I wish I was a little bit taller | Hacker News Reader

I wish I was a little bit taller

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53 pointsprofstasiak95 comments

I did industrial tech support in an automobile assembly plant. I would get calls to fix something, and I would tell them why it was someone else's responsibility, or I would try to explain something.

When I went out to plant floor, it was like my perceived IQ went up by 20 points. Suddenly the things I said made sense. I think most of this effect can be attributed to the fact that I cared enough to show up, and that it's easier to communicate in person. That's most of it, but I'm also a large-ish white male (6 feet tall, 250 pounds at that time) and that physical presence does seem to have an effect on some people.

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It's easy to think that I'm making a moral statement one way or another by what I've said here, but you don't have to think that.

> When I went out to plant floor, it was like my perceived IQ went up by 20 points.

I thought you were going to conclude that factory workers are dumb, so you appeared relatively smarter.

(Before anyone gets upset, I have grandparents who were factory workers; I admire hard work.)

There were some really smart people out there working on the assembly line - accountants and other professionals. A lot of people had a second job or owned another business. The job itself is pretty mind-numbing, but if you're on a good team you can have a good time.

You're right about the physical presence thing. I had this conversation with a friend of mine who's a short-ish woman in her early 70s. She's always had big, intimidating-looking dogs, and likes to joke that she "only meets nice people" because of it. :) I mentioned (joked, really) that the way I say safe on the streets is through a combination of maintaining situational awareness, and being a 6' tall white guy.

I'm sure there are social effects I don't perceive because I've been tall since I was a teenager. For instance, it's hard to believe that the average Fortune 500 CEO is 6' tall just by coincidence. Height also seems to predict overall financial success in an interesting way: https://news.utexas.edu/2009/12/15/research-shows-height-may...

Straight out of GATTACA.

I cringed pretty hard when the image at the top loaded; was not expecting this kind of story, was expecting a missive on the song from the 90s.

Also, this story reminds me of a passage, among many, from the Deus Ex timeline wiki (https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline):

"Antoine Thisdale, an un-augmented oil rig worker sues for the right to have both of his fully functional natural arms amputated and replaced with cybernetic arms in an effort to compete with mechanically augmented workers in his profession. The Supreme Court rules in his favor, clearing the way for elective augmentation."

If there was a surgery that made people look white, I wonder how many people would get it.

I have read that there are many things people do in Japan to lighten their skin as this is perceived as more beautiful.

The reason is that tanned people got tanned because they had to work.

Can confirm. Used to work on an early version of their "instagram" filters and one of the functions was to whiten skin.

Ask the star-bellied sneeches.

"Asian blepharoplasty" creates an eyelid crease resulting in a larger and more symmetric, almond-shaped eye is apparently pretty common.

I am myself quite short (168cm). Growing up I had no insecurities about it, because I only started becoming short after puberty. Anyway, there was a period between ages 21 and 25 when I was obsessed about my height. Natural selection is pretty cruel. If you have good looks do not take them for granted. Now I care less about my height and more about my lack of hair.

It is really not healthy to obsess over this stuff. As I said, natural selection is pretty cruel in general, but it is also stochastic in nature. Being short, or bald, is not a death sentence, although it does make things harder.

There's one thing I have to say though. If you're successful and you still need to go to such lengths to attract women, you have yourself to blame and not your height.

If you allow me to assume you are male, my quickmafs thinks you're taller than 4/5 women, as opposed to the median male who is taller than 19/20 of women.

Do other women want men taller than they are, or do they want men taller than other men? I don't understand the mechanism myself.

One time, I found a scatter plot of male and female heights in pairings, and there was a pretty clear drop-off at x=y. If you're really interested, that's the data source you'd want to have.

Of course, it wouldn't solve the causal question. Are women rejecting men who are shorter, or are men mentally gear-shifting around people who are taller than them? The latter might sound insulting, but that's actually what you'd want it to be, because then you could overcome it with a really good attitude. If all of the grown up monkeys going around in this world are programmed to let the big monkey do the bossing around, that's something you'd expect to see subconsciously acting on both sides - and you'd be able to deal with half of by yourself.

Some women want men taller than they are with high heels. Some women want men taller than a round number taller than other men.

Regarding dating. If your goal is to find a great life partner and have a wonderful family, I find being short to actually be a benefit. Garbage women will self-select themselves out of your potential dating pool.

> Natural selection is pretty cruel.

