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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2734 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 20, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I've done a relatively exhaustive analysis on male pattern baldness (I have a vested interest). I'm extremely relieved to find out that despite the reflection of the OR lights off dad's head being dazzling, I likely have lower than average odds of going bald.

Relevant factors:

  1. 50% of men lose some hair by 50.
  2. Dad's saving a lot of money on haircuts.
  3. Maternal grandpa has a respectable head of hair past 95. If I'm slightly thinning when I'm crossing my 80s, I can live with that.
  4. Only 1/3rd of my paternal uncles are bald, all of them older than my dad.
  5. I'm teetering dangerously close to 30, without losing anything off the top. That pretty much rules out early onset AO.

I can breathe a little easier, without having to worry so much about turning 30 and finding out that I've lost my hair, alongside my well-founded belief that you immediately develop arthritis and an inability to drink liquor like you used to. The jungles of Norwood seem less daunting, and worst comes to worse, it's time for minoxidil or a trip to Turkey. Going bald might even be good for career progression, just look at Scott!

(I was immensely annoyed by the fact that while stats on the probability of your dad being bald if you're balding are well established at around 80%, the odds of becoming bald with a bald dad are much harder to find. And MBP is annoyingly polygenic to boot.)

Edit:

Here's the final post

50% of men lose some hair by 50.

That percentage seems surprisingly low. My hair genetics are probably very good (top 10% of pretty much all people I know), and I have definitely noticed some slight recession in my thirties. Perhaps I'm more neurotic about it than the average interviewee of this study.

I mean, a lot of it hinges on the threshold for what counts as "hair loss". A single strand? Who hasn't lost one of those? It's more to do with what's noticeable to yourself or others.

You have P(dad is bald | son is balding). If you can find P(bald) and P(born to a bald dad) - assuming the latter doesn’t impact the sex ratio - you could use Bayes’ Theorem instead of searching for P(son is balding | dad is bald).

I figured it out, but with the caveat that this only works in ideal circumstances which are very much not true.

Here's the link to the full post. I'm reasonably confident about the maths.

Awesome! It warms my smooth pate to see Bayes in the wild.

Yeah the genes are carried on the x chromosome so your own father is the one person in your ancestry who has almost no influence on one's baldness.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5308812/

Hmm? That's definitely not true. I'd know, I just submitted an effortpost on the topic.

Even in the study you linked:

Using common genetic variants with a minor allele frequency of at least 1%, GCTA-GREML analysis found that 47.3% (SE 1.3%) of the variance in baldness can be explained by common autosomal genetic variants, while 4.6% (SE 0.3%) can be explained by common X chromosome variants.

Fathers contribute autosomal chromosomes, even if they don't hand over an X chromosome. The relative risk if you have a bald dad is anywhere between 2.5-6x as much!

I would be interested to hear if you've found anything more reliable than the old "best indicator is whether a man's mother's father went bald" (which doesn't seem terribly accurate).

My 77yo father is Norwood 0, as am I in my 40s, so my vested interest is minimal.

You're in luck, because I did in fact decide to begin that effort-post. I've got a 6 hour journey today on abominably slow British trains, so expect something in a few hours or change.

During COVID I had my hair cut really short, like a buzz cutt even in front, just because. I thought it was cool enough but then looking at pictures of the cool guy buzz cuts it seemed my own buzz cut was considerably higher up the forehead. I proceeded to have a moment where I was sure I was beginning the downturn and my hairline was receding at an accelerated pace. Began growing it out a bit. Now I find I still have a pretty full head of hair, even in front, but I probably just have always had a fairly high hairline. Old photos suggest this is true.

Hair is weird for men. You can lose the beer gut, you can build your arms and legs and abs. But you can't diet or exercise yourself more hair.

Hah, I've been pretty convinced that my hair is thinning around the temples for the past 4ish years.

I'd go back and look at photos of me from college and try to guesstimate if I've lost a couple millimeters.

I considered using some kind of marking system to see if there was any retreat. But I'm 36 now, and hair is still pretty thick, so even if I lose a bit on the Temples I doubt its a real concern.

Also, apparently the convergence of techs available now mean that you really can get your hair growing again with some investment of time and money.

It's all well and good to begin succumbing to the recessionary pressures up top once you're already married and settled down. To my (mild) astonishment, women are quite unlikely to abandon the partners they cherish and love, while being averse to going for their less lucky counterparts while single.

But hey, hair transplants work if you can afford them.

Interesting, I thought hair transplants didn't really work once you're a norwood 7. It would probably cost an insane amount of money at that stage, at least.

I wonder what the statistics are on how averse women are to going for their less lucky counterparts while single.

I don't see why they wouldn't work, but you'd be stretching out the transplanted follicles to cover a lot more surface area.

I don't recall running into any studies, but I think it's just an observed fact that's not really in question. It would be good to know the numbers though!

I'm also gauging interest in an effort-post on the topic, so let me know if this something that you'd like to know more about.

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