The main concept of: “what if instead of only increasing resources, everyone physically needed less resources due to biology” blew my mind the first time I encountered it. It warms my heart to see it appear again.
More seriously: Tallness seems to cause heart and spine issues, as well as seem to have no visible genetic asymptote until we run into awful deadly issues from height. I’m slightly worried that we’ll keep growing until it becomes a nasty issue, but keep pressing further into tallness around because it’s sexually selected for.
Actually, nevermind. Upon investigation Our World In Data seems to think average height was primarily nutrient driven and is ending its climb and plateauing due to maxing out the possible benefits of nutrients. Also apparently ancient people were as tall as we are today. I had no idea.
From wikipedia. Turns out we only just caught up to our ancestors. This really makes agriculture and cities look horrendous. What happened in 2000 BCE with that spike?
Smaller people don’t seem to have disadvantages except the unwinnable comparative placement from culture (not everyone can be tall), and if we could reroute that biological energy to health, lifespan, and intellect instead....it sounds like a win to me. Why not rationally laud the luck of the people who are biologically more efficient and likely have longer lives? With this in mind I somewhat wish I were shorter.
The main concept of: “what if instead of only increasing resources, everyone physically needed less resources due to biology” blew my mind the first time I encountered it. It warms my heart to see it appear again.
More seriously: Tallness seems to cause heart and spine issues, as well as seem to have no visible genetic asymptote until we run into awful deadly issues from height. I’m slightly worried that we’ll keep growing until it becomes a nasty issue, but keep pressing further into tallness around because it’s sexually selected for.
Actually, nevermind. Upon investigation Our World In Data seems to think average height was primarily nutrient driven and is ending its climb and plateauing due to maxing out the possible benefits of nutrients. Also apparently ancient people were as tall as we are today. I had no idea.
Smaller people don’t seem to have disadvantages except the unwinnable comparative placement from culture (not everyone can be tall), and if we could reroute that biological energy to health, lifespan, and intellect instead....it sounds like a win to me. Why not rationally laud the luck of the people who are biologically more efficient and likely have longer lives? With this in mind I somewhat wish I were shorter.