Hacker News Reader

Comment by ptoo | Hacker News Reader

Why does it matter if they reach their full possible height, barring health complications? At least 80% of height is genetic so creating a value system based upon something that has no bearing on a person's qualities, aesthetic or psychological, is of no importance. Always substitute race for height and see how the line of argument sounds. The only difference is that one trait is generally culturally acceptable to disparage while the other is not.

View on HN

> does it matter if they reach their full possible height

What you’re asking is the implied question. Is the shift due to changing demographics? Or is it evidence of malnutrition, that city kids are not reaching their genetic optima?

At a population level, ceteris paribus and longitudinally, height is a health indicator. Individually or comparatively it’s useless.

It’s these reductionist arguments that lose the forest for the trees.

If we see a clear health disparity between two groups who should otherwise have equal outcomes, then it implies there’s possibly something in the environment of one group that’s negatively effecting them. And therefore could possibly have other side effects we’re not privy too.

You say height is of no importance, but a majority of women[0][1] would disagree, and men below average height would also disagree. Perhaps our evolutionary signals point to something other than “a social construct” for choosing height in mates. Wild thought.

0 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...

1 - https://www.wsj.com/articles/online-dating-investing-match-t... (quote of note: “A former Bumble product manager says that a majority of women on the platform tend to set a floor of 6 feet for men, which would limit their candidate pool to about 15% of the population.“)

The majority of women, especially before we began to actually combat racism, would also agree that being white is preferable, as would black men who were subjected to the results of living in a racist society. We currently live in a heightist society so naturally being taller is perceived as better. The crux of the issues is that it shouldn't be considered better. It's a totally inconsequential trait.

Height is a physical measurement and has actual consequences, it's not a social construct like race is.

Then again, race has actual consequences too. We unfortunately still don't live in a colorblind world.

> The crux of the issues is that it shouldn't be considered better. It's a totally inconsequential trait.

They physical advantages of height are very apparent and simple to understand. Even animals recognize the larger you are the safer you are (generally). How is that inconsequential?

Physical threat and violence should have no place in a modern society. Throwing in the note about animals should underscore that.

I agree, but they do, thus height is important. Why try to pretend otherwise? I’m still stuck on how one can defend “height has no importance”.

Confused how one can come to that conclusion. If violence is not a trait in a modern society, how big people are should be of no consequence. Back in times of the caveman this was an extremely important trait because violence was an aspect of daily life that had real utility. Now, people can go their entire lives never having been in a fight.

In fact I would argue having an arms race for ever bigger humans is antisocial and detrimental... just the carbon footprint aspects alone is a good reason to discourage that. The extra stress on our food system. Bigger cars, airplanes, fuel, etc... as opposed to women dig it and you can beat people up. Really?

Sorry, I meant that it'd be ideal for violence to have no place but it does.

It does matter if people aren’t getting the nutrients they need or if something else in the environment is interfering with their development.

An individual person’s height isn’t an indicator of health but in aggregate the statistics matter.

I don’t see the analogy with race working in this context.

Height is a quantifiable value heavily influenced by genetics, race is not even a biological concept amongst humans.

I'm not implying anything about the biological racial differences between humans. When I say racism, I'm talking about people of colour who experience prejudice based on the colour of their skin which is indisputable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com