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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31671 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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These results do not surprise me . It would seem like thinness is positively corelated with almost all metrics of success . Maybe IQ plays some role, in that thinner people are smarter, which could account for success at a wide variety of things. I have noticed that it seems like there are few fat 'STEM people', particularly in physics and math, compared to other areas (the stereotypical fat feminist).

No, overweight men earn more than slim men

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8468324/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46379465_When_It_Comes_to_Pay_Do_the_Thin_Win_The_Effect_of_Weight_on_Pay_for_Men_and_Women

are few fat 'STEM people', particularly in physics and math, compared to other areas (the stereotypical fat feminist).

Feminists control minds. Physics and math men are near bottom of ladder and full of incels.

No, overweight men earn more than slim men

Looking just at your first study, it appears not to control for age which I would say is a fatal error. As people get older two things happen. First, they tend to move up the ladder of whatever career they have chosen, earning more money because they are more experienced. They also tend to transition to more sedentary jobs, especially if their field originally was more active in the lower rungs. Which leads directly into the second effect, they get fatter. I have a sneaking suspicion that the male half of this study accidentally found a correlation between age and income, not weight and income.

It would seem like thinness is positively corelated with almost all metrics of success . Maybe IQ plays some role, in that thinner people are smarter, which could account for success at a wide variety of things

If that is true then I bet that it is in general correlated with willpower and ability to control yourself, maybe with ability to plan long-term.

I don't have the cites available, but IIRC about half the correlation disappears once sibling fixed effects are added. This suggests roughly half the correlation is due to assortative mating. Given that both IQ and BMI are almost entirely genetic, the other half of the correlation is probably that the same genes cause both (plausibly by affecting willpower/self-control).

More likely the correlation here is something like, if you're serious about making money as an escort you're going to keep your body in peak condition. If you're doing it as a lark to make ends meet, that's one thing, but if you're trying to maximize earnings you're going to get on that treadmill. So BMI probably correlates with a smart fitness plan probably correlates with a whole pile of other similar profit maximizing strategies.

Yeah, that's a possible cofounder. A very small correlation between BMI and income could instead appear as a huge correlation if those that are actively seeking to maximize income correctly identify that they need to have a BMI of 20, and those that aren't maximizing income don't bother. However, "smart fitness plan" probably just means eating less. It's BMI that's being measured here, not muscle mass.

That's why I went with "fitness" rather than "workout," but yeah, BMI is really just weight, which for the vast majority of humans is really just fat.

I have to say I'm somewhat surprised that BMI correlates that well, I've dated some short women blessed in the "weight goes to tits/ass" department who would have lost out on BMI while still having abs, but I've also never paid any money to a prostitute so I'm not really in the sample anyway.

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I... don't know what to say about this. In fact it goes against every stereotype I have about these groups.

It goes against every observation I have of these groups, too.

It's not that I've never seen a thin (non-Asian) STEMer, but I certainly see fewer thin STEMers than thin artistés.

And while "fat feminists" are a thing -- there are certainly overweight women who identify as feminists -- there are also plenty of thin feminists

This is just a truism though, isn't it. "There are both fat and thin feminists", sure, inevitable. The pertinent question is whether or not the distribution is skewed, and I would be very surprised if it wasn't.

It's not that I've never seen a thin (non-Asian) STEMer, but I certainly see fewer thin STEMers than thin artistés.

Isn't this the reverse of what you wrote above:

I have noticed that it seems like there are few fat 'STEM people', particularly in physics and math, compared to other areas (the stereotypical fat feminist).

Who is the fattest poet laureate?

I have coworkers that weigh twice what some Nobel laureates weigh. There's a great abundance of fat engineers.

Before I wrote my post I spent a good 5 minutes racking my mind trying to think of counterexamples... I can only recall one professor (an Indian guy...cannot recall his name) who has a Wikipedia page.

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