In the cartoon show Invader Zim, the alien civilization uses height (and only height) to select its leaders. The older I get, the more I wonder if this was satirical.

great show

Tall people tend to be more relaxed in leadership roles, because they feel less of a need to prove themselves.

Nope. I remember there was a study where non-descriptive figures on paper were shown to little children and they all attributed positive traits to the taller figure and negative traits to the smaller figure. It's not about behavior, there seems to be an innate bias amongst humans towards taller people.

> there seems to be an innate bias amongst humans towards taller people.

Either that or our tall people worshiping culture had time enough to shape those children's world view. I also wonder though if children aren't a bit biased because their own parents, the people who feed and love and protect them, happen to be giants from their point of view.

White people tend to be more relaxed in leadership roles, because they feel less of a need to prove themselves.

Do you see how insane this sounds?

The social dominance affected by greater height is not an illusion - this has been observed and studied widely. Being part of a majority group (which whites are in the US) is also noted for similar effects. Just because we don't like these things doesn't mean we should deny their existence - that's how you get systemic discrimination in the first place.

Also, men, because they're physically larger, on average.

The important thing is that this all gets sussed out via whiteboard coding questions, where the candidate is put in a usually windowless box with some alpha coder, and told to solve math puzzles under time pressure, and are then judged based on "culture fit".

That reminds me. Does anyone know how to buy bike desks like the ones in The Zero Theorem?

I'd like to add them to our bull pen and interview setup, now that we're back in the office:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7my1G0TrwT8

(I've found that examples of what not to do are often the most useful.)

You might be interested in the biography of General Benjamin Davis, a great American hero.

Maybe they actually have more need to prove themselves since short peoples leadership gets challenged much more often? Why else would they feel greater need to prove themselves? It isn't like short peoples brains are wired differently.

Tall and/or attractive people have lifelong advantages. There's nothing fair or just about it. We're each dealt a different set of cards, and it's up to us to take advantage of the good cards and make lemonade from the bad ones as best we can.

I.e. don't confuse having an advantage or disadvantage with destiny. We make our own destinies by the choices we make.

> I.e. don't confuse having an advantage or disadvantage with destiny. We make our own destinies by the choices we make.

That's cute but very disconnected from reality.

> That's cute but very disconnected from reality.

Reality is full of examples of people who have overcome disadvantages. Edison suffered severe hearing loss as a child, for example.

Good example, now imagine the same Edison (w.r.t. potential) at the same time with the same hearing loss born to a black family.

Imagine the great things a genius like Srinivasa Ramanujan could have achieved if he had the privilege of a proper formal education and wouldn't have lived at the poverty line for most his life, which ultimately caused him to die young.

For every Edison there's literally millions of (mostly) poor people, who for one reason or another (be that born with the wrong genitalia, wrong skin colour, or at the wrong place) simply never even get the chance to develop their full potential no matter how hard they try.

Denying the impact of pure happenstance on people's destiny is denying a large part of reality. Unfortunately not everyone is lucky enough to be born into a supporting family or a country that offers actual opportunities in life.

edit: basically what I'm trying to say is that it's incredibly hard to roll a 7 when using a single D6 versus someone rolling two D20s :)

I don't buy the defeatism in your theory. Too many counterexamples.

I recommend you read a biography on Edison's early life.

Or just look at America itself. It was not settled by rich people, or even middle class people. It was settled by destitute people, criminals running from the law, indentured servants, and slaves.

It became the richest country in the world, with the largest and wealthiest middle class.

Why do you think millions of people desperately try to get into the US every year? What do they know that you're overlooking?

> I don't buy the defeatism in your theory.

There's no defeatism, just a healthy dose of reality. It's not a theory either, it's a fact that can be demonstrated by statistics and even put in numbers (though I'm not a fan of GINI and the like).

> Too many counterexamples.

I recommend you look at the dire state of many people around the globe and throughout history. History only tells the story of those who made it - nobody writes about the millions who failed and why. It's an inherent bias that distorts our perception.

> Or just look at America itself.

I explicitly mentioned countries that provide opportunities, of which the US is one. Though it wasn't everyone who immediately benefitted; the slaves and the indigenous people weren't so lucky in their time, for example. The gain for some was a loss for the others.

> Why do you think millions of people desperately try to get into the US every year?

For the exact reason I mentioned: because they grew up in places that simply don't allow them to achieve their goals, no matter how hard they try. How many fail to cross the border or get rejected and how many are deported later?

Thousands of refugees die every year while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. Were the survivors truly masters of their own destiny or did they just get lucky? Is it talent, determination and the right attitude that gets them out of the refugee camp on Lampedusa; or are they at the mercy of a cold and uncaring bureaucracy that just wants to get rid of them?

I'm not saying only certain people can achieve their life goals. What I'm saying is that determination and talent alone are not always sufficient. Circumstances play a major role in life.

Call me cynical, but for every success story there's a hundred young people who didn't live to their 21st birthday in the favelas of Rio or in the slums of Lagos.

Your perception might be different and I'm not trying to convince you, I like your optimism, even though I don't share it.