Is it? I think this is just the fallacious conclusion that results from a lack of humility and from a sense of entitlement. If you believe you're entitled to X, but you don't have what it takes for X, then you set yourself up for self-pity, envy, and grievance as if you've been wronged somehow by not getting what you (falsely) believe you are entitled to. But neither our qualities nor what those qualities can bring us are things we are owed. The solution is to recognize the truth about ourselves, here the immutable truth, and play with those cards instead of wishing we were someone else or had different cards, or hating those with better cards. The latter is a waste of time and ultimately self-destructive.

There is also a kind of dualism at work here. We see ourselves as somehow separate from our qualities. But we are those qualities! They are part of who and what we are. You could not have been otherwise without being someone else.

Egocentrism is a recipe for misery and no amount of manipulation or make believe will ever address the underlying mental and spiritual problem. It's much healthier to accept what you are and be grateful and work with what you have. Occupy your niche. If you're a tortoise, be a tortoise instead of fantasizing about being a cheetah.

Furthermore, surgery like this is essentially a form of lying. You are falsely advertising about your qualities. Whatever benefits you receive because of the mere appearance of having such qualities instead of the genuine thing is a species of fraud. Anything you receive through fraud will taste like ash in your mouth in the end.

And these traits won't be communicated to your children. In this way, you subvert natural selection.

Note also the incoherence. If the trait matters, then your deception is made worse. If the trait doesn't matter, yet people seem to value it anyway (a common form of denial among the have-nots), then why cater to those with a bad sense of value? Any appreciation you receive is fake anyway.

The baseline standards for natural selection being cruel are de novo genetic diseases, not some people being short. Nature has no way to tell whether or not a gene sequence will kill a 20 year old except wrapping a person around it and shooting it out.

Those are a lot of nice words, but I stand by my statement that natural selection is pretty cruel. I do not see how accepting one's fate makes it any less cruel.

I did not comment on the surgery and do not approve of such measures.

> you still need to go to such lengths

When i was in elementary school, a classmate had something wrong with the growth plates in his femur, and the solution at the time was to basically do this surgery but at 2mm a week. He spent all of third grade with pins in his left leg and a permanently semi-healing femur that would get cracked open a bit further and a bit further...

he missed a LOT of school, because he basically couldn't function for 48 hours after the next increment was done.

The alternative was that his left leg would be 8" shorter than his right, so it was probably the right thing to do, but good lord it's not without cost.

As a well below average height guy who had knee surgery following an ACL tear: no freaking way I would even undergo surgery that wasn't absolutely necessary. Your bones may heal, but what about your muscles and the nerves they touch? Being healthy is way more important than looking good. I have (small) problems even from a routine intervention, I don't even want to know what these experiments yield.

And as insensitive as this might sound: get over your god damn insecurities. All the statistics in the world of how much more money tall guys make can't account for individuals, and we all know plenty of short rich business owners and poor big guys working terrible construction jobs or worse. The only real limitation in being short is dating tall women. But guess what, there's plenty things limiting your dating pool: baldness, being fat, facial features, age, social and financial status, etc. Nobody has it all and you will never finish if you go the rabbit whole. You can only end up like those women butchered by too much cosmetic surgery.

At 5'9 Im comfortable with my average height. Sure, had I been taller Id probably be perceived differently but these are things that cannot be changed (till now). Since I'm comfortable with my height I rarely think about this but I'm sure shorter guys may have it more on their mind than I do. Im genuinely curious though, with extending the length of the femur, wouldn't that make the body change proportions? Aren't taller folks consisting of larger/longer bones overall? How would that affect center of mass and balance?

I found that confidence can overcome a few inches in height and good communication skills can overcome the advantage taller people have, well, except for dating stuff...

A lot of those statistics about men being the taller ones in most pairings come from the fact that men are taller than women on average.

But that alone doesn’t explain the full gap.

https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/man-woman-...

This statistic can be true while at the same time, women prefer tall men.

To confirm the latter, it is not enough to look at who is the taller in most pairings.

It is a little annoying to be elbowed in the nose accidentally by my Dutch customers, though.

So, I created a joke.

“Why are people in the Netherlands so tall?”

“Genetic pressure. They have had occasional dike failures over the centuries, and the short ones drowned.”

> Im comfortable with my average height.

Does your height vary much? /joke

I am 6'4".

Flying sucks.

Can't fit in a Miata and sports cars suck in general.

Showers in hotels suck.

