs, unfortunately

Some clicking on google scholar shows academic literature supports the claim at least with regard to height. Maybe someone can find similar articles with weight (I couldn't find anything)

https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2004-95165-004

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00288309

I'd agree if its most other jobs but I thought devs were one job where appearance doesn't matter as much?

Sadly, social forces apply to in person interviews.

I think it applies to any job where you have to interview with someone face to face. Like it or not they are probably going to judge on your appearance.

thatsthejoke.png

well, yeah, all engineers are under valued

one could devil's advocate speculate the other way as well; e.g. If IQ declines with age, and exercise is a way to slow the decline[1], fatness could reflect lack of exercise and lifestyle which doesn't prioritise exercise, so would you expect to see lower value for fatter engineers in a pure meritocracy?

If lower IQ correlates with obesity ("a 10‐point decrease in IQ was associated with a 1.10‐fold increase in the odds for obesity."[2]) either way - a lower IQ person is more likely to get fat, or the metabolic changes of getting fat negatively affect cognition as well - over a large group of skilled people would you expect thinner people to earn more?

If height and IQ are correlated ("Taller people tend to be smarter. Although the relationship is modest, height and IQ are consistently correlated at ∼.10–.20"[3]), would, etc.

[1] https://www.mdedge.com/neurology/article/193699/alzheimers-c...

[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lim2.11

[3] https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo...

Maybe revisit that comment in your mid 40s or 50s.

Up until around age 35 or so, I was generally very lean and did not get noticably fat regardless of my lifestyle.

I know I haven't gotten any stupider. Hormonal changes are the most likely difference for me.

What difference does it make whether I am in the described groups or not? You can argue that IQ doesn't exist, or shouldn't affect engineer value, or that the correlations don't exist, but telling the author "you won't like it when it happens to you, so agree it doesn't exist" is weird.

> "Up until around age 35 or so, I was generally very lean and did not get noticably fat regardless of my lifestyle."

It's tempting to read this as saying "I didn't choose it to happen, so I'm excused from any negative effects", although that would be taking a negative view on it. But if not that, what else is this sentence here for? Maybe you're saying that there's more to fat than lifestyle - then skim read "Ten Putative Contributors to the Obesity Epidemic"[1] (PDF or online PDF) where they discuss things like viral infections, environmental triggers, socieo-economic contributers, and other things which aren't diet or exercise related. Does any of that change whether obesity does or doesn't correlate with IQ? Or maybe you're saying you got fat despite exercising - which only says exercise didn't save you, it doesn't need to change whether IQ and obesity are correlated or not. Plus exercise was suggested as a counter to age related decline, not as a counter to fat, only as a thing people might think when seeing fat.

> "I know I haven't gotten any stupider."

Who ever thinks they have? Would you honestly know? You ought to have lost some abilities just going from age 35 to 55 alone. See[2]: "Age and individual productivity: a literature survey" - "The ability levels of employed white men and women up to the age of 65, using data from the General Aptitude Test Battery collected in the U.S. from 1970-1984, is shown in Figure 2. These findings suggest a relatively sharp decline in most abilities, after maximum values are reached in the 20s and early 30s (Avolio and Waldman 1994). The decline of mental abilities from early adulthood is a universal phenomenon. The age-induced changes in cognitive abilities are similar across countries and within population subgroups, such as between men and women (Park et al. 1999, Maitland et al. 2000). Further individuals with high and low ability levels are subject to the same age-induced changes in cognitive functioning (Deary et al. 2000). Even among non-human species, ranging from fruit flies to primates, age-reductions in memory and learning capabilities have been observed (Minois and Bourg 1997, Bunk 2000)."

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40447388_Ten_Putati...

[2] https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2003-028.pdf

> If IQ declines with age,

IQ doesn't decline with age. Pretty simply because IQ is deliberately determined in an age agnostic way: your IQ score tells how well your problem solving skills are compared to your age group.

Fluid intelligence does decline with age, but most people are said to be able to keep up fairly decently by utilizing (and building) crystalized intelligence. Now, of course, your usefulness as an engineer may very well decline with age. Though there are different roles that you can take on in most organizations. It's anecdotal, but my mother used to be a software engineer until her retirement in her sixties, as well as her colleagues she used to work with when I was a child. They started their careers in the 70s and 80s and most of them never left the field.

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