Well... there are some basic issues here. First of all any time you decide to increase growth of tissues where there would otherwise be none, you run the risk of cancer. I'm not sure how (other than breaking and resetting bone) you'd get people taller, and what the other issues would be. You'd also need to make sure the quality of bone is still high, that the growth doesn't lead to fractures or issues with the connective tissues. You're essentially trying to reboot a major organ system which both supports your entire body and contains the machinery for making blood and immune cells. That's a huge risk for an incredibly modest reward.
Meanwhile bleaching people is a dangerous, unwise, but still quite straightforward thing to do. You don't have to reprogram anything fundamental, you just use a cocktail of nastiness which has the desired effect at a very superficial level.
This is really something better left for pharmaceutical giants given how much R&D would cost and the time to market. The amount of time to see a return on the investment makes it impractical for a startup. Weight-loss drugs are going to be incredibly lucrative but it took long term research into treating diabetes to make any practical progress. If we get a treatment for height it will likely come from a similar long term adjacent research.
I thought pharmaceutical giants did their R&D these days by buying startups that had already done the hard work? And which in turn had been spun out of a university department that had done the basic research?
What do you mean 'huge proportion of people suffer from'?
Frankly this sort of talk reminds me of typical incel rhetoric - overly focused on perceived deficiencies to the point of disconnect with reality. In other words I don't imagine the market you imagine exists.
Caveat; yeah if that kind of body mod became as simple as dying your hair I wouldn't be surprised. But just screwing with your bones to squeeze out a few inches? Most people just wear boots; same effect, zero potential to accidentally cripple yourself.
Are you familiar with how common cosmetic surgery is, especially among women? The internet has this effect on everyone, and it’s no wonder men are starting to feel the same. I don’t like the reduction of sexuality to resource competition, but it is an admittedly useful lens for analysis. One used to be “in competition” with the people in their own town, or their neighborhood. Even the advent of cities wouldn’t have marked such a major shift in one’s perception of beauty. With social media, one can digitally “live” among the most beautiful people in the world, distorting not only their self-image but their expectations for a mate[1]. I’m not active on any of this, have decent self esteem, no features that I would consider deficient, and receive enough female (and male) attention to feel good about myself. I still have twinges of inadequacy when exposed to such things.
It’s dismissive to ascribe this to “incels”, although they may be the first group to really prioritize such things for men.
The whole thing is antisocial. It should be fixed, but it won’t, and we’ll see an arms race of self-augmentation.
[1] I will say that a lot of the obsessive quantification of traits applies more to oneself than to others in the real world, and that people have trouble translating between the two. Regarding height specifically, I’m barely above average. No woman has ever accurately assessed my height. They always think I’m a couple of inches taller than I am. I don’t do anything to exaggerate it, it’s just that they have specific numbers that they’ve fixed upon as “a good height” and when they see a man that looks tall enough, they think he must be at that height. On the other hand, they tend to get fixated on their own perceived flaws, like breast size, where I actually prefer someone on the smaller side, but they’ve already quantified an “ideal” and determined that they don’t meet it.
7 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 30.2 ms ] threadMeanwhile bleaching people is a dangerous, unwise, but still quite straightforward thing to do. You don't have to reprogram anything fundamental, you just use a cocktail of nastiness which has the desired effect at a very superficial level.
Frankly this sort of talk reminds me of typical incel rhetoric - overly focused on perceived deficiencies to the point of disconnect with reality. In other words I don't imagine the market you imagine exists.
Caveat; yeah if that kind of body mod became as simple as dying your hair I wouldn't be surprised. But just screwing with your bones to squeeze out a few inches? Most people just wear boots; same effect, zero potential to accidentally cripple yourself.
It’s dismissive to ascribe this to “incels”, although they may be the first group to really prioritize such things for men.
The whole thing is antisocial. It should be fixed, but it won’t, and we’ll see an arms race of self-augmentation.
[1] I will say that a lot of the obsessive quantification of traits applies more to oneself than to others in the real world, and that people have trouble translating between the two. Regarding height specifically, I’m barely above average. No woman has ever accurately assessed my height. They always think I’m a couple of inches taller than I am. I don’t do anything to exaggerate it, it’s just that they have specific numbers that they’ve fixed upon as “a good height” and when they see a man that looks tall enough, they think he must be at that height. On the other hand, they tend to get fixated on their own perceived flaws, like breast size, where I actually prefer someone on the smaller side, but they’ve already quantified an “ideal” and determined that they don’t meet it.
Adults can take it too, it doesn’t make them taller but it does improve your physique the way anabolic steroids do and it works together with them.
There are pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1980 with the distinctive gap between his front too top teeth which is a notable side effect of HGH.
https://www.businessinsider.com/limb-leg-lengthening-surgery...