Buying T-shirts is annoying.

I did have a nice dating life....but I missed out a ton because I was a quite oblivious lol...now I'm married and it doesn't really matter.

If it makes you feel any better, except for t-shirts all of those still suck at 5'8" just less so.

I was really excited to buy a nissan 300Z years ago. Sat in one and letting out the clutch would cause my knee to smack the steering wheel. It was a deal killer, and I'm 5'11.

> According to a 2009 study of Australian men, short guys make less money than their taller peers (about $500 a year per inch); are less likely to climb the corporate ladder (according to one survey, the average height of a male Fortune 500 CEO is six feet); and, for the cis and straight among us, have fewer romantic opportunities with women (a 2013 study conducted in the Netherlands found that women were taller than their male partners in just 7.5 percent of cases). I’m five six on a good day, and I’ve found that being short is great for flying economy class—and not much else.

Unbelievable :(

Could be a good investment if you do it while you're young

rhGH seems way better honestly.

I don’t think it gets the job done as reliably though.

But they have less cells that could become cancerous?

This. Short people live longer.

Anorexia ftw.

> a 2013 study conducted in the Netherlands found that women were taller than their male partners in just 7.5 percent of cases

Isn't that entirely to be expected just because men are on average taller than women? As a very quick 'n dirty numerical check, if you pick pairs of numbers from two normal distributions with means that are 2 standard deviations apart, only in 7.8% of the cases will the number from the distribution with the lowest mean be larger than that from the other distribution. In real life male and female heights aren't exactly normally distributed with the same standard deviation and just a differing mean, but is the true expected number of such pairs really much higher than 7.5%, that the result is significant?

How did you calculate that? (7.8%)

Let's assume male heights are distributed according to a pdf p(x;μ,σ) for a given mean and standard deviation, and assume the female heights are identically distributed with a mean lower by two standard deviations p(x;μ-2σ,σ) (which seems to be reasonably accurate). For a given female height y, the odds a random man is smaller than her are given by the integral of p(x;μ,σ) where x goes from negative infinity to y. You then have to integrate this quantity where y ranges from negative infinity to positive infinity, with the measure p(y;μ-2σ,σ) dy.

It's easy to show this quantity is independent of either the mean or standard deviation, so I just numerically integrated it in Mathematica for a standard normal distribution, which again seems to be reasonably accurate for human heights.

>Short guys aren’t so much discriminated against as they are precluded from stuff: like dating certain taller people, or making your frosh-soph basketball team.

Another one in the hall of "writers who don't read their own articles," this was the sentence preceding the one about the wage gap.

Just because there's a gap doesn't mean someone is being discriminated against. Shorter men could have self esteem issues that cause them to perform a little worse or fight for salary a little worse.

I worked in sales for a decade. I was better than top 1% at it nationwide. I'm 6'4". Was that because people just love buying from a tall person, or was it because I felt comfortable walking up to anyone and everyone since I was taller than them?

If that were true, you'd have to explain how they got the self-esteem issues in the first place if there wasn't discrimination.

FWIW, I have known a lot of people in sales and it's not confidence that makes you good - that's just a stereotype - but the ability to make the other person feel like you have their interest in mind. Sure you have to be willing to approach someone but without the ability to establish a connection, the confidence would be misplaced. It also seems like anyone can train themselves out of cold call anxiety.

Learn to play guitar! Ideally singing while strumming.

If you think it's unfair to make $500 per inch less for the same work, try making 12.5% less, per breast.

Until we solve the inter gender pay gap, I'm not really interest in the intra gender height gap.

> (a 2013 study conducted in the Netherlands found that women were taller than their male partners in just 7.5 percent of cases)

Don't men also tend to prefer women who are shorter than them? I know I do personally (though my first two girlfriends were taller than me, go figure.)

They could give teens growth hormone instead. I guess now that late adolescent gender transitions are becoming accepted, and since they already give growth hormone to little people, that's the next step.

At least according to podcasts, that is done for kids that appear on track to be short.

It seems like the people in my SES/field of work trend substantially taller, especially the younger cohort. I’m 1/4” shy of 6’ so it seems strange, but I always assumed it was due to better nutrition. I think a few years less of the pasta-based food pyramid would have made a difference. Or maybe they’re all just getting hormones.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/687/small-things-considered

P.S. if it is ok to give trans kids hormones for gender dysphoria, I don’t see any issues with giving cis kids hormones for dealing with height dysphoria. At least the consequences of HGH are less severe and better understood.

