Tallness is zero sum. But I suspect beauty isn’t. If everyone was more beautiful but the relative differences remained, I think people would be happier. Am I wrong in this? This has policy implications, as once genetic engineering gets better taxing height is likely wise to avoid red-queens races into unhealthy phenotypes. Taxing beauty seems very horrible to me. As beauty is quite beautiful.
Yeah. I prefer not fighting the thought experiment though and thinking of beauty qua beauty. Though perhaps what remains of beauty once it is stripped of all its correlates is perverse.
Height is not zero-sum. It’s correlated with health in nonlinear ways, and also it’s valuable or harmful in different quantities for different things. The vast majority of value (positive and negative dimensions) is NOT relative to others, so “zero-sum” is not a relevant framing.
Beauty is not purely zero-sum either, but arguably more of its desirability is zero-sum than height. Out-competing others in selection contests (mating, politics, some career choices) is influenced by beauty more than height (note: height and IQ are often listed as the two best predictors of income, but that’s because Beauty is rarely included in demographic studies).
My impression is that health problems reduce height but height also causes health problems (even in the normal range of height, e.g. higher cancer risk). I’d be surprised if height was causally healthy.
There’s a measurement issue on the beauty question as well. Height is trivial to quantify, but what is the unit of measurement of beauty?
There are definitely consistent biologically rooted norms of what is beautiful, but this is a very controversial and culturally loaded issue that would make any taxation scheme (or any other policy relying on some measured “beauty” trait) far more difficult to pull off.
It seems like the move for height would be to make men taller and women shorter? Or to increase the sexually dimorphic difference, and separately pick the optimal average.
Because “tall” is context dependent. In Laos the average male height is 163 cm (5″4). In the Netherlands it is 184 cm (6 ft). If your height is 180 cm, you are very tall in Laos, but below average in the Netherlands.
I feel like there are countries where the average beauty is much higher than it is in most of the anglosphere and people in those cultures seem to just come to value beauty less.
I also think we should try to figure out why, lets say, penalizing diversity in appearance, is so common, I doubt that it’s entirely a result of changing or differing beauty standards over time and space, I think there’s something adaptive about it, I think it might force people to be less superficial, to be more desperate to prove their worth through their deeds, rather than just luxuriating uselessly in the glow of their material, and that gives rise to families of deeds, and those families win their wars.
people in those cultures seem to just come to value beauty less
Is it “less” in the sense that their standards simply got higher and shifted the beauty curve, or in the sense of diminishing returns? Not sure I could operationalize this, but intuitively it feels like there is a difference between:
this person (beautiful by other country’s standard) seems repulsively ugly to me
this person seems pretty, but so are most people, so I am looking also for some other traits
Tallness is zero sum. But I suspect beauty isn’t. If everyone was more beautiful but the relative differences remained, I think people would be happier. Am I wrong in this? This has policy implications, as once genetic engineering gets better taxing height is likely wise to avoid red-queens races into unhealthy phenotypes. Taxing beauty seems very horrible to me. As beauty is quite beautiful.
I think part of this is probably that beauty is much less one-dimensional?
Seems like a lot of the low-hanging fruit would be in preventing (or healing) disfiguring diseases and injuries.
Yeah. I prefer not fighting the thought experiment though and thinking of beauty qua beauty. Though perhaps what remains of beauty once it is stripped of all its correlates is perverse.
Rather than ‘zero sum’ I’ve heard it referred to as a positional good.
Height is not zero-sum. It’s correlated with health in nonlinear ways, and also it’s valuable or harmful in different quantities for different things. The vast majority of value (positive and negative dimensions) is NOT relative to others, so “zero-sum” is not a relevant framing.
Beauty is not purely zero-sum either, but arguably more of its desirability is zero-sum than height. Out-competing others in selection contests (mating, politics, some career choices) is influenced by beauty more than height (note: height and IQ are often listed as the two best predictors of income, but that’s because Beauty is rarely included in demographic studies).
My impression is that health problems reduce height but height also causes health problems (even in the normal range of height, e.g. higher cancer risk). I’d be surprised if height was causally healthy.
There’s a measurement issue on the beauty question as well. Height is trivial to quantify, but what is the unit of measurement of beauty?
There are definitely consistent biologically rooted norms of what is beautiful, but this is a very controversial and culturally loaded issue that would make any taxation scheme (or any other policy relying on some measured “beauty” trait) far more difficult to pull off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_(unit)
Dollars per hour on OnlyFans?
It seems like the move for height would be to make men taller and women shorter? Or to increase the sexually dimorphic difference, and separately pick the optimal average.
Why is tallness zero sum? Tallness is part of male beauty standards, so if guys were taller that’d be great for everyone.
Because “tall” is context dependent. In Laos the average male height is 163 cm (5″4). In the Netherlands it is 184 cm (6 ft). If your height is 180 cm, you are very tall in Laos, but below average in the Netherlands.
This data is not relevant to my point. What would be relevant is the delta between male and female average height in the two countries.
I feel like there are countries where the average beauty is much higher than it is in most of the anglosphere and people in those cultures seem to just come to value beauty less.
I also think we should try to figure out why, lets say, penalizing diversity in appearance, is so common, I doubt that it’s entirely a result of changing or differing beauty standards over time and space, I think there’s something adaptive about it, I think it might force people to be less superficial, to be more desperate to prove their worth through their deeds, rather than just luxuriating uselessly in the glow of their material, and that gives rise to families of deeds, and those families win their wars.
Is it “less” in the sense that their standards simply got higher and shifted the beauty curve, or in the sense of diminishing returns? Not sure I could operationalize this, but intuitively it feels like there is a difference between:
this person (beautiful by other country’s standard) seems repulsively ugly to me
this person seems pretty, but so are most people, so I am looking also for some other traits