Worked for Lionel Messi: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1492546-lionel-messi-and...

Growth hormone has amazing qualities, but as it stimulates the liver to produce IGF-1, it has to be taken together with drugs that deregulate IGF-1 and under supervision.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acel.13028

Hopefully nobody would read my comment as a suggestion to start taking it.

Actually I wish more people would be taking it. Currently about 10-20 people are in the experiment, and it's the only drug proven to reverse epigenetic aging in humans. I want to be part of the experiment, but I'm afraid of developing prostate cancer, and I don't live inside the US, that's why I prefer to wait.

Tall people die younger, have more joint and back pain, and have trouble finding shirts that fit.

See a shirt in a store? On me a L is a belly shirt and an XL is a baggy belly shirt.

I’m tall and wish I was average and I’m not even “super tall” just 76”/193cm. I straight up feel sorry for people taller than I. They end up on crutches before dying in their 60s.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1600586/

> See a shirt in a store? On me a L is a belly shirt and an XL is a baggy belly shirt.

Seriously, as another skinny-ish tall person, I wish "L-Slim" was a thing. That would be so nice. I'm tired of wearing shirts that are way too wide.

Not sure where you live, but it’s called LT in my region.

I'm ideally a medium tall (MT) but that size is a unicorn (doesn't exist). LT sometimes doesn't look too baggy but they're so rare I don't even bother searching for them in most clothes stores.

When a store has a big and tall section it's literally big AND tall, not normal and tall. If you are 2m (6'7") tall you better weigh 300lbs if you want a shirt that fits.

Is it such a surprise that customization is required to accommodate three standard deviations? People of that height aren't comfortable in every automobile, either.

If you're really fishing for tall sympathy on this thread, of all possible threads, you might want to avoid the word "normal"...

I like TallSlim Tees [0] – pricey for what they are, quality-wise, but for me it's worth it to get a good fit for once. I have a similar build to GP (191cm, ~77kg) and wear a size medium in these. Very nice not needing to clad myself in a billowing sail just so my shirt can reach past my belt

[0] https://tallslimtees.com/

Slim fit. Like these (a german page from the site of a global chain): https://shop.mango.com/de/herren/hemden-slim-fit_c28503139?S...

Mediumish quality.

I feel your pain. My son has had a >20" neck since he was mid-teens, on an otherwise typical big-guy build (6'3", was 240lbs in high school, now a good bit more). Custom dress shirts required, not even stuff from the B&T shops fit.

I'm very much below the national average height for my gender. After a while you'd start hoping that conversations occur at your eye level instead of flying over your head. Practically everyone I know from the same gender and half the other gender are taller than me. It's difficult to quantify the psychological impact of always having to metaphorically wave your hand in the air to get attention. Or when you invite friends over and every time you open the door, you find their eyes looking over your head before looking down seemingly to say "oh there you are". In the article, one of the patients at 5' 5" talked about being ignored by the bartender because a taller customer talked over him. That is something I actually experience fairly frequently.

WFH has been wonderful for this reason, everyone is a half body stump on camera.

I don't think the people in the article are aiming to be super tall. Just tall enough to match their peers. Arguably super tall people (YMMV since everyone is tall to me) and short people both want the same thing, to be average.

With all that being said, I don't find the tradeoff of cost, lost time, immobility, and pain to be worth that marginally extra social respect. And to be honest, it's just a mild annoyance.

You can see my other post. I am also quite short. However I do not have this experience you are conveying here. I think it is a matter of attitude, more than height. Of course being a quiet guy who is 190cm would be better than being a quiet guy who is 165cm.

Yep, no one's ever happy :P. I wish I was a little shorter, plane and bus rides are a literal pain and I don't see any real benefit of being 1.90m when 1.80 - 1.85m would be enough.

That said I'm perfectly ok and wouldn't get surgery even if it was a routine thing, but I don't see any real benefit and only a few annoyances. (Buying clothes or bikes, not all chairs are comfy to sit on, etc).

After my divorce, I dove into the hetero online dating community and discovered that many men lie about their height in their online profile. This is more common among men because many women do in fact want a taller man. Similarly, men and women both often lie about their age in order to help their profile sneak around age filters used by others.

But the lying about height is pathetic and always backfires, often spectacularly, because the women can tell immediately when the guy shows up three or four inches shorter. So at that stage the problem is lying, not height, and it makes for a very awkward date if the date even continues.

Why is it pathetic? Men have a smaller pool to date from unless they get out of the filter bubble. They're wagering they can still win despite the physical statistic.

It might create noise on the other end, but they are heavily incentivized to lie.

I've never used a dating app, but I can only imagine all the women showing up with measuring tapes and the men wearing inconspicuous platform shoes.

If an otherwise great guy, lies to get through your height filter and you go on a date and its great because you get along well. Is then the problem that he lied or his height? If the problem is that he lied, then consider his alternative: never tempting his luck and never getting to know you.

> But the lying about height is pathetic and always backfires, often spectacularly, because the women can tell immediately when the guy shows up three or four inches shorter.

Most men show up 1 or 2 inches shorter. Even tall men.[1]

[1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/thebigliespeop...

https://dilbert.com/strip/1992-08-27

Things can always be looked the other way. Being short is an opportunity to play the game in hard mode, showing everyone that you've got skills. Sometimes I wish I was born black for that reason. Well, at least I'm short, happily married, and working on my path to meaningful accomplishments in my career :)

I am 6’2" and wish I was just a little bit shorter. The standard heights and sizes of everything from toilets to countertops to airplane seats simply are not designed for people over 6'.

I'm 6'4 and I wish I were 5'9.. I would fit on airplanes, busses, and even cars better. I could find shoes in my size that did not look as though they were government-issue. Proper fitting slacks..

"Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone." -Mary Schmich

5'11" is ideal, taller than average, but not so tall you continually bump your head. Budget airlines are still a bit of a squeeze.

The kind of article were I had to check whether it was published on April 1.

Fascinating and somewhat shocking phenomenon. I was under impression that length would be the only aspect of humans that can’t be altered - turns out that was wrong.

I'm trying to be less judgmental, but John Lovedale is pushing me to the limit.

I am definitely going to try this! I could go from 5'11" to 6'4"!! That's how you go from middle management to VP!

> The effect is like a Grand Theft Auto extra who’s just been sniped in the butt.

An example video would help a lot.

I wish I was a little bit more able to comfortably sit on an average office chair.

I recommend the Haworth Very for taller folks. At the max height my femurs actually sit slightly above the horizontal plane containing my knees so I don’t feel boxed in.

I am a touch above 5'3". I've used a Haworth Very for the past ~5 years. My wife now has one, too.

With this chair:

- My feet can touch the floor, even without shoes

- The armrests can move down to the place where my forearms naturally rest

- The armrests can point from my elbows to the front corners of my keyboard

- I can sit for long periods without my any discomfort

Oh that’s really cool! Seems like it’s just a well designed chair for most heights.

I agree on all of your points. Bless the designers for saving our back/knees/hips etc!

wow

"I wish was a baller, I wish I had a girl, if I did I would call her".

Sorry first thing that came into mind when reading the title.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ryDOy3AosBw

You're not the only one.

That's most likely the intent of the headline, pop references are normal.

“I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat and a six-four Impala.”

I always heard it, and remember it as "a six-four father", but I looked up the lyrics and the lyrics sites are all saying "Impala", which makes way less sense to me than "Father". Impala like the car? Like the animal? How do either of those help with a height problem? If you had a six-four father however, you would also likely be tall.

Which lead me to make this: https://imgflip.com/i/6tigza

A 1964 Chevrolet Impala is an impressive automobile that may persuade potential mates to overlook ones height deficiency.

This cosmetic surgeon needs a refresher course on the Hippocratic oath.

We've had purely cosmetic surgery for decades. Is this any different than a boob job or lip implants or hair plugs? It's more painful, sure, and irreversible, but is it morally different because of that?

> but is it morally different because of that?

Yes, because it's more painful and irreversible.

This sentiment with respect to radical medical transformations is not well received in certain online communities...

I imagine you are taking about gender reassignment surgery. In that case, the patient is seeking help to solve a serious physical and psychological problem for themselves. Leg lengthening does not cross that bar for me, at least not how the motivations of the patients are described in the article. I can easily imagine cosmetic surgery that is ethical, including leg lengthening, but these guys are not it.

You're making very fine distinctions. Many people will draw the line somewhere else. Our society has drawn the line somewhere else, because this well-known and respected physician makes a good living providing this treatment to satisfied patients. IANATrans person, but I doubt many of them would see a problem here either. In the context of USA health care, invoking Hippocrates on this guy is silly.

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